The Green Ninja

Constant Content Challenge Results: Keeping the Faith

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:48:47 +0000

Well folks, it’s that time. A couple of weeks ago I challenged all of you to add at least 7 article to Constant Content and wait it out and see what sold. I don’t know about you guys, but I can tell you what I sold.

NOTHING.

I’m not bitter. Quite the contrary. I intend to keep uploading articles to Constant Content until I start selling them which will hopefully cause some sort of snowball effect to make money online writing. I’m tired of writing $15 articles for a certain website and I am trying to find a balance of writing for upfront pay and writing for potentially more money at other sties.

I have decided to continue writing my measly articles for up front pay, while saving my afternoons for working on my blogs and articles for other sites such as Suite101, CC and eHow. Hopefully, by the end of the year, this strategy will pay off.

By they way, a big THANKS to all you guys who signed up through my link. Rock on!

What about you guys? Sold anything yet?

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Constant Content Update

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:27:52 +0000

So it’s been almost a week since I wrote my post about Constant Content. I don’t quite have all seven articles up yet for my challenge, but I’m well on my way. The review time is taking a little longer than I expected, but it is definitely within reason.

I have 3 articles that have already been reviewed and are posted to the website. One of them I wrote in response to a public request for articles about website promotion. The other two were just articles that I wrote about various subjects in which I am well versed. There are others which are waiting for review at this time. I have already noticed that articles you write for public requests are reviewed faster than the others.

Nothing has sold as of yet, but I am confident that by the end of the month, I will have sold at least one of the 7 articles.

I have found that the interface is very easy to use and even though my first article came back with an error, it was an easy fix. ( I left out an ‘a’) My experience so far has been good and I would recommend Constant Content to anyone.

I will be out of town for most of the rest of the week. I’m taking my husband to see Revered Horton Heat in New Orleans at the House of Blues. It was his Valentines Day present! We’re both really looking forward to a few days away and to the apartment where we’re staying that’s in the heart of the French Quarter. Hopefully, by the time I return, there will be sales in my account!

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Join My Constant Content Challenge

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:45:49 +0000

Yesterday I took the plunge and created an author account at Constant Content. I am growing bored with Demand Studios and I am looking at other alternatives to enhance my income streams. After checking out a few forums and blogs, I decided to give CC a shot. Here the 411.

You go to the Constant Content website and create an account. Once your account is active, you can upload articles that you have written. Articles need to be in a .doc or .txt format and in 12 pt. Times New Roman.

There is an actual in house editor and the word on the net is that he is STRICT.

Which is good.

Why? Because the site only allows top notch content and top notch content goes for a bigger price tag.

When you upload your article, you will need to include the word count and how much you would like to charge for 3 different kinds of licenses (usage, unique and full rights). You can check out the guidelines for each one on their website and also suggested prices.

When you set your prices, keep in mind that Constant Content keeps 35% of the sale price. If you want to make $45 from a 600 word article, you should price it at around $70. It’s entirely up to you what to charge. That’s the nice part.

There is a list of recently sold articles on the website which is very useful. You can look at the topics that are selling and how much the articles are going for. There is also a list of requested articles that you can choose to submit. If your article is selected, you will be paid for it. If not, it will go up for public sale on the site.

The minimum payout is only $5, so I thought, “Hey self, you would be an idiot if you didn’t try this”. So last night I submitted my first article and today I submitted my second. The first was just an article I wrote – the second I wrote in response to a public request. Be aware that the review process can take several days.

Here’s the Challenge

I intend to submit one article per day to Constant Content for one week and see how much money I make by the end of the month. I would like as many of you as possible to join me. The link I am providing you is an affiliate link, so if you sign up under me, I will get 5% of the profits from the CC side. You don’t lose out on anything. Don’t be greedy. Help a ninja out.

Let me know in the comments section if you want to join the challenge. I will do a feature blog post about the person who earns the most money by the end of the month by submitting one article per day for an entire week. (7 days) Good luck!

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Another Look at Writing for Helium

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:25:27 +0000

I’ve been writing a little bit for Helium since the site first began and honestly, I collect a payment from there every couple of months and forget about it. However, recent developments have caused me to take another look.

As most of you know, in order to receive your payments, you must do a minimal amount of “rating” each month on the site. Though I still don’t agree with this policy, it does help to keep me active. You are given two articles to read and you have to rate the one that you think is the best.

ANYWAY, a couple of weeks ago I was checking out the Marketplace section of the website. If you are going to make any real money from Helium, this is the place to do it. I saw an article title that was available that I could easily write. The payment, if my article was chosen, was $24 and it had to be 500 words in length. I wrote the article and it was accepted.

Needless to say, I enjoyed writing this article much more than I enjoyed writing how to articles for Demand at $15 a pop. But the fun didn’t end there. A couple of weeks after my article was published, I got an email from a Helium project manager saying that the client who bought my article was interested in making a team of writers who would be writing at least 2 articles for them per month. I readily accepted.

I logged into my account and there were several article titles to choose from. I chose mine and wrote my article. The interface was very easy to use and I was delighted. I already have 3 more articles in my queue to write.

But wait.

There’s more.

Today I got an email asking if I would like to be among Helium’s first how-to writers. Apparently they are launching a huge how-to section on their site. The payment is $1.00 per 1000 page views. You can suggest titles or choose from the list. I decided to give it a try.

The coolest part about the process is the user interface. I could easily add in “zones” such as a list of my other articles, polls, photos, or even an Amazon widget. I could also add a google adsense block and provide my own PID. Currently my article is waiting for approval, but as soon as it is posted, I will update with a link so that you can see what it looks like.

(UPDATE: Here’s the How to be a Good Girlfriend article.)

I currently make around $15.00 a month just from page views of my Helium articles. However, I don’t have that many on the site and almost all of them were written before I knew anything about SEO. Some articles have made next to nothing and I have one that has made over $75.00. Most of them are somewhere in between.

The reason I chose the article title that I did:

I used Micro Niche Finder to find out that it gets lots of searches per month with very little competition. I know with the proper SEO, this article will make me money. I won’t bother writing articles that are not going to be well read. More money- less time.

What do you think? Have any of you used Helium lately?

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How to Make Money with a Blog- OIO Publisher

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:09:03 +0000

You all may have noticed the advertising spots on the right sidebar of my blog. A couple of months ago, I read about OIO publisher over at Felicia’s blog and thought that it might be worth checking out. There are lots of ways to find out how to make money with a blog – but private pubishing is one area that I had never really checked into. I’ve used Google Adsense, affilate partners such as Amazon and Clickbank, a little bit of paid posting and various other methods to make money with my blogs, but this was something I wanted to check out.

OIO Publisher is a great little script (or plug in) that you can use with your wordpress blogs. You purchase the scrip one time and then upload it to any or all of your blogs. You then go to the settings area and choose which types of ads you would like to sell. For now, I decided to stick with the simple 125X125 banner ads that you see at the side, but you can choose other banner ads, text link ads or even paid posts.

Once you set up your ad zones, you then go over to the OIO Publisher site place your site and information into their marketplace. When advertisers are browsing the marketplace to find places to put their ads, your site will be there. You set the prices for each of your blogs and ad types, so you are in control of how much money you can make. If you would like, you can even upgrade to a premium listing so that your blogs will stand out to publishers.

Another way to for people to buy advertising space on your blog is to visit your blog and click on one of the Advertise Here spaces. The process is totally automated! They fill in some information, upload their ad and make a payment. The ad then appears on your page. Easy, right?

So far, here are the drawbacks that I have encountered:

I have yet to sell any ads. I have not, however, paid for a premium listing, which is something that I am looking into for the new year since I have added this plug in to several of my sites. Also, the sites that I have listed do not get a ton of traffic yet, so that may be a factor in folks wanting to advertise with me.
The default “advertise here” space is not very attractive. You can see an example of the default settings at my laptop bag site. I got around this issue rather easily by going over to this site and made a cute little banner in just a couple of minutes. It’s easy and it’s free!
There is a learning curve in using this script. However the site is full of information and has great customer support. It took me a couple of days to figure it out, but now I can operate it like a champ.

And on the plus side:

There is plenty of money to be made. Let’s say you have a 4 blogs. You can place 4 little 125×125 ad spaces on them each and charge $15 per month for that ad space. That’s an extra $240 per month – from an entirely automated process. Pretty freakin awesome!
More blogs = more money.
You can use replacements in ad spaces that have not been sold – like the Human Rewriter button over there. This way, that is not wasted space. And if someone wants to order articles though my Human Rewriter link, I will make a commission. Once the ad space is bought, my default ad is replaced with the paid ad.
There are a ton of features that I have not even explored yet.

If you are a blogger who thinks that OIO Publisher may be for you, you can order though my link and save $10 through the month of December by using my coupon code : FAWKES-NINJA

If you have any questions about OIO, leave them in the comments area and I’ll do my best to answer.

Note: If you are reading this post after December 09, just leave me a comment and I’ll give you the coupon code for the current month.

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I Quit My Job – My 100th Post!

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:33:13 +0000

This week, I officially quit my day job. WOOHOO!!!!! I cannot express how excited I am about leaving my career and beginning to work from home.

Starting in January, I will be freelance writing and blogging full time. The move has been a slow process that started at the beginning of this year. It was my goal to be proficient enough at blogging for money and have enough freelance writing clients that I could replace my salary as a full time massage therapist.

I”m ready!

I have been experimenting with different types of blogs and since I’m a big proponent of not putting all of your eggs in one basket, I am learning which ones work for me and are the best and most profitable use of my time. I have learned how to use software to speed along my process and when the best times are to outsource. Of course, I have also learned a good deal about SEO, as well.

I want to thank each and every one of you who has encouraged me along the way. It’s been an exciting and eventful year and next year is going to be even better.

In the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing some of the new things that I have learned, as well as letting you know how my Google Adwords experiment went.

Until then, enjoy your holiday season. I know I am.

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Are Cyberhub Article Writers Sexist?

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:18:14 +0000

One of the yucky parts of creating your own websites is the process of getting backlinks. An easy way to do this is article marketing. Create articles about your website subject, include links back to your website and submit them to article directories.

Although I do write for a living, sometimes it’s easier to outsource these types of articles so that I can focus my time on tasks that no one can do but me. Usually, I buy articles from Cyberhub. I have written about them in the past and have generally been pleased with the articles that I receive from them. They are very low cost and can mostly be posted without correction.

I do, however, highly suggest that you read the articles over before you post them anywhere. I have come to notice that even though their FAQ states that most of their writesrs are from the U.S., Canada and U.K., some of them are not. And some of those are decidedly confused and befuddled by women.

A couple of months ago, I ordered some articles about ladies laptop bags to promote this laptog bag site. After reading the articles they sent, I spent several minutes cleaning of my laptop screen where I had spit my coffee all over it.

Wow, I thought. Someone has mommy issues. Surely these articles are a joke.

Lest you think I am being a silly girl, here are a couple of quotes:

Good thing that laptop bag makers have considered the growing percentage of female users of laptops. Yes they known to operate one since hello? The way to open it is plug that rectangle thing to the socket then push that round thing until the screen lights up and there you go!

Fashion laptop bags are considered to be women’s extension of their cosmetic kit. Did you know that some actually buy the whole package of these sleeves that they can turn into their little pretty bags for their make-ups, pens, phones and what other electronic pink gizmos they have brought over the previous months.

And then there’s this one that a friend on The Niche Blogger forum received:

“Even women have the right to find the most suitable insurance for themselves.”

But they weren’t joking. They were not good enough to rewrite myself, so I decided to give the Cyberhub guarantee a try. I used the contact form on the site and informed them that in no way could I ever use these articles because they are so sexist. I asked that they be re-written. I didn’t get a response to my query, however I did get brand new articles in my email box a couple of days later at no charge.

Honestly, I would have rather seen the writer fired than to have gotten new articles.

But that’s just me.

Aside from the sexism, I have been very pleased with Cyberhub. For the most part, they deliver decent articles at very low cost.

So that’s your warning for today:

Always, always read over articles that you have purchased before posting them elsewhere.

Has anyone else experienced this with Cyberhub? What are your thoughts?

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It’s Flipping Madness!

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:19:31 +0000

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that I had my first attempt at flipping a blog. First of all, let me say that Flippa made the process really simple.

Did it sell?

No.

But at least now I know how to do it. AND, when your blog doesn’t sell, Flippa immediately puts it up for private bids for a month. That means that now anyone can email me and make me an offer for the site. As of today, it is still up for sell, but who knows!

In other news…

I love getting mail from Google. Especially when it’s a check from Google Adsense. However, this week I got a $100.00 coupon to use for Google Adwords. I have never delved into PPC, but as with everything else, I thought I might as well jump in. Especially when I get to do it with someone else’s money!

I have set up 2 ad campaigns that will run for 5 days or so. I’ll let you know how it goes and what I learn.

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Thank You to RedGage and eZinearticles!

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:15:38 +0000

I was checking my email today and I saw that I had a couple of new comments at RedGage. So, I clicked on over to the site and got a nice little suprise!

For those of you who don’t know, RedGage is a website that allows you to post links to your blogs and articles and make a little money from the page views that they generate. Every day they give out a few bonuses for articles, photos, videos, etc. that they select to appear on their front page.

Today, one of my article was selected! So, I got a bonus of $5.50 into my account.

Hey, don’t laugh…it adds up!

If you do decide to join, I need to go ahead and warn you, they are doing some site maintenance this month, so the site is loading pretty slowly. Other than that though, it’s a win/win situation.

Also, today I got an October Performance Report from ezinearticles. The report listed my most viewed articles for all time and for the month of October. It also listed how many clickthroughs I got from each article. You can get most of that information by browsing your account at ezinearticles, but what impressed me was that in addition to that info, I also got a list of keywords that people used to find my most viewed articles.

This is like gold.

I can now create other articles based on those keywords and link them back to my site as well!

By the way, my 55 articles there have been viewed almost 9,000 times since the beginning of the year, resulting in 1,349 click thoughs to my websites.

I’m no good at statistics, but I think that’s a pretty damn good ratio.

In other news, the auction ends on Saturday for my first website flip. I’m am nervously awaiting the outcome and trying not to compusively check my stats. So far, the auction has had over 70 views but only one person is “watching” it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

You might notice that I have created a facebook fan page for this blog. There is a widget in the right sidebar that allows you to follow me…please do!

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Flipping a Website – My First Attempt

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:20:07 +0000

Since I’ve been blogging for a year now, I decided that it’s time that I learn a little about flipping a website. My mindset is this: if it sells, great – if not, it’s a learning process and I will learn what I can do better next time.

I have decided to use flippa.com to sell my site. It costs $19 to list your site and their step by step process is actually quite easy. I also had the advantage of a tutorial on blog flipping from The Niche Blogger. This was extremely helpful in me getting the blog ready to flip.

As far as what happens when the blog sells, we’ll see. The tutorial shows me how to transfer it myself, but if I can sell it at the BIN price, I want to outsource someone to move it for me.

Click here to see the site listing on flippa!

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