Goals, Goals, and More Goals

I think you can figure out from the title that this post will be amount goals. First, I want to look at my longer term goals.

I would like to be persistent enough so that by the end of June 2018, I will be making $3000 per month online. Why this amount at this time? That is the time that my youngest will be 18 and leaving for college. I figure that $3000 per month should about cover college costs for her in 9 years. After that, I can add that figure to supplement my retirement income which will help out a lot in sure. At least it won't hurt.

Breaking It Down

Now to get there I figure that if I can get to $1000 per month in three years, and if nothing else, repeat the process two more times, I am set. So, the question becomes how to get to $1000 per month in 3 years. There are 12 quarters in 3 years meaning that I need to get just over $80 monthly in each quarter.

Obviously, it will be more difficult and move more slowly at the beginning since I am starting from zero. I will do my best to shoot for that goal, however. That means that ideally I would be at $80 monthly here at the end of September. I won't be there. I can just make sure that I close the gap and keep track of progress.

Amount of Content

If I can average $1 per article per month, then I would need to publish 80 articles per quarter. Realistically, I should aim for 80-100 in case I don't quite make that much. Also, I need to do whatever I can to boost traffic.

Ultimately, it is certainly feasible as long as I keep publishing something each and every day. Whether it is an article or a blog post is probably not as important as much as whether or not it is consistent. This leads me to the October content, traffic, and earnings goals.

October Goals

HubPages: This has become my primary site. The earnings per article are not as good as eHow, but I started here and some of my early stuff wasn't all that great. I think I am getting better. I have 90 Hubs. I want to have at least 100 by the end of October. I would also like to get to 10,000 total views. I am just over 6500. I think it is possible.

eHow: This is a great site for earnings. Per article, it is better for me than HubPages. The articles have become harder for me to write and motivation is tough. I am at 39 eHows. I would like to get one done tomorrow and add 10 more to finish at 50 by the end of October. I would ultimately like to have a minimum of 100 articles at each site by the end of the first year of writing. My goal for traffic has been met for September. I would like to get close to 4500 total views by the end of October. That will take some effort (feel free to stop by and send all your friends to my eHow articles. LOL)

Xomba: What a great site with a ton of potential. I have not utilized this site as effectively as I could. I will be posting more articles here in October. I have primarily thought of this site as a place for links. I think I am underestimating earnings potential. I will be writing a lot of stuff here over the next few months to see what I can accomplish.

InfoBarrel: I did finally get my first earnings for this site. I think there is also potential here as well. After hitting 100 Hubs, I will probably start working more and more on the other 3 sites to build up my article count. I don't have any particular goals in October but hope to add some more material.

My Online Income: I will continue to post 2-3 times per week at least. I am having a good time sharing my experiences and documenting my journey. Plus, this site is actually earning some money. More than I thought it would. Cool!

Real Assets: I will continue to develop this blog as well posting 2-3 times per week also. I can see that there is probably earnings potential here as well.

Adsense: I don't know that I can give out exact numbers, but I would like to increase my ad impressions by almost 50%. This may not be as difficult as I think if I work more on Xomba and InfoBarrel.

Overall, I am rather optimistic that I can achieve the majority of my writing goals. I will also be working on traffic and trying my hand at some SEO. I will see what happens. The bottom line is that I just need to keep plugging away, learning as I go. I think I can handle that.

Finally, I just want to say thanks to everyone who takes the time to come by and read what I have to say. I appreciate it and hope you are learning something. I want to make the time you spend here useful and productive. Thanks for reading.

Until next time--I can't wait 'cause it will be my first quarterly earnings report. Yippee!

Best Day For Earnings Yet!

OK, I usually don't post two days in a row, but I can't help it. I am just SO excited! I couldn't wait to tell you. Yesterday was an awesome day for earnings! I am starting to see some of the pay off for all the hard work. And the great thing is that it is for work that I already have completed. It has taken a few months but things are starting to come together. It is like a snowball picking up speed down a mountain. It won't be long and an avalanche of earnings will happen.

I am sure you are wondering what was so awesome. Don't worry. I will tell. Not only were earnings great, but the fact that they came from multiple sources was even better. I don't want all my earnings concentrated in one place in case something happens to that source. Be sure to read my great article (at least in my opinion) on writing for multiple websites since I know that it plays a huge factor in increased earnings.

So, back to yesterday's earnings, here goes:

• Xomba yielded $2.38
• eHow added $1.98
• HubPages was responsible for $1.95
• InfoBarrel gave me $1.48 (my first earnings from IB)
• This blog came in with $0.31

Can you believe it?! FIVE different sites provided some online passive income earnings yesterday. WOW! The total is $8.10. Imagine doing that everyday for a month. I know that won't happen again today. It may not happen again for awhile. But, I have seen earnings increase each month since starting. I am looking forward to posting my first earning's report in a few days.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the key is just doing one task per day. Only an hour or two each day can add up to serious money. If you don't believe it, check out this post by Lindsay who made $100,000 in a year with Adsense by spending an hour or two a day on her sites. It took 4 years but it takes the same amount of time for a college degree. If her post doesn't inspire you, you must not have a pulse. I find it interesting that I found her post yesterday.

(By the way, $100,000 per year is $274 per day. So I am already 3% of the way there with my $8.10 day.)

Anyway, just so excited! I am looking forward to more exciting days in the future. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Until next time.

Making Money While I Sleep

I have been excited the last few mornings because I am actually making money while I sleep. When I woke up today, I checked my Google Adsense account and had $0.03. OK, I know that you are thinking that 3 pennies is not a lot. And I agree. But the fact still remains that I made them while sleeping and without any clicks. The income was based solely on the number of views that I had to my sites. That, my friends, is true passive income! That is why I am so excited.

Even better than that--I had no ad clicks at all yesterday. Why is that so great? Because I made $0.28 just on traffic alone. That's over $8 a month without doing anything at all! That would be enough to pay for a Hostgator account and start my own niche websites. I am not quite ready for that yet, but I am learning. And this is only my 4th full month of writing online.

The more I write, the more views I will get. The more views, the more passive income. Not to mention the fact that as traffic increases, the odds of getting ad clicks will increase. Imagine what I could be doing with 10x the traffic that I had yesterday. Take the income from views and throw in some clicks, and I could easily be looking at $100 per month.

Just Get Going

It doesn't take a lot to make passive income online. You just have to get going. It starts out slow and simple, but if you are persistent and can make it through the first several months, it will start to pay off as it has started to for me.

In fact, I was getting so excited, I decided to start another blog. This one is a niche about investing in real assets. It is a topic about which I am very passionate. I figure I can easily spend 15-20 minutes every other day or so to write a post. Plus I can throw a few links to my articles on real estate and gold investing as well. If it is like this blog, in a few months I will be earning a few dollars each month. Then who knows? I think it is worth it.

You can check out my new blog here. It is called Real Assets. I will be making another post later today. Right now there is only one since I just started yesterday.

Til next time. Keep writing for that passive income. I may take a nap and earn some more money. Yippee!

Progress on September Online Goals

We are getting close to the end of September so I thought I would look back at the goals that I had set for September and review the progress made. With one week left in the month, maybe I can make a final push if needed. I think I will try to make a push this weekend, but don't know if it will be enough.

HubPages: The goal was for 80 Hubs. I am actually at 87 right now and would like to be at 90 by the end of the month. This should make up for my lack of progress elsewhere. The traffic at HubPages has been good. I am over 6000 views so far while the goal was for 5650. The biggest issue is that earnings might not even be as much as last month's. It has been slow on that front. Oh well, I will keep plugging away at articles and traffic.

eHow: My goal had been to get to 50. I am at 38. I found it hard to come up with good articles this month. I will focus and get 2 more so that the 10 less here was made up with 10 more at HubPages. The traffic is solid with 2200 views so far. That leaves 300 over 7 days to get to my goal of 2500. It should be close. I am happy with the progress except on the writing which is my fault. Earnings have exceeded last month and are close to target.

Xomba: I have completed links to all my eHow articles and will start on HubPages articles. Now I should see some of the impact on traffic since HubPages will track traffic sources to some extent plus I have Google Analytics. I have not written an article per day. Nor have I posted as many links. I have 10 Xombytes (articles) and 75 Xomblurbs (links) posted. That's not bad. I'm OK with it. Maybe I will increase those numbers by the end of the month. What started out as promising on the earnings front isn't quite panning out. But, there is a week left.

Shetoldme: I have posted some links to eHow articles. Still have some to finish. I am not spending a ton of time there since I am not even getting any ad impressions. I probably won't focus many efforts here because of that fact. It then becomes just like digg, and I don't spend a ton of time there, either. I don't expect to earn anything from this site, ever!

My Online Income Blog: Traffic is coming along. I have been posting at fairly regular intervals. I did get into another blog carnival. Every day in September has at least had 2 visitors and traffic is up 47% over the last 30 days. I am pleased with that. Furthermore, I even have some earnings from this blog.

InfoBarrel: I wrote 3 articles for InfoBarrel in the month so far. I really didn't have any goals since I wasn't writing at the beginning of the month. I decided to expand my horizons a little farther and see. I will include this site for the October goals and see what happens.

I don't know that AdSense allows you to talk ad impressions, but I have been paying close attention to those numbers since HubPages, Xomba, InfoBarrel, Shetoldme, and this blog all show AdSense ads. I can see how many impressions I am averaging per day and will set a mental goal for seeing these numbers increase by about 25% in the month of October. I will include a formal category in the October goals post.

That is all I had for today. It looks like for my final push I would like to go with 3 Hubs, 2 eHows and a little more work at Xomba but no firm numbers. Til next time. Thanks for reading. I sincerely appreciate it!

One Task Per Day

So, what one task will you do today to enhance your online income? Being persistent and consistent is the best way to achieve long term success. In Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, he talks about the 10,000 hour rule for achieve spectacular success. He gives several examples including the Beatles. The Beatles played live in Hamburg, Germany's red-light district for several hours at a time. With all this practice, they couldn't help but get good.

Imagine how good you would be and how much knowledge about earning online income you would have after 10,000 articles. But most people aren't going to have the persistence necessary to accomplish such a task. You would know what works and what doesn't. You would know what keywords earn a lot. You would have so many articles on the internet, you couldn't help but have traffic out the wazoo! Backlinks--you would have thousands.

So, what one task will you do today to enhance your online income? Ideas:

• Write an article and publish
• Write a blog post
• Create a few links
• Visit forums and comment
• Keyword research
• Read other articles and blogs about making money online

I have listed some of these ideas from most active to less active. Some days I just don't feel like writing, but I can at least post a link or two to help with traffic. The key is just doing something each and every day. Persistent and consistent in your quest toward 10,000 publications.

I currently have 85 Hubs, 38 eHows, 22 blog posts, 5 lenses, 3 InfoBarrels, and 1 ezine article. That is 154 publications total. I am probably safe to say that if I quit now, I could earn a steady $40 per month passively. But, if I get to 10,000 posts over the course of 9 years or so (3 per day) and only earn at a similar pace, that is still $2600 per month. I would dare say that I could do even better with improving traffic and links.

So, keep at it! What are you going to do today? I posted this to my blog. Now I have 23.

Til next time and keep writing. Please comment on other things that you do to enhance your online income. I would love to hear your ideas.

Writing For Multiple Sites

I think writing for multiple sites when writing for online income is important for several reasons. I wrote a complete article about the subject and posted it on HubPages, but wanted to summarize it here and make some additional comments. The reasons that I have elected to write for multiple sites are:

• Get all the exposure possible. Not everyone who reads my articles at HubPages will see the stuff I post at eHow. Nor will those at Xomba see my InfoBarrel articles.
• Use the multiple sites for backlinks. I try to put a link or two in various posts. I have seen that I have gotten a few visitors at HubPages from my eHow links. They may even take the time to look at my other stuff. People running across this blog may not even know about all my writings so it pays to advertise and improve search engine rankings at the same time.
• Improve online income possibilities. I have gotten about 10% of all my Adsense impressions from this blog. Without writing here, I would not have gotten those opportunities at all. I am working on increasing my total number of impressions regardless of source. Furthermore, I am earning more on eHow than HubPages this month. Had I not started writing there, I would be making a lot less.
• Diversification. You never know when a site will change the business model or go belly up. It is simply smart to not put all your eggs in one basket.
• Mental diversity. Sometimes I don't have what it takes to write a certain type of article but I can post a blog or post links at Xomba. There is no reason to do nothing when I can do something that will improve my passive income later on.
• Efficiency. If you have done a ton of research for a topic or have a good idea, why not use it in more than one location to improve your earning potential. That is just smart business sense.

As you can see, there are several reasons for writing at multiple sites. If you want to check out my article at HubPages, here is the self-serving SEO backlink (reason #2):

http://hubpages.com/hub/Making-Money-Online-Writing-for-Multiple-Websites

I think I will try to post this at a blog carnival to drive traffic. Yippee!

That's all for today. Hopefully earnings on Adsense will pick up. Otherwise, I may be about the same as last month. The second half of August was better than the first, so there is still hope. Til next time.

Xomba Really Showing Promise for Online Income

I think Xomba is the real thing. I have been a member there for 16 days now, posting links to useful and interesting sites on the internet as well as trying to build links to my own articles on eHow. I have also written a few articles as well. The site graphics aren't all that appealing to me, but the site is fairly straight-forward and easy to use. And, the best part is--I am making income online.

Earning Money on Xomba

I really can't believe that I am actually earning money on Xomba. In my 16 days there, I have earned $1.87 in my Adsense account. That's over $0.11 per day. I don't think many of the other sites I have been to have started out so strong. This just seems to hold immense promise. My goal was to earn about $10 for the month on Xomba. I don't know if I will do it, since I haven't posted at my goal rate. But, that's OK. Life can be busy sometimes. If you want to begin earning money online at Xomba, here is my referral link:

http://www.xomba.com/referral/777d849c

Applied as Feature Writer

I think Xomba holds so much promise that I applied today as a feature writer for the Money & Investing section. If you have read any of my work at HubPages or eHow, you know that I have a great passion and interest in the topic. I am not a professional writer by any means but hope that my love of the subject comes through in my articles. I figure the exposure would be good for all my work. I will just have to see if I am accepted. I will be sure to let everyone here know if I am.

That was all I had for today. Traffic everywhere seems to be respectable but my online income is simply lousy. Each and every day I am falling farther and farther behind on my $2 daily goal. But, the good thing is that I am earning something everyday on one of the sites where I write. That is positive. And I am earning without clicks all the time (which kinda confuses me). I is only a few pennies but eventually it adds up.

Now that is truly all. Til next time.

Online Income Ups and Downs

Well, I am actually making money on the internet! I find it hard to believe that I can write some articles and get paid for it. The prompt for this shock is the receipt of my first eHow payment (up). I saw on the forums that others had received their payment, so I went to my PayPal account and saw the payment. No one can ever take that away. Now the opportunity for residual, passive income exists! I will report exact amounts on the quarterly report.

So far this month the earnings on eHow are on a good pace (up). Unfortunately, Adsense payments for the other sites have not kept pace (down). It was pretty slow at the beginning of the month in August also. Maybe there is hope for the remainder of the month. Today turned out to be a day that produced less than needed to meet the end of month goal.

But, that's OK. I am still writing content, speaking of which...

First Two Articles on InfoBarrel

I published my first two articles on InfoBarrel this past week and am starting to see views. I haven't earned anything yet. I didn't expect to. I suspect that I will see something by the end of the month which will add to the Adsense earnings at HubPages. I think I can see the first payout by the end of the year. I need to keep publishing at a steady pace to accomplish this goal.

I had some writer's block last night and was probably suffering from a little burnout. I have some ideas now and should be able to get something done over the next few days on each site. I have made good progress on HubPages but am having some difficulty coming up with anything for eHow after the 6 quick articles last week. Oh well, like I said, if the ideas show up...run with them and get the content out there. Otherwise, I will work on other activities to support my online income.

That's all I had for this evening. Until next time...Oh, check out my articles at InfoBarrel. Here are the links:

6 Reasons You Should Be Investing in Gold Now
Advantage of Trading Around a Core Stock Position

Ouch, while I was getting these links, I looked at the ads by my articles. They are not very relevant. They were actually the same for both articles. I wonder if they were some sort of default ads. I can't believe that I don't have the appropriate keywords in the articles that the ad bots can't figure out the context. Huh? I wonder what's up with that. I will have to check back on this later.

Productive Start to September

I don't know what started it, but the writing flow was turned on. So I decided to just "go with the flow" and published 6 Hubs, 6 articles on eHow, 2 decent blog posts (this one will make 3), my first InfoBarrel article which was over 1000 words, plus a few short posts on Xomba and all the links I posted with the summaries. Whew! I'm tired just writing about it.

Clearly the additional content will serve me well in the months and years to come so it was great to be able to post all of this material. I'm sure that writer's block and burnout will show up someday, and I will long for a week like the one I just had.

HubPages and eHow Update

The traffic at HubPages has been amazing. It has mostly been internal traffic, however so the earning potential is relatively small. I am definitely behind on the earnings pace for Adsense. I take comfort in the fact that August started out relatively slowly and picked up toward the end quite substantially. I need to try and earn $1 per day via Adsense to make my earnings goal by the end of the month unless eHow really comes through.

Speaking of eHow, traffic has also been solid. I am getting between 40 and 50 views per day. I can't tell if the traffic is internal or external. The earnings at eHow have simply amazed me. They are on pace for meeting the end of September goal. I don't know if things can keep up this way or even if they might be able to compensate for any lack of Adsense earnings.

My goal for the month of September was to get $2 per day or $60 for the month. It was admittedly a bit of a stretch and not anything I really have any direct control over anyway. That is why the past week was so wonderful. I do control how much content I publish so that was great!

New Follower

This blog has a new follower, and I am so excited. I have placed her blog on the blogroll. She is a professional writer so I am honored to have her follow little ol' me. Be sure to check out her blog because it is so useful and informative. Maybe someday I can do some interviews or something.

Finally, here is the link to my newest (and so far only) InfoBarrel article:

6 Reasons You Should Be Investing in Gold Now

I am anxious to see how this third income site works out. But, like I said, I am worn out after this past week so I will probably take it easy for a few days. Til next time and thanks for reading.

Photo credit: Wing-Chi Poon

30 Day Hub Challenge

For those who don't know, I write articles on HubPages and have participated in a couple 30 Day Hub Challenges. When I first joined, a 100 Hub in 30 days challenge was starting. Although I couldn't manage to get 100 Hubs done in 30 days, I did manage to get 30 done in that time frame. It was started by a guy named Courtney Tuttle who is an online money making professional at The Keyword Academy. You should check out his writings since they are incredibly useful. Someday maybe I will even buy his course. Anyway, he made a bunch of money doing this, but he knows what he is doing.

I just recently finished writing another 30 Hubs from the end of July to the end of August, taking my total from 40 to 70. It can be difficult but has been very useful.

Value of a 30 Day Challenge

I just completed an article on what I have learned during my first 3 months writing online. I think it offers some useful insights and will be beneficial for you to read. But I would also like to list several benefits that I received while writing 30 Hubs in 30 days while writing content for eHow as well.

1. Increase in your article count. You increase the odds of someone (or the search engines) finding your stuff.
2. Increased traffic. As I continue to publish more and more content, my traffic continually increases. I suspect this is related to number 1.
3. Increased earnings. More traffic means more opportunities for someone to click on an ad.
4. Better writing. As I look back at some of my earlier stuff, I think it sucks. I think I should revise it but it is easier to just keep writing new stuff.
5. Faster writing. I have gotten much more efficient at writing articles and blog posts. As long as I don't have to do any research, I can write an article in 20-30 minutes. This allows me to complete more articles in the same amount of time leading right back to number 1.
6. See what works. Publishing more content allows you to get an idea of what works and to do more of it.

September Progress

Things are going reasonably well so far in September. My eHow earnings are doing slightly better than expected. HubPages are a little weak so far, although I am getting loads of internal traffic. This is inspiring me to keep publishing. I have written 4 Hubs and 2 eHows so far this month and it is still early.

My great backlink experiment is going well. I am placing links on Xomba and shetoldme.com. I am averaging about 3 of my eHow articles per day on those sites. I can't really tell if I am getting any increased traffic on eHow since it doesn't tell where the traffic is referred from. I do think that my traffic there is increasing, however. When I go through and work on links for my Hubs, I will be able to tell and will report on that.

I would like to extend a heart-felt "Welcome" to my new follower. You know who you are, and I will check out your page.

That is all I have for today. Enjoy the holiday weekend.

September Off to Fast Start

WOW! Yesterday was my biggest traffic day ever at HubPages with a total of 102 views on Google Analytics. I am unsure what prompted it, but I'll take it nonetheless. I have noticed in the past that, when posting Hubs, there will be a bump in traffic so maybe that has something to do with it. Also, just a view here and a view there of some of the older Hubs can add up pretty quickly. Now it is just a matter of converting those views to revenue.

I do know that it is unlikely that my link campaign added to the HubPage traffic since I started with eHow. I am posting 4 links to my eHow articles each day on Xomba and Shetoldme. I know that people are seeing the links but really can't tell if people are going to the articles. I do know that the eHow traffic has been fairly respectable with 30-50 visitors daily.

Furthermore, traffic at this blog has been nice with 8 visits yesterday and 10 on Tuesday. Plus, I got my 2nd follower of this blog. I want to personally say, "Welcome". And since I know who it is, I will suggest that you go to her blog and check out what she has to say about making money online also.

Earnings Streak Continues

For those who might not know, I have been in the midst of an earnings streak that began on August 9. Every day since then I have earned at least something either from this blog (only once), HubPages, or eHow. A few days it was only $0.01, but it was something. Well the streak continues. Better yet is that for the first two days of September, I earned something with eHow and HubPages. So, earnings are getting more consistent.

Unemployed at YouData

I just wanted to update everyone about earning money online with YouData. I have not gotten any ads since August 8th. I even wrote a Hub about the topic which generated some interest including a comment from YouData. It is an interesting and good article if I do say so myself. Some of the HubPages traffic is related to that article. You can check it out here:

Making Money Online with YouData Just Doesn't Compute!

Well, that is all I had for today. I am having fun, writing articles and trying to promote traffic. As I get more and more views, the earnings should come. I did stretch my goal this month with $60 so I hope I at least come close. Til next time.