I have to admit that as a freelancer, I’ve hit a bit of a rough spot. I’ve grown tired of writing articles on topics that don’t in the least bit interest me for a small rate of $5 per 500 word article. I had thought before that I HAD to do this in order to make enough money to pay the bills. That was until I remembered a site that I have used a little bit in the past: Associated Content.

Associated Content has been around a lot, and I have been using it since 2007. I’ve had 18 published articles with only 2 rejections (because the articles were too generic). My average offer was $4.70, each article was around 400-500 words and each were on topics that I actually enjoyed. I’ve made around $3-5 per month in performance payments and have 10,000 page views. (see my content producer page here) Most of these views came from an article I did on Guitar Hero III, a game that greatly interested me at the time. Now, granted, $4.70 isn’t a huge amount of money, but for an article on something that I like and an article that takes a mere 10-15 minutes to write, that’s not bad. I figure I can write 4-5 of these articles per hour, which adds up to $18-$23 pay per hour, not a bad rate at all.

So I have made the decision to finish up my last couple freelance projects for clients before doing what I like to call an AC experiment. I will be working exclusively for AC for one month starting on May 8. I will be writing 9-10 articles per day, which should take 2-2 and a half hours. My goal is to make between $42.3-$47 a day, or $211-$235 per week (which adds up to roughly $800-$900 a month). This is what I consider to be “part-time”, which is all I want for right now, since I am simply seeking to make some extra money this summer.

9-10 articles per day sounds like a lot, and it is for people who have difficulties in coming up with topics or are used to having topics given to them by clients, like I am. That’s why I’ve sat down and plotted out two days worth of article ideas so that, when I go to write my AC articles, I have all the ideas right in front of me.

If this experiment goes well, and I earn what I want to earn, I plan on expanding to possibly as much as 20 articles per day, which would make $1,800 a month and would take probably only 4 hours to produce. A nice wage for what is still considered part-time work.

Since I know there is such an interest in AC and making money writing for them, I’ve decided to post updates of the experiment throughout the next month. Look for the first update next week, after I hopefully receive payment.