eHow update, I've made a thousand bucks!

I finally did it! Today I broke a thousand dollars on eHow, that's total overall earnings. I started with one article in late July 08, so in 16 months with 158 articles (after sweeps) I've finally hit a big milestone, yay!

My earnings per month just keep going up, even though I haven't written very many  new articles in the past several months. This month I'm projecting I'll make around $140, my best month yet.

Now if I could only get the creative juices flowing and churn out 158 more articles, I'd be sitting pretty. I keep saying I'm going to, and I have a huge list of article ideas I'd like to dig in on. But really, I think I'm going to write some recipes before diving in bigger topics.

Recipe articles don't earn that great on eHow, but they're pretty consistent. Especially around the holidays. But if you have enough written, it does add up to a nice little profit each month. 

That's the greatest part about residual income. You write it once, and it just keeps on earning. I need to tweak some of the lower earning articles, most of those were from when I was still new to online writing, and didn't have a great keyword or SEO strategy.

I just had to share my milestone, I'm so happy!

eHow update!

I figured it's probably a good time to throw in an eHow update, too. Earnings for October have been calculated, and I made $119.91 on 158 articles. Around 76 cents each! It keeps going up, last month it was around 74 cents, and the month before 67. 

I finally wrote another eHow article, finally! It had been six months since I actually wrote anything there! I've got to put some time and effort into eHow, the residual income can't be beat. 

I enjoy writing eHow articles, and really they don't take long to do well. A half hour to an hour, depending on how familiar I am with the subject matter is about all it takes.

One word of advice. eHow's site is often buggy. I strongly suggest writing articles first in a Word Processor document, then cutting and pasting into the site submission form. This way you have a back-up should it not go through, or if an article is deleted. 

I have been writing for eHow since July 08, and in that time I have made almost $900. If you divide that by the time I have spent writing there, it comes out to about $11.32 per hour. Not bad! Even if I never write there again, that hourly wage will just go up as the residual income trickles in. 

This is one of my favorite ways to make money being a stay at home mom! Now if I could just buckle down and write a bunch more....

Updating eHow articles to make more money

Now that I've really gotten my feet good and wet writing for eHow, I like to take a little time now and then to update articles. How so, you may ask? After giving a new article a couple months, I check in on them with page views and earnings. To do this, I go to my list of articles and click the views tab once. This will sort them, starting with the lowest views at the top. 

These are the articles that need attention. Perhaps I chose a keyword with too much competition, or not enough search traffic. I will pull each up, studying the keywords used, and use the Google Keyword Tool to find similar, but better, keywords. 

I try to shoot for 2 or 3 keywords per article, any more than that seems to water them down and give strange ads. By playing around with these, I've seen dud articles suddenly take off and add an increase to my residual income. I haven't added any new articles in a few months now, but I have seen my income rise each month using this process. 

Also, I focus on articles with low views but decent earnings considering. I try not to veer off the keywords too much on these, because something is right. It's just the page rank that is suffering. Promotion of those articles, via social book marks, seem to help with that. Anything to get those articles out there!

eHow is a fantastic tool for my journey to become a stay at home mom. The residual income comes in super handy each month. The sky is the limit, the more you put into eHow, the more you will get out of it. 

Writing more articles is key to making more money, but at times it's best to take a step back, and fix the ones that aren't doing so well. A few minutes work doing this can reap huge rewards in the long run.

eHow Sweeps

eHow has been a godsend for me for extra money. Any US citizen can sign up, write articles, and generate residual income. Simple, right? Well, not necessarily so. I've been a member since July 08, and I've only lost a few eHow articles in sweeps. And honestly, those should have went. They came across as spammy, didn't meet the how-to criteria, or were poorly written. All we can do is learn from our mistakes.

There are several guides available to help somebody become a better eHow writer, to increase income, and to avoid getting articles deleted. This guide, by one of eHow's top earners, WriterGig, can help get the most money from each article. It has proven invaluable to my own time on eHow, what a fantastic investment!

This free guide, written by a well known presence in the eHow forums, shows how to not only write a good eHow article, but to make sure it is in the proper format to avoid deletion in eHow sweeps. I strongly suggest reading both to get the most out of your time on eHow.

So what is proper format, you may ask? It's actually fairly simple. It has to be a straight forward how-to article. The writing doesn't have to be fantabulous, but of course that helps! Each step should be in a logical, chronological order, and show a specific action. Many suggest starting each step with a verb.

Proper spelling and grammar are also of utmost importance. Using spell check should be done on every article. Once published, you should take another look and read aloud, to ensure grammar is used properly. You can go back and edit if necessary.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Using good keywords is also important for the value of your articles. There's several different theories on the best way to go about this, but using Google's Keyword Tool and clicking CPC (cost per click) can show you the best paying keywords. Really, anything above a dollar can be good. Plus the Google Keyword Tool will show the amount of searches per keyword. Going for keywords that are heavily searched, say above 10,000 searches per month, will probably have stiff competition. So a good approach is to go for keywords with less competition, to ensure you get a fair amount of traffic.

eHow can provide a nice little residual income in time, but it takes a while to build up a library to achieve success. Working at it a little bit every day will have big rewards in the end. If you lose some eHow articles in the sweeps, don't let it get you down or turn you off to eHow. It happens to some of the best authors. Learn from the mistakes and keep writing.

On to Infobarrel

Well, I was very excited to apply with Suite 101, but my application was denied. I think I need to strengthen my writing a little more and will probably apply with them at some point in the future. They do only accept 20% of applicants, so I really need to get a little stronger before trying again.

However. For now I am giving Infobarrel a shot. It utilizes Google AdSense as a means of payment, offering a nice share of ad revenue. The writing style seems easy to work with, and the residual income will be much appreciated. Every little bit helps when trying to become a stay at home mom. Plus, having multiple streams of residuals is always a good bet. 

I plan to go through my eHow library to spawn ideas for Infobarrel articles. Not to copy them, just for brainstorming purposes. Their writing also does not have to be in the how-to format, which opens up a lot of possibilities to write about. This is an exciting step for me, definitely a way to broaden the writing horizons! On the bright side, I had to write two sample articles to apply on Suite 101, so my first two submissions are already taken care of. 

I'll keep this updated with progress with Infobarrel. I do think this will be a great opportunity in my journey to become a stay at home mome.

Infobarrel does have a referral program, so if you are interested in writing for Infobarrel please check out this link. 

Expanding writing skills and trying Suite 101

After doing a little research, I'm finding people on WAHM.com are saying Suite 101 has higher residual income than eHow. There is an application process, and active editors involved. Eh, things could be worse. I like the idea of editors being involved, unlike eHow, to provide higher quality writing. I'm still somewhat new to writing online, but have learned a lot about SEO and article marketing along the way. I think the next logical step from eHow must be to Suite 101! 

Some of the WAHMs on the message board were posting their numbers of articles compared with the montly earning between the two sites. It was a huge difference, some of them three to four times as much residual income from Suite 101! Since there is no cost to apply, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. This could very well the the means to becoming a stay at home mom!

Straying from the how-to format is seriously going to stretch and improve my writing. It's ridiculously easy to put a how-to together into actionable steps. I've just ran somewhat dry on ideas I can do that with. I have "the list" but just have been having trouble adapting ideas I have into articles. Remove the how-to and actionable step issue, and voila, I have tons of articles ready to go for Suite 101. Problem solved!

They do have a set amount of articles they want written, but it's fairly small. I believe it's 10 articles per three months. When I was going strong with eHow, I was churning out 15 per week, so I know that won't be an issue. Obviously, it would not be wise to just copy the eHow articles to put over on Suite 101, as this hurts search engine ranking. Plus, I believe they frown on exact copies, as well. However, I plan to use the same byline, so I can modify existing articles for use on their site. 

I'm really excited about this opportunity. If I spend two hours each morning on writing, my odds of becoming a stay at home mom raise substantially. No more scrambling to find a babysitter for me, hopefully! Wish me luck!

Update on eHow earnings

I am taking a good hard look at eHow, and how much money I am currently making from my efforts there. To date, I have made almost $750 in just over a year writing for eHow. I estimate that I spent around 82 hours in my time writing there, which would make about $9.14 per hour for my work. Here's the catch, once the work is done, the earnings keep coming in, so even if I never write another article there my hourly wage is only going up. Not bad for passive income for a stay at home mom!

Obviously, the way to raise this even more is to churn out more articles. Easier said than done. I've mentioned before keeping a running log of article ideas to draw from in moments of writer's block, or to just keep on paper before I can forget. Then there's the issue of time. What stay at home mom has enough of that? There's always laundry that needs done, always dishes in the sink, always life in the way. I'm making it my goal to FIND time to write more articles, and up my passive income.

Another important thing. You can never know enough about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It's not good enough to just throw it out there and hope your writing just strikes it rich. If you are counting on this for another stream of income, make the most of it! Use Google's Keyword Analysis Tool and find the keywords that are searched for and have a decent pay per click. I was going about this wrong in the beginning, going for keywords with tens of thousands of searches AND a very high CPC. Those keywords often have very heavy competition, which means it will be hard to get on the front page of searches in search engines. 

Finding keywords with a couple thousand searches per month and a decent payout (between $1 and $5) means there is a demand for the subject, but not so much competition that your article gets buried in thousands of other search results. A little bit of homework in this area goes a very long way with passive income!

How does that work with "the list?" Finding which keywords to use for your subject is tricky. It may involve wording that you're not very comfortable with, which can show through in your writing. Take the time to MAKE it work, to make it sound natural and you will see much better rewards in your writing. Go through "The List" from time to time and do your homework, and take notes. If you think BBQ is going to provide better results than Barbeque, take note. It's the little differences like this that can make a huge difference in the long run in passive income. 

When using passive income and writing online as a means to becoming a stay at home mom, you've really got to stay on top of things. Read through everything you can get your hands on to ensure you are finding the best way to maximize your time, thus maxmizing your income.

Making time to make money.

I'm going over my list of articles to write on eHow today. My eHow income is steadily rising, but I sure would be happier if it was higher. The best way to increase this income is of course to write more! I have my list handy to start working on this today. Finding time is my biggest challenge. I have to make time for this if I am ever to become a stay at home mom! 

Today I am hoping to focus on writing recipe articles, as they are quick and easy. They are often not the best earners, but mostly steady. There's another website, Type-O Mom, who also pays for articles online, and I'm hoping to find time this evening to check it out as a possible income stream. The more streams coming in with income the better, in the online world. Well, if time was not a factor, I suppose the same could be true in the real world, too!

Passive income is a fantastic idea. Although there is nothing passive about getting it off the ground and running. It takes hours of work to go into the perfect article, researching to double check facts, keyword research, photo selections, etc. But for the amount of time you put in and the continual reward for it, it's the perfect fit for a stay at home mom. This is where taking notes and keeping a running list comes in handy. It can help save time overall. I often spend and hour or two just researching keywords on article ideas and jot the info down along with the list, so my "job" for that article is already started. So when I do have a free hour or two, I'm already half done.

So today my goal is to write at least three recipe articles. I will probably lean toward some holiday recipes to give them a little time to mature before the holidays arrive. I already covered a few last year, and they did perform well. Here's to hoping one will strike it rich in the long run with lots of passive income!