How to Track Your Sales on Associated Content

Content Producers for Associated Content often have no idea what their average pay per article is. While the Content Producer “My Content Page” does list all articles sold and their sales price, the information is merely a list. For those Content Producers who desire more detail, here’s a do-it-yourself guide to track your sales on Associated Content.

First, open a blank Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or other brand such as the free Google Spreadsheet. Next, go to the “Payment Information” link on the “My Content” tab. Use your mouse to highlight all the sales data displayed and use the copy command of <control + C> or choose file/edit/copy from the browser’s menu bar. Go back to the spreadsheet and paste the data into it by using <control + V> or file/edit/paste.

You will now have some data to work with. For example, you can go to the bottom of the list and enter the following formula to figure out the average pay per article:
=AVERAGE(__:__)
Note: fill in the blanks with the starting cell and ending cell of the data you’d like the average on.

Or to find out how many articles you have you can enter:
=COUNT(__:__)
Note: fill in the blanks with the starting cell and ending cell of the data you’d like to count.
The easiest way to get a quick formula is to highlight the column of data and look at the bottom right corner of the screen. Here you can right-click on the display that says “NUM” with your mouse and change the options for viewing average, count, max, minimum and sum. The results will display in the bottom right.

I like to track sales in other ways too. I like to see how much I’m making per word as well as per hour. I also track sales by category and Content Manager. This way I can see which categories and Content Managers tend to pay more so that I can better tailor my future submissions. Another way I track sales is by clout level. This way I can see how my average price changes as I move up the clout index. To track sales these ways you need to add more data to the spreadsheet.