Progress with Online Income

Making money online is a marathon and not a sprint.  This is what I had planned when I first started with $30 monthly income in July 2010 and figured that I would try to grow that figure by 5% monthly.  In so doing, I figured that I could get to $1000 per month by 2016.

Little did I realize that I would surpass that figure for 3 months in a row.  However, there has been some fluctuations and income for February and March will be down but well above the $96 figure that I would need to earn by July.  In fact, it appears that simply the HubPages Ad Program and AdSense alone could almost account for that total in this month.

Even with some set backs, it seems that I am on track for meeting the online income growth targets for the first two years.  The biggest driver of that success has been the development of 2 personal finance blogs.  Now I am not sure what the future will hold, but it seems that developing a few more blogs would seem like a reasonable thing to do.

In fact, I will be coming out with a collaborative project in the next few days and will announce it here sometime during the month of April.  It has turned out to be a bit more work than I anticipated, but it is coming together.  I will be spending some more time working on it this weekend in preparation for the April 1st launch.

I am fully expecting the new blog to add to the AdSense income although I will have to pay for some content once certain goals have been met.  I do think that the costs should be covered, but only time will tell.  I have set aside a couple hundred dollars from my other earnings to cover the initial costs of author payments.

I hope you have been keeping up with my income reports at Grand Per Month.  In case you missed it, here is the income report for February.  The March report will be coming out shortly.  It will be down, but will have some AdSense income and HubPages income to help out.  I am suspecting that April will be even worse, but we will just have to see.

Passive Income While Playing Golf

This is my favorite part of the year for passive income.  Why?  Because for one week in January, I get to go and play golf with my wife's brother in South Carolina.  It is something to look forward to following the Holidays and breaks the cold weather in half since it usually starts to warm up a little in March.

I also like it because it provides me a good comparison from year to year on the amount of passive income that I can earn while away on vacation.

Looking back at 2011 during the 7 days while we were away, I earned a total of $6.98 with AdSense or not quite $1 per day.  This year I am pleased to report that I earned $14.15 or more than double with AdSense during those same 7 days away while playing golf.

I am also especially pleased to report that I received an additional $82.47 while away due to efforts on my own blog.  This is what is most exciting because I only started Cash Flow Mantra in late May and now have 2 blogs that I will be working on for the next year.

I would dare say that I could more than double the amount that I can earn in that time frame so that I am earning almost $30 per week with AdSense by January 2013 and about $200 per week with my blogs.  At least that is the target at which I will be aiming.

There is no reason not to think that it will be possible.  I recently published my 100th post at CFM and at a rate of 3 per week should be more than double that number in a year.  Also with GPM, I should be at about 150 posts as well so that will be more than 250 additional blog posts compared to the 100 this year meaning that doubling my income in the next year would seem reasonable. 

Then in another year, I might even be earning enough to cover the whole trip.  Of course, I will be using the money to pay off debt first, but every little bit will help.  Ultimately, though, once the debt is paid off and the kids are out of the house, traveling on blogging income would be so cool.

Work Coming Along On New Blog

I couldn't really work on the new blog at all last week.  I was sick in bed all day on the one day I had off to go Christmas shopping so I don't even have that started yet.  This week has been a lot more productive.

Sunday night I was able to get WordPress loaded onto the new domain with only a little help from the online live chat at HostGator.  It simply gets a little bit easier each time.  I then found a theme that I will be starting with and spent the last few days working with it.  I now have a Welcome post and the Policies page complete.

I have also placed my own picture across the top.  I am not exactly computer savvy when it comes to CSS and HTML coding, but I managed to piece together enough information to figure out what I needed to do.  It only took me about 1.5 hours last night to do that.

I have also created a list of all the articles that I want to post for the month of January.  The plan is to post every Monday and Thursday with some Saturdays available for odds and ends.  I had previously sent my list of potential topics to the two writers that will be working with me.  It is simply impossible for me to write that much content with my busy schedule so I am planning on partnering with these individuals for 2 articles each initially.

The cost will be $20 per article meaning $80 in expenses for the month.  I will be on the hook for 5 articles myself which will be doable.  I have already received back from the authors which topics about which they want to write so I can start writing my articles when I get a chance.  I want to try to plan and stay about a month ahead for when times tend to get busy or illness occurs.  I have enough money in the Paypal account for six months worth of articles.  I am hoping that by that time, the site will at least be covering its costs.

One of the authors has already returned his articles and I will be submitting payment to him in January.  So, it looks like the blog is beginning to take shape.  I added Google AdSense and Analytics code this morning.  I should be ready to announce the domain name by Monday and will likely do that.

The two authors are also bloggers so I am hoping to generate a little more buzz and have a ready made audience from my own blog.  This would be a lot better than when I had to start from zero at Cash Flow Mantra.  I plan on announcing the domain on Monday there as well.  Hopefully, I can get everything finalized this weekend.  Wish me luck.  I hope to be back here on Monday morning!

Starting Another New Blog

Over the next few weeks, I will be starting another new blog.  The plan is to launch at the beginning of January.  I don't quite plan on revealing the topic yet, but I think that it will be a great topic and incredibly useful to lots of individuals.

The best part is that I am now making enough with my blog, Cash Flow Mantra, that I can afford to partner with a few fellow bloggers and pay for 4 articles per month with some of the money that I have been making.  Right now, I have enough money in my PayPal account to pay for about 4 months worth of articles.

My plan all along has been to spend my time to develop an online income stream rather than any money.  I have successfully done that and haven't spent one dime of my own money.  Rather by starting with HubPages and eHow, I was able to earn on a platform with no upfront costs.

Then, once I got affected by the first Panda Update, I finally got the guts to start my own WordPress blog.  Of course, I have to repeatedly ask myself why I didn't do so sooner.  I would be much farther down the road had I done this 18 months ago.  I might be making double or triple what I am making now.

If this new blog is anything like CFM, it should take about 6 months for me to be making enough to pay for the costs of paying for content and begin making a profit.  Then, I could start another blog with the additional proceeds and pay for more content.  The goal would be to keep my writing load the same while increasing my internet exposure and earning possibilities.  It would be a lot like reinvesting dividends and compound interest.

Of course, having cross-marketing opportunities across the different blogs will help.  I suspect that this new blog will grow much faster than CFM because I have some experience getting traffic but also some writing partners who will help in that realm and benefit themselves from the traffic.

It is going to be a busy December getting ready, but I am looking forward to it.  Wish me luck.  I will be sure to let everyone here know the name and topic in a week or two.

Why I Am Sticking With HubPages

As you can see from the title of this post, I am sticking with HubPages.  Now there is a lot of potential meaning in those words, and they could be taken in many different ways so I will be explaining myself.  It could mean that I believe HubPages is a viable method of making money on the internet.  I suppose it might work for some people, but it really doesn't mean that for me.  I have found a much more profitable method of generating income.

Essentially for me those words mean that I won't be deleting all of my Hubs like many others may have done.  In other words, I will retain HubPages as a source of passive income.  I haven't written anything for the site since June 4 of this year and that was really to complete a grand total of 200 Hubs.  Before that, I hadn't published since March.  I only end up going to the site every few days and checking to see if I have any comments to address.
 
Despite that lack of activity, I managed to earn $14 through their Ad Program and a couple bucks in Amazon purchases and AdSense ads.  Clearly, it is not the most lucrative venture but it is entirely passive at this point and pays for my hosting costs at Hostgator.  That is clearly OK in my book.

HubPages got hit big with the Panda update in March of this year.  I saw my traffic nearly disappear and decline through the summer.  But recently, I have seen an uptick.  However, my traffic is still less than half what I received in January 2011.  It would be great to see a return to that level, but I won't necessarily be doing anything to encourage traffic since I feel that my efforts are more useful with other projects.

Nonetheless, I won't be complaining too loudly about income that will pay for my expenses without any effort on my part.  I am pleased that I can continue to earn passive income for work that I have already done.

Back From Vacation Trying to Catch Up

Well, I have been back from vacation for a little over 36 hours now and trying to get caught up after not doing any of my daily activities for the past week.  I did manage to get through the large stack of mail this morning and have started to slowly unpack.  Since we stayed in a house, we were able to do laundry and so came home with mostly clean clothes.

I still haven't been able to get much written yet.  I did write a post for Christian Personal Finance last night as part of a paid writing position.  I figure that it could pay for hosting fees for my other online projects and provide a potentially larger audience for my blog.  If I pass the "audition", then great.  If not, then nothing is lost.  I will let you know when it is posted so that you can go and vote for me to become one of their two new writers.

I am also working on the list of articles in my Google Reader and commenting here and there.  I had over 300 to go through.  I have knocked that total in half currently.  I hope to get it done by later tonight so that I can keep up again.  I would also like to get posts written for Cash Flow Mantra, Options Dude, and Options Dude A to Z.  I am wondering if I am trying to get too much done in the next 12 hours.

The good news is that I have a very good idea of the topics that I will be discussing.  The bad news is that it will probably take some time (about 2 hours or more) to get it all done.  And I have a softball game plus some other work at the desk to do for my rental properties plus I would like to sleep some time tonight.  Oh well, if nothing else, I should be back on track by tomorrow evening at the latest.

The biggest problem with vacation is that you have to get 2 weeks worth of work done in one week in order to enjoy some time off.  The work doesn't necessarily stop, but simply gets compressed into a shorter time frame.  Anyway, it will be a bit busier for a few days.  I would also like to get ahead on some posts for Cash Flow Mantra since I really liked being able to schedule my posts during vacation when internet access was spotty and very slow at best.

Back from Vacation and A Passive Income Report

I am back from vacation and plan on writing several Hubs about the experience.  I will post the links on this blog when I get that done for those who might be interested.  We had a great time especially in Cozumel where we swam with the dolphins as you can see from the accompanying picture.  The sun was great that day!

Anyway, I thought I would report on the passive income that I received while away with no internet access.  I will include the time from starting travel on Sunday, December 19th and count through this morning as I write this report.  This is the time that I didn't do anything on the internet in relation to online income making all revenue totally passive.

This only counts AdSense income as I did not note how much I had earned on eHow prior to leaving.  I do know that while away I had an Amazon order for a book but it hasn't shipped yet so I don't know how much that will earn.  I expect it will be about 75 cents to a dollar.

I did receive decent levels of traffic while away, but traffic did decline between Tuesday and Christmas day.  I am not surprised since I suspect many people had last minute preparations for the holidays.  I was somewhat disappointed that I did have a few days with minimal revenue, but I did have 2 good days.  The total for those 6 full days and 1 partial day was $10.93. 

Overall, not that bad considering it is on par with what I might expect to earn for a 7 day period based on my recent monthly earnings.  Needless to say, I plan on being able to increase this total over the next year and will write a post on this in the near future outlining my goals and plans.  In the meantime, I have several days off work to be able to relax and write a little bit as well.  I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and is getting ready for a wonderful 2011.

A True Test of Passive Income

What do I call a true test of passive income?  Those times when I travel and know that I won't be having internet access for several days in a row.  Well, starting in about 48 hours, I won't have internet access for 5 days.  I am leaving the snowy, gloomy Indianapolis weather behind and boarding a Royal Caribbean ship in Tampa, Florida with my wife and 6 kids.

We decided that rather than purchase Christmas presents for each other this year, we would take a cruise instead.  I have been looking forward to the time to get away from work, email, and any other responsibilities for awhile now.  Of course, while I am traveling, I will still be able to make some passive income.  I can't wait for the day that I make enough while gone to pay for the trip.

I can say, however, that the amount of income that I have made since starting in May of 2009 is paying for 2 and a half of us.  LOL!  The time will mostly be spent on the ship since we are going to leave Tampa, sail to Cozumel, Mexico and then go back to Tampa.  But that is OK.  I look forward to the sun and laying by the pool.

Anyway, I will be curious to see what kind of income I can make over the next week or so.  I am hoping that it continues to average about $2 per day so that I can report back when I return that I made over $10 while cruising on Caribbean.  We begin driving to Tampa in less than 20 hours so if you don't see a lot of response to comments just know that I am still busy packing.  I hope to come back refreshed and ready to tackle 2011.

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

Putting Long Term Thinking Into Perspective

I just read a great post by Felicia over at nojobformom.com about big dreams and long term thinking. Of course, this got me to thinking about my longer term goals for making passive income online.

In case you hadn't read previously, my goal is to make $3000 monthly by the time my youngest is on her way to college. That means I have about 8 years and 10 months left to achieve this level of passive income. Considering that I made just over $58 last month, it would seem that getting anywhere near my goal in less than a decade would be impossible.

But, what happens if I start by making just $30 per month and increase earnings by 5% each month for the next 106 months? Certainly a 5% increase doesn't sound that unrealistic, does it? That would simply mean going from $30 to $31.50. At the end of 6 months, that would be $40.20. I am sure that I can be making over $40.20 monthly by the end of this year.

However, if I carry this out for the full 106 months, then I would be making over $5200 per month! That is well above my goal of $3000 monthly. So, the question becomes: What does it take to increase earnings by 5% each month?

Well for August 2010, it probably won't take a whole lot since I will likely be above the $31.50 without doing much. But what I do this month will make a difference 2 or 3 years down the line when the 5% increase is a much bigger number.

But just like compound interest can work to the advantage of the saver, the work I do now will compound and work to my advantage. Each backlink will metastasize into several backlinks. Each article will be read multiple times and will continue to earn month after month long after my effort has ceased.

Thinking about this is mighty encouraging. Even though growth seems fairly slow now, I realize that it doesn't take a lot of growth to add up into some seriously big numbers over time. It makes up for the burned out feeling that I was having last month and will inspire me to keep going and shooting for 5% growth each and every month. It will also provide me with a target each month to track my longer term growth. This means that in December 2011, I should have made $69 to stay on target. I think I can do it!

Photo credit: TakingITGlobal

Earnings for Second Quarter of 2010

First, I would like to apologize for not posting for the past week. I was out of town and had very limited internet access (not to mention time) so was unable to post anything. I still haven't gotten to the point where I schedule blog posts in advance. I simply write on the spot and off the cuff. Maybe someday, I will be so organized.

As a result of the time off, I feel like I am way behind in my regular life. I still have a week's worth of mail to go through and bills to pay. I plan on catching up this evening after I am done at work. In the meantime, I have a few minutes to post my earnings numbers for the second quarter of 2010.

I am encouraged by these numbers since the June earnings were slightly better than I earned in May. Hopefully the downtrend will be broken, and I can start to see some gradual improvement. Of course the earnings are much better compared to last June since that was my first full month ever online. I am really hoping that the numbers are looking better in the fall and winter months since last year seemed to be pretty good considering I was still early in this venture.

So here is what I earned for the past 3 months:

April 2010: AdSense = $22.86, eHow = $22.94, Total = $45.80

May 2010: AdSense = $22.49, eHow = $11.34, Total = $35.88

June 2010: AdSense = $24.51, eHow = $13.78, Total = $41.88

It looks like maybe I have found the bottom. Of course, one month does not define a trend, and I will have to see what this month brings. So far, the start of July seems to be promising. I need to get to work building more links and will be doing that for the next several months to be sure.

I hope to get back into the swing of things over this next week. It is always tough for me to come back from time off. It seems like I spend a lot of time trying to get things done before leaving and time catching up when returning compressing 3 weeks of work into 2. Anyway, it will be good to get back into a rhythm again. I will try to do a little each day and keep plugging away at building that passive income.

My Online Income Worth $36,000

I read this amusing rant about domain values by Sara shortly after I had reviewed the worth of this blog which just happened to show up in some search results.  I also found it rather humorous that this blog was valued at $2637, had 1,238 estimated visitors per day and made about $4 daily.  Shoot, if a day is internet code for about 6 weeks, we might be on to something.

But then I started thinking about it a little bit and decided to do my own valuation.  And I came up with right at $36,000!  How on earth did I get that number?  Did I pull it out of my hat?  First of all, let me say that it is not the value of this blog by itself.  It is the value of all of my internet articles--everything that you have been reading about right here.  It includes all of my Hubs, eHow articles, and everything else all combined.

Of course you are still wondering what I mean so allow me to explain:

The same day that I ran across Sara's post I received a notification in my email that a $100 dividend had been paid on 2000 shares of Valero Energy (VLO) that I own.  This dividend is paid quarterly and represents about a 1.1% yield which is comparable to the rates on a 1-yr certificate of deposit.  In other words, it is passive income!

Compare that to my current online income for all of the work that I have done over the past year.  All of the articles at the various sites are currently yielding about $100 every three months between AdSense and eHow payments into my Paypal account.

Since VLO is trading right around $18 per share (closed at $17.99 today), it would take me $36,000 to generate the same amount of passive income via dividends or even a CD deposit that I am making with all of my blogging and writing.  So as you can see, I have valued my online activities at $36,000.  Assuming that I have worked 360 days over the past year, I have created $100 in value for each and every day of the year.

It is encouraging and makes me feel good to know that I have created that much value.  At $10 per hour, that is the equivalent of working for 10 hours each day and shoveling all of that money directly into savings.  Everything that I do over the next year will only serve to increase my passive income and enhance the value creation.  Boy, it makes me want to get cracking to create $100 in value today.

On a side note, I was able to complete my Highlight Video of the 2010 Indy 500.  This video is shot from our seats.  We are located on the front row of the stands across from the first few pits so we always get to see some good pit action where the outcome of the race can be decided.  I am hoping to get 500 views over the next year and add to my YouTube earnings.

Anyway, have fun creating some valuations for your online enterprise and let me know what you come up with.  Are you an online millionaire in terms of passive income?  You never know.

One Year Online--A Look Back

Well, it is hard to believe that exactly one year ago on May 26, 2009, I published my first online article on HubPages.  I don't exactly remember how it started or why I did it, but what started as a small, little experiment or hobby has developed into a "part-time" quest for developing passive income.

I ended up starting this blog to chronicle my journey and share with those other "part-timers" (or anyone else who might be interested) what I am learning along the way.  I have also shared my goals, frustrations, and the results of my various efforts.

One year ago, I had no idea what a keyword or a backlink was.  I didn't know the difference between "follow" and "no-follow".  Now I can use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to try and enhance my CPC.  I have a rough idea of how to drive traffic and improve my SERPs even though I may not be very good at it.

For those of you who have followed this blog, you know that it has been my goal to ultimately earn $100 daily online by the time my youngest reaches college.  My thoughts are that this will help pay for her college and then ultimately provide a supplemental source of retirement income.  That day was nine and is now eight years away.

I am really only about 1% of the way toward my goal, but I still have 8 years left.  So, let's look back and see what the actual results of the last year have been starting with content and traffic.

HubPages:  I have published 141 Hubs, have 256 followers, and have received 25,000 views during the past year.

eHow:  I published 43 articles of which 38 still exist.  These have been viewed just over 8,900 times.

Xomba:  I have 44 articles and 212 bookmarks.  The total number of reads is 10,795.

My Online Income Blog:  This is post number 117.  I really don't have easy access to the number of views, but there are 35 followers through blogger and 8 Facebook followers.

Real Assets Blog:  I have 14 posts with 3 total followers.

Infobarrel, Triond, Squidoo:  There are 6 articles on IB, 5 on Triond, and 5 lenses.

Life123:  I published over 20 articles on Life123 before the program for authors was discontinued.

All told, I have 390 pieces of original content published on the internet.  These were all completed in one year's time which averages out to just over 1 piece each day.  Personally, I find that pretty amazing considering all the days that I did not write.

For all that effort, however, the earnings will seem rather minuscule.  I have to remember that those articles will be out there with the potential to be earning each and every day.  I have done nothing on eHow since October of 2009, and yet those articles continue to earn month after month.  Not a lot, but something.

With those comments, lets look at the earnings.  As of this evening, my total earnings are as follows:

AdSense:  $325.72  --  I have received 2 checks already and will get the next one in late June.  This took 5 months for the first, 3 months for the second, and 4 for the next one.

eHow:  $157.74 -- There has been only one month that I didn't make payout, and that was when the UK site was started.  I should make it this month, but it could be close.

Life123:  $440 -- I really liked writing for Life123.  Too bad it couldn't continue.  They were honorable and paid the maximal amount of $20 for each article.

My expenses for the year consisted of $1 for advertising and $57 for the Michelle Adams Flipping Guide.  So my net profit for the year amounts to $923.46 - $58 = $865.46.  Divide that by 390 articles, and I got $2.22 per article this past year.  Of course, this is heavily influenced by the Life123 payment but I'll take it.

I hope to improve upon these results in the next year.  My next post will discuss my goals for the next 365 days and what I hope the impact of my activities will be.

So, how has the past year been for you?  Productive?  Profitable?  What will you be doing to improve your results?

Considering Another HubPages "Challenge"

I have been incredibly impressed with the results from HubPages this month. So much so that I am considering the possibility of putting together another challenge for myself and trying to write several Hubs during the month of March.

As soon as I get past this work deadline on February 28th, I should have a little more time to write some articles. I have been doing some research and figuring out what topics I might be able to cover. I have a few good ideas for about 4 or 5 articles in my head already.

Improving CTR

I have noticed that the click through rate for HubPages has improved significantly over the past five or six months. My guess is that it has to do with the increasing percentage of search traffic that I am getting. During the fall of last year, my main source of traffic was HubPages itself. Now, my main source is Google. It won't be long and Google will represent my single largest source of traffic for that site.

Now that I have an idea what I am doing with keyword research, SEO, SERPs, et cetera, it might be worth it to target a few keywords and see what I can accomplish on the site. The nice thing is that I have done essentially nothing on HubPages this year and am seeing my traffic and earnings slowly increase. Now is the time to put in another slug of hard work to plant the seeds for the fall. It would be smart to do now before the weather gets nice anyway.

So do you have any plans for March? Any major projects or focus? Need to get motivated? Join me in really focusing on developing the seeds for passive income in March.

Passive Online Income: A HubPages Earnings Surprise

I really haven't been able to write as much last month or this month as I had originally planned and hoped. In fact, for the year 2010 I have written exactly 1 Hub article, 4 articles at Xomba, and 14 blog posts.

So, I am really shocked that with another 10 days to go in the month, I have earned almost as much in AdSense this month as I did in all of January which has 31 days. Even more surprising is that the majority of it is coming from HubPages.

In reality, I had written HubPages off when compared to Xomba thinking that my time would be more profitably spend working for passive income online at that site. But maybe I was wrong?! Maybe I am starting to see the fruits of my labors that occurred in the fall of last year when I started figuring out a little about what I was doing when it comes to SEO, keywords, and writing content. It just might be that by the time I started on Xomba, I had a better understanding about what to do so that results were seen pretty quickly.

Or it could simply be random chance. To be honest, I really can't say. All I know is that life is pretty busy right now and time for writing is at a premium. This means that the majority of my online income is passive right now. That is encouraging to me. Even though I don't have a lot of time, the time that I do spend writing will be paying off in the future. The important thing is to just keep at it and be persistent.

Make Residual Income Online with HubPages

I received an email update yesterday from Court at the Keyword Academy who stated that from April 7, 2009 and February 11, 2010 his Hubs had earned just over $4000 with $413 earned in January 2010. That is a nice little bit of residual income if you ask me. He has 105 Hubs so that works out to just over $38 per article.

Now, Court is a professional and does this for a living. He obviously knows a lot about keywords and keyword research if he is running an academy. In a way, that might be a little discouraging. But I find it inspirational and here is the reason why.

My best earning article on eHow was published on August 4, 2009 and has earned $26.77. It is entitled:

"How to Make Monthly Income with Stocks that Pay Dividends"

Give it 3 more months and it could possibly match or surpass the $38 mark. The biggest issue is that it is only one article. It shows that I have the potential and simply need to increase my rate of successful articles through better keyword research and traffic generation.

My Personal Residual Income Online with HubPages

On a personal note, I too have been earning some residual income online with HubPages. Granted it wasn't over $400 last month, but it was $14.42 in January and is already past that figure at $14.96 so far this month.

I am seeing slightly increasing levels of traffic overall with twice as many Google searches as internal HubPages traffic. It won't be too long and Google will represent my highest source of traffic. That at least means that my articles are showing up on searches. This is encouraging.

I am not sure which of my Hubs are my biggest earners since I didn't bother to place them into individual channels in the AdSense reports. I figured that was too much information. I do, however, know my most viewed Hubs and figure that there is probably a close correlation since no traffic means no earnings.

Here are my five most popular Hubs:

1. 7 Money Making Ideas Using Your Body
2. Irish Tradition of Corned Beef and Cabbage on New Year's Day and St Patrick's Day
3. Finding High CPC Keywords Using Google Adwords
4. Generate Monthly Income with Dividend Stocks
5. Generate Monthly Income by Selling Puts

Looking at the above selection of articles, I can deduce a few things. Making money topics are popular. Seasonal articles can do well (but I will tell you that only near New Year's Day did I get most of my views--though almost no earnings are associated with corned beef).

So if you are writing part-time like I am, then the potential to do well exists, but it will take a lot of hard and smart work to become a consistent performer. I wish all of you part-timers the best of luck and hang in there.

Writing for Google AdSense

One of the reasons I am writing this blog is to share with others what I am learning and what experience I am gaining when it comes to making money online. Many of you will already know much more than I do; others may have come across this blog and are just starting out. For those just starting, allow me to take this post and share how easy it can be to write about your experiences with an eye toward Google's AdSense and earning passive income.

I just got back yesterday from Las Vegas and wanted to write a little bit about the trip. One of the great experiences was seeing the Fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel. I thought this might make a decent little article that I would post on HubPages. I also thought it might be useful to write this post about the process. So let me show you step-by-step what went into these two pieces of content:

1. Brainstorm writing about the Fountains at the Bellagio and make a blog post about the process (10 min while driving)
2. Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool and research the Bellagio (1 min). In doing this, I realized that I want to include keywords related to the Bellagio Hotel more than the Fountains themselves given the number of searches (135,000) and CPC (over $4).
3. Open my Firefox browser enhanced with SEO for Firefox and check the Page Rank of all the first page Google search results for Bellagio Las Vegas and Fountains at the Bellagio. When I did this, I discovered that most were PR 4 or 5, but one was a PR 3. I might be able to displace that one given enough time and effort. Realistically, this would not be the best keyword to go after; but if this blog ends up with enough authority eventually, who knows? Right now, I am doing this for illustration purposes (2 min).
4. Write Hub and making sure that I included my keywords several times but not obnoxiously so (15 min). You can view my Hub entitled "The Fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas". I write my articles in Word and then copy and paste. I do this in case there is a problem with the network connection or if the site ever goes offline.
5. I included a video and a capsule for news which might help to keep some of the content of the page fresh and published the Hub (5 min). I have also included a link in the above point using good anchor text. I double checked the article to see if ads for the Bellagio Hotel appear next to my content. They do, although not 100% of the time.
6. Wrote this blog post with all the important steps that I mention above (15 min).

So for 48 minutes of my time, I have an article posted on HubPages, a blog post about the process, and a link to the original article which could ultimately help with SEO. When I published the Hub, I also took the opportunity to Tweet it. For an additional 10 minutes of my time, I can post links to both this post and my Hub on Xomba as well as post a link to this post using Blog Engage.

Now with all of these opportunities to display ads next to my content and links, who knows what potential these may all hold especially after several months as the sites mature and gain in authority? It may very well be that this process is worth several hundred dollars in ad revenue. I think that is what makes this whole process scary and exciting. Writing for Google AdSense is just mysterious. You never know what can happen.

Please feel free to comment or ask any questions you might have. Thanks for reading and I hope that this post has been helpful to someone.

Mixed Emotions from Life123's Closing of Writer's Community

It happened this past weekend seemingly without warning. Since I checked my stats on views at Life123 daily, I noticed something was wrong when on Saturday, I received a 403 error on my Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. It persisted into Sunday. Finally on Monday, there was a notice that Life123 was shutting down its writer's compensation program. You can read the notice at DeAnna's blog.


First of all, I was perplexed. I didn't realize that the program was a beta program and never suspected that it would be shut down. I was upset that I didn't receive some sort of email notice letting me know of the change in advance. On Friday, everything was fine; then nothing. I am saddened and disappointed since I really enjoyed writing for the site and even included it in a strategy for WAHM to build up internet income quickly.


But, I am somewhat happy since Life123 is doing something that I feel is incredibly honorable and professional. They are paying out the maximum potential earnings of $20 per article written and accepted regardless of the current level of views and keeping them published. With the exception of failing to send me an email in advance of the shut-down, Life123 has been very well run and professional. They have responded promptly to my inquiries and communicated well. The site was easy for which to write.


It sounded from the response to my email sent on Monday that the shut-down was sudden and may have even taken the editorial staff by surprise. I guess that is what happens when dealing with a large company. It certainly makes me rethink the need to develop and publish my own site. This sort of thing could happen without warning with any content site.


Looking Forward to the Windfall

Initially, I didn't fully comprehend the payment for articles already published. I thought I would have to wait until hitting the appropriate level of views for the $20 payment on each article so I wondered how I could track the results. I was surprised to find out, however, that the full $20 payment would be made regardless of the number of views. Wow! That is awesome!

I have written and published 21 articles for the site. That is a total income of $420 minus the $20 I have already received in December and January. According to the email I received, the payment should show up in my Paypal account by the end of February. I am excited to be receiving that $400 payment this month and will be sure to use it to pay off some credit card debt saving myself over $80 this next year creating additional residual income in the process.

So, I guess that means that I will have to get to work writing for other sites. I will keep doing what I have been so far minus Life123 and be sure to update everyone when I get paid ending this chapter in the story that has been Life123. Did anyone else write articles for Life123? Will you be receiving a payment this month?

Back Home Again in Indiana!

Well, I am back home from golfing in South Carolina. It was great to have a break. The weather was nice with the exception of one day when it rained fairly heavily for about 3 holes. We got absolutely soaked. It seemed like an inch of rain fell in about 15 minutes. One of the days was cloudy with just a few sprinkles. All the other days were sunny and in the mid 60's so I could golf in a short sleeve shirt after about 10:30 once it warmed up a bit.

I had a good time and golfed fairly well also. I took DeAnna's advice from Write Moms and other than one blog post did not do any writing. It was just as well since the schedule is pretty brutal. Get up at 6:15, eat breakfast, and drive to the golf course for a 9 am tee time. Then play 18 holes followed by another 9 holes. Finish about 4 or 5 depending upon the pace of play, drive back to the hotel, eat dinner, get back to the hotel about 8 and fall asleep in order to repeat the next day.

Passive Income Update

That busy schedule is why there is little time for writing so it was good to have some avenues for passive income already in place. I took the time to add up what income I received while away and not able to participate actively in generating content. I did this so that I can compare to next year's trip and see what I am able to earn in 2011 while golfing.

For the 7 days that I was travelling and golfing, I earned a total of $8.14 with AdSense and received $5 from Life123 for a total of $13.14! That is enough to pay for one of the extra nine holes of golf on one of the days. Next year, I would hope to double or even triple that amount. I should have close to triple the amount of content since once I get back to a regular schedule, I will have almost 12 more months of writing under my belt.

I would also like to mention that I am less than a dollar away from getting the next Google AdSense payout. That will happen in the next 10 days for sure so I will have met my goal of hitting the next payout in 3 months after receiving the first in 5 months. I hope to get another check in 3 months again meaning February, March, and April. After that, I would like to be able to reach the $100 in 2 months for several checks and by the end of 2010 be making $100 in AdSense on a monthly basis.

Well, that is all I had for today. I have a lot of mail to catch up on and some other things to take care of. Friday I have to go back to work and get back to the daily grind. Eventually, I may have more time to golf but for now, passive income just isn't enough for golf and food.

Passive Income is Working Well

I must say that the past week has been very enlightening in terms of the potential for passive income. The reason has been that I got sick with a stomach and intestinal virus on New Year's Day and was able to lay around over the weekend while making grandiose plans. I lost about 6 pounds and didn't do a lot. Once Monday rolled around and I had to go back to work, I found that I had absolutely no motivation or physical energy to accomplish anything except work and basic survival tasks.

As a result, I did not keep to my schedule the way I had envisioned in my last post. I ended up doing very little in the way of writing or even interacting in the blogosphere. I was able to check e-mail and respond to a few comments but that was about it. So, I would like to apologize for not posting on this blog as often. I will try to assume the schedule that I proposed beginning in February. Even though I feel that I am finally getting back to 100% both physically and mentally, I am preparing for a week long golf trip in South Carolina. Thus, I make no promises as to what I could get done so I am planning on doing nothing except golfing and answering comments.

A Test of Passive Income

The silver lining coming out of my illness and lack of production for one week has shown me that it is still possible to make online income passively. The traffic at all of my sites has had fairly steady baseline which was maintained. Traffic at this blog was slightly decreased but over the past month has been up. I suspect that I will be able to post more often again which will help. I doubt that I will get any other major articles done for the month so have written it off from that regard. If I do get something done, great! If not, I won't be worrying about it. (I also have a work project that I need to get done so any free time will be spent working on that.)

To sum it all up, I will be moving at a much slower pace for the rest of January but plan on kicking it back into high gear again in February. Thanks to everyone who has come by to read this blog. I certainly appreciate it. I also want to encourage everyone regarding the potential of passive income. Despite my lack of activity, earnings have held up and I have benefitted from the efforts of last year.