Happy Hour with AC's CEO & President

Later today, Associated Content's CEO Patrick Keane and Founder/President Luke Beatty will appear in a live video address to the AC Community. They'll talk about their vision for the company, and answer questions from AC Contributors.

When:
Wednesday, 7/28
2pm - 3pm PDT / 5pm - 6pm EDT

Where:
We'll be hosting the event live via webcasting website Ustream.tv. Simply log onto www.ustream.tv/channel/ac-happy-hour to join in (and be sure to RSVP in advance so you'll be notified when the webcast begins).

Do you have questions for Patrick & Luke?

During the event, Twitter users can tweet questions with the hashtag #achappyhour. There will also be a thread in the AC Forum where you can post questions. We'll take the questions Patrick & Luke are best suited to answer and they'll address as many as they can before the hour is up.

We hope to see you there later today!

RSVP now

AC's New Contributor Banners

Associated Content is launching a new marketing campaign that highlights some of our expert Contributors and promising newcomers. We'll be running the ads pictured below, both on and off AC, to spread the word about the exposure and earning potential our platform affords.

Can you identify the AC superstars featured in the ad spots below? Click each image to enlarge.

1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.
If you think you can match these cartoon portraits to the real-life AC Contributors, leave a comment to this post. The first commenter to guess all 7 correctly wins an AC tote bag, an AC notebook made from recycled material and a $20 “Wild Card” Assignment to create content on a topic of their choice. Sorry, the seven campaign stars aren’t eligible. (You know who you are!)

Have fun, and keep your eyes open for these brand new banners!

UPDATE: Sabah Karimi correctly identified all 7 AC Contributors. Congrats, Sabah!

Article Page Changes

As a part of our ongoing push to improve the visitor experience of Associated Content, we’ll be testing out a new article page layout starting later this week.

Here’s a preview of what the new layout will look like (click the image to enlarge):


You’ll notice two major changes:

First, we’re moving the top set of related content links into the article body, on top of the primary ad. Why? It’s a cleaner look that provides more encouragement for site visitors to continue exploring the AC library.

Second, we’re creating a space to highlight the article author at the bottom of each piece. Why? Our Contributors want to be seen, and our visitors want to know where the information they’re reading is coming from.

We’re expecting to launch these changes by the end of the week, so stay tuned...

In the meantime, be sure to update your bio and the rest of your AC profile. Very soon, it’ll be a lot more visible!

New Page View Report - Coming Soon

Many of you have requested more information about the traffic your content is receiving, and to that end, we’re happy to announce an exciting addition to the suite of reporting tools we offer.

In May, we launched the Daily Page View Report, enabling you to track your total number of page views, day to day. Starting next week, a brand new report will enable you to track your daily views on each individual piece of content. You’ll also see a graph for each piece, so that you can easily monitor its popularity over the previous two months.

Click on the thumbnail below for a sneak preview of this new report:


With more granular information about the traffic you’re receiving, you’ll be better able to observe trends and draw meaningful conclusions about the popularity of the topics you’re choosing. We hope this information will help you to become a better informed and more successful AC Contributor!

What other stats do you wish you had access to? Let us know by leaving a comment.

June Award Winners

We'd like to congratulate the winners of Associated Content's June awards.

Last month, our Best of AC Awards went to three relative newcomers, who have quickly distinguished themselves as experts in their respective fields by publishing lots of insightful content. Please join us in congratulating Nina Rotz (Web Technology), Rick Blaine (Summer Travel Guides) and James Hamel (Automotive)!

We'd also like your help in welcoming five awesome new publishers to the Associated Content community: prolific student writer Josh Tuilano, automotive enthusiat Serge Pupko, expert researcher Eleanthe Anderson, and two writers that have already become prominent members of the community, Jan Peterson and Han van Meegerin! Each of these talented individuals was honored with one of June's Best New Source awards.

Note: The Best New Source awards will be known as "Rising Stars" moving forward, and we'll be giving out five every month, rather than three!

Now it's time to start nominating some of your favorite new and veteran AC publishers for July's awards. The Best of AC categories are Music Reviews, Pet Care and Real Estate. Send us your Best of AC and Rising Star nominations by email to community@associatedcontent.com or post them in the AC Forum.

Health & Wellness Content Drive

Associated Content is hosting a Health & Wellness content drive!

Health & Wellness content has always performed well on AC – there are lots of people searching for health tips and most health advice is evergreen. From now until the end of July, each Health & Wellness article published on AC enters its author in sweepstakes, with a chance to win a Nintendo Wii Fit or one of two Fitbit Trackers. We hope that you’ll use this opportunity to build your own library of useful, search engine-optimized Health & Wellness content.

Here are the details of the sweepstakes:

-The contest runs today through July 31.
-Every article you publish in the Health and Wellness category counts as an entry (limit 12 entries per person).
-On August 11, one grand prize winner will be selected to receive a Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit package, including balance board. Two runners up will each receive a Fitbit Tracker.
-Read the official rules here.

Need some ideas to get started? Try publishing:

-Guides to shaping up for summer
-Your personal experience dealing with illness
-Coverage of hot topics in the health world
-Reviews of weight loss products
-Tips for keeping your kids happy & healthy

Good luck and happy publishing!

AC is Evolving

Earlier this year, we introduced the term Source into the Associated Content vocabulary as a new way to describe the individuals who publish content on AC. Since then, feedback we've collected from our visitors and community has indicated that our use of the term is confusing. So, we gathered suggestions for alternative names and now we're going to make another change.

From now on, AC will proudly refer to our publishers as Contributors. It’s a simple change, but one that we hope will give each individual a better sense of ownership over the content they create, and give our visitors a clear sense of what AC is all about. In the weeks ahead, you can expect to see us phasing out Source while we bring Contributor to the fore.

But that’s not the only way in which AC is evolving.

In May, we made some significant changes to our home page. Now we’re going to start experimenting with alternative home page layouts to determine how best to encourage visitors to explore the AC library. You should know that this is a process we take seriously. All of our decisions are guided by the data we collect from visitor interactions with the site, and we’ll continue to tweak things as we analyze the results of each change.

Click on the thumbnails below to see previews of just two of many possible arrangements.



This is only the beginning. In the weeks and months ahead, you’ll be seeing even more changes, some minor and some major, in other areas of the site. Why are we doing this? To improve the visitor experience. The library that you’ve created is wealth of useful information. We want to present it in the best possible way, while encouraging visitors to dive deeper and come back for more – increasing page views and putting extra money in your pocket!

Thanks to AC’s many talented Contributors! Stay tuned for exciting new experiments!