My Day is Coming!

That's right. The day when I notice that my earnings for a single site have dipped down under $10 for the day. I had to smile when I saw that Felicia over at nojobformom.com was noticing that earnings were down for the month because she failed to reach the $10 mark on Suite101.

First, it is good to know that I am not the only one who is having difficulty with earnings for the month. I have read several comments in various places about this being a disappointing month. I can see where people might be busy preparing for the holidays.

Second, the prospect of a $10 day is encouraging. My best so far has been just over $8. That was one day about a month ago, downhill and with the wind. But believe me, when that day comes, you will be the first to know. I know that my day is coming; I just don't know when it will be.

Finally, it was good to note that Felicia has earned over $14,000 for the year. That is some decent income that should only grow over time. Crystal (here is her blog) puts it in perspective when she says to compare to last year during this time as opposed to last month. When I do that, I see that I had ZERO internet income last year during the month of November. So things are looking up.

Thanks to all who came by to visit the blog yesterday. I think I had a record number of visitors. Yippee! I am so excited. It helps make up for that earnings thing.

Life123 Update and Earnings

For those who don't know, I started writing for Life123 the last few days of October. After the first article is submitted, it goes through an editorial process. If it is accepted, you are then allowed to submit up to 10 articles in a 30 day period and are known as a contributor. I had my article accepted and promptly filled my 10 article quota.

Now I am in the process of waiting until I can submit more articles while I get enough views for the next level. At that point, I will be able to submit 40 articles per month. You need to have 500 views across all of your articles and have written 10 articles. As of this morning, I am at 222. I am adding views at a rate of 5-10 per day and would suspect that about half way through December, I could start adding articles at an increased rate. Although, if every reader of this blog started visiting my articles, I could probably accomplish this sooner.

After an article receives 50 total views, you receive $5. I have achieved this level on 2 of the 10 articles and so have earned $10 for the month. The next highest article has 24 but I don't think it will reach the 50 article view level until sometime in December. My goal is to go after the low hanging fruit on Life123 and create a steady stream of income that can be used for additional online income opportunities while I build residual passive income.

I have posted on how one can create a decent at home income that utilizes upfront payments. I am not entirely sure what my next steps will be. I have strongly considered trying to set up a small niche site that would focus on AdSense and maybe a little affiliate income. I would probably prefer to go that route prior to building out a larger website so that I can make my mistakes on a smaller scale.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the Life123 update. I have written 3 articles just waiting for the next month or next level whichever comes first. And I am pleased about earning the $10 so far but payment won't happen until $20. As always, thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate it and hope that it is helpful.

Getting Started at Triond

After reading DeAnna's blog post about Triond's new money making features, I decided to join the site and give it a try. I am doing this as an experiment against InfoBarrel since I have 6 articles there and have only earned $1.48 despite having a respectable number of views. I am not entirely sure how I will be making money at Triond. I suspect it will be a combination of views and ad clicks. So far, I haven't had to input my AdSense code on the site anywhere. You can also see that I have figured out how to place the Triond widget on my site so that all you readers can visit my articles there.

I just 2 days I have managed to publish 2 articles and earn 3 pennies. I plan on publishing about 6-10 articles and watch what happens. If my views and earnings continue to keep gradually increasing over time, then I will likely keep publishing. If not, then I will likely move on to another site and try something else. At this point, I can't give any evaluation of the site other than it seems fairly easy to publish. It seems like the articles are actually reviewed by a human prior to going live since I published one at night here in Indianapolis and didn't see it until the next day. The other one was published during the day and was published almost instantly. Right now I have one pending that I published last night again. I will be curious to see if I have to wait until Monday or not.

I think I will head over to InfoBarrel and grab the RSS feed to place on this blog along with the others. That way everyone who comes here can go and read any of my articles from any of my content sites. Now that I know how to grab widgets and RSS feeds, I can go nuts with them. The next time, I will post an update on what is going on over at Life123. I am excited about my progress so far.

It Only Takes One Article

I don't where you are in your journey to create online passive residual income. Maybe you are already well on your way making over $1000 per month. Maybe you are like me and still in the process of developing a cohesive strategy, excited about the prospects but still struggling with the daily roller coaster of emotions that go along with building passive income. Or maybe you are like I was six months ago when I had no idea what I was doing with no clue what keywords, backlinks or SEO techniques were. Or finally, you could just be reading about making money online and haven't even signed up for any content sites at all.

No matter where you are in this journey, I want to encourage you to just write one article. Get started taking your online income to the next level. If you are anything like me, I have a tendency to get burned out and not want to write anything. Instead I spend my time reading blogs, visiting forums on the different sites to which I belong, and simply waste time. I know I should write more. I have several good ideas just sitting with titles and some notes. I really should finish those and get them posted. I have one idea that has been sitting for months with a pretty low CPC but that might work on Life123. I should get that one done so I can at least earn $5 from it.

So if you are just sitting at home wasting time, be sure to finish reading all the posts of my blog and then get writing. Every step you take by publishing another article brings you one step closer to your goal. And if you are going to spend time reading stuff, check out my stuff on eHow or Life123. Thanks a bunch and maintain that fire.

PS--I made it for 15 hours and 15 minutes without checking AdSense. I will try to continue to cut down and stop wasting time in that way.

I'm So Retarded!

If you haven't noticed, there is a new widget on the side of this blog. It is a widget that shows a few of my hottest (most popular) hubs. I had no idea that there was even a widget available at HubPages. Dang, I'm so retarded! At least I got this figured out during the month of November which I designated as link building month.

As you can see, I am not a professional and am learning all of this stuff on the fly. I hope that this blog has been helpful to people and that you are able to learn a few new things. I will certainly share as I learn.

Comments on HubPages

I figured while I was here, I might as well make a comment or two about HubPages. One of the cool things that has happened recently is that over the last 7 days, my traffic from Google has been greater than my internal traffic from HubPages. This is the first time that this has happened. Although my overall traffic is down, it is mainly because the internal HubPages is down. That is OK with me since the Google traffic is much more valuable.

The other comment I would like to make is that I will probably finish up a few more Hubs and then take a break for awhile from HubPages while building up some more articles on some of the other sites for which I write.

Earnings are down for the month at HubPages. I think that is OK since I figure that things will be up and down. They won't always be up. I can say that they are better than the first few months. I would anticipate that making Google payout will take less than the 5 months that it took for the first one. I am thinking that 3 months is a reasonable goal. It looks like I might be on target so far.

Well, that is all I had for now. Thanks for reading. And let me know if there are any other obvious things that I shouldn't be so retarded about. Does anyone know if I can put an RSS or widget on Facebook?

Kicking the AdSense Habit

OK, I'll admit it. I'm addicted to AdSense and want to try and kick the habit. No, I'm not talking about de-monitizing my blog or no longer writing content. I'm talking about checking my AdSense stats every hour or so when I can.

You see, I am a stats and numbers junky, and AdSense provides me with lots of numbers that I can play with and record in spreadsheets. Plus, I am curious about how many people are visiting my articles and especially how many clicks are happening. I am always disappointed when there haven't been any clicks in the last 20 minutes and excited when there are. It simply has to stop. I have to spend more of my time writing.

So, I am going to try and go 24 hours without checking my AdSense stats to see the number of impressions, the number of clicks, the click through rate (CTR), the eCPM, and the revenue for the day. I am going to stop comparing to last month to see where things are a little different.

I get frustrated by eHow and Life123 which only update once each day. I want real time data. But it really doesn't make any difference. Looking at the stats doesn't bring me any more visitors. It won't bring any more revenue, either. Writing more does. Linking does. Reading blogs and commenting does. So, that is why I am going to kick my AdSense habit and only check once a day at most and be surprised when I see that I now have more earnings. Maybe I should check it even less often so I can be assured of some new clicks since I still can go 48 hours without one.

Thanks for listening. Anybody else out there an addict?

Online Income Mid-November Review

It is time to look at how the month of November is going since we are midway through the month. By doing this and comparing our progress to the goals we set out for the month, we can see where we are and where we need to go. Again, this is another way to make ourselves accountable so that we can accomplish more than we otherwise might if we just let things happen.

Hubpages: I started at 106 Hubs with a goal to end up between 115 and 120. I currently have 113. I think I am on target and doing well with this goal. I will definitely meet it. I also have a great idea for several more Hubs and will start working on them shortly. I think that I will get several written and release in series.

eHow: The goal was to get to 50 articles and make $25 for the month. I started at 42 but lost 4 in a sweep so am now at 38. I have made just over $6 so far. Looks like I am way off target here. I should start working harder but it is difficult to get motivated when it seems like there is always the risk of losing work. Have to see what happens. Maybe I can get a couple written by the end of the month.

Xomba: Started with 22 Xombytes and 111 Xomblurbs. Now I am at 25 Xombytes and 126 Xomblurbs. I am making some progress toward my goal of 30 bytes and 150 blurbs but need to get working here too. Earnings are OK but not stellar.

InfoBarrel: I had made no commitments and haven't done anything. The good news is that I now have 4 new articles from eHow just waiting for publication. I plan on waiting for a month or so for the articles to become uncached at Google.

Life123: I had no real goals since I hadn't mentioned that I had just started. I have published my 10 article quota and one just earned $5 this morning. I have another that will likely earn before the end of the month meaning that I am on track for $10 in earnings this month. It would be great if I could earn more, but it doesn't look like it will happen. That just means they will earn in December or January. I am adding some views each and every day. When I get to 500 total, I can submit 40 articles per month. I also have 2 written and ready for publication.

My Online Income: I am posting every few days on schedule and adding traffic slowly but surely. I would like to think that many of these posts have been helpful.

Links: I have been able to add links to each and every article that I have written in one way or another. I haven't really gone back to add links to previously written articles and could do some of that. If I run out of other work to do, maybe that is what I will do (like I will run out of work). It seems like the effect on traffic has been positive. I am on pace to increase the AdSense impressions by about 10% for the month. Earnings haven't followed yet, but I suppose eventually they will.

SEO Experiment: I didn't have any goals but thought I would mention what is going on. I think that the post may have been de-indexed since I can't even find it in Google when I type "seo experiment" + kidgas. It certainly makes me wonder about the wisdom of all the social bookmarking that we all do. Not to mention adding all the links. I suppose that the links are useful to get people that run across my stuff to read some of my other articles. Who knows what it all means?

Finally, here are a few Life123 articles that need some help:

Stock Investing Greats and the Lessons They Teach
If Gold is Too Expensive, Consider Silver

As always, thanks for reading. And thanks to everyone who made my first $5 at Life123 possible.