I don't know what you guys call crappy articles, because if it has poor grammar, poor sentence structure etc. it's sure to get rejected by AC. I wouldn't exactly call an article crappy if it's at a certain acceptable standard. Not very informative yes, but written with good English.
Have you ever taken the time read AC?
I've been reading it heaps since I recently joined, and it is poorly moderated in that way, seriously. I've seen website spelled wegsite, and many more I'm honestly too ripped to remember
But... my whole experience reading it has been a lot of 1 star ratings, a few 3s, a couple 5s, and a whole lot of "if they effing reject MY articles, I will turn eThug and wig out on them. I better get 7 bucks
yo".
They are way more concerned with seo rankings than quality. They are really pushing community over anything, although yea, I'm sure there is a fair amount of uber-crap that probably gets tossed.
BlackSmack: It's like, if you write 7 or 8 articles a day, at 4 bucks a pop, and you do them all in under a 1/2 hour a piece, there's a full time labor living in a part time time frame. Plus, every 1000 views your articles get, you get $1.50. So, if you are really social on there and make a lot of people feel like reading what you have to say by mingling them and favoriting them etc, it should not only bring whatever SEO article power you can manage, but also the virility of friends. THAT is how some of the people there are making a full time [and GOOD] living with Associated Content alone.
Especially the WAHMs, they are like a tribe. lol.
edit: also, a lot of them probably take every single reject and just always have fresh content for their blogs. Like, they probably all go hard at writing for AC, and expect, accept, and post rejects on other blogs. Actually, there's the rebirth of the AC method too, not just ewhoring today lol Instead of re-working and re-submitting your rejects, just post them to a new or existing niche specific blog you may have.
Money in the bank for later. That is, if it becomes a solid routine.