Writing Tip: Write About What You Don't Know

While typically advice is to write about you know, I also advise that you write about what you don't know.  Meaning if a question comes up where you end up performing a Google search for the answer, why not use the information you learn to write an article about it? If you have are searching for an answer, odds are other people are going to do such a search as well.

Recently, I must have stepped on glass and ended up with a shard of glass buried deep in my foot. While some ways to get glass out of the foot is pretty common sense, I figured I would search for any other methods to remove glass from the foot in case there was anything I wasn't thinking of. After I searched several sites for advice on getting glass out of your foot, I wrote an article on Infobarrel about the various methods and ended up publishing How to Get a Shard of Glass Out of Your Foot.  Next time you find yourself searching for the answer to a question online, think about whether other might be performing the same search and write an article to answer the question

My 2011 Earnings from Writing Online & 2012 Writing Goals

Happy New Year! 2011 has come to a close and 2012 has started.  I have updated all of my making money earnings and made a total of $585.48 this year by writing online.  I made $554.32 from writing articles and $31.16 from affiliate sales.  A more detailed break-down of my earnings per program is below.

My goal for 2012 is by the end of the year to be making $500 per month.  A huge goal!  I hope to become more diligent about promoting all of my articles and creating backlinks for them.  I also plan to write, write, write.  I hope to have at least 100 articles/pages for each site that I write for by the end of the year and will greatly increase the number of articles I write for Infobarrel.  (I haven't written for Infobarrel in almost 2 months!)  This year I received my first tier 1 lens for Squidoo: Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon.  I plan to promote this lens so that it remains tier 1 all year and create at least 1 new lens that becomes tier 1.  (Ideally, I would like to end 2012 with 5 tier 1 lenses).   I also plan to create more pages at Wizzley, where although I have 2 very simple pages, I am pulling in strong Adsense earnings per page.

My 2011 Squidoo Earnings: $100.99
My 2011 Infobarrel Earnings: $20.38
My 2011 Bukisa Earnings: $11.81
My 2011 Triond Earnings: $2.14
My 2011 Associated Content Earnings: $94.62
My 2011 Hubpages Earnings: $2.61
My 2011 Wizzley Earnings: $1.76
My 2011 Examiner Earnings: $9.71
My 2011 eHow Earnings: $310.30

How did you do in 2011?  What are your writing goals for 2012?