Residual Income: Ehow

Ehow is one of the sites I use in my new writing adventure. Ehow and other residual income websites are different than pay per article sites because you do not get paid a set amount per article. Instead, you get paid based on different things like page views and ad clicks from your article. On eHow, you can write an article on any subject as long as it is explaining to someone HOW to do something. The platform is very simple to use, and the only complaint I have is that there seems to be a lot of glitches with the system. There have been quite a few times that I've started an article only to be told that it is under maintenance once I hit the "next" button. So, a word of advice on eHow is to make sure you save your article before putting it on their website. With the websites that focus on page views and ad clicks, you really want to focus on keyword optimization. Keywords are key! You want to come up with any and all words and phrases that you think someone may use to search for the subject you are writing about. Then you want to use those words within your article. I'm not claiming to be any sort of expert on keywords, or seo, this is just what I have learned so far.

The bad thing about these kind of websites is that you don't see any money for awhile. It could take months before you reach the payout minimum, but the good thing is that once your articles start earning money they normally earn that amount, or better every month. I've done some research and have heard of some people making $200 - $300 a month from any individual site, and I've even heard of people making around $1000 from it per month. Of course, these writers have been doing it for quite awhile and have written a lot of different articles, not just one, or two.

If you are not sure about what to write about, just give it time and make a list. Sometimes ideas will pop in my head at random times and I have made a list on my laptop so that I don't forget what they are. Whenever I get ready to write I just pull the list up and choose a topic from it to write about.

Just remember not to give up if you don't earn much the first few months, it takes time and patience. Use your key words, and promote each and every article on places like twitter, digg, stumbleupon, myspace, facebook, any kind of networking website. Promote them on your blogs, tell your friends about them, promote, promote, promote.

There are two other websites that I write for as well. I stick mainly with the pay per article sites during the week, but try to write at least one article per week for the residuals. I will be writing about the other two soon.

Here are some of the articles I have written on Ehow so that you can get an idea as to what your articles will look like and what ehow is about.

How to Videos & Articles: eHow.com

*If you already write for ehow, feel free to add me as a friend!*

Paid Per Article - Demand Studios

I have mentioned before about working for textbroker. Textbroker.com is a great place to start when thinking of getting into freelancing. They are normally pretty easy to work for and they pay twice a month via paypal.

The other company I work for getting paid per article is Demand Studios. Now, they do require sample articles and I think a resume as well (not positive if it was them or not that needed a resume). The resume needs to state any past work history that would involve writing or editing. I applied with them the first time and sent them an old sample article that I had written for Associated Content. It was written a few years ago and was really not that great, but it was the only article I had to send them. I was denied, and very upset. I continued working for Textbroker and saved copies of my best articles. I wanted to give Demand Studios another shot, but I had to use a different email to do it since I was denied before. I sent them the articles I had saved from TextBroker and I got an email the same day saying that I was accepted!

I was a bit nervous to start working for them because I heard that they are very picky and that they have rude editors that pick apart each article. I finally took the leap and wrote my first article for them and it was accepted with no rewrites! Phew! Now, I'm not perfect and since then I have had plenty of revisions, but the editors have always been very professional and most of the time they rewrites were just a few minor things that needed tweaked. I am not very thick skinned, but I have taught myself instead of getting upset about rewrites I will just take them in stride and consider them to be learning experiences. Demand does have some strict rules to follow when writing articles, but once you write a few articles you will get the hang of it.

With Demand you can pick and choose the articles you want to write. They pay any where from $3 - $15 an article and pay twice a week via paypal. The only thing I get frustrated with is the listings. I don't know who categorizes the articles, but you can filter your searches to a search for only one subject, however, even when I search for "dogs" I will get a bunch of article offers for how to change car parts! I don't know anything about working on cars and it has nothing to do with dogs! So I waste a lot of time sifting through articles finding ones that I want to write.

With Demand you do have to show at least one resource with each article. My advice is to choose topics that you are at least a little knowledgeable about. For instance, I wouldn't write an article on working on cars when I have no clue what they are talking about!

I am really loving this change of work. I feel more free to do what I want. I don't have to worry about working all day and all night for beans. I can take time to play with my kids, or do something I want to do without stressing over it and I enjoy it!! I'm so glad I took the leap into freelance writing!

My next post will be about residual income and revenue sharing websites, so stay close!

My First Month of Freelance Writing

The first month's tallies are in. Here is a run down of what I made for the month. Keep in mind that I didn't get a full month's payment from textbroker because they pay on the 5th and 20th of each month, so I missed almost 10 days worth of pay that I normally would have gotten from the end of January. I hope that made sense?? For the next few months I will be posting my monthly stats of what I made, so that everyone can see how and where I am progressing with freelance writing. Some of the sites I just joined and didn't get a chance to profit from them for the entire month. For instance, Demand Studios I only joined up with for the last week of the month, so I was only paid for two articles through them. Here's the run down:

Textbroker: $185.03
Squidoo: $5.36
Demand Studio: $15.00
Sponsored Reviews: $13.00

Grand Total: $218.39

Not too bad for the first month. Like I mentioned before, I have a steady customer on textbroker now. The have been sending me orders for 5 articles a week, however, last week they doubled that and now send me 10 a week. For now, I am just doing the direct orders through textbroker and doing other articles through Demand Studios because I will make more through Demand. Textbroker is a good place to start for newbies, but I've noticed a lot of business that want to pay pennies for an article and yet expect the writer to do everything to their anal specifications. Sorry, but if you are going to be that specific about something you had better shell out a few extra bucks to make it worth my time.

My next few posts will be on the different websites that I am currently writing for. A few of them are not listed here because I didn't get paid from them yet, but I will go through each one and explain how each works.