Wrapping Up 2008 With Associated Content

As the year draws to a close, we here at Associated Content would like to take a minute to review the highlights of 2008. It's been a year of tremendous growth and change for us and we are primed to make 2009 even better.

The AC Blog was revived.
Our CPs produced stellar coverage of the Presidential election and the political frenzy that stretched from early '08 through November.
We expanded into other social networks like Twitter, Ning, Facebook and Linkedin. Look for more developments in 2009.
AC launched a really cool Facebook Portal.
We hit an all-time high of 8.2 million uniques in October.
We topped 200,000 registered Content Producers.
Associated Content paid out $1 million to our CPs this year.
We previewed a redesign in early December that goes live today!

This has been an exciting year, but also one of great turmoil in the U.S. and world financial systems. Traditional media organizations are struggling, and layoff numbers are still rising, but Associated Content is still providing an opportunity for anyone to earn money when they publish with us. We're confident that we have a chance to thrive as more and more people discover what they can do with us.

We're especially grateful for you, our Content Producers. We're glad that you're here, showcasing your talents on our site, and we're working hard to make it the best place for you to publish and spend your time.

Cheers to a whole new year together!

Associated Content Going Strong

Approaching the end of 2008, the news around the media industry has been uniformly dismal.

National media companies are getting the most attention. Just this week, the Tribune Co. moved into bankruptcy, the New York Times borrowed money against its new headquarters, Gannett's newspapers may be lowering their home deliveries and CBS merged CBSnews.com and CNET in a move that will be accompanied by layoffs.

Many places online aren't making out much better. Layoffs at Yahoo and ongoing cuts at Gawker Media made big waves recently. Even the dynamic Blogher organization announced that they'll be lowering their rev share program for their affiliated bloggers by 10% in the beginning of 2009.

I've got to toot Associated Content's horn for a minute here. We've made record payouts to record numbers of Content Producers for the past 3 months. We will pay out $1 million to our CPs by the end of 2009. Where other media companies are laying off workers, we're "hiring" new ones every day. The number of opportunities on AC are only increasing and we're pretty proud of that fact in a time when many media organizations are more focused on survival than growth.

Our Content Producers are a big part of that success and we're thrilled with your work so far this year. Keep it up, and 2009 should be even better than 2008.