Trying Associated Content Slide Show to Monetize Images

I've been a writer at Associated Content for over two years, and have mixed feelings about the venue, but they have recently added the ability to create slide shows.

This presented itself as another possible way to gain income for showing my images. You can earn for "performance payments" only, and the rate is the same as articles. That means you get $1.50 for 1000 views. So this morning I set out to create a slide show there to see how much I like it.

First of all, you can't get the interface to work in Firefox. They don't say that anywhere; I had to communicate with an author friend to find that out. So you have to use Internet Explorer. I haven't tried it in Chrome yet.

Their terms for image use are quite strict. Even if you only use your own photos, if there are people in them you are supposed to be sure to have permission from each person to use the photo. This is really the way you are supposed to use photos anywhere, but AC will suspend you in a heartbeat if someone complains that you posted a picture of them without permission. That's not like a law suit, but it would be the end of that income stream.

The interface to create the show is as cumbersome as any of these sorts of photo upload sites. No big surprise there. But another real annoyance is that you only have 255 characters to label each image. You can use as many images as you want, however, in a show.

Here's the biggest drawback in my mind. I want a way that people can see a larger version of a picture that I might use on a blog. This is not going to do that for me. The images are displayed in a tiny thumbnail strip at the top of the show, and then the "full-size" display is no larger than what I can put on a blog. So that hope is completely dashed.

Perhaps the only use for it to link from a blog would be to show additional images on a similar topic, rather than clogging up a blog post.


See my first Associated Content slideshow Flickertail Observed in Minnesota
See I Love/Hate Associated Content

web ad income Sept 16 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.13 Adgitize $.54 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.02 Clixsense $.01 ______________________ Total: $.73