SheToldMe Now Charging to Backlink

I have previously written how SheToldMe was a great site to get backlinks for your articles and also get additional revenue as it offered a 100% Adsense share.  Well, SheToldMe has made a recent change that you must pay for a premium membership ($5/month or $12/year) in order to post scoops (i.e. in order to post links in order to get backlinks for your site).  This essentially takes SheToldMe out of the equation of backlink sites.

Take Advantage of Popular News Items: Amy Winehouse Dead

I am overdue for an update on my Infobarrel Challenge, but first wanted to share a tip on getting paid 2 write online--take advantage of the headlines!  If there is a big news item that you know will be getting a lot of internet searches, jump on it and write something! Especially if it is about a celebrity and there's no bigger celebrity news than a celebrity death (except maybe a celebrity wedding or break-up!)

It was recently announced that Rehab singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London home.  I quickly jumped on the news and wrote articles on sites that I knew had instant publishing (why waste time on articles that won't be published right away and miss out on the heavy spike of Internet searches as the news goes viral?)

So I wrote my first "Amy Winehouse is Dead" article for Triond: Amy Winehouse: Dead at 27.  I then backlinked this article on SheToldMeSo and RedGage.  I even backlinked the SheToldMeSo and RedGage backlinks to themselves.  With RedGage, I even uploaded a blog post with a trackback link to Amy Winehouse: Dead at 27 and submitted it for RedGage's knowledge based content.  (I've put examples of these backlinks at the bottom of the blog post.) 

Then I wrote an Associated Content article, only to realize that while in the past "Display Only" articles on Associated Content went live automatically, there is now a delay...boo!

I then created a Squidoo lens about Winehouse's death: Amy Winehouse Dead at 27.  This was an opportunity to also backlink my Triond article as well as try to gain some revenue from purchases of Amy's CDs and singles which I promoted on the lens.  I also was able to use the Google News module and the Twitter News module to provide up to date content on the lens about Amy's death.  I also of course, backlinked Amy Winehouse Dead at 27 with SheToldMeSo and RedGage.

When publishing Amy Winehouse Dead at 27, I quickly threw something together and in the future will continue to add more and expand the lens.  Ideas include more detail about Amy Winehouse's life and struggles, utilizing my affiliate programs, such as AllPosters and Zazzle and promoting their products about Amy Winehouse and also creating new lenses and articles that can be backlinked through that site and backlink to that site, topics include surprising celebrity deaths and the dangers of drug an alchol addiction.

This is an example of how you can take an hot news item and work it to your advantage to gain views to your articles and webpages.

Here are my backlinks related to Amy Winehouse's death:

• Amy Winehouse Found Dead at 27
• Amy Winehouse Found Dead
• Amy Winehouse: Dead at 27
• Amy Winehouse Found Dead in Her London Home
• Amy Winehouse Overdoses
• Amy Winehouse Dead
• Amy Winehouse Overdoses and Dies at 27
• Rehab Singer Overdoses
• Amy Winehouse is Dead at 27

Backlinking

A great and important way to get traffic to your website or paid to write articles is through backlinking.  Backlinking is also important for high rankings in search results.  i have recently been experimenting with backlinks at 3 different sites: RedGage, SheToldMe, and Best-Reviewer.  One of the positives about these sites are that not only do they help drive more traffic to your site, but you can also earn income throught them. For everylink shared on SheToldMe or Best-Reviewer, adsense ads with your adsense id are placed on that sites.  You get 100% of the adsense revenue from those clicks (adsense ads with the adsense id of the site owners are placed elsewhere on the page where your link is promoted).  With RedGage, you earn a set amount per thousand views of your link, this varies depending upon the success of the site as well as the quality of the link you are sharing. Right now it's about 60 cents per 1000 views--not a ton of money but remember your goal with RedGage is backlinks, the extra revenue is a bonus. I only joined RedGage yesterday and shared about 10 links, within a matter of minutes I had earned 3 cents. Not exactly going to retire on that income; but a nice start and encouraging considering on many other sites it takes days, weeks or even earn one penny. For more info on getting backlinks to your site or article, you can check out these books below that are available on Amazon.

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?