Make Money Online and New Beginnings

September 29th, 2009 6 Comments

In a lot of ways,  I feel like I am starting over – or at least coming full circle. These past few months have brought a lot of professional changes.

  • I no longer write for clients. The writing wasn’t very fulfilling and I wasn’t having fun anymore. Whatever writing is to me (profession, hobby, little of both) whatever I write needs to be enjoyable.
  • After a few years of embracing social networking, it lost it’s appeal. Overnight I canceled my twitter and facebook accounts. I don’t remember the login info for myspace… And I think I have a plurk and linkedin account somewhere but I haven’t logged in in ages. It’s great and can be helpful but it was also highly distracting. To save my online income I needed to quit – and I did cold turkey (much to the shock of some of those I had gotten to know!)
  • I’ve started submitting to print publications again after a several year hiatus. This is the full circle part – I started out this way, took a break to write web content for clients, and then decided to come back to this. In many ways it’s like I’m a newbie again because my clips are so old. But when I approached my writing in this way I was a lot happier professionally.
  • I’ve hit the ground running with internet marketing. I did the Thirty Day Challenge (thanks Ed Dale!) but still have not made my first dollar. But that’s okay, I learned so much I’m able to take that  and translate it to my blogs and other internet marketing projects. In other words, now that I am not working for clients I can take what I know about SEO and web content writing and apply it selfishly. And let me tell you, the results I’ve been getting with SEO have been outstanding.

So that’s where I’m at. I’ve created a list of tasks. I do one at a time. Then when the list is done, I go to the top  and start over. Things that are on my list include (and I’ll share the details of each method in posts to come)…

  • Creating  an income stream with hubpages
  • Bum marketing
  • Creating an income stream with Squidoo ala Potpiegirl
  • Writing queries and submitting publications
  • Creating niche blogs ala The Niche Blogger
  • Writing devotionals
  • Working on my blogs, niche sites, and other internet marketing projects

If I lacked focus before, I certainly don’t now. I try to work at least 30 hours a week and I let my timer tick on so that I can keep track of how I spend my time. It’s ticking right now. Had a bit of a late start t0day and am working on my second hour.

You’ll notice I took the signup block off. I may start another list someday but that course on writing was a bit obsolete. The marketplace is changing and I’m a bit out of touch. Though I still use sites like Associated Content, Helium, and Textbroker every now and then. But at this point it just distracts me from starting my niche sites.

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How Much Can I Really Make From Blogging?

July 8th, 2009 4 Comments

I’ve decided to do an experiment. The topic of the blog is just about one of the lowest earners because there is so much competition on this subject. And less face it, though this blog is informative and pleasant, there are others out there that are great, too. I’m sure you can think of a few…

Anyway, I wanted to do an experiment. I am going  to see how far I can take my blog earnings. I have several, but I am going to track and share the results from this one only. I want to know, how much can I really earn from blogging… I mean  REALLY earn.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am going to use Blogging to the Bank as a guide. I’ll also use the techniques learned in Niche Blogger and also at Problogger,com. I am now a sponge, soaking up knowledge. Not sure where I am going to post earnings yet… but you’ll know when I do.

Today, I haven’t made any money…

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Using Blogging to the Bank to Make My Blogs Successful!

July 6th, 2009 1 Comment

I’ve decided to work on this blog a little more and I’ve chosen a blueprint – Blogging to the Bank. I’ve used this resource off and on to make my blogs better. What I love about it is that it isn’t just a “plan to make money”. The writer focuses on teaching us how to give the reader a great experience and a blog filled with wonderful, engaging content.

You see, that’s the first priority to being a great blogger. If your information is useful, helpful, and entertaining, then people will return. That’s my goal here – to show you my journey and tell you how I’m reaching my goals. I’m still building my skills, so I try to find resources that will help me get there.

A word of caution – all the resources in the world won’t help boost income. Only pure action will do that. I learned that the hard way. I’ve purchased am lot of informational products on how to make money online. But purchasing it won’t pay the bills – following the advice will.

This is something I always need to remind myself which is why I’m focusing on building one blog at a time. Yes, I have other blogging products. I’ll take a look at them after I’m satisfied I learned enough from Blogging to the Bank.

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Make Quick Cash with Associated Content

July 5th, 2009 Comments Off

Are you wondering how to make quick cash with Associated Content? Well, ever since I’ve stopped writing for clients, my income dropped a little bit. It’s going back up because of my website efforts, but not as fast as I would like. So, I decided to use Associated Content to make up the difference. The other alternative would have been to get more clients, and that’s really not something I want – a deadline driven lifestyle isn’t conducive to my goals.

I know, I know – they really don’t pay that much but they review your article, make an offer or deny it, and then pay you in a very prompt manner. Higher paying options involve clients, deadlines, and I don’t see the money sometimes for weeks or even months. So, I figure I could write some articles here and there and boost my income.

Here’s my plan:

  • Write as many articles as possible.
  • Set my timer so I can write as fast as possible.
  • Stick to topics I know a lot about. In fact, I plan to write exclusively about herbal medicine topics.
  • Make sure I work on what I need to work on to boost my income so I don’t always need to write articles at Associated Content.

I’ve been with AC for a while, and I go off and on with them. I hadn’t really posted there since 2008 and it was only 1 or 2 articles. I’ve made over $300 overall but I can’t seem to write too many articles at once for them. We’ll see how long I last with this next phase. :)

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Working from Home – My Story, My Beginning

July 2nd, 2009 Comments Off

Everyone has their own story about why they work from home. What’s mine? It’s not that I dislike office jobs. I could probably tolerate it if I needed to. I just don’t love it. As annoying as it is when I need to stay up late to work on a project because I chose to go to the movies during the day instead, I still love it because that means I have freedom.

It’s About Freedom

Freedom. One thing that drove me crazy about working for someone else is that I always had to ask for the day off unless I called in sick. I had to ask to go on vacation. If they said no, which they often did, I’d have to be faced with a decision. Deal with it, or quit. Finally, I quit. Not because of the vacations but because my husband and I needed to leave town for over a month. After a brief stint with temp work, that was my last time having an employer – eight years ago.

Just Begin

Looking back on it, my first year in freelance writing was a disaster. I was excited. Creative. Eager to learn. Eager ti submit. But, I only made $60. A year of this, and I didn’t give up. And more importantly, I began. I look back at that time and wrinkle my nose. From where I am now, I see all the things I was doing wrong and I want to shout at myself to approach things differently. But I need to remember that I did get started. That wasn’t the end. This is the most important part. I began.

Creativity Meets Business

But the truth is, I’m a little jealous of what I was back then. I skipped through Europe – tiny notebook in hand – and wrote. My husband took pictures on a bridge in a park in London. I wrote. I didn’t worry about a batch of articles I had due. I just wrote. Happily – creatively. When was the last time I stopped to write a poem, shopping bags dropped on the ground around me. I couldn’t wait five more minutes. The walk took ten. I had to write the poem right at that moment. Maybe Germany was inspiring. Maybe my mind was tipped more towards creative and less towards business. That’s probably it. Self Note – try to get some of that free-spirited artist back.

Career for Free Spirits

Oh, I’m still creative. Just in a different way. This is the ultimate career path for free spirits and creative types. But I needed to unlearn some of that – hide it almost. Not because I was ashamed, but because I needed to make room for Business. And that’s what it is. Creative writing is now Hobby, as is travel. Turns out, this is a great career,  for people who love to travel.

What Would I do Differently?

Nothing, but I know what I need to change. I can’t completely abandom the Creative Girl with the notebook, nor can I ignore that I am running a business. So… Something to work on, I guess. :)

What’s your story? Create a post on your blog and put a link to it in the comments. I’d love to read it!

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The Importance of Community in Revenue Sharing

June 27th, 2009 Comments Off

Do you use sites like Bukisa and eHow to make extra writing income? Well, don’t underestimate the importance of community when using them. Sure, if you just post your articles and leave the site alone, you will eventually make money there. But commenting an articles and posting in the forums gives your articles even more exposure which could lead to more page views.

Writing Your Articles

The focus should always be on writing excellent articles. Make sure you write for the web. Use subheadings, smaller sentences, shorter paragraphs, etc. Keyword research and optimizing the articles is also important because this will be the number one way people will find your articles. If they do well in the search engines you’ll make more money.

Promoting the Articles

The next step after you write the articles is to promote them. There are several ways you can do this including:

  • Putting your site profile link in email and forum signatures.
  • Letting people know about your new articles on your blog and in the social networks.
  • Social bookmarking sites like stumbleupon and digg.
  • Through microblogging at sites like twitter and plurk.

However, keep in mind  that the best way to get page views is in the search engines. Just choose one or two methods to promote beyond that and the articles will get a boost.

Participate in the Community

I saved this tip for last. This is really a form of promotion, but you get a lot more out of it than that. A lot of revenue sharing sites (and eHow is one of the best at this) have incorporated Web 2.0 principals in their business model. Utilizing these principals helps you because it

  • Increases article exposure
  • Gives you a way to promote other things such as your blogs
  • Helps you develop contacts and increase your overall network

All of these benefits either directly or indirectly increases your revenue. Now, you don’t need to go crazy and spend hours on the site to get the benefits. But if you make it a habit to go into the forums and comment on some articles each time you post a new article, that will be enough.

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Getting Back into Pure Freelance Writing

June 24th, 2009 2 Comments
  • I am in a situation where the household could use my extra income. So, I am going to get back to my roots and do some pure freelance writing for a while, until the income comes in. Then, I’ll go back to focusing on my internet marketing effots. This is what I’ll do:
  • Post bids at freelance sites like rentacoder.com. I’ve been using that site for a few years and it’s the easiest for me to use to get some quick cash.
  • Query magazines with article ideas.
  • Submit articles to places like Associated Content. I know, I know – sometimes this ends up backfiring on me and I don’t make enough money. But it’s worth a shot.
  • Build up residual income at Bukisa.com.
  • After I’m done all that – evaluate how much progress I’ve made.

So, I need to work hard because I will need to do a lot of writing for the next few weeks in order to cover as much ground as possible. I created a master list of tasks and I will not move on to the next task until I actually finish something. And I had to be careful of making the list too long, too. Otherwise, I’ll just get discouraged.

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Creating My Business Online – What have I been up to?

May 27th, 2009 Comments Off

It has been over a month since I last posted here on this blog. It seems like eons – but I haven’t been away from the computer. On the contrary, I’ve been here, typing away, working on my niche blogs and squidoo lenses and building up my internet properties with a vengeance. So, I’ll give a little summary.

Building Up My Squidoo Lenses

I went out and purchased three additional resources on how to make money on Squidoo and have been using two of them with great results. Squidoo Queen has always been a favorite of mine. I started building lenses using those suggestions and my affiliate sales increased by about one sale per week

But still, something wasn’t clicking. I didn’t feel organized enough SO I purchased One Week Marketing. Merging the two systems to create my own plan has been inspiring and motivating. It starts by having you build Squidoo lenses in a niche and then a blog. If the niche does well and you make sales, the next logical step would be create a niche blog.

The Niche Blogger

I love the niche blogging system that Amy Bass has put together – I always have. But, I had the same problem with that as I did Squidoo Queen. I felt like there was something missing. Again, it wasn’t that the process hasn’t been working. It has. The blogs I started are still doing well in the search engines and generating income, especially on Adsense, even though I haven’t been working on them.

So, I merged that process with One Week Marketing. I prefer to test the niche now using the plan of creating lenses and a free blog and doing article marketing to get traffic and backlinks. Because, once I do create a blog on wordpress using Niche Blogger, I already know which keywords work and which don’t.

First Ever Membership Site

In my time away from this blog I’ve built up my online income and gained knowledge using those products and finding my own methods. This is what it’s all about, right? So, a friend and I are launching a membership site teaching people a simplified, step by step version of making money online.

There are people out there who want to learn and would like to benefit from our experience. That’s the way it works online, right? So, check out Blog Cash Bank for additional updates and status on the site plus articles about how to make money blogging. The target launch date is June 15 – it’s really exciting. Also stay tuned for our radio shows on BlogTalkRadio.

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Don’t Be Afraid to Let Your Business Evolve

April 21st, 2009 2 Comments

My business model is always changing and evolving. When I first started writing, I stuck to mainly print and some online magazines. I moved on  to writing for clients and starting my own blogs. Then Squidoo came into the picture and I started creating lenses like mad.

Now, the face of my business looks much different. I’m still creating lenses. I have several blogs, all on wordpress. I am social networking – was that even a phrase when I first started my career? I am not sure – 2002 seems ages ago in internet years.

I made the leap into writing online sort of in the middle of the rush. I’ve been doing it long enough to remember the resistence amongst some writers to change. I always thought that in order to really get anywhere I had to examine each “new thing” to see if it was worth my effort or if I could make some money from it.

Things change, things stay the same – that’s the way it has been.

So now, after nearly seven years as a freelance writer, I can offer you this bit of advice. Things will ALWAYS change. Don’t resist it. Let it evolve. Not only do the technologies change, but so will you. Follow your instincts and don’t be afraid to change or take on an exciting new project. Isn’t that why you started working for yourself to begin with?

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Improving Vocabulary through Reading – My Quest to Be a Better Writer

April 17th, 2009 Comments Off

My husband is now a student. That means he needs to write papers and do a lot of reading – his program is intensive with both of these things. Because I am a writer and an editor, I figured I’d help him out. But first, I needed to read the article.

And that’s where the problems began. The writng was extremely high level and in a subject that I know next to nothing about. It didn’t help that there were some words I didn’t know. I skimmed the piece because I didn’t have time to do any more than that.  I can usually figure out the main point of an article after skimming but this piece was difficult.

I kept thinking that if only I knew more of the vocabulary words, I could figure out what the passage meant a lot easier. So that settled it. I needed to expand my vocabulary, but I needed to do it in a fun way. So, I decided to come up with an essential list of classics that I’ve either never read or have read and didn’t appreciate (or it has just been so long ago, I pretty much forget the story). Feel free to chime in and share anything I’ve missed!

  • The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Wuthering Heights - Elizabeth Bronte
  • War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
  • The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
  • Don Quixote – Cervantes
  • Hamlet - William Shakespear
  • Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
  • Mannsfield Park - Jane Austen
  • Bleak House – Charles Dickens

Why did I choose these? I don’t know- no rhyme or reason. It just seemed like a good place to start my relearning. Not only do I need to expand my vocabulary, but I also need to read more. Both are essential in becoming a great writer.

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