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.
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Great post full of useful information. When you break down the numbers the way you did, it really shows how profitable writing can by slowly building up your articles. I think people have to look at it this way to see how well they can do instead of thinking they have to place 100 articles on a site all at once (nice to do but not always practical). I really enjoyed this article. :)
ReplyDeleteHey Kidgas! I read your post about Life123 and wrote my first article for them a couple days ago. I received an acceptance email today and I'm in!
ReplyDeleteI like the way you break it down to figures and scenarios. I often do this my self quite a bit myself. I have been mainly concentrating on AC for more of a short term gain at the moment.
I figure if I make an average of $2.70 in upfront payments per 400 word article on AC, write 20 a day during a five day work week, I would average $270 a week in upfronts.
For me, it takes an average of 16 articles to reach 1000 views per month in order to get the performance bonus of $1.50
Writing 20 a day for a month solid would yield an average of an additional $37.50 each month in performance payments.
in a year I could possibly bring in close to $1530 a month ($450 a month in residuals)
It typically takes me around 25 minutes to write 400 words and submit to AC.
Starting out I would only be making around $5.40 an hour, working 50 hours a week.
Many people on AC make over a couple thousand $$ a month from AC but it would TAKE YEARS of steady writing I would imagine. I want to find a good balance between upfront and residual streams as well as mixing it up in the process.
Keep up the great work!
GO COLTS!
Thanks for the clear picture of how this can all work out in real life over time. Not only will I be considering your advice for myself but plan to pass it along to my daughter and DIL.
ReplyDeleteDeAnna,
ReplyDeleteThanks for you kind comments.
John,
Thanks for the figures. Keep us updated and best of luck on the upfronts. COLTS managed to pull out a close one.
Crystal,
I am glad this was helpful. That is the whole point of my writing this. Feel free to stop by frequently for more good advice.
Hi Kidgas, Thank you!! This was jst what I needed to continue feeling upbeat abt writing mainly for residual income.. Being a non U.S. writer, I have mainly residual income streams working for me and while Suite101 is my top earner, the others are bringing in a few pennies.. This post helped me see how those pennies will add up!! Blessings..
ReplyDeleteprerna,
ReplyDeleteYou are so welcome. It can be difficult at times to see the bigger picture 2 and 3 years down the road. Glad to have been an encouragement.