Places That Help Pay Rent

A few years ago, I purchased on fiver 5 high paying, low competition keywords.  Sadly, I only wrote one article from the keywords (one of these days I'll get around to the others--I just found them so boring!)  The article I wrote was my Places That Help Pay Rent article on Infobarrel and it is my second most successful article on Infobarrel after Fungal Ear Infection Treatment (my first every Infobarrel article).  Check out my Places That Help Pay Rent article on Infobarrel and tell me what you think!  If you like the article and think it has useful information, please share it on your social media pages!

Yahoo! Voices Changes

As I previously mentioned, Associated Content is now Yahoo! Voices.  As part of the change, Yahoo! Voices has apparently decided to go through and purge several of the articles on the site.  (Apparently 75,000 to start and more as times goes by.)  The strange thing is how they are going about it.  I have two articles that were published over one year ago that I received e-mails regarding stating that they were rejected for publication.  The e-mails were written as if I had just submitted the content for review so the wording was weird given they had been published for over one year.

With the first article, it was "rejected" but in reality de-published for taking content from other sources.  It was a list of the 2011 Oscar winners, so obviously that is content that is published numerous locations and there really aren't a variety of ways to write it a different way.  Annoying, especially given it had gotten a lot of traffic in the past few months with talk of the 2012 Oscars, but no big deal.

The second article was "rejected" for upfront payment because it was too short.  The ridiculous part about that is that I have already received an upfront payment for that article.  In fact, I received upfront payment for that article in January, 2011!  So again, what are they going to do? Take the money back?

The only frustrating thing is that when the articles are "rejected" they are not only un-published (just because the 2nd article wasn't good enough for an upfront payment doesn't mean it's not good enough to be published) but you don't have the option of going back & editing the articles to resubmit.  The only options are to view the article or delete it.  At least you can view it which gives the option of cutting & pasting the article and either rewriting it for Yahoo! Voices or submitting it to another paid to write site.  I haven't decided which I'm going to do.  The 2nd article is a local article and considering I am the local writer for my neighborhood on Examiner, I will likely edit the article to make it more timely and relevant and fleshed out and submit it to Examiner.  The Oscar article isn't really worth much, but I may try to publish it some place like Bukisa or Triond to get the occasional view.  If I were patient I could also create a Hub, Lens, or Page on Hubpages, Squidoo, and Wizzley respectively regarding the 2011 Oscar winners and use it to promote the DVDs of the movies nominated on Amazon to try to gain affiliate sales.  I already have a lens like that ready to go for the 2012 Oscars.

Has the change to Yahoo! Voices affected you? What are your thoughts on the change?

Holiday Shopping--Write Articles About Gift Ideas

With the holiday shopping season upon us, it is a great time to write articles about gift ideas.  Articles about gift ideas are great because they will not only get great traffic during the holiday shopping season, but are also a great way to promote products for purchase and hopefully make some income from people purchasing these items.  Below are some examples of articles I have written regarding gift ideas.

• Top Holiday Toys

• Toys By Age Group

• Top Toys for Babies

• 10 Gift Ideas for Toddlers

• Top 10 Toys for Pre-Schoolers

• Top 10 Toys for Grade-Schoolers

• Top 10 Toys for Tweens

• Top 10 Gift Ideas for Teens

• Toys for Boys

• Toys for Girls

• The Best Board Games

• Top 20 Electronic Gadgets on Amazon

• Top Gadgets for Christmas 2011

• Gift Ideas for Kids--Top Toys for Any Age Group

eHow Ends WCP & Where to Go From Here

I my spare time I have been writing articles online and gaining revenue both passive and active for these articles.  My biggest earnings came from several eHow articles I wrote when the Writers' Compensation Program ("WCP") was active.  Sometime last year, eHow stopped allowing writers to contribute new articles unless they applied to and were accepted to their Demand Studios writing program.  However, they continued to pay WCP members residual income for the articles they had written.  Starting May 5, 2011, they stopped paying WCP members their residual income and offered either a bulk payment for your articles or for you to remove all of your articles from the site.  I felt my offer wasn't worth what I could make on other sites, tTherefore, I had all of my eHow articles removed from eHow and will be migrating them to other sites.  That's where the tricky part comes in--where do I move them to?  I already write for Associated Content (no Yahoo! Contributor Program), Bukisa, Squidoo, and Hubpages.  However, none of those sites pay as much as eHow did--nor have I put as much work into them.  Associated Content is great for upfront payments, but not so great for residual income (only 1.50 for every 1,000 views). Bukisa has switched over to an adsense format so I'm still seeing how that is working out.  Squidoo lenses and Hubpages hubs are tailored differently and I'm not sure are the best place for simple eHow articles.  I am hearing good things about Infobarrel so I have recently joined them and will likely put my articles in a combination of Infobarrel and Bukisa.  I will let you know how it goes and as I post new articles I plan to do blog posts advising how it's going and which sites have give success.  I plan to use sites like Shetoldme, Best-Reviewer, Squidoo and Hubpages to get backlinks to my articles.

Are you a former WCP member? Did you accept eHow's offer or are you moving your articles somewhere else? What type of success have you had so far?