How much do Yahoo Contributor Network (formerly Associated Content) or Demand Media writers get paid?

Some authors on the Yahoo Contributor Network are able to make $50K+ per year. Payment is in two parts: Upfront and Performance. Upfront payments are in the range of $0-15 and do not preclude the contributor from receiving performance payments. Performance payments are $1-2 CPM for a given article. The better an article's SEO, the more one will make. Generally the majority of compensation comes from performance payments over a long period especially if a significant portion of a contributor's content is "evergreen" or not trend-based (e.g., stories about Tiger Woods' affair may perform really well for a couple of weeks, but will be surpassed by a good chicken recipe over a couple of years). In order to earn get paid consistently and make decent money, it is necessary to maintain a relatively well SEO optimized library of relevant content. Top earners tend to write more 100+ articles per year with a mixture of evergreen and trendy topics.