I joined AC a while back and have been producing content mostly on a weekly basis. I learned a lot here on AC. I also started a journal on a web site. I am writing this article to share what I’ve learned with new AC producers.
If one views AC as a quick get rich scheme, one will be sorely disappointed. One compelling reason for my choice of joining AC was their honesty in their promotional material. Likewise, I always tell people, you could earn some money while honing your writing skills. My favorite saying is: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
In my opinion, the qualifications of a successful writer on AC are tenacity and perseverance. It is much more just wanting to earn an extra buck. It is the burning desire to produce an article and share it with others. If one does not enjoy writing, the AC experience may be short lived.
So I produced my first article for AC and published it. Then I started to look for ways to promote it. I have to admit that if one is not familiar with blogs, the AC format for promoting articles may appear a bit daunting. Not necessarily due to AC, but due to the fact that maneuvering around some blog sites is not intuitive. As a matter of fact, it could be downright frustrating to the new user. But don’t get discouraged. Always keep an optimistic view. Convert that frustration into determination. Vent your frustration so that it motivates you.
I signed on to a lot of blog sites. I gave up about half of them because I did not have the time to explore the blog site in search of new friends and I could not post anything in my blog without at least one friend listed. Many people find themselves in the same set of circumstances. They have a family to care for, a house to maintain, a car to maintain and a very demanding full time job. They simply don’t have time to socialize without neglecting responsibilities. I know. I neglected home chores for the first few months on AC. I won’t tell you how dirty my kitchen, living room and bathroom floors were, but I’ll tell you it took six hours to clean them without moving furniture! One should not equate failure on AC to time spent promoting AC content. If one does that, one is defeated before one starts. That’s were perseverance comes in. Set aside a time each week for writing. It may be an hour. It may only be ten minutes. Set aside the time you could afford to devote to it. And publish your work on AC. If you feel like I do and you don’t want to give up your rights to your creation for a few bucks, then publish it for performance payments only.
Your article does get promoted regardless of whether you choose up-front payment or performance payment only. To prove it: I went to the Google search engine, typed in my name (in quotation marks) and the title of my article in the space provided for the search. Then I performed the search and browsed through the results. My article was listed in the search results.
Now let’s get back to the blogging aspect. In my opinion, one of the best blogs is www.blogger.com because the site is very easy to use. You will find that your user name and password for blogger is the exact same as the user name and password for www.google.com Hence, your blog link is in the google search engine.
Also don’t be shy. Go to the Just For Fun forum and ask people to view your article. Remember to include a link to your article. Remember to return the favor to those who make comments about your article and view their articles. If you read an article you really like, promote it on your blog.
One last thought. You may want to start your own journal on your own website. The only host I could make comment about is www.siteground.com Personally I like it. I joined Siteground and have a website www.art-4godsglory.com I only have one recommendation: In order to increase the volume of traffic at your Siteground website, you should submit a sitemap to www.google.com. You can do this in Windows XP with the default Sitebuilder provided by Siteground. However, you cannot do it with the default Sitebuilder in Windows Vista. And you can create a subdomain using the default Sitebuilder, but you may not be able to create a web page using the default Sitebuilder in that subdomain. Therefore, I strongly advise you to buy the $99 version of Sitebuilder from Siteground before you start developing your website.
If you sign into Google and access “my account,” you will find advice on how to build a website and how Google rates each website.
So, though this article tended to wander astray here and there, I hope it helped those people who are struggling to build viewer ship and money on AC.
