Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

My Helium Experiment Continued

Many of you are probably wondering how my Helium experiment is going, especially after the lengthy explanation from the Helium representative on how the rating system works. Well, so far instead of around 10 cents a day, I am now earning an additional 25 cents a day on Helium... or around that.

Is the extra 15 cents worth the time it takes to read article after article? The answer is no, it isn't. Now, if I was making an average of $10 a day on Helium and rating doubled my earnings, it certainly would be. If you're making pennies or dimes on Helium, the doubled earnings is simply not worth the time it takes to rate.

Just based solely on my experiment, the additional rating resulted in my DOUBLING my Helium earnings.

Things that make you go Hmmmm.

Bukisa Makes Posting Changes

I've talked to several people that post articles on Bukisa. When I first joined the site to make additional passive income money from writing articles at home, articles instantly posted. You would just have to hit the publish button and you were done. This is not the case anymore on Bukisa.

In my opinion, earnings are harmed on Bukisa. It can take anywhere from three to six business days for your article to go live on Bukisa. This means virtually one week that your article is not getting indexed by the search engines and is not earning you money.

Strange thing was I never received an email from Bukisa stating they had changed how they post articles for publication.

Is Bukisa still worth the money? I average around a quarter a day with my articles and another quarter with my team. I have decided I won't be posting new articles to Bukisa. It's simply not worth the money, unless I need a link back to a particular article.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Am I Blogger Rich?

Someone once asked me if I'm blogger rich. I had to think for a moment about that. If you've read my blog, you know my Google account was banned because of the work of someone not so nice. I haven't had time to build up a bunch of affiliate links and other pay per click advertisers (other than bidvertiser).

Technically, I'm not blogger rich. I've only earned 60 cents from Bidvertiser in the past 3 months of running this blog. That's only a slight handful of ad clicks.

But realistically, I am blogger rich. I like sharing what I learn and find out on my blog. I like writing from the top of my head without worrying about grammar and all that. I know that there are some people that get enjoyment and might actually learn from my freelance writing journey.

So the answer to the question is both yes and no. I'm blogger rich in theory and blogger poor in money. Not too bad a combination.

Friday, May 29, 2009

No I Don't Promote WAHM Articles

A friend of mine asked me if it was really worth my time writing from home and trying to pay bills in this hard economic time. I have to admit that it has been a bigger struggle for me in the past 6 months than it has in previous years. Upfront offers for articles written from home are significantly lower than this same time period as last year. The amount of traffic and thus page view bonus money is also significantly lower.

That brought to question then how much time I spend promoting my work at home articles that I submit for upfront payment and for page view money. Of course the articles that I ghost write from home for direct payment aren't figured into that.

I don't really promote my WAHM articles. I just don't have the time to be honest. I use the widgets for automatic posting or notification on Facebook and Twitter. That is about it. I have a Digg Account, Stumbleupon and a few other social bookmarks that I can't even remember. However, I'd rather spend my time writing than promoting.

One person tried to tell me that they made around $500 a month on Associated Content Page views. While this is possible, I'm a tad skeptical. I looked at their view numbers for 3 consecutive months and by my calculations, they're at right around half that in page view money. They promote heavily, write often and comment heavily.

Is it worth the time to promote? I'm not really sure at this point. One day when I have enough residual income coming in to pay my bills, I'll experiment with it. Right now, my focus is on making my monthly bills and doing the other stuff between assignments that currently put food on the table.

Things such as this blog don't make any money for me. Some of my other endeavors don't either. But I do them because I enjoy them. Who knows? One day they may make money for me and I'll have a nice stream of residual income from them.

May Helium Payout and No Stars

I finally made Helium payout (minimum is $25) and after a couple of months, I made it to $26. I was going to cash out my Helium money. However, there is a trick on Helium. You need at least one rating star. I guess I'll be spending part of the day today making sure I get that star.

Why does Helium require you to rate? I'm not really sure. I've found this to be perplexing in and of itself.

The ad revenue from Helium is very slow. With over 400 articles, you'd think that I would make payout each month of the $25. Yet, I have noticed that I don't seem to do this, particularly if I don't rate articles a LOT during the month. This could be just coincidence. The two could have nothing to do with each other. It does make you wonder though. Hmmmm.

I'll report back in next month on how it is going on Helium. I don't plan on leapfrogging or writing any new Helium articles. All my spare time is spent maintaining this blog and working on articles to post on eHow.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Freelance Writing: Speed Write Articles with Customized Templates and Make More Money

One thing that I have learned as a freelance writer that time is extremely important. The amount of time that you spend per article can make a significant difference in the amount of potential money that you can earn. Researching the Internet on improving you odds of making freelance writing money, I came across the technique of using customized templates to speed up your article writing process.

What is a template?

A template is design that you can use over and over. For freelance writing, a template would be a document already set up in your word processing program for you.

What are the advantages to a template for freelance writing?

You can save yourself a great deal of time typing if you sue templates for your writing. For example, I always create my title, article description, and keywords for each of my articles. Instead of having to type these section labels, my template already has them there for me. I can keep my article format clean and usable without retyping over and over keywords, title, article description.

You will be amazed at how much redundant typing you do when you get into the field of freelance writing. The use of templates can save you a great deal of time.

The use of templates can help you stay organized in your writing. I recently joined a product review site. I set up a template in my word processing system that has labels for me to fill in the information for each of my product reviews. For example, the template has product name, product price, product features, product description, where I purchased the product, pros and then cons of the product. Having all of this in a template makes certain that I don’t forget something specific to put in a product review. It also saves time in typing out the information.

Are templates free?

I make my templates in Microsoft Word. They are free to create and have been very helpful.

When is it best to use a template?

I like to use templates for anything that has general format that I am consistently following. This enables me to keep my information organized. I also tend to forget less. It helps to generate ideas when I have a section to fill in for the template.

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: Make Money at Your Fingertips and Become a Millionaire

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: Potential to Earn Shared Revenue is Limitless

As a freelance writer, you have the potential to earn limitless income. You can post thousands of articles free for shared ad revenue. Look at me! I have 512 articles on Helium that were all posted free. I’ve been a member since October, 2006. I used to average 30 cents a day in shared ad revenue money and now make around a dime a day.

See I can really plan for the future with that type of work and that kind of shared ad revenue money! But hey the money never stops coming in. Unless of course they ban the account or the site shuts down.

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: Can Get Rich from Google Ads

Getting rich from Google is a great way to make it to a millionaire in the writing business. Did you know that the average person must have an account for over 6 months to even get to the minimum earnings? But that is alright. You can slave away for 6 months and SEO your work to hope that you get enough traffic and clicks to get Google money.

But wait! One little problem with Google is that when you start reaching the payouts, your account can suddenly be banned for invalid click fraud. That’s right! All that hard work down the drain.

Anyone can randomly and repeatedly click your Google ads and get your account banned for life. Google doesn’t block the ISP fraud clickers but bans the ad publisher.

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: Free Sick Days

Free sick days are a great perk for work at home freelance writers. Any day that you want to call in sick you can. The days are free. They are free from making a single penny because you don’t have paid sick time! So, definitely the free sick days is a real plus. You can stay in bed and worry about missing a writing deadline or getting nothing done and earning zero dollars for the day. See why they are called free sick days?

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: You Get Lots of Extra Time on Your Hands

Hey, did you know that when you become a freelance writer that there are now thirty-two hours in a day instead of twenty-four? Seriously! I mean after all, you have your writing goals and then you have a list of things that you need to get done with your writing. Suddenly you are the only one in the house that can mow the yard, cook, clean, answer the phone, help with homework, shop and of course errand run.

Now stop and look at it. The time that you write is only counted toward your day’s work. So it is great to be a writer and get lots of extra time on your hands! After all, we must right? How else do we write so much and get all these other things done?

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: You Get Paid Lots

I love getting paid so much as writer! I mean, my goal is around three cents a word. But in reality, most Internet freelance writers average around half-a-cent per word! I love getting paid so much as freelance writer.

Another perk is that as a writer, you can average around two bucks an hour! That is so wonderful for single mom’s supporting a family with all that extra time on their hands with the more than twenty-four hour days only allotted to freelance writers!

So, you might say that there are tons of writers on the Internet that make more than that. I’m here to tell you that there are tons more that make only that or less.

Are they bad writers? No!

Do they not work hard enough? No!

But just stop and think of all the people competing with article content on the Internet. Think of all the time spent editing, re-writing, social networking, reading other writers, researching, outlining topics and so forth.

Landing a steady writing gig that does not rely on volume of work is a gold mine in the world of Internet freelance writing!

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: You Get to Be Popular

Ok, I have to admit that having an audience that actually likes to read your writing work is a perk. It can be fun to come up with ideas that you think will entice your readers. It can actually be fun to sit back and read the comments.

I wasn’t one of those popular kids in school. I wasn’t even very popular in the neighborhood.

It is through my writing that I have become popular. I belong to one website that is for product review writing. I have over 300 friends there!

Can you imagine calling up everyone and saying, hey come over for a picnic this afternoon? I don’t have enough parking space for more than four cars at my house. That would be a mess. However, it does feel good at times to log into different writing sites that I’m on and feel like someone enjoys my writing.

Top Reason to Work from Home as Freelance Writing Specialist: Work in Your Pajamas

One perk of being a freelance writer is that you can work in your pajamas. What other job can you wear pajamas to? Ok. Don’t answer that one.

The majority of the time, freelance writers are doing life chores and errands. In fact, the advice is to get up and get dressed for a regular outside the home job when you are a writer.

Most of the time freelance writers are in their pajamas for one reason. They got dressed for bed. They felt the pressure to get one more article written. They slip off to the keyboard and three hours later they are crawling into bed praying that tomorrow they hit it big in the writing world.

They fall asleep with keywords in their heads. They remember someone on their social network list they forgot to comment on. The alarm rings. They begin yet again.

Business Tips: Taking the Plunge for a New Work at Home Web Business

Many times people feel that they must quit their day job and hope that their new work at home web business is a success. Unless you have the financial backing to this, it is not recommended to take a full time plunge into a new work at home business. How do you get started with your new web business and still pay your bills?

Work at Home Web Business Tips: Join with a Partner

The first step to any successful work at home web business is to find a partner, co-founder or business helper. You need someone that is going to invest both time and money into the new work at home web business.

Why join with a partner for your new work at home web business?

The primary reason is that you need someone to share ideas, test your new business, invest time and money into the business and motivate you. Often, if you go solo it can be a challenge to stay motivated and on target. There are too many distractions that can deter you from being successful in your new work at home web business.

If you have a friend, family member or co-worker that doesn’t have money to invest, still use them to test your work at home web business, provide ideas and to help motivate you. If you know that someone else is counting on you, you will be much less likely to take a break or even give up on the new business.

Work at Home Web Business Tips: Work a Fixed Schedule

One problem that new entrepreneurs in the world of Web business often encounter is the inability to get everything done. Before you know it, a few days or a week have gone by with virtually nothing productive being accomplished for your new work at home web business.

Work a fixed schedule that is a minimum of two specific times during the week. Cut off the telephone. Close your email. Shut down your instant messengers. Let the family know that you will are working and if it is not a fire to please not disturb you.

You must have time to get your business going while you work a full time job. Consider your new work at home web business your second job. If it is successful, then you will be on your way to working it full time and leaving your day job. For example, schedule to work one night a week for two hours and a different night a week for three hours.

Sure you miss a lot of television time and social time. Remember you are the key to your new business. Schedule one of your work times with your partner. This is the only person to communicate with during the work period.

Work at Home Web Business Tips: Know When to Bail Out

Not all ideas are going to work. No matter how much effort you put into it, realize that some new work at home web business ideas are going to fail. Typically, you will have to try several different ideas before you find the right one for you and your partner.

Talk to your partner or co-founder and set a specific goal for a set amount of time. For example, you can set a monetary goal for the business or even a specific number of visitors for the website. Be in agreement with your partner when you are going to bail out of the project. This will save you going through a lot of partners and enable you to either move forward together or to bail together.

Work at Home Web Business Tips: Come Up With Ideas that Test Quickly

Remember, you are working part time on your new work at home web business. You should come up with ideas that test quickly in a specific time frame. Often, people go through several ideas before they find the right one. You do not want to waste months and months before you can test your idea.

Do not get stuck in a rut of working on the same idea for an extremely long time in hopes that it will work. For example, selling customizable luggage tags is easier to test than earning ad revenue for various blogs.

Ideally, you want a work at home web business that focuses on some sort of results in a relatively short time span. If you can’t make it work and come together in just a few months, it is probably time to try a different plan and bail out.

Work at Home Web Business Tips: Use Your Full Time Job for Your New Business

If you are fortunate to work at company that will not fire you, go ahead and spend your lunch hour and breaks researching and building your work at home web business. For example, if you are going to build a new business creating shopping carts for other business owners, you can spend your free time at work learning the latest software programs, coding techniques and popular carts being utilized.

Work at Home Web Business Tips: Learn from Your Competitors

Learn from your competitors. Find out what they are doing to be successful. Apply the techniques and information that you learn to your own work at home web business.

For example, if a particular blog is very popular and your work at home web business is providing blog content find out why the blog is popular. If your work at home web business is selling nutritional health supplements, find out how other sites are doing this so well.

Find out what areas of your niche are doing well and why they are doing well. The time you spend researching can enable you to grow your work at home web business quickly and efficiently. You are learning from others that do not even know they are teaching you.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Blogging Money is at Your Fingertips: Are You Really Going to Throw Hundreds of Dollars Away?

Are you really going to throw hundreds of dollars away? If you completely ignore your blog or don’t even have a blog, you could be doing just that.

Blogging is an investment in the future. It is a chance to really fine tune your work. It’s not that hard to do.

Simply take your work that you publish as non-exclusive or free to different websites and toss it up on your blog. So, you spend what another five minutes of your day?

Later when you have a bunch of different topics on your blog, split them up into individual blogs. Toss in a picture to change the page layout and avoid duplication of content. Bold a few words too. That really helps.

Can you really make hundreds from blogging? According to the entire buzz you can.

Right now my blog is just one ad sponsor. I’ve been too lazy to sign up for other ones. My ad sponsor seems to run the same two ads all the time. Hmmm. Maybe when I get a library built up on my blog it will be better? Who knows?

Blogging isn’t immediate satisfaction. It is indeed an investment in the future. Who knows maybe the traffic will come? Mine averages about five hits a day. But I am still going to keep building it up and see what happens.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

SharedReveiw More Insider Scoop Information

I recently joined SharedReviews and have really enjoyed the experience with the community there. When I first wrote the other article about SharedReveiws for everyone I was still learning the process. Well I found out some more from making friends and reading the forums. In fact, I have run into some friends from Associated Content over there as well. SharedReviews has just come out of beta testing. It is a good chance to get in at the ground level of this site. They take the reviews that are posted by members and share them with other sites to make money. They pay the top 10 articles in a review subcategory 50% of the ad revenue. Then the remainder 50% is split among the voters. If you vote well, you can make money with SharedReviews without ever writing a single article. Just vote for friends and the top reviews to see a nice residual income.

Vote for the Top 10 in a Subcategory

I initially said in the other article to vote for the top 10 people. I was wrong. You vote for the top 10 in the subcategory. But there is a trick. You get new votes each month BUT you never can vote on a review but once. So choose your votes wisely!

One hard thing is wanting to vote on your friends' reviews and hope for reciprocal votes. I have found that reciprocal votes aren't really going to happen. Some friends might vote on your stuff but the majority of people are voting randomly or on the top 10 in each subcategory. LOL Also, now that it's the end of the month a lot of people have run out of votes.

Shared Reveiw Score or SR Score to get You Money

On your profile you will see the SR score. This starts at 50% and goes up and down as you interact in the community. The higher the SR score the more votes you get to cast. The more votes you cast, the chances are in your favor that the review will make the top 10 in the subcategory and bring you in money.

How to Increase your SR Score

Your SR score will slowly go up if you vote for other's reviews.
Making friends.
Commenting several sentences on reviews (even if you don't vote for it)
Write reviews

Decreases in SR Score

Writing short comments
Writing voted in your comments
Having a friend request rejected


How Much Money Can You Make?

I have no idea. I feel certain though that it is more than some of the shared revenue sites. It is a great way to social network and have fun too. I like to cast votes and comment when I'm between writing tasks or relaxing.

I took the time to look at other member's earnings. You can make more money than:

If you cast you votes well, you can make more money than one ptc ad site or even doing several of them.

You can make more money just from voting than what you make doing ratings on Helium. You can make more money from a couple of good reviews and voting than you might make on Helium in adshare revenue.

You can make more money than the average person makes on Google adsense ads coming to their blogs, and even more so for new blogs and newbies to the Google adsense system. You can also make more money than the average person or new blog to Bidvertiser.

You can make more money than the average person makes on the paid to socialize sites.

If you stop and think, when you register you are brand new but if you get friends, up your SR score and vote like crazy, you can make money with SharedReviews. I wouldn't use it as my primary writing venue or social venue. However, it is a nice little residue income for sitting around voting and sending friend invites.

How to Get a Ton of Friends

After you register, click the two people holding hands on some of the reviews you are voting on. The monitor on the same screen being green means that they are showing online. Once you get some friends, click community. Click firends. Go to one of the friends. Click view all friends. With each friend, click send friend invite. It's that simple.

When you click your community board you can find out how many votes you have left. You can see which friends left comments, voted or have new reviews to vote on. It's really cool.

For example, Click Here for my link. You can click the orange people holding hands. That will send me a friend request. You can see if I'm online by the red or green monitor. The envelope is to send me mail there. After I accept the friend, you click community, friends and then view all friends by my name. I have over 200 friends so that will get you started.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Pen in Hand Poem

I have been lucky and not suffered writer's block too often. But at times, writer's block can be really frustrating. I'm used to having writing ideas. Just to stare at the paper and have no writing ideas can at times be very scary. What if I never think of another writing idea? This poem is in tribute to those times that writing ideas just seem to escape me. Often poetry is a good way to get the muse awake again.

Pen in Hand


Pen in hand,
Paper blank,
Staring back at me,
Begging me.

Pen in hand,
Paper blank,
Write on me,
Fill me.

Pen in hand,
Paper blank,
Tell the world,
Give me life.

Yet...

Pen in hand,
Paper blank,