One Year on Associated Content: What I've Learned About Writing for AC

July 27, 2009 marks my one-year anniversary as a "Source"--"content producer," "crap pusher," whatever--on Associated Content. I know I'm generally regarded as a genius and a Master of Page Views ("MPV"-not the Mazda kind; more of a dyslexic MVP), so I feel that it's my duty to share some helpful pointers and insights with my fellow AC Sources.

When I started writing for AC one year ago, I considered myself a "creative writer"-in particular, a fiction writer. I have a bachelor's degree in English with a Creative Writing emphasis, which comes in very handy...as a wall decoration.

I made a life-changing decision last summer, the day before I turned 31. "I'm 30 years old," I said to myself, slightly panicked because I was only going to be 30 for twelve more hours. "I've always loved writing. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do. So why am I not doing it? Sure, I have two young kids, but I can be a Mommy and a writer, can't I? Lots of people do it!"

I'm not sure how I found AC. I know I looked at Helium, and compared it to AC, and decided I liked AC better because it "looked prettier." "I can write about whatever I want, and earn money for it? Cool," I said, eager to get started, expecting to "take the AC site by storm" or something stupid like that. "I write way better than this gal with 250,000 page views, so, obviously, it isn't hard to get page views," I exclaimed like a snooty jerk, "not hard at all!"

It is hard, actually. Especially when you know nothing about keywords and SEO and all that jazz. My first three months here could be called "A Workshop in How NOT to Get Page Views on AC." I'm not taking that workshop again!

Here's what I know about getting page views, fans, subscribers, and comments on AC, based on my own experience:

Poetry and fiction do not perform well on AC. It sucks, but that's just how it is. Let me break down my total page views to prove this point. I have roughly 41,000 page views at the time of this writing. (Yeah, so I lied about being an MPV.) Of those 41,000 page views, 2850 are from 16 fiction pieces-6.95%. My best-performing fiction article is "Excerpts from a Rejected Romance Novel" with 620 page views-once a featured article on the AC Humor Category's main page. And since the AC Humor Category's main page virtually never changes (the current articles featured there have been featured for the last six months! What's up with that?!), I got steady hits on that article for a long time.

I have 2330 page views from 14 poetry submissions-5.68% of my total page views. My top-performing poem is "A Short Love Poem for My Children," with 440 page views. My biggest AC bombs are all poems. These two haiku-"Then" and "Now"-have 19 and 20 page views, respectively. Pathetic!

I didn't include any of my satirical AC-related fiction pieces or my surprisingly-lucrative "Fill-in-the-Blank Valentine's Day Poem for Lazy Men to Give Their Girlfriends or Wives" in the above tallies. I'd put those into a separate "humor" category. By the way, when I say "surprisingly-lucrative," I'm talking about any article of mine that grabs over 1000 page views. My average is closer to 500.

Do "humor" articles earn good page views on AC? Kinda, sorta. Sometimes, no. Sometimes, yes-if you have a lot of subscribers. That fill-in-the-blank poem I mentioned above is my best-performing humor piece, with 1744 page views-because people (lazy men, I'm assuming) actually do Google searches for "fill-in-the-blank love poem." Who knew? I've added up all my page views from 21 "humor" articles: 8360, or 20.4% of my total.

How much money is that? Let's see how much I've earned on AC from creative writing (fiction, poetry, and humor) alone. Math is fun! About $20.50 in performance payments, plus $11 in upfront payments. $31.50. Is my calculator broken? That's for the whole year?! Someone get me a Kleenex...I'm feeling rather lugubrious all of a sudden (thanks for that Vocabulary Vitamin, Lindy Lou!).

Don't despair yet! Maybe I've learned something from my AC successes-yes, there have been a few of those! My other 27,500 page views (67% of my total page views) have come from 25 non-fiction articles, almost all of which were written with a humorous slant. My best-performing article of all is my first clumsy attempt to write with keywords in mind: "Yo! Should You Join YoVille on Facebook?" How many times can Maria write "YoVille" and "YoVille on Facebook" in a single article? Lots and lots! That silly article, which I published display-only although it would have probably been eligible for upfront payment, just went over 9000 page views. How is such a thing possible? Do a Google search for "YoVille on Facebook," and you'll see the link to my article on the front page.

Basically, if you want a lot of page views, you have to write about things that people actually search for online. No one is going to search for your lovely, heartrending poem called "Dusty Soul Window" or your awesome, hilarious fiction project called "Dragonelf and Friends (and Swords!)." Sorry. It's not because nobody likes you; it's just that they're too busy searching for "Britney Spears' boob job" and playing "Farm Town" on Facebook.

Cute, clever, creative article titles will get you nowhere. Say what you mean! If you can make your title cute and clever while still clearly stating what your article's about, then go for it; but if you can't, just state the obvious. "How to Add Two Plus Two" is probably a better title than "The Answer is Four, Dummy!" I used to think clever titles would "generate interest" in my AC articles. Yeah, right! Clever, vague titles will generate diddlysquat. Save the cute stuff for the subtitle. I think the reason my poem, "Short Love Poem for My Children," has as many page views as it does is that the title clearly states what it is-exactly as someone would search for it on Google.

The AC community is wonderful! Compare the comments that people leave on articles here to the comments that people leave on sites like Digg.com, and I think you'll see a big difference. We're an eclectic bunch of friendly and supportive content producers, aren't we? Are we more careful about the comments we leave here because we're not anonymous and we want people to leave nice comments on our own work in return? Probably. But can't I pretend that the general lack of profanity and inflammatory remarks in our AC comments sections has something to do with us? With how kind and open-minded we all are? Don't laugh!

I'm really proud of the fact that I've somehow attracted 126 fans. That's awesome! Thank you! (Blowing kisses to all my smart, terrific fans.) If you're wondering what the secret to attracting fans and subscribers on AC is, well...I'm not entirely sure, but I think it has something to do with reading and commenting on lots of AC articles, and writing fun articles. (Am I fooling myself? Is this "fun" for you?) Get yourself out there! Don't be shy! Write from your heart! Bribery works wonders!

Leaving comments is fun and profitable. If you want to get lots of comments on your articles, you're going to have to leave lots of comments on other writers' articles. Quid pro quo, dude. Sometimes it's a chore, reading and commenting on all those articles-I won't lie-but most of the time, it's worthwhile. It really will increase your visibility on AC, and you'll learn neat things, too. For goodness sakes, don't just go around leaving smileys, either. Leave comments that prove you actually read the article. You'll get good at faking it after awhile. (For shame! I never fake it.)

I have more writing opportunities, thanks to AC. Who's this person here? She looks familiar.

AC has also put me in contact with the sublime Michy and her Accentuate Writers forum, which is so, so, so helpful for writers. Please check out Accentuate Services, if you haven't already. Accentuate Writers led me to submit a letter to Michy's cool new project, Unsent Letters, and my letter is actually going to be published-online and in a book with real pages made out of paper! Be still my heart!

Unexplored page-view grabbers. I've noticed that all of the following types of articles generate good page views. I ought to write more of these: Product reviews. Previews of major sporting events. Previews of major television and movie events. Weight-loss tips. Video game reviews. Restaurant reviews. Celebrity gossip. "Top 10" lists (if the topic is a popular one-my "Top 10 Coldplay Songs" article has done surprisingly well in a short time). Travel articles. Holiday articles.

You never know who will read your articles. I'm MySpace friends with the Little Caesar's sign-shaker in my hometown, all because of my AC article, "Little Caesar's Pizza Now Hiring More 'Hot-n-Ready' Dancers." I need to send him a MySpace message telling him I really like the Kiss makeup he's wearing nowadays as he plays his pepperoni pizza guitar...

Learn more from AC's best Sources. I have met some exceptionally talented, supportive, warm-hearted people here at AC this last year. I don't write at AC for the money. That's crazy talk. I have to see the money more as a bonus. The "main event" is the joy of writing and sharing my writing with others, and connecting with people who enjoy writing as much as I do.

I'll mention two friends of mine who are true MPVs: Kofi Bofah and Jennifer Wagner. They both joined AC after me, and now have over 100,000 page views each. Kofi has almost reached 200,000 page views, in fact. Amazing! Jenny's so sweet and so supportive. You probably already love her. Kofi and Jenny know how to write for page views. Read their work and learn from them!

Glitches come and glitches go. An AC without glitches just wouldn't be the same. You know the cause of all the AC glitches, right? If not, you'd better read this article: "Cause of AC Glitches Finally Revealed!"

All right. That's enough self-promotion in one article. Just kidding! Look at all these other helpful articles I've written about AC this past year:

"The Funniest Writers on Associated Content"
"How a Stupid AC 'Content Producer' Becomes a Valuable 'Source'"
"The Real Story of How I Got Verified on AC"
"AC Subscription Overload"
"Letter to an Anonymous AC Millionaire"
"AC Assignment Ideas that Don't Suck, Stink, or Blow"

What kind of loser writes so many articles about Associated Content? One who spends way too much time here. One who is very glad she joined AC one year ago! It really has changed this loser's life-in mostly good ways.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who read my work and leave such nice comments! You guys are the best!

For more information about earning more page views on AC, here are some great articles (written by other talented AC "contributors," as we're now called):
"More Popular Keywords Translates to More Page Views and More Money!"
"How I Earned 800K Page Views in Less than 9 Months"
"So You Want to Write for Associated Content"