How much time do you spend promoting your online content? Do you use social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon to help grow your passive income streams? What about content you have published on EzineArticles or your beloved eHow or Info Barrel articles? Chances are you have probably spent some amount of time marketing your product to others on the web, even if you don’t know it.
Getting your product out in front of your customers is critical if you are trying to make money online. Once you understand the importance of marketing your content, the question then becomes – How much time and effort should you spend promoting your product? This is a critical question to ask yourself if you are in the business of creating passive income, since time is so important.
Promote or Create?
Several hours of grunt work are usually required upfront in order to build a solid passive income stream. Once that initial work is completed, a good passive income stream will typically only require a few hours of ongoing maintenance. While the levels of maintenance each income source requires may vary, the ideal scenario is to spend as little time as possible going forward while continuing to maximizing your returns.
So at what point are you suppose to stop promoting your old content and start creating new material? This is a question that I struggle with every day. Each scenario is different, but it can be difficult drawing the line and letting your older material market itself.
The important point here is to continually review where your time is being allocated to ensure you are maximizing your most valuable asset. If you can’t realize when it is time to cut the cord and move on, your passive income business will never grow.
Are the Benefits Worth it? – An eHow Case Study
If you spend anytime on eHow, then you already know that they have a forums section available to their writers. This is a place where eHow members can communicate with each other to find out useful information. It is also a place where writers can self promote their eHow articles to other members.
I have been an eHow writer for well over a year now and have built a monthly recurring income stream of over $200. In that time, there is one thing that I have spent 0 hours on – promoting my articles on the eHow forums. I have been asked several times by other eHow writers – why don’t I spend more time on the forums? While I think the forums can be helpful if you are trying to find out what is going on with eHow, I just don’t believe promoting my content there is worth the time.
Maybe I would have a $300 passive income stream if I decided to spend time promoting my eHow articles on their forums? But at what cost would this come? And would this increase of income become sustainable? These are all questions that I have asked myself and based my decisions on. I would rather spend my time writing more eHow articles then using it to attract other writers to my articles.
Final Thoughts
Regardless if you are an eHow writer or not, there is one lesson I want to stress here. That is knowing when to cut the cord and realize that your time could be served better elsewhere. I know that time (not money) is my single most important asset when it comes to building passive income. In order to accelerate my earnings potential, I need to use my time wisely.
I try to weigh the benefits of spending time marketing my material versus creating new content. While I am not always successful at it, I am continually reviewing where my time is being spent. Whether you agree with my opinions on using the eHow forums or not, ask yourself if your time there is worth it? If you think it is – then go with it and use the tool to help build your income. Just remember to keep asking yourself – Is my time being used wisely?
How much time do you spend promoting your online content? Do you use forums or other social networking tools?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been enjoying your blog for a few months but this is the first time I have commented.
I used to spend time in the forums at eHow. However, I found out that when I posted a new article, there were clones by the next day. I became frustrated and pulled nearly 150 articles from eHow and moved to Hubpages. I have never promoted my articles on HP and am making more money than on eHow. So I agree with you that staying out of the forums is a good thing, and for more than time management.
Interesting post John,
I think there needs to be a balance when it comes to creating and promoting. I am like you when I don’t really promote my residual income items and articles. For some reason I don’t really feel I need to blab my mouth over Facebook so people will go view a step by step guide to something they may not be interested, but I do believe some promotion is necessary, maybe a page on your own website that has a link to all of your articles. I am not quite sure how eHow gets people linked to the articles without visiting the actual eHow website, so taking this matter into your own hands may prove valuable.
Hey John – you definitely run your passive income streams like a business and for that I think you’ll be more effective. Kudos.
The one thing I personally struggle with is spreading myself too thin. You’ve got the blog, eHow, inforbarrel, hubpages…all great ways to make money. Then you have the issue of promoting them with your stumbles and your diggs and your ezinearticles. All “productive” activities but where are you really making your time count? I guess it’s different for everyone; analyze which method is paying you the best and hit it hard.
Just more of my 2 cents.
An interesting post John. At the moment I tend to cross promote between articles on different sites with maybe one or two links to each. However, I’m currently doing a little experiment with Squidoo to try and overcome my initial lack of success there. With this I’ve selected what I think is a mainstream type of article and I’m seeing just how much promotion it takes to try and get it into the top 100. I doubt if this is really a worthwhile use of my time, but I’m genuinely interested to see the outcome.