Informative Post vs. Associated Content

*Originally published on 1/29/09

**This article was already somewhat obsolete since Informative Post tanked a few years back, but now that Associated Content/Yahoo Voices has shut down as well, it's doubly irrelevant...hooray!! In any event, here are my thoughts on the two sites from back when they were up and running.


I'm always looking for more paying websites to write for. Associated Content has been good to me, but having multiple places to write gives me more options so that writer's block becomes less frequent. In addition, having multiple websites allows me to submit articles en masse without bombarding the editors at one site with whatever workload I get through. One site that I came across recently was Informative Post. It has become something of a rival to Associated Content. I ran searches and found that both sites feature articles by contributors that say that their site is the superior. As curious as I am to see if I got published if I wrote an article saying Informative Post was better and then submitting an article to Informative Post saying Associated Content was better, I'm just going to weigh the pros and cons here and keep things simple.

Both sites have their pros and cons. Informative Post is upfront about their upfront payments (upfront payments are upfront). Honestly, when you write the article, you select the category and it tells you flat out what they are going to pay you. There is no guesswork, no worrying about keyword density, you'll know flat out what sort of money you're going to pull in.

Another good thing about Informative Post is the fact that once you get an article written, they will feature it on the front page for several days allowing your work to gain page views, even if you do focus on esoteric subject matter. This is great for an initial burst, but having searchable articles is still a good idea in the long run.

Associated Content does have its pros. While Informative Post tells you what payment you are going to get, the pay levels are about the same. There is potential to earn higher upfront payments ($10-$40 levels) with Associated Content though. I have yet to hit that sort of upfront payment. However I don't focus on keyword density so much as I just write what I want and let the chips fall where they may.

Associated Content is also much faster with responses. I have filled up the queue on Informative Post (you can only have 10 articles in at a time) so now I'm playing the waiting game with them as they review my work. As I am new and still have a low AP rating, it will probably be a while. This is another factor, the AP rating is supposed to keep you active in the community. I get it to a point, however, my queue is full and articles don't come through that frequently so how am I supposed to comment in order to get my rating up? It's most likely just a time factor. A few months from now, I will have a high enough rating to get things published quickly. No matter how active you are at Associated Content, your work will be read and responded to in a pretty prompt manner.

Both have their pros and cons, however even with those cons, they are still the best two websites to write for. I have only worked with a couple, but many writers support the idea that Associated Content is one of the better sites. Informative Post is still new and needs time to grow, but I am sure that the two of them will be the Coke and Pepsi of internet article publishing.




You can read my reviewstream review of Associated Content here.