Oh, my, it's been a while...

Well hello again after quite a while! Even though it's been over a year since I last wrote to this Blog, I thought I would drop in and let anyone who is paying attention know what's been going on in my Online writing career.

As many know, eHow went belly up for us writers quite some time ago. I personally was quite sad about this. Not because I loved eHow very much, but I really miss the regular money I was recieving from them, even if it was only $20 bucks a month or so.

I had to sell them my articles. It was really hard to give them up, too, but I didn't feel I had a choice in the matter. Either keep the rights and have all of my well searched and ranked articles removed from the site, or sell them off to ehow for a flat fee? Needless to say, I took the $75.00 they offered at the beginning of the Summer and ran with it. There was no point in retaining rights to articles that I couln't republish anywhere. It was sad.

So what now?

Well, I found a new site and I returned to an old one! I felt the need to start praticing my writing again, becaue the Hubby and I are interested in starting a Network Marketing business and I want to blog and write about it, but it's really back to the drawing board after all this time away. There are soooo many sites out there and soooo many people trying to do this for a living that I went back to basics.

The site I returned to was and old fave. http://www.mylot.com/?ref=ljbinkop MyLot.com has been pretty good to me. Click on the link above to join (tee hee). I started posting there again this week and have a little earnings to show for my effort, but the writing practice is very nice.

On MyLot, I found a link to another site. Postloop.com, http://www.postloop.com/invite/ljbinkop, is a nice treat for writers out there. I have not totally completed their rather severe application process, but I did do my first 10 posts, hopefully according to their strict guidlines. I see why they have the rules, though. I have been though so many sites and see so much terrible writing and TONS of spammers just trying to get people to be their referrals and such. I think this compnay might have it right (or write...) so I'll just play the waiting game and keep myself and anyone paying attention up to date!

Feel free to comment! It's always nice to know someone is paying attention!

The eHow Scam

Wow. I have been so surprised by what has been going on over at eHow that I just forgot to write about it! I think I should be thankful and just take this recent experience as another good lesson in writing online and trying to make money with it!

So today the big news finally came in from eHow on how they were dealing with NOT PAYING their writers for their duplicated articles on the ehow UK site. I think the end is coming soon for eHow over this one.

Personally, I remain feeling lucky amidst other who are less so. I think it would be great if all of the people who have been writing their hearts out for eHow, with their sub-standard payout system, to get what they deserve back. Class-Action Suit anyone? I'll sign.

I have not really lost a lot in this deal. My articles never really took off over at eHow because I had no idea how to promote them at the time. Now I know more and I write for Info Barrel. I learned a lot at eHow, but now I move on.

My articles, I think at this writing, will stay live there until they are not. I don't have a problem taking in a few bucks a month for doing nothing. That is what this whole gig is about, right?

Hope all who find this blog are well and earning money writing online!

Info Barrel: Is it the real deal?

Well to answer that question first, I will say I think YES! I have been enjoying this new Info Barrel experience. I have fifteen articles up at the time of this writing, and I am so far encouraged. Here are a few things I've learned in the past two weeks about Info Barrel.

• Info Barrel is a pretty new site, which is great, in my opinion. One of the things I just can't stand about eHow is that there is just so much CRAP on the site! 300,000 articles, indeed! Maybe 1/3 of those articles have any value, and now it just seems like a crappy site where people are trying to promote themselves more than the information they are writing about. To site an example, the front page of eHow the other day was "How to Use a Wii to Stay Fit". This has been so overdone, it wasn't even worth reading.
• Speaking of writing, I have to say that the QUALITY of the articles at Info Barrel seems much better than at eHow. I think that is because eHow will put any piece of junk up on their site just to keep it really active in the search engines. At Info Barrel, you have to et your article approved, which does take time, but if it saves the site from tons of poorly written articles on the smae topics, I'm OK with it!
• I think the money potential is really there at Info Barrel. I know that it took a while to make any money at all over at eHow, but I have already seen a SMALL jump in my Google Account in the few days since I got it up and running properly. I signed up for Chitika, too, at the suggestion of Info Administration, so maybe I will see some money from them, too.
• The fact is, if you want to make money writing for Article Submission Sites, you have to write a LOT of articles. A few good articles may be good from your standpoint, but the real way to make money is to write a BUNCH of QUALITY articles, use good keyword placement, back-link other articles to eachother and market the hell out of them. it takes time, but I see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
• I am happy that Info Barrel has recently added a Forum, or at least I just noticed it yesterday... I think this is important to make friends, but it has been hard so far because the only way to communicate at Info Barrel is to comment on an article and hope the person sees it and comments back. eHow's Forum was pretty good, I think. At least it was Active, especially this past year with kinks and bugs galore!!!

If anyone finds this little blog, please feel free to comment! I will check out your Blog in return.

Another wonderful surprise!

WOW! I was approved on a really good article today over at Info Barrel! I got the overview approved for the Food and Dink page! This page alone had over 1480 hits when I recieved what I guess is ownershil of it. This is cool, and it makes me want to write more for the site and see what happens.

Just to keep this little Blog consistant, I should announce my earnings for the month. This month I earned about $35 from eHow and Hellium.com. That's OK with me, by the way. The money is in Paypal. I would like to earn more, though, so I am just going to keep on trying.

Hope this finds all who read it well.

Laura

Exciting News!

I was THRILLED this morning when I went to my newest writing site InfoBarrel.com (http://www.infobarrel.com/signup.php?ref_id=5433) and found that I had an important article approved!

In searching around the site I found a list of "things to do", most of which were to write "overviews" of topics already on the site. Of course the one that jumped out at me was the oppotunity to write an overview on the topic of Restaurants.

This was one of my toughest articles to write yet. InfoBarrel does not just accept the crap you can post on eHow, and even though I know a lot about the restaurant business, an overview of a topic is something quite different. What they seemed to need for this article was a description of the TOPIC of restaurants, a challenge to do in about 500 words or less!

Here's the good news...

My article has had over 140 hits already!!!! That's because it is a topic overview, and anyone looking to write under that subject has to go to the topic's home page, and I get credit for every click! Some of the topics (and therefore the overview article) get hundreds of views a day!!! I can't wait to write more of them.

As a matter of fact, I already submitted one. On the subject of WRITING, if you can believe it. I was really surprised that no one had written an overview of this topic yet, since it such a popular subject for online writers these days. I have submitted, and ams holding my breath that it will be approved. It would be huge for me to have this article on such an up-and-comming site!

Here is a link to the Restaurant Overview page... http://www.infobarrel.com/Restaurants

Drumroll please...

And here it is, folks, the newest site for articles that doesn't seem to be a rip off like eHow...

INFOBARREL.com!

I just joined InfoBarrel ( http://www.infobarrel.com/signup.php?ref_id=5433 ), and I hope that anyone who stumbles along into my humble little blog will join up as well! I have only four articles posted there right now, but I can already see that they are much better put together than eHow.

I was not immune to this weeks eHow article sweeps. I only lost one, but it just pisses me off so much, because their reasons, when they even give them, are just so random! They told me this article was removed because it wasn't in How To form! How can you even post the article if it isn't in How To form????? I'm earning very little there anyway, so I may as well give Info Barrel a try.

These are the articles I have written for them at this point...

http://www.infobarrel.com/Tipping_Suggestions_for_the_Novice

http://www.infobarrel.com/Is_the_Restaurant_Business_the_Right_Career_for_You%3f

http://www.infobarrel.com/Understanding_the_Basic_Rules_of_Football

http://www.infobarrel.com/How_to_Make_Fish_Fun

Only one of these articles was written for another site, too. I tried to be original, because I think it will help me start writing more. There are so many different ways to write an article other than in How To form, so it will be nice to stretch myself a bit! I even made a few friends there, so now I just have to traffic my articles there instead of eHow and see what happens!

Hoping that this post finds all who read it happy and writing! Have a great day!

Excuses, Excuses!

We are all full of excuses aren't we? I have been lazy and I admit it. I have not written an article in a few weeks, and I am just riding out what I already have published, which is really an astonishing amount. I have 102 articles on eHow.com, and they are all earning every month, even if I don't work hard at it.

I really want to set a goal of getting 150 -175 articles on eHow by the end of the year. I think that would seal the deal on making a minimum payout every month there.

I also added a Hellium article onto the Traffic Swarm website to see if that would make a difference. So far I think it has made a big difference in my income on eHow, I usually go up about .50 a day and there are days when I only go in and rate few articles and return comments for a few minutes. It's nice that after all this time I begin to see the residual income side of this monay at home deal! I am not planning on quitting my job anytime soon, mind you, but every dollar these days helps to be sure!

As soon as I get going again, my articles will all be here for viewing pleasure, so please check them out and become a follower of my blog! I will certainly return the favor...

August is halfway done...

This has also been kind of a slow month, but I will definitely make payout on eHow, so I am happy about that! I can't wait for the kids to go back to school, so that I can get back to writing again! There aren't enough hours in the day.

When I started wring last December, I had no idea that I really could end up making money doing it! I didn't even know when I joined Web Colleagues that this was what I was going to be doing! I guess I really owe it to those guys that gave me the idea (and the eHow site) in the first place. I would totally recommend them, mainly for the help their course gave me on how to start a blog and all of the technical stuff that I learned in the process. I really could have been scammed, though, so anyone starting out really needs to be aware that most sites are just trying to get your money, at least in the beginning. Everyone wants to make money online, but it is much more time-consuming and difficult than people make it seem! Not to mention the marketing aspect!

Marketing my articles has been the hardest thing to learn, and it is the reason that I don't make a LOT of money doing this article thing. It takes time and effort to become a part of a community like eHow and Hellium, and you really have to keep up with it in order to get page views. This in and of itself takes time. I am glad to have been recommended to the Traffic Swarm site. http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?943843

Click on that link above and start getting more views for your eHow articles! I spend about 10-15 minutes a day clicking on other people's sites, and now that I have been doing it for about a month, I feel OK recommending the site to others without fear of it being a scam! My earnings have gone up, no doubt about it, so give it a try!!!

Hope this post finds you happy and earning big! Have a great day!

Another nice surprise!

I really did not know if Hellium was going to pay off or not this month, but I was very pleasantly surprised two days ago when I checked my balance on a whim. Hellium has a payout minimum of $25.00, and it had taken about 3 months on eHow to start making a regular payout. My balance was $27.95!!! I have requested a payment, and I hope it ends up in Paypal soon!

EHow was a bit slow for me this month so far. I did enter another contest in the hopes of winning another $50.00, but I am not getting my hopes too high. It was a Home and Garden catagory contest, and I really don't have a lot going on in that category! The link to the article is in the eHow widget if you feel like looking, it is about How to Garden with your Child. I got nice responses, but we'll see. My balance on eHow is still below payout by a few dollars, but if I work at it and write an article or two more by the end of the month, I may make it. If not, I will just get a really nice payout next month, so no biggie once again!

Hope this post finds all who read it healthy and making money online!

What a nice surprise from eHow!

I was pleasantly shocked today when I went to my eHow earnings section! I knew that my earnings for April were $14.59, and that was a record month for me there by itslef, but little did I know that I also must have won a contest or something, because there was a completely seperate payment to my account in the amount of $50.00!!!!!!

I was so excited!!!

This now means that I made a serious record in earnings last month, everyone. I made a total of $71.38 from just the two websites that I work on consistently. (eHow and Associated Content)

I am not even sure that I will be able to duplicate that again, unless eHow knows something that I don't but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth, to be sure. I'm taking my money and running!

I have also decided to start writing a new blog. The title is still to be determined, but I will most defiantly be writing about my other career as a waitress at Applebee's. I am enjoying working there, but the stress is high and I need to vent verbally every now and again! Once I have the site up I will post a link here.

Hope this post finds anyone who reads it well and making money from home!

April is going well!

I am happy to say that I am having a good month so far! I will surely make payout on eHow this month, and I got paid on a few Associated Articles as well. Hellium is still a bit of a time consumer, so I only publish there a few times a week!

I just started a new waitressing job this week at a big chain casual dining restaurant! I was exited to get the job, what with times being what they are, but it really stinks to start at the bottom.

Honestly, I think I see another blog forming in my head! I just have to remember how to get it all up and running, but if I got a few of you fine folks to follow me over there... Well you know the rest of the story.

Hope that anyone who read this is in good spirits about continuing to make money online, and I do hope that you are enjoying Spring somewhere!

Peace.