I have been a member on AC
for almost two years now and I remember their glorious days. Now the site seems to be getting too strict and their editors know nothing but to decline articles. Here I will give a list of the most annoying things that you can face while being on AC.
Cite Your Sources
Yes, I agree that articles should be cited and referenced to avoid copyright issues and to stop people from copying articles from other people and submit them as their own. But sometimes when you are writing a general article you might find it difficult to cite things. For example, a couple of years ago I did a short course in Bach Flower Remedy and now I am writing articles about this technique and I am not using any Internet articles or books. I am just writing from the top of my head…how can you cite if you are doing that.
Recently I have also been declined multiple times because their editors say that I need to cite the sources and I look at the reason they give you in disbelief. Couldn't they see that it was cited and referenced? Or were they just doing a quick job and just skim through the articles?
So if you cite, you have a chance of being declined and if you don't cite you are going to get declined too (but that is not always the chance, read further into the list to know why)
Upfront Payment
This option is a very good option. All it means is that they will offer a certain amount of money if your article gets accepted. It is great for those who are not patient enough to wait for clicks. But that is changing too. I remember in the beginning I used to write a lot of recipes and alternative medicine articles (with no cites) and they used to get accepted like a bliss. A week ago I submitted two more recipes and they got declined because they said that they no longer offer Upfront Payment for recipes. Three days later I submitted another recipe and it got accepted for Upfront Payment!! Unbelievable.
Other Forms of Declining Articles
This only happened to me once but I was really angry and annoyed. I spent over 2 hours trying to write an article about the fantastic Maltese cuisine (Malta is a tiny island just south of Sicily). It was a very interesting article and a few days later I got an e-mail saying that it was declined, so I logged in the site to see why. The reason just said that it was submitted before…I sent them an e-mail and got no reply up to this day. And this happened to other people too, because after it happened to me I wanted to check if it happened to anyone else before I start ranting.
Performance Payments
This is another payment option apart from Upfront Payment. This kind of payment is according to how many views your article gets. While I never had any kind of problem with the payments, I have been experiencing something really frustrating with it. Before you submit an article it clearly says that it should not take longer than 3 days for reviewing and once you get three articles accepted for Performance Payments, then the rest of the articles will be accepted automatically. I have seven articles that I submitted fifteen days ago and still no reply on them…Again, I wrote an e-mail asking for an explanation and still no answer. I checked with other people if this is happening to them, and yes, it is.
Article Formatting
I write most of my articles in essay form but sometimes I would need bullets or numbering, but guess what? I have had articles being declined because I used numberings and bullets. How are you supposed to divide your article other than using numberings or bullets? But I guess that was my mistake because they make it clear on their article submission FAQs that no bullets or numberings are allowed. I just don't understand why not.
Again, I have to make it clear that this was not a personal rant. I have asked a lot of people if they have been experiencing the same things just to make sure. And oh, be careful about their exclusive and non-exclusive article submission. There is no huge difference in the amount of money they offer, anyway.
