August 31, 2009

eHow Earnings Expectations

It’s month end and I am finishing up my first 15 days of writing for eHow. I figured it would be worth it to put down on paper what my expectations are. After all you can’t have goals without ironing them out.

From what I understand quality eHow writers make around $1 per article per month once their articles mature in 2-3 months time. The best writers I believe earn roughly $2-$3 per article on average. I don’t know how much truth to that there is but it’s what I understand so far. I have written 36 articles over the past 15 days which is about a 70-75 article a month pace. That means that if I keep up my pace my first articles should be mature and earning at full speed by the end of October and beginning of November. Let’s say that I write 70 articles in September and in October; that would put my article count to 175 right as my first articles are maturing. October I should be earning a full $1 per article from my first articles ($36), ~$0.50 per article for my seventy Sept. articles ($35), and say ~$0.10 per article for my seventy October articles ($7). That adds up to $78 of October earnings to be paid around the 10th of November.

This will be my goal as I feel the numbers just make sense. The biggest challenge will be to keep up my article creation pace but I am hopeful that I can do just that and get lucky and cross over the $1 per article plateau to the upside. $1 per article would put January earnings up to around $175 per month or higher if I can do better.

Anyway, all this is to say that I want to achieve the $1 per article per month average and then try to increase it from there. In my goals section on this blog I stated that I wanted to eventually replace my day job with residual income and that of course would be easier to do making upwards of $3 per article instead of $1, but I’ll have to take things in stride and see how it all turns out. For now I’ll continue to lament the fact that I have made nothing at all with any of my 26 articles though traffic is picking up day by day. I’m not even a heavy forum user so I don’t see my traffic numbers increasing because of other eHow users stopping by. I think I’m getting genuine search traffic, the good stuff.
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August 30, 2009

It Takes Me A While To Craft Articles It Seems

I just posted my first article based on what I know well.  It was not optimized for search via keywords or researched at all.  I knew everything up front and took about half a minute to find a picture for it.  Virtually 100 percent of my time went to writing the article.  It must have been quick for me to write up you'd think.  No; it wasn't It took me exactly one hour.  I don't know what's up with these 20 min writers; they must be glazing over everything.

I write so much more when I know too much about the subject it seems.  The article is very long.  Sure, it's very thorough but it took me a while.  I'll see how it does over the next month or so but I feel that it's more worth my time choosing my topics carefully as opposed to my thought process on article selection.

For reference purposes here is my freshly posted article on How To Throw A Bowling Ball And Make It Hook.
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How Much Time Do I Put Into My eHow Articles

Post Updated 10/10/2014
Dead links removed and edited for grammar and readability. This post will remain on the site as it's a snapshot of my past.

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Original Publish Date
8/30/2009

I've got to say that coming up with topics for eHow is not that difficult.  The difficult part is balancing the selection of which topics to actually write.  I'm of the opinion that I want to write quality articles that are more fully developed with more words.  I also want my articles to be based upon high paying keywords rather than lowpaying keywords.  I'm perfectly happy with less traffic so long as I'm making more per visitor but this seems to lead me to writing about topics I have to do research on while writing.  This of course slows me down.

It seems that many other writers have coined rules of thumb when it comes to article writing on eHow that don't particularly apply to me.  For instance, writers seem to think that you can punch out a article in 20-30 min and be done with it.  I don't know about you but I take at least twice that time if not more. 

I'm probably averaging 50 min honestly including my research time.  It's not that I'm slow it's just that my topics are more in depth.  I could crank out an article describing how to hook a bowling ball in 20 min but nobody is searching for that nor do the keywords pay much of anything.  Why should I take the time?

Well, maybe I should.  I think I will take some time over the next couple days to write a couple quick articles not based on traffic and quality keywords just to see how they perform.  After all, it's not like I'm making anything yet anyway, I'm only on day 14 with eHow. 

Until articles like my article: How to choose HVAC service software (article removed by ehow) or How to get your CFP certification online start earning money I will take some time to write a few more elementary articles.  Not necessarily elementary but simple to me and not optimized for high paying key words.

20 min per article, however, still seems too quick.  Maybe I can hit 30-40.
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August 28, 2009

I'm Learning How To eHow Better

Post Updated 1/22/2014
Dead links removed and edited for grammar and readability. This post will remain on the site as it's a snapshot of my past.

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Original Publish Date
8/28/2009

This is my 12th day writing for eHow. I now have 28 articles posted and have been doing a fair amount of reading how-to ehow articles while I try to keep up my posting schedule on my blog and ehow. Let’s just say I’ve been busy.

My first couple eHow articles were fly by the seat of my pants articles. I didn’t know anything about eHow or even if I wanted to invest any time into it. I wrote How To Buy Fine Wine For Under 10 Dollars (article removed by eHow) and How To Treat Sleep Apnea Symptoms (link removed). It didn’t take long for me to decide to read up about the site before investing any more of my time.

Obviously I felt it was worth while and I kept posting new articles based on my readings so I figured I share some of them with you. My first week saw me reading almost every post on the following blogs: Smart Passive Income, Freelance Home Writer (blog now defunct), and Write For eHow (blog now defunct).

These blogs gave me a good primer on how to write for eHow efficiently. Most notably is the concept "1 good article is worth 10 fly by the seat of your pants articles". Since my first two I’ve been working hard at writing focused articles that can be good money makers.

My Research

This week I read desolator144's eHow guide (link removed - site is now defunct check the wayback machine to see what it used to look like). If you are looking for a ton of info without buying an ebook or piece-mealing it all together I recommend checking it out. Eventually I’ll probably read more but for now I’m going to let it all sink in as I begin to implement what I’ve learned. At some point you just have to do rather than keep preparing.

For newbies like myself; do some quality reading on "how to ehow" better. I assume it will be worth it in the long run.

For reference purposes I’m 12 days in with 28 articles, 217 page views, and $0.00 in earnings. I hope that last number eventually starts moving up a bit.
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August 27, 2009

Residual Income and Goals Index

Last Update: 4/5/2010

Unlike some other residual income writers out there I have no intention on stating my actual earnings information in my monthly earnings updates or anywhere else on this blog. This means that you probably won't ever see me say anything like "I made X amount of money in a certain time frame". 

I do feel that keeping a running tab on some of the stats from my residual income sources is necessary and will benefit the reader of this blog... at least it will make it more interesting so I will summarize all my earnings into a metric: Earnings per 1000 page views.  This will allow me to normalize all my earnings reports from all the various income streams and identify how each stream performs and how that income stream changes as time passes.

Additionally I'm going to always share with you my basic residual income goals and share with you my progress.  Included in this will be my overarching goal of duplicating my day job income.  I won't share with you how much I make but I will share the relationship between the two in percentage terms.

In my opinion my thoughts about my online income and it's progress is necessary and desirable for myself and for my readers. This page will be updated routinely with information related to my residual income goals and accomplishments on eHow, InfoBarrel, my blogs, as well as my general residual income online earnings from other sources.

Check back in for regular updates or just subscribe to the blog feed. Good luck to me in the future!  You can see period specific reports below or just note my progress graph here on this page.

Monthly Residual Earnings Reports
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009

Short-Term Goals
100 published eHow articles | Progress: 82 Articles (4/5/10) - Will not happen as eHow has terminated the WCP for eHow.
Make payout by 9/30/09 | Progress: Accomplished (10/8/09)

Mid-term Goals
1,000 published Xomblurb | Progress: 279 Xomblurbs (4/5/10)
Build Backlinks to Moneymakers on Blog and eHow | WIP
Increase Earnings per 1000 PV on Longevity Blog | WIP

Long-Term Goals
Duplicate my day-job income | Progress: 4.83 Percent Accomplished (4/5/10)

That's it for now. I've got a ways to go but it all starts with article creation and publication.
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About the Author

Hi there - My name is Brian but you can call me Chezfat. :)

I write for eHow, InfoBarrel, Xomba, a multitude of article submission sites, as well as a good handful of personal blogs. My main blogs are How To Live A Longer Life and this blog you are reading Chezfat.com.

I have a day job but hope to one day work from home. My goals in life are to go into personal finance and freelance work. I do not want to be swamped so building up a streak of residual income is a must for my life. To build up my residual income, eHow, InfoBarrel, Xomba, niche blogging, and article marketing will be a major part of the plan. Eventually I will be introducing a significant chunk of my time to dividend investing and money management as proper long-term investing is the foundation for long-term passive income.

I have many interests and will share some of those with you in time I'm sure. To start off with I'm a big fan of medicine, health, and fitness. I'm a junkie for anything business, economics, and finance related as I fully intend on going into personal finance work when I get fully chartered as a CFA. I LOVE fine wine and gourmet cuisine; and I enjoy golfing and bowling especially.

Anyway, that's a bit about me. I hope you enjoy this blog and more importantly I hope you find some value in it. This site will chronicle a lot of my efforts to build different residual income streams and i will also serve as a launching pad for some of my projects. At the same time I hope to be able to teach others to do what I'm doing as we all have to learn somewhere.

Not all posts on this site will be blogging and article driven but in the early days I suspect this will be the bulk of my efforts. As money starts rolling in I'm sure I will begin discussing capital reinvestment and dividend investing. Those topics however will likely not come up for some time.

Lastly, if you are social and into these kinds of things, hit me up on Google+ as well as all the other networks on my sidebar.
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About This Site

Page Last Updated: 10/10/2014

This site is all about the journey of writing online for both residual income and passive income.I started my career in this line of work in May of 2009 knowing nothing and reading and learning a ton.  I started first with a blog on human longevity (which I still maintain).  It was my first baby and I did a lot of things wrong from the get go. 

Once I started to learn what I was doing I began to write for eHow and started Chezfat.com.  This was my first foray into true content publication and monitization.  This blog was originally going to chronicle my journey on eHow but it quickly was rebranded to chronicle my overall internet empire.

My Early Days - 2009 & 2010

I wrote my first eHow article on the 17th of August 2009 and began my first major blogging project on May 11, 2009. This blog was formed in late August 2009 under the title "The eHow Journey" which I renamed the first week of October 2009 to it's current name and URL.And in November 2009 I joined InfoBarrel where I quickly started making the bulk of my online income in those early years - you can see my InfoBarrel profile here.

Since that time I have joined a few other revenue sharing websites. The names of them have chnaged a lot over the years as most of them have come and gone - many no longer exist today. Few have had any lasting value for the duration of my time online.

By March of 2010 I was making some progress in my residual income goals but it wasn't until then when I became a paying member of The Keyword Academy when my income started taking off.  I knew a lot of what I was doing by then but the tools provided through membership were and still are invaluable to my revenue growth.

In 2010 I also stared a few additional blogs, including a site on diabetic shoes which I discussed at length her on the blog way back in the day. Over the subsequent years I've since built lots and lots of sites in many different niches and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

Animal Attacks

2012 was a wake up call to me as it was to many people online when the animal attacks started. I lost a good chunk of my income in many different places around the web but I wasn't devastated at like like many people were.

I took this as an opportunity to continue what I was doing but in a more strategic manner. It took some time to recover but by late 2013 I was making more than ever before using tactics that weren't so blatantly bad. Quality in my stuff improved and I stopped a lot of spammy link building. This stuff still works folks.

The Future - 2014 & Beyond 

In the future I hope to continue building even bigger, better, and more profitable websites and it would pretty amazing to be able to replace my wife's regular income with with my online empire - I'm certainly making good progress this year! :D This site will continue chronicle that process a little at a time and I will do my best to teach you how to do the same whenever I'm feeling generous. :)

I hope you find value in what I have to say. Please feel free to contact me anytime. I moderate comments once in a blue moon so the best way to get a hold of me is through email which is found on my contact page. Even better though would be to join the forum and get involved. I always show up there and can always be reached in threads and PMs.
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