Featured on the Parenting Page!

I'm super excited. Well, maybe not as excited as I was when I first discovered my links on the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, but it is still a wonderful honor to be chosen as the feature parenting article on Associated Content. It means that I'm making progress, that I'm doing something worth while, not just monetary either... because the money is just the icing. If I'm making oodles of money and no one likes what I'm writing then that means nothing to me. I'm enjoying this rush I get when I get some recognition for my work. Yee-haw!

If you're interested, below is the article that was featured today. I don't know how long it will be up there, but I'm enjoying looking at it! Thanks to Momie who is one of the category editors over in those parts.

Five Places You Don't Think About When Baby Proofing

So What?

Some people just don't like change. Whether it's change they don't like or just the look of the new Associated Content home page, I don't know. I personally think it looks a lot more professional and cleaned up which gives more emphasis to the purpose of AC for the general reader.

I only have two problems with it. There's no feature "Source" (the term AC gives us as writers). The topics are also just listed at the bottom. It would be better to have the topics more visible.

In any case, there's an uproar about it that I really don't understand. If it works, great! Why get upset?

Over 1,000 Page Views in One Day!

Hurray! This week, as I follow the season finales on the small screen, my page views have skyrocketed! This is excellent for me as I've been sitting on average of less then 100 views a day. On the 14th, I noticed my page views up 162 from the previous day. On the 5/15 update, it went up 450. 5/16 saw an increase in 517. I thought that would be my top off as the 5/17 update only showed an increase in 272 views. Then this morning, I check my account to find that between my Survivor Finale article (which caught almost 700 page views in one day) and my Jillian Harris article, plus added views from the other entertainment news I did, my page views since yesterday were up by 1028 views! Yippee!

But with all the page view complaints as of late, I put myself out there in the forum and asked if these were actual page views that wouldn't be taken away. While I believe in AC, I have to wonder how reliable the technology is that does these updates, especially when they couldn't pinpoint exactly how a problem with page views occurred last month. But here's for hoping.

How I Started

In July of 2008, after researching for ways to make some money online, I came across Helium. Being a writer all of my life, I thought this would be an excellent way to get my name out there and write for money. But after seven months and writing for pennies, I came to dislike the site for several reasons. In order to receive any payment from Helium, you must first reach a payout amount of $20. Not only to you have to write but you have to rate other articles. Rating for revenue share was simply exhausting and took up a lot of time, especially if you are intent on being fair to the nature of rating. Also, with hundreds of articles smashed under one title, there was nothing that stated that your article would be search-able on any search engine. After trying to keep up with the site and failing miserably, I burned out. I just wasn't making any progress.

In September of 2008, I played with the idea of writing for Associated Content and even signed up. But with visions of Helium dancing in my head, it was a few months before I got up the gumption to write anything for AC.

In January, I finally got the nerve up to write my first article, Train Yourself to Potty Train Your Toddler. I wrote this after having potty training troubles with my son. After seeing some nice results and kind comments, I wrote another article, Writing Your Fiction Query. I had enough support and encouragement, and having been paid upfront for both those articles, I felt that AC was something I could really get into.

After the first month, I'd already made twice as much from Associated Content then I had made in seven months struggling on Helium. AC has become my new home. I have published, to date, 70 articles and have reached a clout of 5. I've seen my page views increase substantially as I learn about the tricks of the trade. Between yesterday and today, I was astonished to see my page views rise 450 just from two articles!

If you'd like to browse through my article catalog, click to view my profile here.

Welcome!

Welcome to my Associated Content blog. Here, I will discuss what I've learned, post successes, post frustrations, or anything relating to my writing for Associated Content. I will not just plug my articles but discuss anything on my mind relating to the articles I post as well. I will also post any useful information of anything I find intriguing from fellow Associated Content writers. Stay tuned for how I got started on this journey. Thank you for stopping by and I hope you will subscribe and comment!