Associated Content Scams Writers Around The World

This article is from JadeDragon's Blog and is copyrighted.  You may repost the article if you keep all links intact and use the whole article.

This email was distributed to thousands of writers outside the United States. Historically Associated Content would only pay pitiful residual income based on views, restricting their pitiful upfront payments to US residents. Now they have stopped paying residual income to writers outside the US too.

From: Associated Content
Sent: 2010-04-29 11:00:07
Subject: Important Announcement About International Payments
Important Announcement About International Payments
Important Announcement: As of May 1, 2010, Associated Content will be making changes to our payment system that significantly impact Contributors who are not United States taxpayers.

After evaluating our payment policies in regard to international Contributors, our legal team has determined that Associated Content must immediately start withholding a portion of all international Performance Payments pursuant to U.S. tax laws. Due to the cost involved in this process, we can only offer continued Performance Payments to international Contributors enrolled in Associated Content’s Featured Contributors program.

Contributors who are not enrolled as a Featured Contributor, or are not accepted into this program, will no longer be able to earn Performance Payments from Associated Content as of May 1, 2010. If this applies to you, you will receive a final Performance Payment on May 12, 2010 for your page views through April 30, 2010 (if your balance exceeds the current $1.50 payment threshold).

If you are not currently enrolled as a Featured Contributor, we encourage you to apply now. Please note that the program requires you to have top-notch writing skills, and a strong body of work in one of our featured topic areas. You can read all the details and apply to one of the programs here. Note: There is no deadline for applying to the program, but you will not be able to earn further payment until/unless you are accepted.

If you are accepted into the program, you will be asked to submit a United States W-8BEN tax form, enabling Associated Content to withhold earnings on Performance Payments pursuant to U.S. tax laws. In addition, your earning threshold will increase from $1.50 to $100, meaning Associated Content will only process Performance Payments when the total payment balance passes $100. The good news: As a Featured Contributor, you will receive high value assignments every month, and will continue earning Performance Payments on all content published.

Apply Now: http://www.associatedcontent.com/featured_contributors.html
_____________________________________

Unfortunately, those who are not accepted as Featured Contributors will be unable to earn additional Performance Payments until further notice. We sincerely apologize to all international Contributors who are affected by this. These changes are occurring for legal reasons outside of our control. We strongly value your contributions to Associated Content, and hope to expand our new Performance Payment system to additional international Contributors in the future. You will be notified again if this occurs.

If you would like to remove your content from AssociatedContent.com, please send your request to community@associatedcontent.com.
_____________________________________

If you have any questions about how this change impacts you, please email community@associatedcontent.com.

Sincerely,

Associated Content

PS: If you are a United States legal citizen or resident, these changes will not impact you. However, you will need to submit your taxpayer identification information to us as proof of your identity. Email us for instructions.

Since thousands of US based businesses have no issues paying people around the world (Amazon Mechanical Turk and Google Adsense are just two examples) I doubt this is really something outside Associated Content's control. More likely it is just a way to keep a ton of content with no need to pay the writers anymore.  Not a word of the change on the Associated Content main page or the official Associated Content blog.  The emails were only sent internally so unless writers log on to Associated Content and check their internal email, they just will not know they will get nothing in the future.   Here is how I found out - another writer's excellent article.

Even though Associated Content will still pay US based writers at this point, all writers should seriously think about why they would support a business that pays poorly and screws over so many of its writers.  Plus Associated Content pays poorly and does not allow linking, so it really is a poor place to write anyway.

Here are some alternative sites that welcome writers from around the world:

Join Bukisa (Paid by Paypal) or read more about Bukisa
Join Xomba (google Adsense Pays You) or learn more about Xomba first.
Join Constant Content (Paid by Paypal) or read more about Constant Content

For more sites that pay, see the Resources Page.