I’ve got nothing against the Web content factories like Associated Content. For new Web writers, these sites are an excellent way to dip your toes into the water. You learn how to work with a Web interface, and you get your first few words online. (Then you should drop these sites like a hot rock, because you won’t learn anything, and you’ll build up too many bad habits, but I digress.)
No one pretends that these content factory articles are worthwhile, but they do fill a need — a need for people to make money, basically.
Yahoo’s just bought Associated Content for an undisclosed sum, believed to be in the neighborhood of 100 million dollars.
So now it seems that Yahoo is both publisher and a search engine too…
Here’s an interesting article on the deal, Yahoo’s Buy of Associated Content Makes It a Publisher, Syndicator, Wire, Ad Rep…and More | Newsonomics, which gives some insights into what goes on at Associated Content, and how that content is developed:
“How good is that content? Well, Patrick Keane is the first to say that editing would be too fancy a term to apply to his process. Though he employs 15 full-time editors, they’d have about two minutes per story to devote to editing, given the 2000-story-a-day in flow. So as Keane told me, editing amounts to ‘making sure the title is correct, the story’s not gibberish and not created by a bot in the Philippines.’”
It’s enough to make you wince. 
If you’re a new writer, writing for these sites gives you a start. Remember however, that you shouldn’t spend too long there. Get a couple of articles published, and then get out as fast as you can run.
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FYI, Associated Content stopped paying non-US writers for page views in May (they were already not paying upfront fees to non-US writers.) I wonder if that will change now.
Tammi, these kinds of sites come and go. I remember several content plays circa 2000 – 2002, but they didn’t have the investor funding that current crop of content factories have. These sites come, they morph into something else, and then they vanish.
In the meantime, writers shouldn’t become dependent on these sites; heaven knows there’s enough writing work out there. Spread your wings.