eHow Experiment 08: Income Increased by 64%

When I wrote my last update over a month ago, I estimated that I would earn at least $412.92 for the month of January. If I met this goal, I would surpass my overall goal of earning $3 per article in any given month (or $339 a month – though one of my articles was removed, reducing my goal to $336 a month).

Well, as it turns out, my estimations were more than correct.

In January I earned a total of $420.29, which is about $3.75 per article a month and $13.56 a day. And, so far in February, I earned $368.44 (earnings were last updated Wednesday), which is about $4 per article and $16.02 a day. If this keeps up, I should make an all-time high of about $449 by the end of the month (and there’s only 28 days as opposed to 30 or 31)! Not bad for doing very little work as far as backlinking is concerned.

I’m also happy to see that my earnings are continuing to grow. If you remember, last year saw 3 months (Oct, Nov, and Dec) where my eHow earnings sort of leveled out and didn’t increase by much. That was when I started giving a few of my highest earning articles backlinks from content written on other Web 2.0 sites. If you compare now (or my estimated total income for the month) to my earnings in December 2010, my earnings increased by 64%. (more…)

eHow Experiment 07: An Exciting Discovery

It has been a little over a month since I last updated this eHow Experiment series – and oh do I have good news to tell you!

If you remember, last month I had one article sitting on the second spot in Google search listings, one on the third spot, and another on the sixth. The other two showing up in search results were sitting on the twenty-fifth and fifty-first spot in Google. Keep in mind that these were broad match results for each keyword phrase, instead of phrase match (the results from exact searches).

Well, I noticed that my eHow earnings this month had improved quite a bit lately since last year. Here’s a screenshot of my earnings from last year (2010). You can click on it to enlarge the image.

Last month, I was earning about $8.81 a day – $2.44 an article (eHow removed one of my articles by the way, though I’m not sure which one – now I have 112 articles published).

Now, let’s look at my earnings so far for this month (keep in mind that we’re only 12 days into the month and earnings don’t include what I accrued today). (more…)

I’m Joining the Demand Studios Holiday Club – Are You?

Photo by Pacdog (flickr)

It’s been a wild month for me, as I try to write up a storm, raise over 30 newly hatched tadpoles (two of my African Dwarf Frogs had mated), publish a weekly newsletter, and tackle various obstacles holding me back from progressing – all with Christmas just around the corner.

I must admit – this month has been a pretty lazy month, and I have myself to blame. My mind is getting ready for the relaxation holidays bring, so I’ve found myself putting things off and procrastinating more than usual.

I should have known better than to tackle so many projects at once right after I just launched my first big project in a long while – Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career. I’ve also been struggling with sharp pains in my back, followed by arm numbness, which made it almost impossible to type for a day or two (every time I would try, it felt like my arm was about to fall off). Luckily, I’m fine now. (more…)

eHow Experiment 06: Analyzing Keywords and Tracking Results

As many of you already know, 8 days ago I posted my first Goals and Achievement post in a long while, where I shared my goals of December. I wasn’t able to work much on my goals for the past week, since I’ve been working on launching my eBook and setting up a newsletter for Cash Campfire.

However, the 3 goals I have set for eHow (in case you’re too lazy to read the actual post) are…

• Increase my monthly income by $100
• Edit 15 articles
• Rank on the first page of Google with 10 out of 113 articles

Now, this might seem like a lot of work, since I have other tasks I also plan to complete, but I believe these goals are obtainable if I really push myself. To achieve these goals, it will require a lot of keyword analyzing and backlinking (so tons of writing on my end) to increase search engine rankings.

I’m not too worried about the editing, since eHow articles are generally short (400-500 words), and I’m so used to writing 1,000 or more word blog posts here on Cash Campfire and other content sites. (more…)

Free eBook – Making the First Leap Into a World of Writing

Are You Ready to Make the Leap?

Making the First Leap Into a World of Writing is devoted to aspiring and struggling writers who are both hesitant about getting started as a freelance writer and need guidance and a bit of motivation to propel them forward.

Making the First Leap Into a World of Writing (available for free) is ideal for writers who are…

• Just starting out and need a gentle push to get started
• Hesitant about diving in and starting a life freelance writing
• Struggling to create a successful writing career and need a boost of confidence to keep going
• Bewildered, with tons of obstacles slowing down their progress

Do You Have What It Takes?

Many people enter the world of freelance writing only to find that the freelance life wasn’t what they wanted or it wasn’t what they were expecting. Others just aren’t given a full glimpse of where they would be headed if they ever did adopt a full-time writing career.

Well, now the secrets are unleashed.

With this free guide, you’ll discover…

• The ins and outs of freelance writing – Why even start a writing career in the first place?
• What makes a freelance writer successful – Why do some writers fail and others succeed?
• What to do if you have no prior writing experience – Can you still be successful if you have no experience?

Get a Sneak Peek into the eBook Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career

Since Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career came out, I’ve been getting lots of inquiries. So I compiled a mini version of chapter 2, complete with assignments, scenarios, and information-rich content – what you now know as Making the First Leap Into a World of Writing. Best of all, it’s 100% free and yours for the taking! (more…)

Jump Start Your Writing Career: Design Your Future and Control Your Lifestyle

You’re working long hours and finally come home late after a stressful night of overtime. Your shoulders are stooped, spine ready to break. Your vision is hazy, and all you can think about is how good the pillow on your bed will feel once you sink down into it.

But you can’t give in to the mindless agony of your body yet – not with all the work you have left to do.

Now you must set aside time for your side business. For if you don’t, your meager income threatens to take away your house and everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve thus far.

As you sit your aching bum into your desk chair and rest your complaining leg muscles, one simple phrase repeats itself over and over in the dark recesses of your mind…

This isn’t the life I want to live.

• You want to live your life doing what you love, enjoying the time you have, cherishing every moment, and awaiting the future with eager excitement.
• You want to free yourself from the tight bonds of your corporate office and frolic in a life you’ve built and have control over, no more fearing that you’ll suddenly get laid off.
• You want to build a steady income that only continues to grow, no longer depending on your boss to give you a pay raise whenever you want to increase your salary.

Well, I’m here to tell you that your dreams are not impossible. (more…)

eHow Experiment 05: A New Income Milestone and Backlinking Approach

It’s been a little over a month since I updated the experiment. Even so, I’m really excited to say that I nearly met my income expectations!

In the last eHow Experiment update, I did some calculations and estimated that I would earn $279 or more in the month of October.

Well, guess what?

My predictions were nearly right – only $4.63 off the mark – and I managed to earn $274.37! (more…)

Are You Ready to Join the Double O Club?

While browsing blog posts for the day, I came across an article called Time to Join the Double O Club by Felicia Williams. Needless to say, I was curious, since Felicia always shares valuable tidbits with her readers.

Photo by Refracted Moments (flickr)

Basically, the Double O Club is a concept (not an actual club) where you tack on two zeros at the end of a digit and use this number as your primary daily goal for the month. In Felicia’s case, she’s aiming to maintain club membership by making $100 every day each month. She would earn this amount by using a combination of upfront earnings and residual income.

I found the concept interesting and exciting, so I figured I’d join in as well. However, I’m only going to focus on residual income to achieve my membership, and I’ll start working for it in November.

Here are the income sources that I plan to utilize in order to acquire my Double O Club membership. (more…)

eHow Experiment 04: Massive Growth

It’s been a while since I last updated the eHow Experiment. In case you didn’t know, I had started an eHow experiment on May of this year to see if I could maximize my earning potential with the articles already written on eHow. I planned to do this by maintaining a keyword density of 2% and increasing backlinks to my eHow articles. Truthfully, I haven’t done much article improvement in the past few months, as I was primarily working on this blog and the new eBook that I’ll be launching soon.

However, I did notice a massive growth in my earnings since the last time I updated the eHow Experiment about 5 months ago, and I wanted to share this growth with you. At the time when I first started this experiment, I was hoping to earn at least $100 on eHow. Now, I’m making over $200, and I haven’t added any additional articles to eHow (since they closed down their writing platform).

Here’s a screen shot of the progress I made this year on eHow in terms of earnings (click the image to enlarge it). (more…)

Past the Basics: 6 Expert Web Content Tips

This is the eighth and last part in the series Writing Web Content for Websites. In this part of the series, you’ll learn 6 expert web content tips to help make writing content for other sites a bit easier.

I’ve given you tons of information in this series so far to get you started in writing content for websites, so that you can gradually build an online residual income. So, in this part of the series, I’m just going to give you 6 of the most important (at least, what I think is most important) web content tips that I haven’t yet touched on, which will improve your freelance writing experience. Use these tips throughout your freelance lifestyle and you should do pretty well.

Web Content Tip #1: Do the Article Research before You Write

By doing the research before you write an article and not during, you save time since you’re not constantly reading in between sentences. Your ideas are more of your own, and you’re also putting the information into memory for future articles you may write on the same topic. This reduces the research you’ll have to do for your next article. If you research as you write, you’re more likely to just rephrase what has already been written by someone else, even if it’s not intentional. (more…)