Is Associated Content, Now Yahoo! Voices, Shooting Itself in The Foot?

I am new to creative online writing sites having just discovered these sites in July. The first ones discovered were Associated Content, now Yahoo! Voices, and Triond. Later I found Helium, Squidoo and Hub Pages. I am a creative writer who is very grass roots. By no stretch of the imagination would I consider myself a professional writer.

I have had my best success with Associated Content but that was because I received upfront payments. Possibly, it was beginner’s luck but I was offered $5 upfront for my first submission. I continued to receive some upfront offers of $2 plus change and $3 plus change for later articles. Some others were rejected for upfront payments but I was allowed to publish for views only.

This continued until late October. I received upfront payments for half my submissions and the other half were rejected for upfront payments. But late October, that was to change. Every article I submitted for upfront payment was denied. I was allowed to re-submit for views only and did so. And those articles were published.

I could tell that something was afoot. The articles that I submitted after late October were just as good, if not better, than the ones that I had submitted previously. Still, I was happy with being allowed to publish articles which earned based on views or performance only. But I sure missed the upfront payments.

I do not remember when Associated Content or Yahoo Contributor announced that they were making changes and were now going to be called Yahoo! Voices. I received an email just like everyone else and a notification was posted on the home page. I took a wait and see attitude wondering what was going to happen. 

I had been working on an article and submitted it just before the official change took place. It took about two weeks before I heard back. It was refused for upfront payment but it was further declined because of other reasons such as spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. I was asked to edit and re-submit. I did so and the next day, this article was declined again for the same reasons. This time I was asked to delete. I did so. I was not offered an option to edit.

Apparently Yahoo! Voices is wanting to become a more professional and a higher quality of content site. It is going to be more difficult to get upfront payment as well as to even publish. They are now going to try to compete with the sites that are more competitive and more difficult to get published on.

I plan to continue to try to write for Yahoo! Voices but I will wait until after the holidays to submit another article. If my submissions continue to get declined for publication, I will have to take a break from Yahoo! Voices until they relax some.

This new “get tough” attitude might work in helping the site become more professional but it might cause good writers to turn elsewhere. Writers who published on Yahoo! Voices might now turn to Triond or Helium and similar sites.  Yahoo! Voices loss might be Triond or Helium’s gain.