My Early Experiences with Associated Content
If given time and peace, I could type on the computer for hours on end, barely getting up to go to the bathroom and to eat. So I thought it was appropriate for me to sign up for free at Associated Content.
I submitted my first article, How to Reduce Your Energy Bill This Winter, on Nov. 24 for review. I was nervous. It had been a very long time since anyone has had to look at my work. The last time was when I in college so many years ago. I don’t really get nervous when people read my blogs.
Like an insane person, I refreshed the content page to see if the status had changed. And each time, it merely said “submitted”. I was getting frustrated and impatient. I had to keep reminding myself that I was a newbie and that it was my first submitted article.
About 5 days later, the status changed. I received a short welcome message from the staff. They offered $2 for the article. LOL. Ok so it was something, and I now had proof that Associated Content was willing to pay for my writing. So I accepted the payment. From the time I submitted the first article to the time I actually received payment via Paypal, it took 7 days. People with actual jobs get paid weekly or twice a month.
So on Dec. 1, I set out to write 5 more articles. I figured writing 5 articles a day to submit to Associated Content wouldn’t be too hard. Boy was I wrong. Since I’m a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, I had a ton of distractions, mainly my kids. I was constantly interrupted for one thing or another.
I ended up finishing 4 articles at about 1 am in the morning. I gave up writing the 5th article and decided to submit the four. I was suffering from writer’s block and going crazy over what I had typed up. Apparently, I was “out of shape” when it came to writing.
I expected to wait another week before my articles were reviewed. Shockingly enough, someone reviewed my work the following day. Unfortunately, the reviewer rejected 2 of the articles. But the good news was that one article was offered $2.24 and the other was offered $3.45. That made me happy.
I looked at the comments the reviewer left behind for the rejected articles. One was because the topic was too common and the other was rejected because I didn’t cite my sources. I decided not to resubmit the first one. But I did add my sources and resubmitted the 2nd article. Hopefully it will get accepted this time around.