My Online Writing Blog: 2009

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

My "How To" Articles About Using Computers and Cell Phones

How to Type a Heart
How to Begin An Email
How to Respond to Text Messages
How to Print to PDF in Vista
How to Save a Word Document in Microsoft Office 2007
How to Group Shapes in Microsoft Word 2007
How to Limit Views On Facebook
How to Google Search for Keywords in Website Titles Only

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

My "How To" Articles About Pregnancy and Baby

How to Know How Far Along Am I in Pregnancy
How to Find Recent Baby Product Recalls
How to Register Baby Car Seats To Get Recall Alerts
How to Get Breastfeeding Help

Monday, March 23, 2009

My "How To" Articles About Beauty and Skin Care

How to Find the Right Foundation Shade for African American Women
How to Get Softer Feet
How to Locate African American Hair Stylists in Your Area
How to Make an Olive Oil Body Scrub

Thursday, March 19, 2009

I've signed up for a Bukisa Writing Account

In my previous post, I mentioned that I had started submitted my writing to sites other than eHow. A couple of days ago, I signed up for a Bukisa account. The major difference between this site and eHow is how you are paid. For eHow, as stated in my previous post, it is based on ad clicks. For Bukisa, pay is based on views. You get paid a set amount per 1000 views (currently $3.72). Keywording, however, is still important since you want your writing to show up in internet search engines. The key in this site is to build a network (see next paragraph) and use interesting titles and relevant keywords that encourage people to click on your article. It sounds much easier to make money than on eHow but I don't have enough experience with it yet and really plan to put most of my energy into eHow until I get to 100 articles.

The other major difference between Bukisa and eHow is that you can make money off the article views of people that sign up under your account. This referral system is 3-deep, meaning that you get a portion of the money from article views of people that sign up under your account and the people who sign up under their accounts. Importantly, signing up under someone does not decrease the amount of money you make. That person's cut comes from Bukisa. So, if anyone is interested in this writing and networking method, feel free to sign up under my account and go sign up people under you. This is a great way to build residual income using multilevel marketing strategies (that you can do in your pajamas-like I am write now since I'm on vacation). Anway, here is the link to sign up under my account if you're interested:

http://www.bukisa.com/join/8434

I'll keep you posted about my Bukisa experience!

Writing for eHow

Since I began my blog last month, I have continued to write articles for eHow and have been adding them to this blog as I write. So, here is a little bit about eHow and my progress to date.

Basically, as an eHow author, you write "how to" articles and publish them on their website. Based on the keywords in the article, Google will place relevant ads. So, if you are writing about "weddings", the ads SHOULD be about weddings. However, they may not always be about weddings (more to come on this later). People that view your article may be more interested in your wedding topic, for instance, and click on Google adds related to your wedding topic or weddings in general. This is where you earn money. Google pays eHow for this click (since it is their site) and eHow passes on some of this money to authors (since it is their article that resulted in the click).

Now, that was a really quick and rather simplistic overview. Many successful eHow writers have written and are selling ebooks about writing for eHow. Others have compiled eHow writing strategies in "free" formats. Here is a link to one that really gets into the importance of keywords and just making money on eHow, in general.
http://desolator144.com/ehow.html

One of the other successful eHow writers has described eHow as one of the "best sites on the internet for earning income as a content-provider". I guess this is a pretty fair description for someone who made about $25,000 last year doing this type of work ($12,000 of that from eHow). See a feature on him and other successful eHow writers here: http://blog.ehow.com/2009/02/218/). He and other successful writers will tell you that, in addition to using keywords appropriately, volume of articles and maturation of articles are key to earning at eHow. The importance of volume is clear-the more you write, the greater the likelihood of income generation. Article maturation, for eHow writing purposes, means that older articles will, in most cases, perform better than new articles. This is because it generally takes some time for new articles to show up in major search engines like Google or Yahoo. HOWEVER, if you post a relevant article to your social marketing site (i.e. Facebook, My Space) or a relevant forum, you can see the money come in quicker since you'll have a captive audience. One successful eHow writer states that it takes about 100 articles (all at least 3 months old) to really see your true potential for making money on eHow.

So, about my progress to date (drum roll please).... I have been writing for eHow since January 3, 2009 and have 52 articles so I am certainly not to a point where I can truly realize my earning potential from eHow (goal of 100 articles by end of June 2009). However, here are my earnings to date (another drum roll please).....

January 2009 ($3.57)
February 2009 (22.32)
March 2009 (pending since month is not over but currently at $15.24)

As long as I keep writing, I hope to see my income go up each month. Oh, the money that I have earned in Jan. and Feb. has already been deposited into my Paypal account (which is necessary for getting paid by eHow) so this is a legitimate money-making opportunity. Who knows how long the site will last. I'm just going to take advantage of it while it is around and make sure that I have back-up copies of all my articles-just in case.

You can view my eHow articles in this blog by looking in "Blog Archive" on this page (for a previous month, click on the month to see all the posts-most articles are categories are in February). I've categorized the articles by topic so a brand new article in previously added category will show still show up in the archive folder with that category.

I've started adding my writing content to a few other sites that I'll write about in a separate post. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

My "How To" Articles About Weddings

How to Create a Wedding Day Timeline
How to Get Groom's Cake Ideas
How to Get Wedding Cake Topper Ideas That Are Unique and Personal
How to Find African American Wedding Cake Toppers

Friday, February 27, 2009

Welcome to My Blog!!

Hello and welcome to my blog!! I created this blog to share with you some of the ways that I am making money writing online. Additionally, as I share my writing journey with you, I hope that blogging will be a motivation for me to keep the writing coming.

I'll begin my journey by sharing some of the articles that I have already written online. Stay tuned!!