I know of a lot of writers who use www.associatedcontent.com to make a bit of extra money. And I imagine that they (AC) make quite a bit of money off of adsense, etc. My question is, does AC have any competition? Are there any other services that are similar??
I like using them for work I've already sold nonexclusively to monetize it a bit again later on. I haven't come across anything exactly like them... you have the free directories that don't pay the writers, and you have the model that allows writers to sell their work to third parties for a commission kind of thing. AC's done a reasonably good job for what they are, so I think it would be hard for a new site to compete without major financial backing to be able to continuously purchase large quantites of articles at a competitive rate with them. They'd also need to come up with some kind of differentiating factor, such as perhaps finding a way to make it even more community-oriented and interactive between contributors.