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Monday, November 30, 2009

Passive Income Goals for December 2009

If you have been following this blog, you will realize that I feel it is important to write down goals. It gives you a sense of accountability and forces you to identify those actions which need to be accomplished. Even if you don't get it all done, you still get more done than if you didn't have any goals written down.

So, these are my online passive income goals for December 2009 divided according to the various content sites for which I write:

Hubpages: I really don't have any goals for December. Traffic there has been decreasing for me, and I want to see if I can generate better traffic on other sites as I improve my article count elsewhere. I would like to see the current traffic hold steady and will continue to link where appropriate.

eHow: I won't do anything at eHow either since I want to focus my efforts elsewhere. I have a hard time writing an article only to have it deleted in the future. I suppose I should publish and earn as much as possible and then republish elsewhere after it is deleted. That could be a viable strategy.

InfoBarrel: It is unlikely that I will do anything on this site except check to see if my deleted eHow articles are no longer indexed and then publish on IB. That would give me a little extra content there.

Life123: I will spend some time on this site in December for sure. I hope to be able to earn $15 in December as opposed to the $10 I earned in November. I also plan on being able to move up to the next level and be able to contribute up to 40 articles per month. I hope to be able to contribute 10 rather quickly and an additional 5 articles when I have moved up. That would bring my grand total articles to 25 by the end of the year. Currently I have 268 out of 500 views needed to move to the next level.

Xomba: I plan on spending some more time here as well. I want to start to fully assess the earning power of Xomba. I plan on posting something each and every day during the month. I plan on being able to post 10 articles during the month. Currently I have 26 so that means I need to have 36 by the end of the year.

Triond: I have just recently started writing for Triond. I am mildly encouraged and hope to write five more articles during the month to add to this site.

My Online Income: I plan on posting as I have been. It is nice to be able to write and post on a regular basis. It is unfortunate that this blog doesn't make any more money than it does. But, every little bit helps. Over time it will add up.

My November AdSense impressions will be close to the amount for October. That is pretty good in my opinion considering there was 1 less day and that the last four days saw no traffic due to Thanksgiving and no publishing on my part for the same reason. I hope to see December have similar if not slightly better results such that a foundation for 2010 has been formed.

Earnings are down in November as well primarily to the decreased number of clicks. That's OK. I am hoping that a baseline exists that can be built upon going into the new year. I would suspect I will see similar results for December.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to check out those Life123 articles so I can move up to the next level.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Getting Back to Business

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and took time to reflect upon everything for which we should be thankful. I had the opportunity to add to my list the birth of a healthy nephew early on Thanksgiving morning. He weighed in at 8 lb, 14 oz and was home by Friday so I got to hold him before we left. He brought the grand total of kids in the house to double digits with our 6 and my brother-in-law's 4. Lots to be thankful for.

But Now Back to the Grind

I enjoyed the 2 days off with no writing and little internet. I didn't even check email. But now it is time to get back into the swing of things. I plan on finishing out the week with a few articles between tonight and tomorrow. I hope to be able to publish again on Life123 now that my 30 days are almost up. I have several articles ready to go.

I would also like to write a few more for Triond to get going on that front. Traffic was down on all sites over the last few days which is not surprising given the holiday. I don't blame people one bit for taking time away from the internet and spending it with family and friends.

Over the next few days, I plan on getting together my December objectives to prepare for the final month of the year. I plan on sharing those objectives in the next post. I find it hard to believe that I have been able to accomplish as much as I have since the last week of May when I first started. The time seems to have gone by rather quickly.

Again, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I also hope you are able to get a few things done working toward your online income goals while preparing for the remainder of the holiday season. As always, thanks so much for reading.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

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.

Monday, November 23, 2009

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.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

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.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

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.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

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?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

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?

Sunday, November 15, 2009

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.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Life123 Update

I promised I would update on Life123 and I try to be true to my word, so here goes.

I have completed 10 articles for Life123. I know that a month means a 30 day period and not a calendar month since I tried to publish an 11th article and was told I had met my limit. So now I have to wait until the 28th or 29th of November to publish again. I think that I will write a few more articles to have them ready to go.

In order to graduate to the next level, I need to have attracted 500 unique visits across all 10 articles. I could easily graduate sometime in December at my current pace. Right now, I have 134 total visits. I added about 20 visits just yesterday. Even if I only add 1 visitor per article per day average, then in 37 days I would be able to move up and contribute up to 40 articles per month. So it would be worthwhile to have some extra ready to go.

I even have 2 articles that are on the verge of paying out at the first $5 level. One has 42 views and one has 38. The next highest are at 15 and 10. I think it would be great to get 4 to payout for the month, but I would still be ecstatic with 2 paying since $10 is the limit, and I could report how well they pay next month.

John of All Trades

I noticed that John of All Trades, one of my followers here, is also writing for Life123. I have included the links to his articles below. I would hope that you would take the time to go and visit his work, since it sounds like he needs the money more than I do. Here are his articles (I found 2 on the site):

The Pros and Cons of buying a Remanufactured Alternator
Make sure your vehicle starts everytime this winter

I told my wife that if I make enough on Life123, she can go on a cruise with one of her friends next fall. So I have a year to come up with about $800. I think I will be able to do it as long as I publish one article per day to the site starting in 2010 and 20 each month earn the $5 for 50 views. So if you want to help my wife achieve a nice little get-away and break from 6 kids, here are the next two in line to potentially earn this month:

Stock Investing Greats and the Lessons They Teach
Make Your Retirement Savings Automatic

That is all I had for the update. I am excited that I will likely earn the $10 this month. It will help add to the total for the month which has seemed slow in the revenue department. This will help provide some stability I suppose. As always, thanks for reading and thanks for all your comments. I do appreciate you.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Back in the Sandbox, Again!

Hey everyone! Just thought I would make a quick mention about the status of the "SEO experiment". To recap for those just joining the blog, I conducted (and am still conducting) an SEO experiment to rank for the keyword phrase "SEO experiment". I did this by creating a link wheel whereby I wrote several articles related to search engine optimization and linked them all to one blog post on this blog as well as to each other.

Then, I watched and waited. Within 16 days, I was on Google page one in the 5th position! I managed to stay there for awhile, but now I am nowhere to be found. I really don't fully understand it, although it was shortly after placing another link to that post and a linking article that I disappeared. I am trying to see if I can get to the number 1 or 2 spot. I guess I will just have to see what transpires over the next month or so.

Anyway, I thought everyone would be interested in an update. I am still paying attention and linking to the blog post where appropriate to see what happens over time. Again, I am learning my way around the internet and trying to educate you at the same time. If I make some sort of mistake along the way, feel free not to repeat it.

Next time, I will have a Life123 update for everyone. Google can bury me in the sand, but they can't keep me from writing. Have a nice day and thanks for reading.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Writing At Every Opportunity

Now, I am not suggesting that writing at every opportunity is what you should be doing if you want to make money online. What I am saying is that you should at least consider the most efficient use of your time especially if you are doing the online income gig part time. I have written a couple of articles on finding extra time for writing online which you should check out if you are busy like me.

I had the chance to take my own advice this past weekend. We went to visit relatives in Ohio for my niece's birthday party. It is a two-and-a-half hour drive each way, so I had my wife drive on the way there while I worked on my computer writing an article for Life123. We have a little device that converts the cigarette lighter power source into a wall plug. I was able to use my laptop which only lasts one hour on battery power and recharge while riding.

I managed to get 2 articles done on the way to Ohio and 1 on the way home. It was a good use of the time and may end up paying off down the road. That night, I was able to post all three articles to Life123. Because I didn't have internet access, I needed to write on topics with which I was fairly familar. It turned out to be very productive since I was motivated to get something done. You just have to go with it when you feel motivated because there will be plenty of times when you aren't.

Comments on November Progress

Things are going OK so far. I am making some links. Mainly, I am doing a better job of incorporating links into my articles and posts. I have had some chance to work on Xomba and post links there.

Right now, I am trying to finish getting my quota of 10 articles done for Life123 so they have a few weeks to gather views. It would be absolutely awesome if I could get to the 50 views for payout on 4 of them, but I don't know if that will happen. I will accept whatever happens and know that December is another month.

I am more pleased with traffic this month, but earnings are pitiful. I hope this just means that the pattern of being slow at the beginning of the month and picking up at the end has returned. At this pace, I won't earn what I did last month. But, I would expect to see some ups and downs with higher peaks and an increasing baseline.

Finally, I think that I will submit again to the usual blog carnival that I have been using. I am not sure if that does anything for traffic or not, but it sure makes me feel as if I am doing something.

Thanks for coming by and reading again.

PS--If anyone wants me to be a guest blogger, just let me know and send an email. I would be honored and would only ask for a link in return. Thanks.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Online Income Inspiration

It can, at times, be discouraging to do several hours of research for an article only to have few visitors and no earnings. Multiply that times tens of articles, and it is easy to see why many people quit writing for online income within a month or two of starting out. I also get discouraged at times when I look back and realize that no one is clicking on any of my ads for several days in a row. So, what do I do during those times?


First, I remember what my college football weight coach would tell us. The times that you don't feel like doing something is the time that you get the most out of it. Why? Because lesser people won't do it (in our case it was lifting weights), and that's when you will start to close the gap on your goals. So when I don't feel like writing because I am discouraged, I write anyway.


Second, I remind myself that everybody has to start somewhere. We all start with that first article or that first blog post when we have absolutely no readers. I try to look at sites and posts that show me the possibilities and remind myself to keep going. Some examples:

  • Felicia at nojobformom is closing in on $2000 per month passive income.
  • Lissie, whom I met at HubPages, recently made $2000 in one month and is striving to make that consistently.
  • Maria makes well over $1000 per month on eHow.
  • Of course, Griz makes thousands per month with an ugly blogger blog.
  • Livingoffdividends is one of my most favorite passive income sites. In fact, it was the inspiration for me to try my hand at internet income.
  • Pat, from smartpassiveincome.com gives this annual report after being laid off. Granted, he was at it full time and wrote an ebook, but he pulled in over $200,000.
  • Bob at ChristianPF.com writes this post on making money from a blog. He also got laid off, but pay attention to the graph of earnings and how it takes off after the first year. Gotta stick with it.
  • Finally, this is my favorite post for inspiration. I have it bookmarked and have read it 4 times now. If you link to nothing else, link to this one. $100,000 from AdSense in a year is huge, but you have to stick with it.
As you can see, those that are making the most are those that stick with it. If you are able to make money online full time, then great! You will make it to that level that much quicker. If you are like me and can't work full time, at least try to do a little something each day. It may take longer to reach your goals, but don't be discouraged. It will happen. Slowly and surely, one day at a time. Just stick with it.


Odds and Ends


First, I want to thank DeAnna at WriteMoms for linking to my last post on an online income strategy for WAHM. You can see the link to her blog on the right. Be sure to visit her blog. I do several times each week. I am sure she is responsible for my 2 new followers. Welcome to you both.


Second, I would like everyone to notice the new RSS feed to my articles at Life123. You can read about my becoming a contributor at Life123.


Finally, I would like to feature several of my eHow articles which have not yet earned anything. There are 6 of them out of 42 total articles. Maybe the links will help them out in the search engines:

That is all for today. Thanks for reading.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Strategy for Work at Home Moms

As mentioned, I wanted to point out a strategy for WAHM to use for making some extra money during those years you wish to stay at home with the kids. We have 6 kids and homeschool until they get into high school so I have a sense of the busy lives that parents lead.

First, as part of the strategy, you need to find some time for writing online. I am going to use 3 hours per day. You must think I am crazy to think you can find 3 hours per day when raising children. Let me suggest that you consider an hour before the children wake up. Now if they wake up very early, this may not be practical and you might have to find time elsewhere. Little ones usually take a nap, so that should provide another hour or so. Lastly, there should be an hour of time after the children go to bed.

Just like examining your spending, you need to look at your time to find out when you can manage about 3 hours each day. Personally, I think it can be done for almost anyone. I am managing to find some time for my writing and will often write in spurts on the weekend. I have written a few articles on tips for finding writing time.

Utilizing Time Wisely

Once you find the time, the next part becomes utilizing your time wisely. I would suggest a combination of writing for upfront and residual income. The upfront income provides the prospect of a short term payout which is probably an important motivator and would demonstrate the viability of writing for online income. The rest of the time is used to develop residual income, create backlinks (article on the importance of backlinks), do keyword research (article on finding high CPC keywords), and network online.

Writing articles for upfront payment can be done at such sites as Life123, constantcontent, and others that you can find reviewed at nojobformom or writemoms. These sites will also review the residual income sites so that you can find an appropriate fit for writing style. Personally, I enjoy using HubPages, Xomba, and eHow for residual income. I just started at Life123 for a combination of quick upfront income of $5 for the first 50 views. I would also write on a free blog to get links and readership.

Hour 1: Write upfront article from prior day's keyword and article research and post. Write quick blog post and include a few links to your articles.

Hour 2: Write a residual article from prior day's keyword and article research and post to site. Start a second article.

Hour 3: Finish second article and post to residual income site. Spend time doing keyword and article research for next day, learning about making income online, networking, and posting links on social bookmarking sites like Xomba to your articles that day (my referral link to Xomba).

The above assumes that you can write an article in 45 minutes. That may not happen right away. It will take some time. But once you get more experience, I think it is certainly reasonable to be able to write 500 words in 45 minutes.

Online Income Possibilities

Let's assume that for the first 6 months, you only get one upfront article done each day and one residual article each day and that you only write Monday through Friday, taking weekends off. I will also assume that you only write at Life123 for the upfront site. I will assume that in year 1, you make $0.30 per article on average residual income, year 2 you make $0.40 per article and year 3 and on $0.50 per article. This should low ball the opportunities since I am averaging $0.50 per article residual on eHow and about $0.40 per article on HubPages only 5 months into the program.

In the first month, you can only contribute 10 articles per month to Life123 and the same is true for the second month. At the end of those months, you are up to the 40 article per month level, but you only write 25. You can still contribute the extra 15 from months one and two over time so that you are writing one each day. Be sure to save all your work on your own computer prior to publication. I write everything except these blog posts on Microsoft Word and then copy/paste. I created an eHow template for myself as well.

After one year, you will have written and posted 260 articles on Life123, each earning $5. Some of the more recent posts will not have earned that, but several should have made the next $5 payout. You will have posted 260 residual articles for 12 months plus another 130 for the second 6 months when your writing speed improved.

Total income for the year: 260 Life123 * $5 = $1300 plus residual income of $0.30 per month for the first month's articles for 12 months, plus $0.30 per month for the next month's articles for 11 months, etc. comes to a total of $641.40. So the total income for the year is $1941.40 or an average of $161.78 per month. The hourly wage then becomes $2.48. But watch what happens in years 2, 3, and 4!

Year 2: Upfront income = $1300 which still assumes you are only making a $5 payout on each article. Some of them will actually make $20. Remember that our assumptions are trying to low ball all figures. Residual income includes all the articles from year one earning $0.40 per month for 12 months plus 2 articles per day for 260 days, some earning for 12 months, some for 11 months, etc. Residual income = $3216.80. Total income for year 2 = $4516.8 an average of $376.4 per month and hourly wage of $5.79. Now we can start thinking car payment. Let's look at year 3 (I will save a lot of the typing and get straight to the figures).

Year 3: Upfront income = $1300. Residual income = $7141. Total income = $8441. Monthly = $703.41. Hourly wage = $10.82.

Year 4: Upfront income = $1300. Residual income = $10261. Total income = $11561. Monthly = $963.41. Hourly wage = $14.82

Now we are talking house payment. Remember this is just a low ball figure. If you can really publish 3 articles per day for 260 days out of the year and make that many links along the way, I suspect you will be making even more. Felicia is almost to $2000 monthly within 2 years of starting residual income.

The key is just being persistent and publishing every day. It will seem slow at first, but over time, the efforts will add up and the results were start multiplying upon themselves. I think in my next post, I will provide a list of places I go to feel inspired when I feel discouraged.

I know this was a long post, but I want it to be encouraging to those who are just getting started making money online. I wanted everyone to see the possibilities that can be realized by just managing time well and using a few hours each day creating a part-time business that will ultimately be paying over $14 per hour for your time and could provide a significant amount of household income while you stay at home and care for a child prior to going to kindergarten. At that point, there may not even be a need to re-enter the workforce but simply continue to develop your online income streams.

Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Contributor At Life123

Hey, here is that interesting news! I am a contributor for the site Life123.com. After reading DeAnna's review of Life123, I decided to try it out. If you haven't guessed by now, I tend to do things and discover for myself how they work. Not only that, I think I was somewhat bummed by the fact that the residual earnings in the second half of October weren't all that great after an awesome start.



As she states in her review, it was easy to sign up. I supplied a small amount of information including my pen name, "Kidgas" and my paypal address. I submitted my first article for publication after reading their requirements (a few special things with writing format). It was accepted after editorial review which took about 16 hours. Now I am considered a contributor and can submit up to 10 articles a month. I don't know if that is a calendar month or a thirty day period.



Anyway, I have submitted 5 total articles that are currently live on the site. It has taken about 20 minutes on average for them to appear and get out of the pending stage. Three were done in October and 2 in November so far. You may wonder why I am doing this so allow me to explain my thoughts. In all honesty, I am going after some low hanging fruit. It only takes 50 views to earn $5. That's $0.10 each view. Then you are paid an additional $5 for the next 500 views and $10 for the final 500 views. After that, you can earn no more money for that article.



For me, this represents a way of diversifying my income stream while not giving up on the prospect of residual income. Plus, it is very simple to put together 300 or 400 words without a picture or any links. It has taken me about 30-40 minutes to put together each article. One of them already has 8 views. Comparing that to my experience on InfoBarrel, I have 6 articles there with differing amounts of views. The bottom line is that 4 of them have exceeded the 50 view minimum meaning that I could have earned $20 so far versus the actual $1.48 that I have earned.



On the other hand, I am 3 months into eHow and have 42 articles there. I have earned on average $1.48 per article in that time frame and could surpass the $20 mark on several of my articles in the span of one year. HubPages has 108 articles and I have earned $80.57 or almost $0.75 per article over 5 months. Of course several of those represent my earliest worst efforts at writing online with poor keyword choices. For someone just starting out, I think both approaches is perfectly acceptable. It is nice to have the prospect of seeing a paypal deposit within about 6 weeks of starting out. I plan on using my money from Life123 for domain and hosting expenses eventually.



In my next blog post, I want to lay out a plan for anyone to get started making money online which incorporates both upfront and residual income opportunities to show how it might work and what the possibilities are. In the meantime, please feel free to visit any or all of my 5 current articles on Life123. I have conveniently included the links:



Stock Investing Greats and the Lessons They Teach

Make Your Retirement Savings Automatic

Transient Global Amnesia (already has 8 views)

12 Tips to Save Gas, Save Money, Save the Planet

Taking Pain and Making Pearls



As you can see, I am getting a good start on building links for the month of November. Thus, I am able to accomplish several things with this one post, namely build links for potential income at Life123 and provide useful information to everyone reading this blog.

My plan is to publish several more articles in the 300-400 word range up to my quota on Life123 for this month and add those earnings in November and December. I am thinking that I should be able to get $15-20 for November and up to $30 in December added to my residual amounts. Whether or not I continue may simply depend upon what I am doing with the residual online income. I am still finding my way through all of this, and you are simply along for the ride. Feel free to learn from my mistakes and improve upon what I do.

As mentioned, for the next post I would like to put together a little system for anyone wanting to start out or organize their work flow better. And if anyone else is writing for Life123 or is considering it, just comment or shoot me an email at pleben.com@gmail.com.

As always, thanks so much for reading my blog.
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