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?

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.