Until next time - frankie d.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Week 6 - Getting Close to First Payout!
My earnings for the full month of March came in at $6.95. I should be receiving my first actual payout this month in April, which is awesome. Had another hectic week so was not able to add any new articles. I will try to post one or two tonight. I guess that's all I have! But big news is that earning money on eHow is defienitely fo real, and I really cannot wait for that first paycheck.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Week 4 & 5 - Catching Up, and $$ Growing!
I wasn't able to post last week because I was out of town (went to Las Vegas for a bachelor party). OK, it was for MY bachelor party. :) Great times with twenty of my closest buds from when I was five years old through my best friends from graduate school. Awesome group of dudes.
Had a pretty hectic week at my full-time gig, somehow just being away from the office for only two days leads to a huge and seemingly endless pile of work (always works out that way). Anyway I have to confess that I have fallen behind on my eHow writing schedule and am still at just about 20 articles published. I'm not too worried though because I know I can catch up later on - I can't force myself to write when I am not ready because then it wouldn't be any fun, and I don't need any self-imposed stress!
On to my latest earnings statistics!
Through five weeks I have now earned $6.68 with 22 written articles.
New articles since my last blog post:
How to avoid getting scammed on Craigslist (true story!)
So I'm definitely encouraged at my earnings growth - my most mature articles are steadily earning and I had a single article rise above $1 in earnings for the first time. I am definitely looking forward to the satisfaction of getting my first payout of $10(!) from eHow sometime next month. I know, BIG MONEY, but hey, it's an infinite return on my investment! Hard to beat that because if I weren't writing for eHow when I do I would probably be on my couch watching cartoons.
How are you guys doing out there? Please leave me a comment! I would love to hear how your own eHow experiment is going. Until next time - frankie d.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Week 3: Total views, where I stand, and my Ped-Egg obsession
Got up to 20 articles this week and felt good about the increasing number of total views. I am at just about 1,900 unique views to my work but found it interesting how quickly they add up. It took me about two weeks to get to 1,000 views, but nearly doubled the count in half the time! The number of views does not translate to earnings but it does increase the probability of someone out there clicking on some ads. I have to think that a winning strategy on eHow has to be a simple numbers game - the more eyes you have looking at your articles should yield more and more readers clicking on ads, and that depends on how long your articles are out online and how many articles you have.
My total earnings through week 3: $2.67 (though today the earnings figures did not update, so maybe this is understated). Disappointingly, the pace of my earnings actually decreased compared to where I was after Week 2. Going to $2.67 from $1.69 at the end of last week only reflected a 58% increase, whereas from Week 1 to Week 2 my earnings increased 70%. Still, I am encouraged that I am earning, but I would prefer to see an increasing rate of increase (though I admit that it still so early in the game that I should chill the f*** out).
I found it tough once again to keep up the pace of one article per day but did find inspiration this week to write what I thought is a really funny article. I play basketball at my gym here in NYC and for a corporate league about three times a week and my feet get pretty beat up. So, on Thursday night, I took my Ped-Egg out and rubbed down my feet. I then thought, this would make a great article for eHow - how to use the Ped-Egg - if you are a dude! (It is not masculine at all to use a Ped-Egg, but screw it, I love it!) What is a Ped-Egg? It is basically a foot scrubber inspired by a cheese grater. These little tiny blades on this egg-shaped piece of plastic gently file down calloused and dry skin to reveal new and healthy skin. Simply, if you have never tried it, it is awesome. I promise.
See, last summer, after walking through nearly all of western Europe and Asia in my flip flops, I bought a Ped-Egg. I had some pretty nasty feet after my vacation, saw the infomercial late one night when I got home to my parents' house in Los Angeles, and checked out their website (www.pedegg.com) and decided to buy one. And of course, my mom, dad, and sisters HAD A FIELD DAY making fun of me for my purchase. But I didn't care - what a freakin' God-send this thing was! The Ped-Egg totally worked as advertised and I had baby-like skin after just a few minutes of using it. I really thought my situation was hopeless and I needed medical attention from a podiatrist, but the Ped-Egg brought me the relief I needed.
Here is the article on eHow: How to use a Ped-Egg (if you are a dude)
I sent it out to my family and had them falling over laughing. I also got pretty immediate feedback from a number of wives out there who read my article dying to get their husbands to clean up their feet! Hilarious. I am seriously considering creating a new website dedicated to men who love using the Ped-Egg (just like me!) hahaha. Definitely on my to-do list now, too much comedic value out there not to.
Anyway, that's all I've got this week, trying to get to 50 articles next (could take a while, I know)
Until next time, -frankie d.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Week 1: writing for eHow
The first week of the frankie d. experiment brought in my first dollar (well, $0.99 actually) from articles I wrote and submitted to eHow.com. If you are new to eHow, it is a website where you can write articles about how to do pretty much anything and are then paid by the site a share of any ad revenues generated from people clicking on ads placed around your work.
www.ehow.com
It is free to participate and you can get pretty into it (eHow addiction). Anyway, my goal on eHow is to generate future passive income of what I hope will be a few hundred dollars or so a month from about 200 articles by the end of this summer (August 2009). I started with 5 articles last weekend and added 6 more to get me up to 11 total.
Here are links to what I have done:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4817431_make-toga-costumes.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4807317_new-original-ideas-write-ehow.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4805312_enjoy-great-nutella-snack.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4804289_score-gmat.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4803784_figure-out-lactose-intolerant.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4803399_reduce-credit-card-interest-rate.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4802608_pay-off-credit-card-debt.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801637_set-up-dual-monitors-pc.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801606_stuff-money-under-mattress.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801554_write-letter-of-resignation.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801234_set-up-k.html
It was hard not to get excited at the possibility of earning cash from simply having these articles uploaded to eHow and I definitely got caught up dreaming of how sweet it would to have that extra income and feeling anxious, checking "My Earnings" every hour to see if I got any upticks.
But, I have be realistic and patient. From the success stories I read of people who make up to $1,000 a month from articles they have written on eHow, I saw that they also faced slow starts (sometimes taking months to earn over the $10 minumum payout) but they kept writing and eventually their work started to pay off over time. That's all I'm trying to duplicate here, so if I stick to a strategy of writing interesting articles people want to read or at least be entertained by what I write (and click on those ads!) I am hoping that the market will reward me.
So I will keep doing what I'm doing and after I build a stock of articles I plan to expand my work to other writing sites with a similar model to eHow. I will talk in detail abou them in subsequent posts in case you want to try them out for yourself. Until next time, - frankie d.
www.ehow.com
It is free to participate and you can get pretty into it (eHow addiction). Anyway, my goal on eHow is to generate future passive income of what I hope will be a few hundred dollars or so a month from about 200 articles by the end of this summer (August 2009). I started with 5 articles last weekend and added 6 more to get me up to 11 total.
Here are links to what I have done:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4817431_make-toga-costumes.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4807317_new-original-ideas-write-ehow.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4805312_enjoy-great-nutella-snack.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4804289_score-gmat.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4803784_figure-out-lactose-intolerant.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4803399_reduce-credit-card-interest-rate.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4802608_pay-off-credit-card-debt.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801637_set-up-dual-monitors-pc.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801606_stuff-money-under-mattress.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801554_write-letter-of-resignation.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4801234_set-up-k.html
It was hard not to get excited at the possibility of earning cash from simply having these articles uploaded to eHow and I definitely got caught up dreaming of how sweet it would to have that extra income and feeling anxious, checking "My Earnings" every hour to see if I got any upticks.
But, I have be realistic and patient. From the success stories I read of people who make up to $1,000 a month from articles they have written on eHow, I saw that they also faced slow starts (sometimes taking months to earn over the $10 minumum payout) but they kept writing and eventually their work started to pay off over time. That's all I'm trying to duplicate here, so if I stick to a strategy of writing interesting articles people want to read or at least be entertained by what I write (and click on those ads!) I am hoping that the market will reward me.
So I will keep doing what I'm doing and after I build a stock of articles I plan to expand my work to other writing sites with a similar model to eHow. I will talk in detail abou them in subsequent posts in case you want to try them out for yourself. Until next time, - frankie d.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Greetings!
Welcome to the frankie d. experiment! What is the frankie d. experiment? Well, like so many of you out there, I am looking to find as many ways as I can to generate passive income streams to maximize my earning potential. After hearing and reading about the success of so many friends - (both online and human, actual friends) - who have taken that creative leap of faith on the internet, I figured, what the hell? I have ten minutes a day, I have a computer, and I do enjoy writing - why not get paid for it? I have never blogged before but did not realize how easy (and free!) it is to do so! I think I'm a nice person and have useful (and a lot of non-useful, but still interesting and funny) knowledge to share so why not share? So this blog will be my way of documenting what I do and what I find about building a portfolio of passive income, and I will see where this journey leads. I hope what I write in the coming months inspires you to pursue their own frankie d. experiment and when you do, I would love to read about it! Until next time. - frankie d.
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