Year End Goals

As 2013 starts to wind down, it's time to think about goals.  I made a lot of goals for myself for 2013 and the truth is life and my "real" job (and a bit of laziness) got in the way of my goals.  I was also hit pretty hard by the Squidoo shake-up and having my account locked.  That certainly hurt and set back my goals.

I also became enamored with some new sites like Bubblews.  Which is a great way to earn money quickly and get paid consistently provided you work hard.  I was working very hard at Bubblews last week and then some life got in the way and Friday night, I fell off the Bubblews wagon and haven't gotten back on my 10 posts a day and frequent commenting/liking on the site.

This week, I have focused on trying to meet some very short term goals that will effect how my 2013 ends up.

Hubpages Goal
First, my goals was to reach $50 in Ad Program earnings on Hubpages so that I will get paid out next month and have a Hubpages payout for 2013. I have been working hard promoting my Hubs and am about $1 away...$1.02 to be exact.  With 4 days left in November (counting today as I don't know today's earnings), I think I'm on track to reach my goal.  For the past two days I've earned $0.38 and $0.48 and according to Google Analytics, I have more views to my hubs today than each of the last two days, so even with the holiday tomorrow, I think I'm in good shape.

You can help me out by checking out my Hubs here.

Adsense Goal
My next goal was to reach a total of $100 in Adsense earnings so I could get paid my Adsense earnings in 2013.  With a balance of $99.00 in Adsense earnings by the end of last month and an average Adsense earnings per month of about 10 cents now that Infobarrel no longer uses Adsense, I figured that goal was not even worth pursuing.  However, someone I must have lucked out as someone must have liked one of the Adsense ads with my Adsense code as I received a click with earnings somewhere under $2 and between that and impression earnings, etc... have a current balance for the month of $2.01 so I should receive payment next month!

Yahoo! Voices Goal
I used to be guaranteed that I'd reach the $1.50 minimum from Yahoo! Voices monthly doing no work either promoting my articles or writing new ones, yet in the past few months my earnings have dropped and I have been getting paid every other month.  Right now my balance is $1.08 and given that I seem guaranteed to reach my goal with Hubpages, I plan to spend the next three days promoting my Yahoo! Voices articles in hopes I will be paid my November earnings next month.

You can help me out by checking out my Yahoo! Voices earnings here.

Bubblews Goal
Once I have complete the above goals, I plan to get back on the Bubblews wagon and get back to actively reading, liking, and commenting on my connections posts while writing the 10 posts per day myself.  Based upon how I was doing, I should reach payout every other day and hopefully daily by the end of 2013.

You can check out my Bubblews posts here.

Miscellaneous Goals
If I have time after completing the goals ahead, I will then focus on my Examiner writing and at a minimum do they 7 slideshows (guaranteed $1 each plus views) and 5 articles with videos (another guaranteed $1 each plus views) each week so I stop missing out on $12 per week, which adds up to $624.00 per year.  Not to mention how much money I would earn from views if I would to back to writing that many articles per week.  Last December I earned over $700 from Examiner, I really need to be more active on Examiner.

Additionally, I will focus more on my personal blogs and using affiliate marketing and promoting products with those sites.  There's a lot of money out there and I am missing out on it, especially with Black Friday, I could have potentially made a lot of money promoting sales and products.

Oh, one more goal I forgot.  Ebates is currently offering a promotion of $50 in referral fees for every 2 new referrals you sign up who make a purchase at one of Ebates cash back shopping sites of $25 by December 31st.  So far I have one new referral, but he has not made a purchase.  I will continue to promote Ebates in hopes of getting those referral fees.

If you are not an Ebates member, it's a great site where you earn cash back for shopping online at your favorite stores.  Please sign up with my referral link here.  If you do, you will get a $10 gift card to the store of your choice just for signing up!

So what are your goals for the end of 2013?

Bubblews

My latest paid to write addiction is Bubblews.  Bubblews is a paid to write site where you write short posts (bubblews) that must be a minimum of 400 characters each.  You can paid for each view, like, comment, and social media share that your posts receive.

Bubblews essentially doubles as a social media site as you make connections with the site and your connections will read, like, and comment on your posts (provided you do the same for them.)

Bubblews also places a cap on how many posts you can write per day of 10.

You can redeem your earnings from Bubblews once you have accrued $25.00 worth of earnings.  You can be paid via Paypal, check or pre-paid credit card.

You also receive a nominal fee for referring new members to Bubblews.

I have been actively Bubbling this week and find my earnings accruing with Bubblews at a much faster rate than any other site.  I cashed out two days ago and already I have another $15 in my bank and am hoping to be able to cash out again tomorrow--depending upon how much time I can spend on Bubblews today and tomorrow.

Bubblews is so easy, I find I can write posts as well as interact with my fellow Bubblers accounts while watching TV.  The Bubblews community is great and I find Bubblers are great about reading, commenting on, and liking their connections posts making it very easy to accrue earnings rapidly.

You can check out my Bubblews profile page and posts here and sign-up for Bubblews here.

If you sign-up, please connect with me.  I try very hard to read, comment on and/or like all of my connections posts.  You get notifications of all of your connections posts which makes it much easier to interact with them.

SirGo--A Squidoo Clone & My New Squidoo Alternative?

As Squidoo continues to undergo a number of changes and lock lensmasters' accounts, including my own, many lensmasters are looking for new Squidoo alternatives to transfer their old lenses to.  While there are already many established sites like Wizzley and Hubpages that are great platforms to create pages, they don't have all of the same modules that Squidoo has.  One module in particular that Squidoo has that Wizzley and Hubpages are missing is the "Black Box" module.  It can be found in Zujava, but I'm currently in the Zujava Petting Zu and have been waiting for an editor to review my leaves for about a month.

I've lost patience with losing income from the dozens of lenses that I spent hours and hours working on.  I have not received a response to my appeal and it is time to move on and publish my lenses elsewhere.  Some of my lenses will go to Hubpages, Wizzley, and even new Blogger blogs, but a few are formatted in such a way that I want to be able to keep the same formatting and use a "Black Box" module.  Enter SirGo.

SirGo has the "Black Box" module (although it is called the "Notice" module).  I decided to use SirGo to republish my earnings lenses and started with my lens about my Yahoo! Voices earnings.  SirGo is a bit slow to publish and is missing some key modules such as the link list module.  I was a bit frustrated with SirGo as it freezes a lot and I found it did not work well with Chrome and it was better to use Firefox for publishing my SirGo page.  You can see my first SirGo page here and compare it with the old Squidoo lens using the Wayback Machine here.

I'm not sure I am settled on SirGo as my new Squidoo alternative and I will probably test it out and see how some of my pages do on SirGo versus other writing platforms.  You make money with SirGo with Google Adsense and Amazon Associates.

You an start making pages with SirGo by going here.

What is your Squidoo alternative?

Squidoo Account Locked!

Squidoo has been undergoing a lot of changes the past few months after a major page rank slap from Google and a serious decrease in earnings for the site and thereby very low payout per tier.  As a result, Squidoo has installed a series of filters which have swept the site both giving warnings and then locking lenses (without warnings). Like many, I received both warnings and locked lenses. Some I edited and got republished without incident, while others I decided to either delete and give up entirely (severely under performing lenses with little content) or move to other platforms (my blogs, other paid to write sites, etc...).

While Squidoo was undergoing these changes, I didn't really edit any of my lenses or create new ones. I figured I'd ride out the wave and focus on the lenses that were hit by the filter and against Squidoo's new rules and edit/improve my other lenses after things settled down and when I had more time. (Things have been extra crazy at work with no less than 4 trials this summer and lots of craziness on my other cases--in case you cared. )

Today, I received notification from Squidoo that my entire account was locked. I'm not sure whether the e-mail was a boiler plate email that everyone gets (it looks like it) or whether it has details specific to me, but it says that my lenses were SPAM. While I do at times discuss certain products or more accurately other paid to write sites where I have found success, I don't think any of my lenses fall under an accurate definition of SPAM and they all comport to my knowledge and understanding of Squidoo's rules as they have published them. (It has become clear that certain new rules that cause the filters to lock lenses have not been published and the lenses that Squidoo refers readers to after locking their lenses or account are the same ones they've always had.) The one Squidoo violation that I am in some lenses guilty of is forgetting to add an image credit. Without a place to specifically add it when uploading a photo I often forget (and when I was requesting that a locked lens be reinstated, I specifically suggested that all image modules and the like have a place for an image credit).

The big question now is do I try to get my account reinstated or just save all of my lenses and republish them elsewhere? Before its fall, Squidoo was my highest earner--with the exceptions of some months where I was very active on Examiner and really raking it in. I think I will save all of my lenses (I only have 7 days to do so) and appeal and take it from there. If they don't reinstate my account, I'll republish elsewhere and then decide if I want to create a new Squidoo account and start from scratch or just focus on other platforms.

Have you had your Squidoo account locked? What was your experience?

Changes to Infobarrel

Infobarrel has made changes to how you can make money writing for them, effective as of yesterday.  Previously, when writing for Infobarrel, you were not paid directly by Infobarrel, but rahter inserting your Adsense, Chitika, and Amazon Associates IDs into your account.  Your affiliate IDs were then shown anywhere from 75-90% of the time depending upon participation on the site.

Infobarrel has now changed the system where you can be paid directly by Infobarrel.  Infobarrel has gotten rid of Chitika entirely as well as an Amazon banner on the side.  (Writer can still incorporate Amazon elements into their articles.)  Writers will now make money through two tiers of ads on the site.  I believe Tier 1 is Adsense and Tier 2 is Chitika, Amazon, and similar ads that they get on the site.  Existing members have the option of keeping their Adsense IDs on the site as it was before.

The plus of using the Infobarrel payments system is that payout will be $50 from Infobarrel via Paypal rather than Adsense's $100.  Therefore, writers can reach payout faster.  Infobarrel also hopes that they will be able to get higher quality ads which will mean higher revenue for everyone. Revenue share will be split with the same percentages previously used.

I have decided to switch to the new program and while there will be a few hiccups for me.  Some minor (changing the formatting of the spreadsheet that I used to track my monthly earnings) and some not so minor (being stuck below minimum payout at Chitika and Adsense), I will find ways to deal with it.  With Adsense, Infobarrel was my biggest source of Adsense earnings and what was really pushing me towards reaching payout.  My other sources of Adsense earnings: Triond, Hubpages, Wizzley, and personal blogs, are minor by comparison.  I will have to amp up writing for these sources and promoting them in hopes that I can get Adsense payout at least once per year.   On Chitika, Infobarrel is the only place I use Chitika and the earnings there are fairly low.  My current balance is around $7.50 and their payout is $10.  I hate to lose that money.  I might have to incorporate Chitika ads here and on some of my other blogs in hopes of reaching the minimum and then I can either close my Chitika account and take the ads off or if they are some what successful, leave them on.

I will report back to see how the new payment system goes and I do have the option of switching back if I wish (although Chitka ads are definitely gone for good).  I imagine I won't want to leave earnings sitting with Infobarrel, so I'll probably stick with it unless it's an utter disaster.

My 2012 Earnings

I have been horrible about updating this blog and don't have a ton of time right now, but I want to at least give a quick update on my earnings for 2012.  In 2012, I made nearly five times what I made in 2011.
My Squidoo earnings were over ten times my 2011 Squidoo earnings and actually twice my total earnings for 2012.  However, the big sleeper was Examiner.  I got a new Examiner title towards the end of the year and made $705 alone in December!  The combination of Squidoo and Examiner ensure that in 2013, my earnings will far exceed my earnings for 2012, with my current goal for the end of 2013 being $10,000!

Wizzley was my big disappointment.  If you'll recall, I was inspired by initial results at the end of 2011 and inspired to make more Wizzes in 2012.  Well, I really dropped the ball on that.  I made one or two new Wizzes, although I'm not sure I even completed them both to the point of being published.  Anyway, as a result, my earnings from Wizzley was a whopping goose egg!

My 2012 Squidoo Earnings: $1,383.41
My 2011 Examiner Earnings: $801.50
My 2012 Infobarrel Earnings: $82.21
My 2012 Triond Earnings: $34.75
My 2011 Hubpages Earnings: $22.05
My 2012 Bukisa Earnings: $15.07
My 2012 Yahoo! Voices Earnings: $10.01

My 2011 Wizzley Earnings: $0

Total: $2,349

I have some goals for 2013, which I will share at a later date, but for now I wanted to at least provide this update which is about 2 months overdue!