Biting the Hand that [Barely] Feeds Me

There are a lot of scams going around, telling people they can work from home and "legitimately" earn hundreds of dollars of extra income by doing something easy. I totally ignore all of these ideas because I know that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

When I was very little I remember watching my mother stuff envelopes. They were spread out all over our dining room table, and she had that stuffing routine down to a science. There were moistened sponges lying around, organized boxes upon boxes of envelopes, tons of stamps, and papers everywhere. After doing it for a short while, she finally came to the conclusion that you'd have to have 12 arms and work 24 hours per day in order to make $5. This is what I remember every time I hear of a 'work from home' opportunity.

I heard about Associated Content from a co-worker who had gotten a list of "reputable and legitimate" companies from the Department of Veterans Affairs. I figured if the VA is touting them, they must be the real thing -- and I suppose if all you need is literally an extra $5, I will concede they are not leading innocent people astray.

When you write an article for Associated Content you basically have two choices in getting it published: (1) submit it to them and let them approve it, which takes a week or two and you assign all rights to your work to them -- giving you the ability to earn the highest up-front payment and page-view rates; or (2) publish it yourself -- completely independently of Associated Content's minions -- which allows you to keep all rights to your work but makes it only eligible for page-view earnings.

They require you to submit all articles to them when you first join, and then once a few have been published they give you the ability to publish them yourself, if you're not looking for an up-front payment. Of course when I first started, I submitted everything to them anyway and waited patiently for the checks to start piling up. After writing 30 articles now over the past three months, I can safely say that I'm glad I like to write and that I'm not doing it for the money. To date, I've earned a little over $15.00. (I'll try not to spend it all at once.)

Now, to be fair, my gripe with Associated Content really doesn't have anything to do with the amount of money they've paid out to me. I knew going into this that it certainly would not be a get rich quick scheme. My complaints have more to do with the lack of effective communication. In general it doesn't bother me if a company has poor communication skills, as long as they don't make it look like they have everything under control when there's actually an antipodal reality.

For example, I submitted my article on "Mitral Valve Prolapse Syndrome" for approval to them a day or two after I signed up with Associated Content, which was October 3. The article was actually published almost a month later -- and the only reason it ever got published at all was because I finally gave up on them and eventually just published it myself. I had been sending them numerous emails asking for an explanation, but never received a response to any of them. All I received was a rejection notice that stated I had "plagiarized" the article since they found the same content on the Internet at http://www.MVPSupport.com. Hmmmm, do you see a problem here with their investigative abilities? My Web site clearly states my name on it as the author and copyright holder, so it shouldn't have been rocket science to put two and two together. The only reason I submitted it to them instead of publishing it myself was because it was one of my first articles and they require them all to be approved, even if you're not looking for an up-front payment. I never said it was original content, or that I was looking for an up-front payment for it. The denouement, however, was that they thought I was a plagiarizer and so they threatened to cancel my account.

As another example, Associated Content offered a promotion in October to give an extra $10.00 to those content producers who published more than a certain number of articles during that month. I exceeded that number, but the only communication I received from them regarding this payment was an email to my personal email account (instead of an official message from them on the Associated Content site itself) asking me to fill out a form with all my personal information and to fax it to the number indicated. If that was a legitimate request, it was handled terribly. That email looked just as legitimate as those emails you get from Nigeria. I'm not faxing my Social Security number and home address to some random fax number I got in an email that I have no way to verify is legitimate. At the very least, Associated Content should have sent an internal official notice through their own messaging system alerting content producers to the external email that was being sent asking for this information.

Then we come to the complaint that bothers me the most -- because it is the most simple. When Associated Content publishes an article on your behalf, you lose complete control over it. This means that if the next day you notice a huge typographical error in it, you have to ask them to fix it. They offer a section on their site specifically for this purpose, where you can submit a request to have a correction made on your article. I submitted a request on October 23 for an error to be corrected and I'm still waiting for it to be changed. Of course multiple messages have also gone to them inquiring about the status, but I have yet to receive a response.

Add those examples to the pennies they offer for content, software bugs that have your page views go from 3,000 to 0 in a single day and then back again, and the fact that they take sometimes half a month to publish an article on your behalf, and I'll reiterate that I'm glad I simply enjoy the act of writing or I'd be long gone. The reason I stay is because it's a really fun way of having an easily accessible, concise portfolio for your creative work. I just wish I had published all the articles myself from day one, instead of submitting any to Associated Content for approval and payment.

All this whining is simply to alert any new-comer to Associated Content of some of the pitfalls of writing here. The concept of Associated Content is wonderful, if only they could implement it better -- and hopefully one day soon they'll be able to. I'll admit, though, I'm not holding my breath.