So What is Blog Engage?

I recently signed up for Blog Engage. Allow me to explain what it is. The way I understand it, Blog Engage is a sort of social bookmarking site for your own blog posts. For the past few weeks after I write a blog post, I go to www.blogengage.com and post the link to my post. It then gets voted up or down. Eventually if it gets enough positive votes, then it gets published on the front page of the site where it can be seen by many more fellow bloggers. There is also a forum for discussion amongst bloggers.

Is Blog Engage Worth It?

So far, for me at least, I feel that it is. Blog Engage has delivered 22 visitors to my blog. More importantly, I have discovered many interesting blogs with valuable information that should only help me on my journey toward online income. Furthermore, I am also making new online friends.

Granted, it is unlikely that those fellow bloggers will do much for revenue since they are unlikely to click on any ads. But that's not the point. You never know who might see what you have written and link to it. I think the interaction with other bloggers and cross promotion within the blogosphere will only help.

I think Blog Engage has begun to play a huge role in generating additional traffic for this blog. I will continue to follow the progress that is made in this area. I would only expect to see improvements over time as the community begins to grow. I suspect many of you have not heard of Blog Engage. If you haven't, you should check it out. If you have a blog, you should really check it out and consider signing up there. Link to a few posts and see what happens. Then you can decide for yourself if Blog Engage is right for you.

PS--I was at Traffic Rank 794,002! I think Blog Engage is helping improve my Alexa ranking very quickly.

Patience Pays Off ($5 to be Exact)

One of the biggest things that I have been saying on this blog (as much to remind myself as to benefit you) is that patience is important. Keep writing and linking, writing and linking and eventually it will all pay off. It did yesterday for me. OK, so it only paid $5, but who's complaining. Allow me to explain.

I awoke yesterday morning and logged on to my Life123 account. I noticed that I had made another $5. Cool! This made sense since I had 2 articles with view counts in the 40's and were close to the 50 view payout level. But as I looked, those two articles still had stayed below that level.

Then, I noticed that the article that paid out had 110 views! And it had been in the 30's the day before! How did this happen? Actually, I have no idea. When I looked at the source of views, 75 had come from Google. I must have somehow gotten on to the front page of Google for a brief time and had gotten tons of search engine traffic. It was like hitting the Google lottery!

The point of the story is that you just need to keep writing and publishing and linking. Eventually, you never know which article may get seen by the right individual and posted on a blog or make it to the top of a search query. Even if only briefly, the benefits could be huge. Plus, I made $4.52 on AdSense the same day. That makes yesterday my best earning day ever at $9.52! Eventually, I will make double digits in one day. Then twice in a month. Then triple digits. Patience, patience. That's all it takes.

PS--These are the 2 articles in the 40's:
Leveraged ETF's: Not for Long Term Investing
Inflation Hurts the Poor Most

My Online Income Goals for 2010

I have spent the past several days coming up with a list of things that I would like to accomplish during the upcoming year as well as a list of tasks to accomplish them. To start, I would like to list the tasks that I plan on completing throughout the year and then list what I would hope to see come out of that effort.

During 2010, I plan on making Life123 and Xomba my primary sites for writing online content. I also plan on working with HubPages and eHow (again, maybe) to add to the articles I have on those sites as well. Of course, I will continue to write my blog posts. By the end of 2010 I hope to have:

• 250 total articles on Life123. I plan on writing about 20 per month on average and maintaining a steady pace throughout the year.


• 150 Xombytes (articles) on Xomba. That would require about 10 per month. I also want to post links on Xomba almost every day of the year. I plan on posting links to all of my articles that I have written so far plus adding all of the new ones. I currently have a spreadsheet that tracks what links I have added to my writings on Xomba, Shetoldme, and Snipsly. I need to do a better job of linking when I don't feel like writing.


• 150 articles on HubPages. I have 115 so that means I will just sprinkle some here and there during the year. I would like to see my HubPages results improve.


• 50 articles on eHow. I have 38 right now. I would like to add some to see if that helps the earnings there. Despite not writing anything for a few months, eHow continues to earn some money. The site has great potential, and I hope that maybe the break will have allowed me to get back into it.


• I plan on continuing to write every 2 or 3 days for this blog. That would mean 10-20 posts per month. I will be linking to these posts as well and trying to bring traffic to this blog.


• I hope to get up the nerve to create a niche website. I have a few ideas but would like to make a little more writing content first. But now that I am putting it out there, I will be forced to attempt to deliver.

I also want to organize my time better and begin carrying a notebook with me to jot down ideas that I have.

Now, what do I hope to accomplish with all of this effort. I will again look at each site and how the efforts at each will add to my ultimate online income goal for 2010:

• With 250 articles on Life123, the potential for earning is $5000. I know that is not going to happen. I would hope that by the end of 2010, half of the articles I have written have achieved the $5 payout. I would expect that by the end of the year, I could expect almost 20 articles per month reaching that level for an income of $100 monthly.


• At Xomba, I would like to think that the efforts expended will add up. I would hope that by the end of the year, I could count on $50 monthly if I add articles plus a great number of links.


• I would expect HubPages to continue to maintain steady at least. I have lost traffic over the past several months but that has been internal traffic. The search engine traffic seems to be somewhat steady. Better linking may enhance this somewhat. I would hope to earn $25 monthly through HubPages.


• eHow has been a steady performer last month and this month despite my lack of effort. I think by the end of 2010, I could continue to see about $20 per month.


• My Online Income blog will not be a big money maker. I don't ever think that it will be so I will not even place any expectations on it. However, I want to be able to help people and teach them what I am learning and share my experiences. I would like to increase traffic to the blog and reach 50 total followers with a steady readership averaging about 50 per day. I think that would get me in the top 500,000 Traffic Rank by the end of the year.

I want to thank everyone who has stopped by to read this blog. I sincerely appreciate it. Please let me know if you have any ideas to make this blog better. I am always eager to learn and would appreciate your input. Also, what are your goals for 2010? How do you plan on achieving them? I would love to hear your comments.

On an unrelated note, I am pretty miffed about the pathetic display that was the Colts game yesterday. Maybe we should just forfeit and stay home.

Making Goals for the New Year

If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I like to establish and record my goals on this blog for several reasons.

1. First, it forces me to sit down and figure out what I would like to accomplish within the given time frame.


2. Second, it enables me to go back and look at my goals to see what I have been able to do and what I need to focus on. I usually review what I have written about half way through the month (for monthly goals).


3. Finally, the fact that I have written and published these goals holds me accountable to my readers and offers motivation to complete the task.

My readers will also know that I prefer to set goals and then establish tasks that will ultimately lead to those results. While I have traffic and income goals, I can't make anyone visit or read my blog or articles. Nor can I force anyone to click on any ads.

Instead, I will focus my efforts on content and networking. Keep this in mind when I make my goals for 2010 and publish them in my next post.

How do you make goals? Do you write them down? Do you make them easy or try to stretch yourself?

In the Top 1 Million!!

I am so excited. I logged on to Alexa this morning and checked my Traffic Rank. I was in the top 1 million websites in the world! I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it into the top million by the end of the year, but I made it.

I want to thank each and every one of you who has come to read my blog. I especially want to thank those of you who stop by on a regular basis and comment. I really appreciate it and owe the impressive Traffic Rank to you all. Thanks so much.

I am in the process of looking back at where I have been this year and considering what I would like to accomplish in the upcoming year. I will be putting all of this information together in a post later this week.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday season. This post is short since I don't want to take too much time away from my family. Needless to say, others feel the same since traffic has been pitiful the last several days. I am not too concerned, however, since I expected it to be this way. Earnings are suffering too. But, it doesn't bother me near as much now as it did in August and September. I have come to expect that traffic and AdSense will ebb and flow.

Anyway, enjoy the day and relaxation. I will be posting 2010 goals soon.

Update on the SEO Experiment

If you have been reading this blog since October, you know about my SEO experiment. For those who haven't allow me to summarize. I decided to write a blog post entitled "SEO Experiment" and attempt to rank for that particular keyword phrase by using links specifically through a link wheel. I wrote several articles (which I will list below) that link to that particular blog post and to one another.

I did this as an experiment to see what would happen. I certainly didn't want to try something like that with a useful keyword phrase. SEO Experiment only gets a CPC of $0.05 so I figured it was no big deal if I did succeed and no big loss if I didn't. Well as it turns out, I was able to get on the front page of Google within 16 days. I then disappeared for awhile and am now back on the front page at position number 5.

I learned several things from my experience which I detail in an article that I wrote for Xomba (see link below). For me, the bottom line is that I want to keep writing original and helpful content for this blog. I also want to include as many interconnecting links as possible to market my writings on the different sites. Eventually I may run into someone who likes and will link to a particular article. I simply need to stay the course and keep writing. Over time, the effort should pay off.

Here are the links to all of my SEO articles:

SEO Experiment The original post
Why Am I Doing An SEO Experiment? This has consistently ranked as well
Making Money Online: Climbing the SEO Ladder Start with less competition and work your way up
How to Build a Link Wheel for SEO
Understanding SEO: The Link Wheel
SEO: Black Hat vs White Hat
Google First Page in 16 Days Celebration Time
5 Things I Learned From My SEO Experiment

As you can see, I got a lot of writing out of just one little idea. That was also a big bonus. I think in the new year, I will try to find another decent keyword, write an article as a focus article and then try to link repeatedly to it. I may use some articles I already have written or consider writing more articles to link into a Life123 article to see how that might enhance views. If nothing else, it gives me something to do.

Promoted at Life123

I woke up this morning and added up my total views for the 17 articles I had published on Life123 and found the total was 501! That means that I have moved to the next level. I then checked the messages on the site and found that it was official. I have been promoted from contributor to writer!

Now I have the ability to contribute up to 40 articles per month. That is more than one per day for all you math wizards out there. Just imagine if I were able to publish one article per day on average and all of them eventually earned the $20 limit. That would be $600 per month. Even if the average was only $10, that would still be $300 per month and would provide a nice steady internet income as I explained in this strategy for working from home. Combining steady income while growing passive, residual income can be very powerful.

I am really excited about the promotion at Life123 since I essentially have no limit to what I can publish. I really don't see myself being able to publish more than 40 articles in one month anyway so getting to the 150 article per month "expert" level is not as important to me. But this level was important since I can easily write 5 articles in a free afternoon if I get on a roll.

Now I need to start brainstorming on some topics and publish some more since it was part of my December passive income goals to end the year with 25 articles. That means I have 8 more to go with 12 more days left in December. Maybe I can get one or two done this weekend. Guess I better get going. Feel free to stop by and read my Life123 articles. I am still working on getting to the 50 view level on all but 2 of them. I have a few that are getting close, but any help is always appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read my blog.

Fun With Alexa

No, I am not outing another Tiger mistress. I am talking about The Web Information Company, Alexa.com. I like going to the site and finding out my Traffic Rank. I think it is exciting to see that my rank in the US is in the top 500,000 and has been moving up! I hope to get my overall Traffic Rank within the top 1 million within the next month or so. For the past 7 days, I was at 726,000. I eventually want this blog in the top 100,000 sites in the world.

How else do I use Alexa (besides for fun)?

When I was thinking about advertising this blog, I looked to Alexa to compare sites and prices. Where would I get more traffic for the cheapest price. As it turns out, the advertising doesn't seem to be getting any traffic to this site, so I likely will discontinue that and just keep being engaged in the blogosphere.

I also like to look at the Traffic Rank of the sites for which I write. Take a look at these:

• HubPages: Rank 278 When I look at the graph, I notice a slight uptrend.


• eHow: Rank 158 There is a clear uptrend to eHow. Makes me think about writing for them again.


• Xomba: Rank 2370 The graph actually looks flat, meaning that Xomba is not gaining traffic. Hopefully that will change.


• Life123: Rank 9780 This site has another clear uptrend. Maybe I will gain an advantage by being an early user.


• InfoBarrel: Rank 14,160 I am surprised by this rank. I would have expected higher, but there is an uptrend.


• Triond: Rank 22,909 The graph seems kind of flat over the past 3 months.

And what about sites you may be considering. Several fellow bloggers write for Suite101. What is Suite101's Traffic Rank? 816 with a clear uptrend. So it makes sense that earnings and traffic will do well at that site.

How else can Alexa be used? I like to go to some of the blogs on which I comment and click on the sites linking in to see if I can find places that similar blogs have been getting or placing links. Sometimes this will lead me to other blogs which might be a good place to leave a comment to expand my horizons. So far, the best marketing has been interaction on other blogs.

I also like to go to the "search %" tab. When I go there for this blog, I find that the number of visitors to this site coming from search engines has been increasing. That is great and is consistent with the info that I am getting from Google Analytics. It says that I might be doing something right to land high enough in the SERPs (although I am not focusing on this so I am really just clueless).

Those are just a few of the ways that I use the site Alexa.com. How do you use it? Are there other sites besides Google Analytics that you use for information? Please comment and share. And as always, thanks for reading.

Photo credit: Jrcastillof at Wiki commons.

Got Paid by Life123!

I was just so excited that I had to post again today. I got notification yesterday that I was paid by Life123. I went to my Paypal account, and I had $10 more than the day before courtesy of Life123.com. That will pay for about 4.2 gallons of the gas I put in my van this morning which may last a day and a half. Anyway, it was good to see payment for my efforts.


For those who read DeAnna's blog, it is because of her review of Life123 that I started to write there. But, I find it interesting to note that our experiences are somewhat different based upon perspective. It reminds me of a story that I heard not long ago in church:

A young man came to speak with his rabbi and bemoan life for his family of 8 living in one small room. He and his family were constantly on each other's nerves living in such a small space. The rabbi told him to go home and bring his goat to live in the house with him and come back in one week. The young man did as the rabbi suggested.

One week later, he came back, and the rabbi asked how life was. The young man complained, "That goat is constantly in the way, chewing on everything, and smells absolutely terrible." The rabbi told the young man to move the goat back outside and report back in another week.

The next week, the young man exclaimed to the rabbi, "Life is wonderful. The goat is gone. The house smells wonderful, and we have so much room."

It all comes down to perspective. DeAnna is a professional writer and has lots of views from Suite101 and eHow. I am an amateur, and it is my goal to reach 1 view per article per day. I have yet to meet that objective consistently at HubPages. So when I look at Life123, I am thrilled with the progress and the fact that I can get close to my 1 view per article per day. DeAnna, on the other hand, is not so enamored.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You have to take your income goals and writing skills and decide what sites work best for you. As your writing improves and matures, as your traffic patterns and audience changes, it would be perfectly natural that you wouldn't be doing the same thing in a year or two that you are doing now. I certainly plan to grow and learn. I would like to manage my own site within a year or two. DeAnna is just farther along in the journey than I am. Life123 may or may not be a good fit. It may or may not be a good fit for you, either. Right now, it is working for me.

I am almost to 500 total views which would put me at the next level. I have less than 40 to go. I would think that would only take about 4 days to accomplish. Plus I have 3 articles that are within spitting distance of making their first $5. I will include the links below if you wish to visit. I would certainly appreciate it. In the meantime, thanks for reading. I enjoy all the comments that people have been making on this blog. I appreciate your time and hope that everyone is taking away something valuable each time.

Here are the Life123 articles that could earn $5 this month with just a little help:

Inflation Hurts the Poor Most
What is Tetralogy of Fallot?
Stock Investing Greats and the Lessons They Teach

Halfway Thru the Month of Xomba

Well here we are, half way through the month. I called it the month of Xomba since I made a commitment to publish a link or article everyday during the 31 days of December and see what the added effort would bring. So far, I have been able to live up to that goal with the exception of one day. On that day, it was busy at work, and I ended being so tired I went to sleep at 8:30. That's OK by me since I really needed the extra rest.

I think I will be able to achieve my goal of 200 Xomblurbs by the end of the year since I currently have 163. That is just a little over 2 each day. The goal of hitting 40 Xombytes (articles) may be a little more difficult unless I get writing more. I currently have 30 so it would still be possible to achieve. I will certainly do my best.

Earnings are Decent

The result of the extra effort and focus seems to be paying off. I am getting more traffic as represented by AdSense impressions, and I have earned almost as much as I did all of the month of November. That is good news so I am motivated to continue to put in the extra effort for the rest of the month and on into the new year.

I plan on making Xomba my main site for the next several months for residual income. The problem is that I really don't know yet whether or not it will truly end up being residual. I suspect that it will have some residual aspect to it since I see Xomba ending up fairly high on some Google searches.

Xomba got a new site engineer and will be making changes to the site. Included in these will be better data reporting which will likely improve my ability to detect what people are reading and looking for at the site. I think this will be incredibly useful.

Xomba is a great way of making some money online. If you would like to get paid for your social bookmarking efforts please join under my Xomba referral link. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to ask since I will be happy to let you know more about my Xomba experience and will be brutally honest in the process.

Google Loves Life123

In my last post, I said that I wanted to spend a little time reviewing some of my online income activities and what I am doing to make money online. I figure that I can take roughly one post each week for the next several and give an update on my experience with each of the sites for which I am currently writing or attempting to make money. I decided to start with Life123.

Make Money on Life123

For those of you who don't know, Life123 is a site to which you can publish articles and receive payment. It has a reasonably unique business model compared to some of the other sites for which I write. Because of this unique approach, there are several pros and cons to the site which I will point out a little later.

You start out by submitting an "apprentice" article on one of the designated topics on the site for publication. The article is reviewed and, if accepted, allows you to become a contributor. A contributor is allowed to submit up to 10 articles per month. These are still reviewed, but are usually published within 24 hours. I am currently a contributor. Once a contributor has submitted a minimum of 10 articles and has 500 total views across the articles, he/she can become a writer. Writers can submit up to 40 articles per month. Once the writer has submitted 25 articles with 2500 total views, the title of "expert" is reached. This is the highest level designated. Experts can submit 150 articles per month.

Earnings occur based upon an articles total views. The first 50 views entitles the author to a $5 payment. The next 500 views warrants another $5 payment, and the next 500 views allows the author to receive an additional $10. So, the most that can be made per article is $20, which brings me to the list of pros and cons.

Pros of Life123

1. Relatively easy to earn $5
2. No AdSense account needed
3. Payment is through Paypal
4. Payment occurs at $5 level
5. Google seems to love Life123

Cons of Life123

1. Cannot publish article elsewhere
2. No longer retain article rights
3. Must be 18 and United States citizen
4. No residual income opportunity

My Experience at Life123

I started at Life123 the last few days of October. It was relatively easy to become accepted as a contributor. I have published 14 articles so far and have earned $10. I have not reached the payout threshold, so I have not been paid yet. I will be sure to let everyone know if there is an issue.

As of this morning, I have received 424 total views to my articles so I am on the verge (within the next week) of reaching the writer level at which point I will be able to contribute up to 40 articles per month. My plan is to be able to contribute 15 for the month of December which would put me at the minimum number of articles for the Expert level while I wait for the number of views to reach 2500.

At that point, I expect to contribute between 15 and 20 articles per month to develop some steady income while developing residual income at my other sites much like I outline in this post about making money working at home. Over time, the Life123 articles will be at different levels of views, and I could easily get some extra money from reaching the next 500 or 1000 views on some of them. As the articles mature, they may easily find themselves rising in the Google rankings. As a matter of fact, my article on Transient Global Amnesia has been getting a fair number of daily views (it has 92 total). It is on the second page of Google.

Overall, I view my Life123 experience as positive and would recommend it as an easy way to get started making money online. It is not good for residual income, but should be treated more like a part-time job with the potential for some reasonably consistent monthly income after the first few months provided you continue to publish to the site. Speaking of, I need to get 2 or 3 articles written for Life123 today...off to work.

Important Note: I received an email from a representative of Life123 in order to clarify the payment policy. The policy is to pay any author who makes $5 minimum by the end of a month. The payment is sent out by the end of the second week of the month so an author could expect to have money in a Paypal account by the 15th or 16th of the month at the latest.

It is cool to see how quickly information can be disseminated on the internet.

My First Advertising Campaign

I have been pretty excited since the weekend when I started my first ever online advertising campaign. It sounds impressive, but really it isn't quite a campaign. I don't even know if it would qualify for an outing. In reality, it is a 125 x 125 pixel button that I made for free and designed myself. You can see it here at Sarge's blog. It is advertising this blog! I even made the red printing flash to draw attention to the button. You can clearly see that I am not a professional internet marketer and am instead just an everyday joe trying to fumble my way through the internet.

I had been thinking of advertising on another blog to try to promote this blog. I even had the button all ready to go and saved on my computer. I figured that as long as I didn't spend any more money than I made on this blog, it would be OK. Unfortunately, I thought I would have to wait until next year. But this was such a good deal, I couldn't pass it up. It is still too early to tell whether the advertising is working. The button will be there for a month so I will watch traffic and referral patterns to see what happens. I will be sure to report the results in a future post.

In the meantime, I would just like to say that this month has been pretty decent so far. I had a busy day today and haven't gotten much done online. Maybe I can get some more done this evening. Over the next few posts, I will update some of my current online income activities in much more detail. Hopefully, they will be inspiring and instructive. This post is somewhat short since I mainly wanted to share my lack of marketing skill. Nevertheless, enjoy my red flashing font. I think it's cool!

My Xomba Commitment for December

I have always heard that Xomba was a good way to make money and have even made a respectable amount myself for the amount of effort expended. But I never really got around to developing a true commitment and focus for the site. That is all going to change for the month of December 2009.

For the month of December, I am making Xomba my primary residual income site. I plan on putting up a link or two or three everyday for the entire month. Plus, I plan on writing several original articles for the site so that by the end of the month I have 40 articles and 200 links.

So far these first 7 days, I have been able to live up to the task and devote some time each day on the site and the early indications are that it will prove to be worthwhile. I already am on pace to have more AdSense impressions and earnings by the end of December than I had for November. The results seem to be tracking the amount of effort, and that is good in my mind. I still don't know what long-term residual potential might exist, but I think that information will come in time. When it does, I will be sure to share with you.

You may or may not know that I am a featured writer for Xomba in the Money & Investing section. I have an article pending and when that gets on the front page, I can only imagine that the impressions and earnings will benefit. I plan on writing 2 or 3 more for the month as well to include in my overall efforts.

Here are a few of the links to my Xomba featured articles since they don't have a widget:

Money and the American Dream
Investing in Gold at Record Prices...A Good Idea?
I Am Earning Real Passive Income Now
Selling the Same Shares Twice (Part 1)

Also, if you want to join Xomba, I will benefit if you use this referral link. It doesn't cost you anything since the additional percentage of AdSense impressions comes from Xomba and not you. So, give Xomba a try to provide backlinks to your own work and earn money at the same time. I think you will like the earning potential.

As always, thanks for reading and following this blog. I appreciate all the comments that you share.

HubPages Traffic is Falling Apart (Maybe)

For those who don't know, HubPages was the first major site for which I started writing the last week of May of this year. It is the site at which I have been most active, having written 115 Hubs (articles) to this point. Granted, some of them are just absolutely pitiful since I was learning as I was writing. I think my writing is getting better now that I have learned about various aspects of writing such as keywords and search engine optimization. But I would like to make a few comments on the trend of my HubPages traffic which I have noticed over the past few months.



I am a stats junky and keep lots of data pertaining to my traffic and AdSense impressions. In September, HubPages comprised just about 75% of my total AdSense traffic. In October that number was 60% and in November just 55%. Now for the first 5 days of December, my HubPages traffic is just under 40% of my total traffic. Both this blog and my Xomba traffic have been increasing to make up the difference since total AdSense impressions in September and October were virtually identical.



I have heard that November and December are usually down months for internet traffic since people are focused on the holidays. I certainly saw that during the four day Thanksgiving weekend. As it stands now, traffic will be down about 10% during December compared to November but it is hard to make an accurate assessment only 5 days into the month.



Even though HubPages traffic is falling apart, I will say this much for it. For the last 30 days, my Google search engine traffic is nearly as much as my internal HubPages traffic. I view this as a good thing since search engine traffic is much more valuable than other Hubbers reading my articles. I am hoping that the traffic will find a base and that any growth represents organic search engine traffic growth. That would be a great consolation to the traffic decrease.

I Want to be the Turtle

There are many lessons to be learned from Aesop's classic fable about the tortoise and the hare. I am sure that you have heard it. The hare ridicules the tortoise for being slow and subsequently a challenge is made pitting the two in a race. Of course, the over-confident hare bolts off the starting line and gets so far ahead that he decides to take it easy under a tree, falls asleep and ends up losing the race. I want to be the turtle of online income.

The turtle has many positive qualities:

1. He realizes his limitations. He doesn't pretend he is fast. He knows his capabilities and really isn't thinking about racing the hare. He is just going about the business of getting to the finish line.


2. He is quietly confident in his abilities. The turtle realizes that he has limitations but is, nevertheless, confident enough in the abilities he has to race the hare.


3. He is up for a challenge. By all appearances, the turtle should lose this race. He is not swift and doesn't match up on paper to a hare. He still goes out and tries despite his apparent shortcomings.


4. He never gives up. It sure would have been easy to just give up when he realized that the hare was so far down the course that he was out of sight. Yet the turtle just kept plodding along, one step at a time. He really wasn't racing the hare in his mind. He was just determined to finish.

I want to be the turtle of online income. I know that I am not a web professional and don't have a ton of web knowledge or experience. I know that I am not a professional writer. I work full time and have a limited amount of spare time to devote to the development of online income. But I do feel that I have useful ideas worth sharing and can write a decent sentence. I am always eager to learn and experiment. I am certainly up for the challenge and have managed to persist for over 6 full months. I certainly don't plan on giving up. I try not to focus on anybody else (although at times it can be difficult but is getting easier). Finally, I just want to make that finish line.

For me, the finish is $3000 monthly in 8 more years and 6 months. Provided I continue to work a little each day, I could potentially have over 3000 articles and maybe even a few websites developed in that time frame. It will be a long haul, but that's OK. I am convinced that like the tortoise, "slow and steady will win the race."

If you are getting started in your journey for online income, don't just take off like the hare. You will get burned out and never finish what you started. It may seem counter-intuitive, but just take one day at a time and publish a little something each day. Before you know it, one article becomes ten, which becomes 100, then 200, then your own site and a second site. That first dollar becomes $10, then $100 and before you know it, you could live off your online income.

Remember, to achieve your goals, think like a turtle.

Featured at Life123

Guess what! I am the featured writer at Life123. I am found on the writers homepage which can be seen here. I will probably be there for about a week if it is like some of the other featured writers that I have seen. I consider it quite an honor that they would choose me. I am hoping that this will allow me to move to the next level that much sooner.



I am able to publish again also. I seemed to be having trouble so I sent an email to ask what it meant by 30 days since I had been through my 30 days and the site still wouldn't let me add to my content. The people at Life123 responded quickly and resolved the issue rather quickly as well. I was very impressed by their professionalism. I would recommend the site to anyone just starting out.



As mentioned, I hope to be able to get 3 more articles up to the 50 view level. The 3 that are currently closest all have view counts in the 20's. Here are the links in case you want to go read them:



Stock Investing Greats and the Lessons They Teach

If Gold is Too Expensive, Consider Silver (This is incredibly timely. If you only have time for one article, read this one.)

What is Tetralogy of Fallot?



Currently, I only need 220 more views to get to the next level at which point I will be able to contribute 40 articles per month. I figure that will happen sometime between now and Christmas. I hope to be able to publish 15 articles for the month. Thank you to everyone who has been able to stop by and read my Life123 articles. I really appreciate it. I plan on making Life123 a source of fairly steady and predictable income for 2010 so that I can start looking at getting my own site and paying for the related expenses such as hosting, etc.

Next time, I want to update everyone on the SEO Experiment. Very interesting stuff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Make Money Faster Through Productivity in Research...If you need to research a topic, why not get several articles out of it instead of just one.
• Tips for Finding Time when writing online
• I have a similar article on InfoBarrel.

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.

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:

• How to Define Medical Malpractice
• How to Find Cash for Investing in Gold
• How to Buy Stocks at a Discount
• How to Take Advantage of Gold Price Seasonality
• How to Make Money When Stocks Fall by Owning Puts
• How to Figure Cap Rate on Your Real Estate Investment

That is all for today. Thanks for reading.

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.

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.

Thanks to Felicia

Here is a great post from Felicia. I'm pretty sure I have heard this type of story before, but it was nice to hear it yesterday. I know that it will help me gear up going into November, and I think it will help motivate you as well.


Making money online can seem like a long and arduous task. OK, not seem like it, it IS, without a doubt, an arduous task. It requires a lot of effort and a lot more commitment. I suspect it is not uncommon to get discouraged and burned out. That is why I find it so refreshing to read other blogs from people trying to make money online. At times, they can offer a much needed word of encouragement.

Some writers and marketers depend upon it for their sole source of income. As I have mentioned before, that would drive me nuts. I have a hard enough time watching traffic fluctuate, let alone worry about being able to pay my bills. The one downside to reading all these other blogs is that they are the successful ones. They have stuck with it and show up in the internet searches. They are the professionals making $1000, $2000, $5000 per month in online income. You really don't get a complete sense of everything they had to go through to get where they are. You don't realize the time involved or the uncertainty or struggles with the emotions that inevitably occur.

That is why I want to write this blog and maintain it so regularly. I want to share that sense of starting out and record it for all the world to see. I want to learn and teach along the way. It is actually turning out to be fairly therapeutic as well. There is a lot of uncertainty. Can I really do this? Can I make money online? Can I meet my goal of $3000 per month in 8 years and 7 months? Will I be able to stick it out for that long? Will I just simply go nuts? Am I nuts now?

Again, thanks Felicia. I think I now have the drive to continue for one more month. Even though I still don't feel as if I have a complete plan or direction and seem to still be searching for what is right for me, I think I can go on. I think I can. I think I can! Alright, enough of this, I am going to write some more and do some more links to get started early on the November linking extravaganza. I will likely have some interesting news in the next post in a few days, so be sure to look out for it. Until then, keep your head up.

So Close, and Yet So Far

Here it is only 48 hours left in the month of October. I was hoping to earn $75 for the month. Based on the earlier part of the month, it looked like I might be able to do it. I had some very solid revenue days, two days over $6 and one over $7. By far, this has been my best month to date. But, I am still just over $8 short. Unless some miracle happens that hasn't in the last week, I doubt I will make it.

But, that's OK. I still think I could make $70 between eHow and AdSense. That would still be close (and yet far). Personally, I think the issue has been the traffic. Traffic at eHow has been less than last month. So has the traffic at HubPages. That is why in November (and for the past couple days), I have been working on creating links. I still have plenty of links to create over at Xomba for about half my Hubs. Doing 2 links each day during November should help not only traffic but earnings also.

A Few Random Thoughts

I was in a book store the other day and as I walked through the door, I was immediately struck with a thought: "Look at all this material! Why is it I get writer's block?" There is more material there than I could write in a lifetime on all sorts of topics. I guess I shouldn't worry about what to write and should just write.

Why is it that I still get so excited over traffic, comments, and earnings? Why am I spending so much time trying to build a portfolio of articles that will earn passive income? I think it is the challenge of building something that I can call my own. I can point and say, "Look what I can do." Why is it that you write?

My ultimate objective for the next two months is to add $15 each month to earnings so that at the end of December I have earned $100 for the month. That is a nice figure and makes you kind of sit up and take notice. I am going to be going at it pretty hard to see what I can get done. I want to thank everyone for stopping by and reading my blog. I appreciate it. Certainly, if you enjoy it, let me know and share with your friends. Also thanks to all the well wishers. That is it for today. Gotta get writing and linking.

November is Internet Link Month

Welcome to my November goals post. In case you haven't guessed, I think I need to do a better job of getting links and linking my own articles. I have been bummed the last few days because my traffic at HubPages is down for the first time in my brief online career. I think that eHow traffic will be down as well. Thank goodness for Xomba and this blog, or I would be really depressed.

Overall, it looks like my total AdSense impressions will be up between 5-10%. Earnings are better than last month but look like they will fall short of my goal. I had a lot of great activity in the earlier part of October which has just trailed off. I hope to revive some of that activity through the use of better linking techniques and a little better organization and coordination of my articles. I also want to increase my AdSense impressions another 10% for November.

That being said, I would like to state my goals for the month of November:

HubPages: I have 106 Hubs. I would like to end the month of November with between 115 and 120 Hubs. I need to make them fairly high quality so I plan on doing fewer. I would like to have around 3000 total views for the month which would mean averaging 100 views for all articles per day. I have yet to be able to achieve that on a consistent basis.

eHow: I have 42 articles. I would like to get to 50 articles and make $25 for the month. I made $27 last month and am just over $20 this month so that would be in between the two. I would like to get 50 views per day total or 1500 for the month. I will need a little more traffic than I have had this month.

Xomba: I currently have 22 Xombytes and 111 Xomblurbs. I am a featured author there in the Money & Investing section. I plan on writing 1 article per week for that plus others. I see no reason why I shouldn't be around 30 or 35 articles on that site. I would also like to be to at least 150 Xomblurbs. Most of them should be as a result of my own links.

InfoBarrel: I have 6 articles there and will add as I find time and see fit. That site is not a priority. I am not getting much in the way of traffic or earnings. I have better ways to use my time.

My Online Income: I will keep posting as I have been. I am not making a ton off this site, but I am making something. I am also seeing my traffic improve and hope that I am being helpful to many of you readers. I continue to plan on letting it all out for everyone to see and report to you what I do and what I learn.

Speaking of learning, I finally figured out what anchor text means as it relates to backlinks. I figure I am the last one to know the definition, but maybe I could do my best to explain it in case my 9 year old reads this someday. The anchor text are those words that you use to create the link. For example, "click here." The thing is that you don't want to use those words but instead want to use your keyword phrase for which you are trying to rank. Turns out it is better with the SEO stuff.

Speaking of, my SEO Experiment has been a smashing success! I am still on page 1 of Google for the exact phrase and page 1 of Google without quotation marks also. Maybe that will eventually help people find this blog. Granted only 300 searches a month, but hey, I won't complain.

LINK GOALS: Back to Internet Link Month. I need to create more links. Plus, I need to be willing to give out some. I have done that somewhat, but I will be doing more of it. I think part of the initial success of this blog and the reason traffic is growing fairly well is due to the links of a few of my followers and the mention by Felicia at nojobformom.com.

You can thank Grizzly at How to Make Money Online for this insight. He is a genius, and you should spend some time at his blog. Just please come back to see this one to watch the process in action from the beginning (how an average person does it). You really need to read his stuff. I have spent much time on his blog going through the archives. I will be adding his blog to my roll on the right. Someday, when I grow up, maybe I can be half as smart.

Back to link goals. I want to add a link each day on Xomba, minimum. Plus one comment somewhere each day. I also want to go over many of my articles at HubPages and eHow to see if I can improve which ones link to which. I also think I have identified a few keyword phrases that I might be able to rank for if I create a few more articles and links using what I have learned from the SEO Experiment. The problem is that I am tempted to make those as part of my own internet site. It would just be for information so I am still thinking about it.

Any thoughts or suggestions from my readers would be helpful. I thank everyone who reads this and especially those who comment and have provided links. I wish everyone the best of luck as we all try to make money online.