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?

The Power of Twitter

A great way to promote your articles and gain backlinks is by using Twitter.  If you have a lot of Twitter followers that is an instant audience for your articles, but you can also get readers through the power of re-tweets.  One example of "the power of Twitter" that I have experienced recently is by promoting my The Real Housewives of Orange County lens by tweeting a poll on that lens regarding readers favorite OC housewives.  A couple of days ago, I tweeted that Tamra Barney & Gretchen Rossi were the most popular OC housewives according to the poll (I had already had a few responses) and was sure to use their Twitter names.  Tamra retweeted my tweet and since then, there has been a constant stream of people voting in the poll and visiting the link.  I have also gained more Twitter followers and other users have retweeted my tweet.  Today, I have had over 200 readers of my The Real Housewives of Orange County lens and hopefully they are sticking around to check out my other lenses as well.  This boost of traffic is great for increasing my lensrank on Squidoo (equaling higher payouts) and hopefully for resulting in more sales through the page.  My The Real Housewives of Orange County lens has already had success in selling products through Amazon.  So keep in mind when writing articles to be sure to tweet your article or a portion of the article (such as a poll or quiz) to your Twitter followers.

More Pages About My Paid 2 Write Earnings

If you're interested in learning more about how much money I am making writing articles online, check out my Squidoo pages about My Triond Earnings and My Bukisa Earnings.  Triond and Bukisa are both lower earning paid to write sites that going forward I plan to use to build backlinks for the more stronger earning sites like Infobarrel and Squidoo.  In fact, my short term goal for monthly earnings for Triond and Bukisa is only $1 per month because I am not concerned about making money with these sites as much as I am about using them to direct more traffic to my pages that have the potential to earn more money.

Squidoo Article Breaks Tier 1!

I have previously written about how my Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon lens is my most popular lens on Squidoo.  It has consistently remained in Tier 2 and occasionally flirted with Tier 1.  This weekend, however, it not only flirted with Tier 1, it full on broke into Tier 1! (I'm sure in a large part helped by the fact that it received a Squidoo Angel Blessing on Friday.)  On Saturday it hovered around 1,800  (Tier 1 lenses rank from 1-2000) but this morning it shot up to 633!  My articles is in the Top 1000!  I've never come anywhere close.  I'm going to keep promoting my Daily Deal Sites lens in hopes I can get it into the Top 500 and eventually the Top 100.  On of the major perks of being a Tier 1 lens is that when payout comes there is a huge jump in payout.  Last month a Tier 2 lens received a payment of approximately $8 whereas a Tier 1 lens was approximately $45!  Here's hoping my Daily Deal Sites lens stays in the Tier 1 for the rest of this month (enough to average as Tier 1) and all of next month!  It will be much tougher when the value of the Angel Blessing (giving any lens a tempoarary lensrank boost wears off) but it also gives me the motivation to backlink and promote my lens (by writing more articles on other sites) in hopes of keeping it a Tier 1 lens.

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.

Infobarrel Challenge: Halfway There

So the halfway mark for my personal 30 articles in 30 days Infobarrel Challenge has come and gone. Despite a slow start, I made it through the first week ahead of schedule with 9 articles.  At this point, I should have at least 15 articles and have done some intense backlinking.  I have not been very diligent about backlinking and learned something--I hate backlinking!  It's a necessary evil for making money online, but I personally prefer to spend my time writing new articles rather than backlinking.  I have continued to stay ahead of pace and have written 18 articles in the first 15 days of my Infobarrel Challenge.

Halfway Through Challenge
Goal: 15 articles
Articles Written: 18


The articles I have published since my last update are listed below.
How to Manage Your Finances Using ING Subaccounts
How to Gain Admission to the New York State Bar
Vitamins That Prevent Blackheads

How to Program Your Tivo Remote with the 30 Second Skip Feature

How to Prevent a Hangover
New York Attorney Notary Public Application
The Biryani House Cart (Liberty Plaza)
Places That Help Pay Rent

Dr. Oz's Checklist for Anti-Aging

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

My Most Successful Squidoo Lens: Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon

Before starting my Infobarrel Challenge, I wanted to give a bit of love to my highest ranked Squidoo lens, Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon. As many of you may know, Groupon is a popular "deal of the day" or "group coupon" site.  Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon lens gets the most traffic and is my highest ranked lens.  It is consistently a tier 2 lens and is inching its way towards tier 1 (hence why I want to give it some love).  If you don't know, Squidoo lenses are all ranked and lensrank determines how much revenue you received from the Squidoo adpool.  The higher the rank, the more you earn.  I will shortly post a blog entry about Squidoo and how the tiers and lensrank work, but right now my goal is for this blog post to serve as a good backlink for my Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon lens, so in order to have relevant keywords, etc... it's best if I talk about that lens.

Groupon has spawned many popular "Groupon clones" like LivingSocial or Social Steals.  Most recently, Google got into the daily deal game with Google Offers.  My Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon lens, offers a comprehensive guide to the many Groupon clone sites that keep popping up and describes each of the daily deal sites so you know what they offer and what cities they offer them for.  If you don't know what Groupon is (have you been living under a rock?!--jk!), well Groupon sends daily e-mails with group coupons that harness the power of social buying and offers discounts of 50 -90% off the best things in your city, such as restaurants, bars, salons, spas, and other retailers.  So if you haven't signed-up, sign-up for Groupon and go check out my Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon lens so you can learn about and sign-up for all of the other Groupon competitors--and hopefully help push my Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon lens to tier 1!

Infobarrel Challenge

Many people talk about a $1,000 Infobarrel Challenge.  The theory being that if you write 3 Infobarrel articles per day for one year, by the end of the year you will have enough articles to make $1,000 per month.  That's a great goal (although so far I have only seen this as a theory and have heard no stories of success) but quite frankly, I have a full time job and a pretty active social life that as much as I'd love to have the dedication and time to write 3 articles per day for a year, I know that between other paid to write sites, SEO research, and backlinking, I'd never have the time and would give up quickly.
Instead, I propose my own simpler challenge: One (1) Infobarrel article per day for one (1) month.  I will also vigorously backlink these articles through sites like SheToldMe, RedGage, and Best-Reviewer. (For more info on backlinking, check out my blog post on backlinking.)  I will also cross-promote/backlink these articles on other article sites like Bukisa, Associated Content, and Squidoo.
I have decided this challenge will start on July 15, 2011.  Therefore, I will have from July 15-August 14 to draft 30 articles for Infobarrel.  I will update with my status of getting articles published, but not my earnings until September 1.  I think that gives the articles a little bit of time to saturate and get listed by search engines.  If this challenge is successful, I will perhaps try the $1,000 challenge.  Want to join the challenge with me?  Leave comments and update readers on how your challenge is going.  Include links to the articles you have published as a great source of backlinks!

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.