Week 2: Progress is slow

Only two weeks on eHow but it definitely feels much longer than that! It must be because I check my earnings once every ten seconds or so hoping to see any uptick whatsoever (I have OCD). Admittedly, seeing my articles earn even a little bit of money is exhilarating, affirming, and just what I need to keep me motivated. Before I go on, I would like to say hello to two people who have subscribed to my blog, fellow eHow'ers MaryAnne and Nightowl Mama - thanks so much for reading!

Week-to-date, I earned $0.70 on 15 articles written, making my cumulative earnings $1.69 (eHow carries over any amount under $10 from the previous month to your current month). Obviously still a very small amount, but I did notice my increases increasing, which is likely to be the result of having more people give me positive feedback, recommendations, 5-star ratings, and comments. After reading what I could find about eHow's payment algorithm, how popular you and your articles are factor into how much you earn.

My top 3 earning articles are:
How to Write a Letter of Resignation - $0.43
How to Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt -$0.30
How to Reduce your Credit Card Interest Rate -$0.30

My bottom 3 articles, which have earned $0.00 are:
How to Stuff Money Under Your Mattress
How to score 700 on the GMAT
How to Prevent a Hangover

There does appear to be a pattern, with my articles about personal finance, specifically debt, attracting more "clicky" readers, whereas articles I wrote about whatever was on my mind at the time (I did in fact have a hangover when I wrote about how to prevent them) attracting readers who like to stop by but that's about it. I definitely have a lot more advice to share about personal finance, so I think I will focus on that in the coming weeks.

As far as the writing process during the week, it is very challenging. I work full-time in a relatively demanding job here in New York, and when I get home, my mind is fried. When I started on eHow I think the adrenaline I felt from building a little side business online with limitless potential really pushed me to get articles out. Writing 5 articles a day even with a full-time job seemed totally doable. Now, I have to be more realistic. I realize that it takes a lot of energy to write and I can't just write anything and expect it to earn money. I have to focus on producing quality articles, otherwise who is going to read and recommend what I have to say? How great would it be to have a 1,000 articles on eHow up as soon as possible (my true goal), but that just won't happen overnight. If I can maintain my current pace of 1 article a day, I will be more than satisfied. If any other fellow writers from eHow are out there reading this, I would love to hear about your own experience!

Finally, this week I started to notice a few of my articles showing up pretty high on Google's search results. My latest article on how to do the long jump is listed third! (Try it!) It's definitely a niche article that so far hasn't proven too popular yet (someone gave me 1-star on it), but I am banking on the thousands of future long jump track and field athletes down the line who might check it out.

I'm not really sure how my article got ranked so high and so quickly on Google (I literally just wrote it on Thursday night, and today is Saturday) - I just followed the advice on how to properly use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and uploaded my article to Digg.com, Google's URL entry site, and Microsoft Livesearch. The advice I've read from others encourage doing whatever you can to publicize and register your articles to as many places you can, but I've only focused on these three spots and they seem to be working pretty well.

Anyway, I'm hoping to report a greater increase in my earnings next week and will of course continue to share my story with you and what I learn. Until next time! - frankie d.