Ah yes, I remember ConstantContent and AssociatedContent... they were pretty similar, and suffered similar fates, as I recall.

My niche blogs (one about stamp collecting, one on psychology, on on ADHD) were fairly successful in their own rights. But even so, the AdSense revenue was negligible... if I was lucky, I'd hit the $100 payout limit once every 4-5 months. Enough for an occasional dinner out.

What's now Upwork was already getting to be a snake pit when it was Elance... and pretty much is bottom scraping with Fiverr; home of the extremely desperate to make a few cents, barely a step above Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" site.

Either way, this is currently my preferred writing venue... with 750+ top level articles, it's now the 2nd most "populated" venue I have used.