Here's what Angel had to say on my previous post about Associated Content:

Seems like a lot of work for little return. If you have serious articles, why not submit them to magazines?

Yes - I agree with you. It probably is a lot of work for what you receive back monetarily. But, there are a lot of ways that you can use Associated Content that will benefit you in other ways and increase the return you receive.

For example (for all the 30 Day Challenge participants reading): use articles on Associated Content to help launch a niche site. How do you do that? Well, to use Ed's favorite example again - let's say you want to develop a site on sausage making.

We've been told that the narrower your topic is for your niche, the more likely you'll find success. This is true on Associated Content as well. If you establish yourself as an "expert" on a certain topic like sausage making by writing a lot of articles, you're going to have more of your articles published, as well as less competition for searches looking for that topic.

So you develop your site on sausage making.

As you develop it, you write 6 - 8 (or more!) articles on sausage making.

• The History of Sausage in the New World
• Sausage makers in San Antonio, Texas
• How to make a Summer Sausage
• Sausage and Cheese: A primer
• I fell in love with a sausage maker
• Annual Sausage making conference lands in Grand Forks, ND.
• Sausage Making: Not a pretty picture

Important: Place a link to your site in your article. Duh!

Associated Content publishes the articles and you get 30 or 40 bucks deposited straight into paypal. Now, let's say you had some startup costs for your niche site on sausage making. A domain name, hosting, etc. The money from the articles more than covers that cost.

So - you get paid up front for the articles, plus you potentially drive more people that are interested in sausage making to your sausage making website where they purchase the Sausage Maker 2.0 Deluxe. In reality, your article that took 20 minutes to write has paid you on the back end as well.

I agree - if you're writing serious articles, why not submit to magazines. Well, like you said - serious is the key word. I spend 20 minutes on article. Not exactly what I consider serious.

I'm using Associated Content as one of many marketing tools and a way to make a few bucks on something that most places are not going to pay me for. Another way to use this tool - if you do want to submit to magazines - is as a sample portfolio. It's easy to point people to your Content Producer page (here's mine) so they can get an idea of your capabilities. It is in no way a complete portfolio for me, but it works if somebody wants something quick and easily accessible. They can always request to see more if it sparks their interest.

You can always use these articles as a springboard for larger projects. One thing about writing is that the more you do it - the easier it becomes. I try to make sure that everyday I post to my blog, I write a few articles for Associated Content, and I read as much as I can. If you keep up a routine it makes things like writer's block a problem you won't have much trouble with.

You can check out Angel's blog here. It's one of my regular reads - I try to read it everyday and he always has thoughtful and well written posts.



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While they're updating the servers over at the 30 Day Challenge - I decided I would take some time to catch up on some articles for Associated Content.

If you were wondering how Associated Content works - here's a few quick pics to show you how easy it is to make money there.




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In the spirit of the 30 Day Challenge, I've decided to run my own challenge here.

The 30 Minute Challenge

The Goal: To go from making $0 dollars online to $3 dollars in 30 minutes.

What's it cost? Nothing silly. Duh. It would suck to have to invest $5 dollars to make $3. That leaves you with negative 2.

What do I need? Well, 30 minutes, oh...and a keyboard. And a PayPal account if you want to be paid.


The Process

1. Sign up at Associated Content.

No. It doesn't cost you anything. By signing up you are just basically registering as a Content Producer (Writer). You can view the Associated Content FAQ. Basically - AC pays you to write and article for them. They're able to do this because they publish your article and make money from the advertisements with the article. Here's an example of one of my articles: Free Vegas: Sin City on a Budget. That's actually my first article I wrote and I made $7 bucks for it. So why $3 only? Because that's the lowest payment I've received for an article. I average about $4.75 per article.


2. Submit an Article.

Write about something you know a lot about. Something you are passionate about. Maybe a hobby or something you enjoy doing. You can write about anything - but think of it like building niche sites on the web - the narrower the better. This is because AC is basically building a library of information, so if you write about something that they don't have a lot of, you'll receive a higher offer than for something they have a lot of content on. Or. Or, try to put a unique spin on something. Perhaps you have a how to guide for something. Really, you can write about anything. If you need some more ideas, browse around the site and get a feel for what's on there.

I spend about 20 minutes writing an article. Do what's comfortable for you. Longer if you need it, or shorter if you think can whip it out quickly. Just remember, you're going to make a few bucks on this, but don't spend 6 hours trying to write an article - because you might be trying to hard. Remember, this should be an easy process - I'm thinking 30 minutes max. A quick exercise in quality article production in a timely manner.

3. Leave a comment here that you're taking part in the challenge and I'll list the participants with links at the end of this post.

After you write the article it takes AC 2 to 4 days to review it and come back at you with an offer. You can accept or not if you think you can get more someplace else. My thoughts are take the money - AC pays more than most places available like this. A day after you accept the offer, the money will show up in your PayPal Account. It's that easy. In the meantime, leave a link here in the comments that you're taking part - I'd like to link to all the articles written once they're published (they do have a page view bonus on how many times your article is read which means you could potentially make a lot more than the initial 3 - 7 dollars).

Oh yeah - and after you submit your article, don't publish it anywhere else like your blog - because AC does search to make sure it's original content and not taken from someplace else. After it is published you can post it on your blog or wherever (just submit it as non-exlusive, that's what I do).

4. Good Luck!

And if you have any questions about Associated Content please leave a comment and I'll answer as best I can.







Technorati Tags: making money online, associated content, 30 day challenge, 30 minute challenge, pay to write

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So I have a lot on my plate. Harper does too - he's busy messing with the dogs and causing havoc in general.

Today the 30 Day Challenge officially kicked off and I've spent a lot of time reviewing the material and doing the 'homework' assigned for today which consists mainly of brainstorming ideas for niche sites. There's still time to try it out - it'll just take a little work to get up to speed, but you could do it if you wanted to.

Yesterday I was driving and listening to NPR and heard a story about people being addicted to FaceBook. Now I've been on Myspace and did it for a while, but became rather bored with it and got tired of my account being constantly flooded with crap and spam. Now I don't know if this is going to happen on FaceBook - but I'll tell you this - I really like it. It's a really neat way to interact with friends and other people. It's definitely working it's way into my daily online routine. If you want to add me as a friend on FaceBook - here is my profile - add me as a friend and let me know you're coming from my blog.

After I heard the story on NPR - I also came across this video in the 30 Day Challenge Forums. It's one of the founders of Facebook speaking to a large group of developers (I know, who cares if you aren't a geek?) about how FaceBook is basically starting a revolution in how information travels. I'd consider myself a semi-geek so I found this video super interesting, but I think most anybody interested in how the internet works would find it informative. Though I guess, if you're interested in that you're probably a geek or a semi-geek as well.

Ok. Despite having all of this new stuff to work on. I'm determined to continue the path that I had been traveling already as well. By that I mean I'm going to spend some time today catching up on some other things like writing some articles for Associated Content, updating my blogs, and completing some offers on CashCrate and Treasure Trooper. I think I have some ads to click on in Hits4Pay as well.

I haven't written a whole lot of articles for Associated Content in about a week. But I got a few more offers, including a couple that were over 5 bucks (I'd been averaging $4.50) so that kind of sparked my interest to write some more today. I'm hoping to kick out 4 or 5 articles tonight. If you like to write check out AC. It's a great way to make a little extra cash - plus it always feels good to get paid for something you write. I'd say it takes me about 20 minutes to write a decent article on AC, but it's hard to sit down and write article after article - so I probably average 2 an hour which comes out to 9 or 10 bucks an hour. That's not too bad - I guess I could go get a job at Dairy Queen and not make that much - or I could turn on iTunes and write a couple articles. Hmmm...decisions decisions.



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I've been spending most of the afternoon preparing myself for the Thirty Day Challenge by familiarizing myself with all of the different applications. It's funny because I've seen and used all of the applications - things like twitter and StumbleUpon, add ons for FireFox, but I don't think I've really used them so far. I'm excited to learn how to really make these things work for me.

In between playing around with the different apps, I've also been writing some more articles on Associated Content. I know the goal of this challenge is to make 10 dollars in 30 days online, I've already done that today. That's not the hard part - but if you think about it, the money I've made today has been from work like writing articles. The thing about the challenge that I am most excited about is learning how to make a more residual income. One that keeps growing. I know that takes a lot of front end work, but the benefits on the back end will hopefully be as Will Ferrell likes to say, "Glorious."

At one time in my life - a short period - I worked as a Financial Advisor for American Express. For every insurance program I sold I earned an initial commission, as well as a residual commission every year (though I didn't stay on long enough to see those). That's the idea I'm looking to create here - I want to do a lot of work over the next thirty day (more likely a lot longer than that) and I want that work to build something for me that keeps paying me over and over.

One of the members of my team is from Uruguay. His name is Esteban. We've only been interacting for a couple of days now, but he's already pointed me in the direction of a pretty neat free application for screen capture in windows. Here's the link: Screen Hunter. It's free and it works like Skitch for the Macintosh.



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