Upfront Payment, Rejection, Online Search Queries, Social Value, Discoverability, Page Views and Validation

I'm a big fan of Associated Content. I'm proud to write for the site and I really enjoy being able to write what I want, when I want and how I want.

And that makes it all the more frustrating when something goes awry.

Most of my submissions get posted right away. I want the gratification of seeing it in print immediately or the piece has a time element to it or it's just something that does not have mass appeal.

But occasionally I submit something for upfront payment because, in my estimation, it's worth it. These are pieces I spent some time on and/or are ones that people will go out of their way to find.

I recently did one of these on the in-game promotions of the Greensboro Grasshoppers, a minor league baseball team. The Hoppers are a very popular squad. Last year they became the first Class A team in the history of Minor League Baseball to draw over 400,000 fans and grow its attendance for three straight years in a new ballpark. They led the South Atlantic League in attendance.

People like the Hoppers, plain and simple.

My piece on the promotions was about sports, but was the type of piece that even non-sports fans would find interesting. It had two phrases that people would put into search engines for looking for more information. I ignored all forms of crisp writing and loaded up to reach the appropriate level of keyword density. I even had a picture.

Associated Content declined the piece, offering what I believe to be a standard rejection response.

• AC gets most of its traffic from search queries. This content does not match something that a user would search for online.

• Unfortunately, we are unable to offer an upfront payment for your submission. However, we believe that it has social value and we would like to publish it.

• You can still earn limitless cash for this content, if you resubmit for performance payments only.

My keywords were "Greensboro Grasshoppers" and "Minor League promotions". If you put Greensboro Grasshoppers into Google, you come up with 54,200 responses. I have no idea if that is a respectable total, but people must be somewhat interested. Even if that is too small, my other keyword phrase of Minor League promotions returned 376,000 results.

As a freelance writer, I am used to rejection. In that department I have heard it all, ranging from "we don't have the money" to "we don't have the space" to "we don't accept freelance submissions" to "this is not content our users would find interesting" and dozens more.

Most rejections can't be refuted. If the company tells you they don't have any money, what can you possibly say? But Associated Content's rejection claimed my submission had "social value" but lacked that special something that people would search for online. And this is something that can be argued, something that can be shown to be demonstrably false.

I contacted the site and briefly laid out my case and requested that they review their decision. And to Associated Content's credit, they reacted quickly to my request and sent me back a reply.

Brian:

We have re-evaluated the Greesnboro Grasshoppers story, and simply feel that the search terms used to search for those things would not be used often enough to get the article any discoverability. We cannot offer upfront payment for this article.

I know page views are not the be-all and end-all of what makes content worthy for upfront payment. But for the most part, they are all we have as Content Producers to judge an article's "worth". And I did a paid Call for Content that got the grand total of 81 page views. You think that's puny? I did another paid C4C that has drawn only 48 page views.

I'd like to take time out from this rant to thank the seven people who read both of those articles. There will be a reward in the afterlife for you.

Anyway, you may not be able to fight City Hall but there are other places that accept written submissions. I took my story elsewhere. This is a site that does not have anywhere near the number of regular readers that Associated Content does, in addition to not having AC's advantage of automated email alerts to people who like me or my writing (or who have the misfortune of being related to me) when I have something published. Finally, this other site publishes everything in one page, rather than the multiple-page format here, which further cuts down on page views.

So, how did my piece do at this other place?

Despite being published at an inferior site for me to gain page views than Associated Content, this piece has already generated 684 hits. And that's also without me doing any promotion like Digg or del.icio.us that I frequently do for an Associated Content piece. I wonder - how did people find this story?

So, this article you are reading now is my way of patting myself on the back. I was right about the other piece of content being one that people would search for and enjoy. I just wish Associated Content published it because even more people would have viewed it here.

I was going to link you to my original piece but you know what? It's readily available in an online search. Just combine my keywords and put in "Greensboro Grasshoppers minor league promotions" into Google. That returns 11,700 articles and mine is on the front page.