It is the second last day of the month and I am determined to meet my self-imposed goal of writing 100 articles this month. I got up at 5 a.m. and drove M. to his part-time job at McDonald's, which Mark usually does, so that I could start the day early. I came home and wrote 7 articles and all were fairly decent articles, with six of them requiring some research, so it was some intense writing time, but productive and fun and then...I ran out of ideas. So now I am here with 10 or so articles to go before the goal is met and I am stuck!
But no fear (not that anyone but me would be worried!), tomorrow is another day and I have a babysitter coming so that I can get a few small but important errands done and finish this January article-writing blitz. Hopefully by tomorrow, I will have a brain full of fantastic ideas and can churn the words out quickly.
There are two articles that I have to wait until tomorrow to write anyway, so that just leaves me to think of 8 or so more brilliant ideas. At this point, I'd take far less than brilliant ones!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Update
The writing this month has been interesting with attempting to reach my goal of writing 100 articles. It's amazing how much the pennies start to snowball once you have a library of articles, but it does become difficult to come up with topics for articles. 100 in one month is a lot! I am at 66 articles so far with only one week left to go. I am going to push really hard to try to reach my goal just to be able to say to myself that I've done it.
It will be really interesting to add up the pennies at the end of the month though. I also have chosen my writing goal for February and that is to finish my book and submit it in e-book format on Kindle. That will also be a tough challenge to meet, but I think that I can do it.
When I was not setting writing goals for myself, I wasn't accomplishing much of anything, so the goals are the way to go!
With just one week left to go for the 100 article challenge, please feel free to leave me any ideas for articles in the comments section. I'm getting desperate!!! Thanks!
It will be really interesting to add up the pennies at the end of the month though. I also have chosen my writing goal for February and that is to finish my book and submit it in e-book format on Kindle. That will also be a tough challenge to meet, but I think that I can do it.
When I was not setting writing goals for myself, I wasn't accomplishing much of anything, so the goals are the way to go!
With just one week left to go for the 100 article challenge, please feel free to leave me any ideas for articles in the comments section. I'm getting desperate!!! Thanks!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
January 2011 Writing Goals
I am learning the effectiveness of making goals public. The risk of public humiliation (okay not quite, but you get the idea!) is very motivating!
I have discovered this by writing a series of articles following my progress on my 2011 goal of de-cluttering my house. Making these public has kept me on track even on days when I don't FEEL like doing the work I need to do to accomplish my goal.
Having said that, I am going to translate that into another area and make my writing goal for this month public as well. Just a few days before the New Year started, I started writing articles on Triond. I am experimenting with this online writing thing and want to see how Triond fares compared to some of the other article writing sites. To that end, I need to write enough articles to get a true picture, so my goal for January is to write 100 articles on Triond.
I have this geeky little chart where I fill in a square every time one of the articles I submit is accepted for publication. I took this picture of it a few days ago and have filled in another 9 or so squares since then.
I am almost on track for completing my 100 articles and I think I can push myself to get this done, especially now that I have to be accountable for my goal.
I have discovered this by writing a series of articles following my progress on my 2011 goal of de-cluttering my house. Making these public has kept me on track even on days when I don't FEEL like doing the work I need to do to accomplish my goal.
Having said that, I am going to translate that into another area and make my writing goal for this month public as well. Just a few days before the New Year started, I started writing articles on Triond. I am experimenting with this online writing thing and want to see how Triond fares compared to some of the other article writing sites. To that end, I need to write enough articles to get a true picture, so my goal for January is to write 100 articles on Triond.
I have this geeky little chart where I fill in a square every time one of the articles I submit is accepted for publication. I took this picture of it a few days ago and have filled in another 9 or so squares since then.
I am almost on track for completing my 100 articles and I think I can push myself to get this done, especially now that I have to be accountable for my goal.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Surveylion
One of my little online earning experiments was to try to make some money doing surveys. The #1 reason I wanted to try this is that I actually love some types of surveys. I love it when you are given the opportunity to preview a print ad, commercial, television episodes, new products, etc. and give your opinion. I want my opinion to matter because after all, I am a consumer and I want there to be good quality products available for my family and have a say in that. In the past, I have participated in panels for free, so for me to possibly make some money at this is a bonus.
Let me say that when it comes to taking surveys online, there are more scams that legitimate companies and you need to be very careful. Also, many companies only accept American participants, so as a Canadian, I had to do some research before I selected the three companies I decided to sign up with. Most importantly, NEVER PAY TO SIGN UP WITH A SURVEY COMPANY! I cannot say whether the sites that require you to pay make you money or not because I have never and will never sign up with them. Many sites out there will try to get you to pay them with promises of large earning cheques in your future. Never do this! The survey company should be making their money off the marketers and companies that come to them for help with gathering helpful research, not from survey participants.
I decided not to include any of my survey earnings in my monthly totals until I had the money in my hands because I really wanted to be sure that they were legitimate companies before I recommended them here.
The first such company for me to receive a payout from and also the one I have enjoyed the most because their surveys have been a lot of fun and the easiest by far to complete is called Surveylion. They accept Canadians (actually I think they may even be a Canadian company) and they do not have a minimum payout. The two other companies each have a minimum payout that you need to reach before you can request payment, but with Surveylion, you can request your payment whenever you wish. You can imagine my delight when this cheque came in the mail for me!
$9!!! This was for completing 3 surveys, each of which took around 15 minutes to complete. Not bad really! Being paid $12 an hour for something you can do at home once your kids are in bed is definitely worth it, however, the truth is, there is not even an hour's worth of work to do each month from this site as they only e-mail survey opportunities once in a while and you may not qualify for all surveys. Overall though, a pretty good addition to my online earnings. I already have another $6 in my account there, but will wait until closer to the end of the month to request a cheque mailed in case it increases again.
If you would like an invitation to join Surveylion's consumer panel, e-mail me at oursevenblessings@gmail.com.
I will do a review of the other 2 survey companies I am with when I get my first payment from each of them in order to ensure that they are legitimate companies.
Let me say that when it comes to taking surveys online, there are more scams that legitimate companies and you need to be very careful. Also, many companies only accept American participants, so as a Canadian, I had to do some research before I selected the three companies I decided to sign up with. Most importantly, NEVER PAY TO SIGN UP WITH A SURVEY COMPANY! I cannot say whether the sites that require you to pay make you money or not because I have never and will never sign up with them. Many sites out there will try to get you to pay them with promises of large earning cheques in your future. Never do this! The survey company should be making their money off the marketers and companies that come to them for help with gathering helpful research, not from survey participants.
I decided not to include any of my survey earnings in my monthly totals until I had the money in my hands because I really wanted to be sure that they were legitimate companies before I recommended them here.
The first such company for me to receive a payout from and also the one I have enjoyed the most because their surveys have been a lot of fun and the easiest by far to complete is called Surveylion. They accept Canadians (actually I think they may even be a Canadian company) and they do not have a minimum payout. The two other companies each have a minimum payout that you need to reach before you can request payment, but with Surveylion, you can request your payment whenever you wish. You can imagine my delight when this cheque came in the mail for me!
$9!!! This was for completing 3 surveys, each of which took around 15 minutes to complete. Not bad really! Being paid $12 an hour for something you can do at home once your kids are in bed is definitely worth it, however, the truth is, there is not even an hour's worth of work to do each month from this site as they only e-mail survey opportunities once in a while and you may not qualify for all surveys. Overall though, a pretty good addition to my online earnings. I already have another $6 in my account there, but will wait until closer to the end of the month to request a cheque mailed in case it increases again.
If you would like an invitation to join Surveylion's consumer panel, e-mail me at oursevenblessings@gmail.com.
I will do a review of the other 2 survey companies I am with when I get my first payment from each of them in order to ensure that they are legitimate companies.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
December 2010 Online Earnings
To recap for those who are newly following my blog or those who don't remember, in September, I began writing online and my grand total earnings for that month was a whopping 25 cents! Yes, one whole shiny quarter was what I had to show for my 19 articles, but I was not deterred! In October, I earned 81 cents more. November was the month that I decided as an experiment to see if I could really make some actual money with this online writing thing and began an experiment in learning how to achieve this. My total earnings in November was $8.12. I was so happy to be able to have a dollar sign in the total amount! November was a month where I was learning about SEO (search engine optimization), monetizing through ads, and branching out. I was optimistic that December would be an even better month for earnings, though a more difficult one to find time for writing with my husband away for part of the month, 2 of my kids having birthdays, and of course, Christmas!
RedGage, a site I had discovered in October, turned out to be my biggest earner. I like the community over there and was able to get another picture chosen for a feature as well as having a blog I wrote featured. When something is chosen as a feature on RedGage, you receive a bonus as well as getting paid for views, so that is where the real earning potential is. The big earner though was winning one of their daily contests, which pays TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS!!!
A few days ago, I also started writing on Triond, which allows me to first publish my articles there and then I can publish some or all of the same articles on Bukisa and put links to those articles on RedGage. I am finally starting to figure this online writing thing out! It is too early to say whether Triond will be worth it or not as my articles were just published in the past two days, so tune in for the January earnings summary and we'll see how that goes.
My December totals are as follows:
RedGage $33.22
Bukisa $3.41
Surveys $9.00
Triond $0.02
December 2010 total: $45.65
Considering that I started just four months earlier making 25 cents a month, I would say that $45 is heading in the right direction. I can say that I expect January's earnings to be considerably higher. With 2011, I plan to put this online earning experiment in high gear and I will share with you what I learn.
(My next post will be about Surveyl*** and some other similar sites I have tried.)
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