Accepted Articles Eventually Sell

[Sharion]

If you're worried about an article not selling, check out the stats for my latest sale:

Time on the market: 20 months

Type of sale: Full rights, full original price (I never change prices once I post an article, I don't sell myself short.)

Type of article: Seasonal, 792 words

Not only that, the article was originally rejected, revised, and resubmitted.

Moral of the story: Do not panic if your article doesn't sell quickly. Move on, keep writing, and grow your portfolio. The more articles you have for sale, the more articles you will sell. Trust in that

[Lysis]

Oh yeah, I agree. I'm a very passive, casual CC writer, so from my standpoint, I can say just keep writing, and let it go. Create a standard for yourself and stick with it. Some things you have to keep on top of, but if you are an expert in something and can write a little bit above the standard, you can sell articles. CC (from my standpoint), isn't a place to make money if you need it NOW. You aren't going to sell 20 a day, every day, but it's a great place for some extra cash. For instance, I sold an article while making my 12 hour road trip. Wrote the article about a year ago. I have some that sell within minutes, weeks, or a few days, too, but it's cool to see an article sell that you thought would never see the light of day again. lol If you are OK with writing articles that don't need to sell right away, CC is awesome. I just wish I had the time to write more for CC.

[Celeste Stewart]

I think CC can be a place for making money consistently -- if you approach it strategically and submit articles regularly. Of course, this means submitting articles to public requests (even if you're not really in the mood for the topics), building relationships with clients who have purchased your articles in the past, and submitting general articles that appeal to the CC customer base and not just writing whatever catches your fancy (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Constant-Content really can be whatever we want it to be. Over the years CC has provided me with: extra money to stock my baby's nursery and the confidence to become a freelance writer (year 1!), a main source of income (years 2, 3, and 4), a reliable source of secondary income as I marketed my writing business and landed outside projects (years 5 and 6), and a supportive friend (collectively --> other CC writers, staff, management, and clients) throughout. Those were exactly what I wanted CC to be at the time. Now that January's nearly here, it's time for us all to define what we want CC to be to each of us in 2012. What do you want it to be? Start thinking about it and keep submitting articles while you decide because Sharion is right, most articles accepted here eventually sell!

[undercoverwaitress]

Wow, Celeste, what an inspiring and detailed post.

My biggest conundrum with CC is whether or not to bother offering usage. Lysis said in a thread that she prices usage relatively close to full rights -- hadn't considered that but makes sense. Celeste, may I ask you if you sell for usage? Curious and would appreciate learning from a CC pro.

Thanks.

[Celeste Stewart]

I'm not a fan of usage, so I price usage licenses high - sometimes as high as full rights. If I'm inspired to post an article on Associated Content, then I'll post it for usage here as well. LIkewise, if an article here sells for usage, then I go and post a copy on AC. I do have a handful of usage articles that have sold enough times here or performed decently on AC that I'm okay with the occasional usage-only article, but it's just a handful and such a small part of my income. Plus, AC's performance has been severely affected by Panda that my page views are about 30-40% of what they once were so I'm less inclined than ever to go that route.

[Lysis]

I do the same. I used to have a system where I'd post to AC, then Helium, then CC. I would make pretty decent money that way for 1 article even though it was a lot of waiting and work compared to just uploading an article, but you can't do that anymore (at least not the helium step). I haven't been back to AC since they got bought out at Yahoo. How is it Celeste? I was doing pretty well there for a while until Panda. I don't ever see AC come up in the SERPs anymore, so I'm hesitant to go back.

My eHow rev share continues to rock, though.

[Celeste Stewart]

I haven't posted a thing on AC since March. In 2010, I posted over 30 articles there and just two in 2011. Between ridiculous upfronts and page views in the tank, I'm just not interested. Plus, I hear that they are changing to a Yahoo domain and with that change they are going to a single page display for all articles. While I personally prefer a single page, the change is likely to affect page views further.

[Lysis]

Well, it sounds like I'm not missing much. lol I was a tech featured writer there, so it was cool to earn some extra cash from the program, but then they took that program away, so I didn't see the point anymore. I did get 1 private client from my AC work, so that was cool. After the first panda, an iPod article on AC went to #2 or #3 (can't remember exactly), so I was getting crazy PVs. But Google fixed that "issue" real quick. lol