A fellow writer asked me the other day if it’s a good idea to submit an article to Constant-Content.com as well as to AssociatedContent.com and other sites as a means to “monetize” that article.
My preference is to write an article and sell it for full rights as it takes much longer for the article to net the same amount at the lower usage rates. That said, I certainly don’t mind the occasional residual. I’ve had a few real winners in that area, so I see the appeal.
I usually submit to Constant-Content first, hoping for a full rights sale. If the article goes for usage, then I immediately post it as a non-exclusive at Associated Content and Bukisa so that I can earn a bit based on page views. You can do the opposite of course, but doing the opposite means that the article never has a chance to sell for the higher full rights price that it otherwise might’ve been able to command. With AC’s upfronts being so low, it’s rare that I’ll offer an article to AC first unless I’m sure I want to go the usage only route.
As time goes by and articles don’t sell on Constant-Content, you can always remove the unique and full rights licenses and then start posting the article at other sites that accept non-exclusives. Again, I prefere to sell for full rights because it’s easier to sell an article once than it is to sell it several times over. While some of my usage only articles have generated more than my full rights price, most of them haven’t.
