A Case Study in Sustainability and Writing for Associated Content

Something I've written about several times in the past was sustainability and how it relates to writing for Associated Content. Sustainability, as I've defined it, refers to an article's long-term potential to draw in page views. Articles that are sustainable might get a low number of page views on a daily basis, but they draw a constant amount of traffic. Articles that are unsustainable might draw a large amount of traffic in the short-term, but will quickly become dated or irrelevant. In this article, I want to describe an actual example of sustainability and unsustainability from my personal experience.

In May, I wrote two articles about ten days apart. The first article I wrote was an article about low-cost summer activities at a local lake. The second article I wrote, ten days later, was a preview article about the fifth season premiere of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8. It should be easy to see that the article about lake activities was sustainable and that the article about the TV show was unsustainable. So let's crunch some of the numbers.

To this date, the article about lake activities has received 583 page views and the article about Jon & Kate has received 591 page views. As they were published 10 days apart, they're pretty close as far as total page views are concerned. However, that's not the important statistic.

The important statistics, with respect to sustainability, are daily and monthly page views. I don't know when the last time was that someone looked at the Jon & Kate article. And this makes sense. Who is going to look at a season premiere preview a month and a half after the show airs? That article has received 77 page views in the last month. Basically, all of the page views came up front.

However, the lake activities article received about 200 page views in its first month after being published. This past month, it brought in an additional 378 page views. On a daily basis, the lake activities article brings in about 20-30 page views. I'm hoping and expecting that the lake article will continue to receive page views at this rate for another month or two. This could bring in an additional 600-1800 page views this summer alone. And hopefully the article will "come into season" again next summer.

All in all, I brought in $3.17 in upfront payment for my lake article, as well as $0.87 from page views. This brings my total income from this article to $4.04, with more page views coming in everyday. The Jon & Kate article brought in about $0.89, and I doubt that it will bring in even ten more cents ever.

Do I feel I wasted my time writing the Jon & Kate article? If it took me half an hour to write, I made about $1.80 per hour while I was writing it. But I don't feel like I wasted my time. If, as a result of writing it, maybe 20 or 30 people looked at other pieces of my writing and maybe 5 people began to read my content regularly, I'd consider the article to be a success.

Sustainability and unsustainability exist, and a comparison between the performance these two articles shows that. If you have any thoughts about sustainability and writing for Associated Content, feel free to share your thoughts in the form of a comment. Thank you for reading!