A Nice Surprise From List My Five

I had pretty much given up on List My Five.  It is one of those content farms that got slapped by the Panda Update.  My earnings there hadn't done much.  I didn't even earn a single penny during the month of April so I figured it was totally dead.  So, imagine my surprise when I logged on a couple weeks ago just for kicks and noticed that I had made over $3.00 in the month of May.  In fact, I had made $3.83 which was enough to get me over the $10 Paypal payout threshold.

So as a result, a few days ago, $11.23 was deposited into my Paypal account.  Yippee!  What a nice little payment considering I hadn't even really thought much about List My Five.  That will pay for one month's worth of hosting giving me a little more breathing room to get my own sites up and running.  At least now, I don't have any balance and can restart accumulating some earnings if that is even going to happen all that often.  So far for the month of June, I have earned nothing.  I would be thrilled if I could get one payout (and hence one month of hosting) each year.

It shouldn't be that much longer and I will reach the payout threshold of $50 for the HubPages Ad Program which would be paid through Paypal as well.  That would mean that a full six months would be covered.  If you have been keeping up with this blog, you know that it has been my desire to not spend any of my own money and only utilize my time for this hobby/part-time venture.  So far, I have been able to do that thanks to the content farms.  I would like to continue to find some sites that will pay via Paypal and use that for all of my expenses with any Amazon or AdSense payments representing 100% profit.

Anyway, I just thought I would share and let everyone know that even though I haven't done anything at all on List My Five, I was still able to make a little bit of money.  It isn't a lot, but I am not one to turn down $11.23 if I have earned it.  Has anyone else had a nice surprise lately, whether on the internet or not?  Feel free to comment below.  As always, thanks for reading and enjoy your summer.  The weather has been very nice here almost like spring.  I need to get out and golf a little more.

December Off to Mediocre Start

So far, December has just seemed kind of "blah", like I am stuck in the snow.  Not only is that the way that I have felt, but that is the way the results seem to have gone as well.  I had wanted to get to 200 Hubs by the end of the year, but that is not going to happen.  I am currently at 166 and just don't have enough ideas or motivation to get the job done.  I will keep striving for the 200 total and will make some goals for 2011 that I will share toward the end of this month.

I had also hoped to make payout at Listmyfive.com but that doesn't look like it will happen either.  I needed to get several more lists published if I wanted to have a chance at making it to the $10 mark.  I didn't get those done either.  Obviously, I have done less writing than I would have liked.  I currently have 13 lists and am lucky to earn a few pennies each day.  Right now it seems that my effort is better spent at HubPages since the majority of my AdSense income comes from that source.  I want to build to the level of monthly payments from Google before I go out and try to diversify.

Speaking of Google AdSense, the results there are mediocre as well.  I am getting respectable amounts of traffic comparable to last month.  Traffic overall is down from October but that was a record month.  Earnings seem somewhat slow to start.  It only takes one or two good days, however, to make for a decent month.  I am simply hoping to get to payout so that I can start counting on a check every other month.  I did get to make a Google AdSense check deposit yesterday which was cool.  That was my fourth one for this year!  I did make it more than halfway during the month of November so it should be close provided things don't continue to decline.

With my busy life and the holidays coming, I think that I will abandon all goals this month and just do what I can when I have the time.  I will make some goals for 2011 and for the month of January and post those so that I can try to establish a little intensity after the first of the year.  Last January, I got ill and it took several weeks to get back to 100% so hopefully that won't happen again. 

I hope everyone else's December is off to a better start.  I know that several have Amazon sites and have been focusing on those for the holidays.  That is a strategy that I haven't utilized but often consider.  I don't feel that I have the knack for selling so it would be a lot of learning and a big stretch to accomplish something like that.  Maybe someday.  I still need to work on getting traffic to my current stuff first.

Update on List My Five

It has been awhile since I wrote an update on listmyfive.com.  For those who don't know, I started writing some at the site having joined the writers compensation program.  If you want, you can read more about why I signed up for ListMyFive.  I have also written a few other updates in this blog as well which you can find in the archive along the right side of this page.

The site seems to be picking up more and more traffic.  As I write this, the site's Alexa ranking for 3 months is 121,543 and for 1 month is 61,007.  Compare these to the rankings on October 5th of 245,519 and 86,673 respectively.  So, the trend is definitely positive.  There are a lot of former writers from eHow who seem to be working to market the site and add content.  I think there is a lot of potential with the site.

Personally, I have written 10 lists so far.  I published 7 in September and only 3 in October.  But, I was out of the country for 10 days and was sick for almost a full week following that trip.  I am only now just starting to feel back to 100% of normal.  I had hoped to have more lists published by now but it is what it is.

I do seem to be getting a reasonable number of views, but it is hard to assess what it actually means since the number of views increases rapidly when tweeting.  I am excited since my most recent list was indexed in Google within 48 hours without any help from me.  That means that the site is getting more internet respect which is also promising longer-term.

I am somewhat disappointed with my earnings this month.  I had hoped to make payout by the end of the year.  I still think that is possible but I would have been more encouraged had I earned more than $1.21 so far in October.  That puts me at a total of $3.50 meaning I will have to earn $6.50 during the next two months. 

It is possible but I will have to publish quite a bit more I believe especially in the month of November.  I don't think I will make it unless I get to 20 or 25 lists by the end of next month.  On a positive note, I do have about 10 different ideas already written down, and it doesn't take all that long to write and publish once I get going.  Now that I feel better, I suspect I will be able to get some more done.  Well, that is all I had to report.  Things seem to be going according to plan and about the way I would expect.  Now I just need to get it in gear and publish a little more so that I can realize the potential of the site.

List My Five Update

Well, it has been one week since I joined List My Five so I thought I would record what has happened during that time.  Of course, I had hoped to have more done during that time but isn't that always how it goes.  It seems that I always set out my goals and try to get too much done in the amount of time I have.  Life just always seems to be too busy overall.

Despite a busy week, I did manage to get 4 lists published.  I linked my first two in my last post and will link my next two in this post.  I am not sure if there is a connection, but the first two were indexed in Google by the next day.  My most recent two have yet to be indexed so I wonder if the reason my first two were indexed so quickly is the fact that I placed links here.  I guess I will learn something fairly soon.  Here are lists number 3 and 4:

The Top Five Ways to Make Extra Money with Your Body

The Top Five Dividend Yielding Stocks of the Dow

Needless to say, if those two lists get indexed now, I will have to be linking all of my lists for a little while from this blog.  I would hope that after another month or two, the site will command some authority of its own.  Looking at the Alexa Rank from today, the 3 month rank is 432,672 and the one month rank is 162,638.  That tells me there is some fairly rapid growth.  I would suspect that in the next week or so, the one month rank should be in the top 100,000.

So far, I have had 325 visits to my lists.  I have no idea if there is any search traffic at all in that total.  I have also earned a total of 12 cents.  I am somewhat encouraged by this since it took me several weeks to earn anything at HubPages.  My goal will eventually be to make the $10 minimum payout each and every month like I am at eHow. 

I think it would be awesome if I could make the first payout by the end of the year.  There are 14 weeks until the end of 2010.  That means to make a $10 payout would require me to average 71 cents each week.  At 3 cents per list for this week, I could probably get it done with 25 more lists made over the next week.  HA!  Like that is going to happen as busy as I usually am.  But at least it is theoretically possible by posting only 3 or 4 lists each day.

Well, I will just have to see what happens and will post an update in another few days.  In the meantime, I guess I should start making a few more lists and get some work done.

Signed Up for List My 5

I want to thank Maria for introducing me to List My 5.  It is a relatively new online writing site with a writer's compensation program that is reminiscent of eHow.  Feel free to read Maria's post about List My 5.  I certainly don't want to rewrite what Maria has to say.

What I would like to say, however, is that I have signed up for the site, joined the writer's compensation program and published my first list in about 30 minutes time.  Now it is just a matter of seeing what income might possibly result.  In the spirit of the site, allow me to list my 5 top reasons for joining and writing on listmy5.com:

1. Opportunity for Residual Income--The site seems to have a similar business model as eHow paying writers residual income.  I suspect it is somehow tied into views and ad clicks as well as possibly activity on the site.  It is not entirely clear how the money is made, but I am sure AdSense revenue plays a big role.
2. Payments are via Paypal--I really felt like I wanted to have some more money coming into my Paypal account.  I am using my Google AdSense checks as extra payments on a credit card.  My plan is to use Paypal money for increasing my web presence and possibly even using for hosting and other related fees when I get to the point of creating my own website.  Extra money in my Paypal account will allow me to do more sooner.
3. Low Payout Threshold--Like eHow, listmy5 will make monthly payments when you reach $10.  The amount also rolls over to the next month if you don't make it.  I like the prospect of being paid monthly assuming I can make the minimum each month.  I suspect it will take a little while but maybe by the end of the year.
4. Opportunity to Diversify--I like the idea of being able to diversify my income stream away from HubPages since it represents quite a bit of my AdSense income currently.  List My 5 seems like a site that I can get excited about and publish a fair number of articles rather quickly.
5. Quick and Easy Writing Format--The writing format seems to be something that suits my personality.  I was able to write my first list with ease in about 20 minutes, not to mention the fact that it was published instantly.  While some lists will require research, others might simply be personal favorite lists or preferences.  I was able to come up with about 20 different ideas for lists on my drive to pick up the kids from gymnastics practice.  Not all of them were good, but the brainstorming was rapid.
6. (BONUS)  Ownership Rights--OK so I am a geek and will read the Terms of Service from time to time.  I liked the fact that I retain all ownership rights to my content.  Ultimately, if the site disappears then I can republish on another site.  Just be sure that you keep a copy of your content on your personal computer.  I have been rather lax about this lately at HubPages and should go back to copy and paste.

OK, so I guess you get the flavor of the site.  And don't use my list above as a list on the site since I have already done that.
 
My goal is to publish several Lists over the next several days and wait a few days before posting some backlinks on the various sites I use such as Xomba, SheToldMe, and Redgage.  Then I will see how long it takes to develop some earnings and determine how much time and effort I would like to spend on the site.  In the meantime, you can see the two lists that I have published so far:

Reasons to Invest in Silver
Reasons to Join List My Five

Well, that is all I had for now.  I will be sure to keep everyone up to date with my progress on the site.  I am not sure if the view counter is working properly since it says I have over 50 views between the two articles within minutes of publication.  Maybe it is counting Google ad spiders.  I suppose that could be a good thing if Google is visiting the site frequently.  Oh well, like I said, I will let everyone know how it goes. 

Feel free to offer up any comments or assessments.  Photo credit: woodley wonderworks