That's exactly what I did. Also included a fix in the route description that was >50nm. It doesn't hurt to go back through your logbook, I found an extra 25 or so hours that met the ATP XC definition. Also don't forget that you can count up to 100 hrs of sim time toward the total time requirement. (I think it's 100, might only be 50.)

When everyone seems low on money these days, an extra $50-60 per flight lesson isn't an easy of a sell as you think it is. Even the career oriented students are telling me that they are running out of money and just need to get done. Then the students of mine that aren't career oriented, are working on private pilot, and turning local flights into XC's really doesn't benefit them at all (at least not enough to compensate for the extra money spent.)

And these same 'career oriented' students are on APC 6 months down the road complaining how they can't get enough X/C time while instructing ;)
"just get it done" to what end?
I guess they could be thinking - why pay for it in training when I hope to get it while getting paid.
That thought process would certainly have been valid in the last few years where the general consensus was to get it done for as cheap as possible (not inlcuding the big university programs or mills) and into the right seat of an airliner as quickly as possible; but doesn't seem to work now in the current/and future environment.

It's a tough road for the new CFIs out there. More power to you!

That is the same thing I'm running into. We have a really strict syllabus (lots of 1 hour local flights) and if we go somewhere outside of a 50nm radius, it makes the what is supposed to be allotted 1 hour of time go to 1.6 to 2.0, which then makes students go over on flight time, costing more $$$ and then leads to us flight instructors getting in trouble by the people above us. Also, to make things worse, our private/instrument trainer (and what we use for 75% of the commercial course) is a two seat plane, so backseating a student while one flies out 50 miles and switching out isn't an option.

What if the flight started at a point (airport A), flew to next airport (Airport B)and landed (just short of 50NM between A and B) continued to another airport (Airport C) which is more than 50NM from A-C but less than 50NM between airport B-C and made a landing there (airport C)? Can I count that entire time as cross country ATP time?

Any flight 50nm from original departure without the need for a landing. You are not required to log any landings in yours logbook except for currency. Unless it was on behalf of a certificate holder, I'd just log A-C.