PFI Weekly Updates - November 18 (2008)

photo credit: OlivanderWelcome to PFI and the weekly updates - The eHow edition. Instead of talking about the struggling economy today, I wanted to focus this post on ways to generate extra income from writing. I have mentioned it many times in the past, but I currently write sponsored post articles on PFI for SocialSpark, PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, and LinkWorth. Someday, I plan to stop writing these types of posts and focus strictly on passive income opportunities. In the meantime, I write these types of posts to generate some cash flow until I can become more established in the blogging community. I am putting this extra cash away into a short-term fund that I can use in case of an emergency due to the weak economy.

One new and exciting passive income stream that I have been focusing on is writing articles on eHow. I believe that writing articles on eHow provides another opportunity to create residual income. It is more in line with my long-term income generation goals, when comparing it to SocialSpark or PayPerPost. I currently have 12 articles on eHow, but am planning to increase my output in the near term.

Recently, there have been many discussions between fellow bloggers debating which is a better investment of your time - Writing articles for eHow vs. Writing articles on your blog. Check out the comments over on Smart Passive Income. It seems that most people commenting are leaning towards writing articles on eHow, but there are many different reasons why. I also had several comments to a recent post of mine called - eHow - A Passive Income Stream. Several bloggers also questioned why I would write articles on eHow when I could have more long-term success writing these articles on my blog. Here are a few of the comments -

Curt wrote - If you are planning to write consistently, then blogging is by far a much better way to make money because you can build a larger and larger reader base.

Blogging Banks wrote - …You are correct that ehow will probably get you more exposure in the short term. But then with your own blog you have much more control over advertising methods compared to ehow. For example if you used a CPM type ad network where you are paid $1.00 for every 1000 page views in addition to adsense while still getting the number of page views you might have made more $$….

I agree with both Curt and Blogging Banks in their comments. I believe that long-term, writing articles on my blog instead of eHow is a much better opportunity. Where I disagree with these comments is that I can write articles that are not related to personal finance on eHow. For example, I recently wrote an eHow article called - How to Make Allergen Free Pumpkin Bread. My oldest son has severe food allergies and I have a recipe that I wanted to share to other parents who are in a similar situation. This is a post that I would not include on PFI, but am using eHow as the medium to deliver this information. That is where I find eHow useful for writing articles.

Another benefit of writing for eHow is the page ranks it gets within search engines. Take my article mentioned above for making allergen free pumpkin bread. A few weeks ago, I did a search on Google looking for the following key words - ’allergen free pumpkin bread’. I was looking for someone else who may have had this recipe. I really didn’t find a lot, but found a recipe that we altered with allergen free products and I submitted my post to eHow. Today, if I type in the following key words - ’allergen free pumpkin bread’, or even ’allergen pumpkin bread’, I have the top rank on Google. If I wrote this post on my own blog, I don’t believe I would have gotten the same rank as quickly. Please note, I don’t believe I would ever get rich or even make a penny off of this post as it only appeals to a small niche of readers.

Carnivals
November 17, 2008 - I had an article included in the Carnival of Personal Finance #179 - Smile Edition hosted by MoneyNing. I would like to thank MoneyNing for including my post - Top 10 Reasons we are NOT Frugal.

November 13, 2008 - I participated in the 22nd finance fiesta! the catching up edition hosted by Financial Wellness Project. A very special thanks to Financial Wellness Project for including my post - Balancing your time vs. Saving Money.

November 12, 2008 - I participated in the Money Hacks Carnival No. 38: Aviation Month edition hosted by Taking Charge. A very special thanks to Taking Charge for including my post - Identifying a Bad Financial Habit.

November 11, 2008 - I participated in the Festival of Frugality~The Veteran’s Day Edition hosted by On a Quest To Be Debt Free…. A very special thanks to On a Quest To Be Debt Free… for including my post - Balancing your time vs. Saving Money.

eHow articles I liked this week
I thought I would change things up here this week and provide a list of eHow articles I found that I really liked. All of these articles were written by some of my eHow friends. Here are some of my favorites from the past week -

1 - TFMiser (aka - Tight Fisted Miser) wrote How to Recieve the Wachovia Bank $25 Referral Bonus.

2 - Abigail, eHow Guide writes - How to Convert a Recipe into a eHow Article.

3 - Julie Mayfield (aka - The Family CEO) wrote - How to Earn Money by Doing Your Christmas Shopping Online. I always love to find new ideas on making money!

4 - WriterGig writes - How to Take Inexpensive Family Vacations.

5 - TheWriterGuy (aka - Smart Passive Income) writes - How to Save Money on Christmas Gifts.

If you have an eHow account, or decide you may want to open one up, come over and add me as a friend. My eHow name is - pfincome.

Have an excellent week!

Tagged as: Weekly Updates