After a frustrating couple of months as an eHow writer, I decided to take the month of February off. This was the very first month since I started that I did not submit a single new article. I had several motivating factors for not writing any new content.
First of all, I am focusing the majority of my time building up my niche websites. I have set some aggressive but manageable SMART Goals for this year. Increasing the passive income generated from these sites plays a major role in meeting these goals. These sites take a lot of time to setup and get running, so I took a break from eHow.
Secondly, based on all the issues surrounding the eHow UK site, I wanted to run a test. I wanted to prove that while eHow has gone through some rough patches recently, it is still an incredible way to build a solid recurring income stream. While you don’t fully control the site and content, there are plenty of nice trade-offs to still make it worth it. Check out my results below if you don’t believe eHow is still a viable option to earn passive income.
Let’s take a look at my monthly results -
February Updates
As I mentioned earlier, I did not publish a single article in February. This was the first time in 18 months that I didn’t add any new content. Just because I didn’t add new content doesn’t mean I stop earning income. That is the beauty of building solid passive income streams. They can continue to payout even while not actively spending any time or effort on them!
My earnings dropped by over (11%) in February compared to the prior month. While this may seem significant, the month was shortened by 3 extra days. If I were to prorate this difference, it would be less than a (2%) drop compared to last month.
Here is the breakdown of my eHow earnings from the past 18
months -
- February (2010)
- Earnings – $184.88
- Articles Published – 0
- January (2010)
- Earnings – $208.36
- Articles Published – 13
- 2009 Earnings
- Earnings – $1,568.76
- Articles Published – 216
- 2008 Earnings
- Earnings – $25.98
- Articles Published – 20
GRAND TOTAL (18 Months)
- Earnings – $1,987.98
- Articles Published – 249
Are you looking for a free way to start increasing your income? If so, eHow is one option that allows you to accomplish this goal. There are people just like you earning over a $1,000 each month on a recurring basis just by writing “How To” articles. If you are new to eHow, one place to start is by checking out a great resource called – How to Earn Passive Income on eHow.com: Maximize Your Online Earnings. I purchased this resource several months ago and have made my money back within the first month using the guidelines laid out.
Milestone – 100,000+ Article Views
I hit a milestone in my eHow career last month surpassing 100,000 article views from all of my articles. While earnings do not always translate directly into earnings, it is still a good sign to see your articles getting a lot of hits. I think this is a good visual indicator of the authority that eHow still carries.
100 Article eHow Challenge – February Results
I challenged myself last year to jump start my eHow passive income stream in an attempt to accelerate my earnings. Last August, I launched the 100 Article eHow Challenge, where I had a goal to publish 100 new articles (finished with 72). I have been tracking the status of these articles each month to see how the challenge turned out.
Here are my earnings from the 100 Article eHow Challenge -
- August – $119.48
- September – $113.95
- October – $75.47
- November – $73.45
- December – $59.86
- January – $37.00
- February – $42.70
Total Earnings – $521.91
My earnings from these articles gained a bit of ground in February but still did not pop as much as I had originally expected. These articles hit the 7 month mark and I normally see a significant increase in my earnings once an article has been live for 6 months.
Now that these articles have hit the 6 month mark, I won’t be tracking their status in the future.
Final Thoughts
The past couple of months have been a very wild ride as an eHow writer. I get the feeling that things have calmed down somewhat and many of the issues that came up are now behind us. I am actually starting to see some increase in daily earnings again, which seems to be a good sign.
I plan to write 50 articles this month as I want to see if I can reach $500 per month in earnings by the end of June this year. Based on what I saw in February, I am comfortable again adding new content to the site. I am also using these articles to help drive traffic to my niche websites by leveraging the Add Additional Resources section of each post. My keyword topics are coming directly from my niche site, so I don’t need to spend a lot of time on research which will help me save time.
Where do you think eHow is headed from here? How did your earnings compare to last month?
Niche websites can be a great way to build passive income streams. There are plenty of methods or strategies that have been successful in creating these types of sites. One strategy that I have been using recently is called The $5 Mini-Site Formula.
I have just completed my third week implementing the $5 Formula on one of my niche websites. I am finally starting to see things pick up over the last couple of days as a result of some hard work put in. I am still only a portion of the way through the steps laid out in the formula, but am starting to see my traffic pick up as well as my earnings. I think in a couple more weeks, I should be earning over $5 per day from my niche site!
Eventually I plan to earn $500 per month ($16.67 per day) from this niche site that will align with my SMART Goals. I am using the $5 Formula as a test to try and jump start this income stream.
Here are my recent notes and current status from this experiment.
Outsourcing
The ghost writer I hired has completed the assigned task of writing 27 short articles centered around the key words I am targeting for my niche website. I requested each article use identified keywords so that I could publish them on several different article marketing websites. Each article is between 250 – 300 words in length.
The total project will cost me $81 and I plan recoup these costs in less than one months time if everything goes to plan. One of the reasons to outsource this type of work is to help take some of the time burden off myself and make this a passive income stream.
I will spending this week taking the articles provided by my ghost writer and publishing them on various article marketing websites (not EzineArticles).
Traffic
The $5 Mini-Site Formula focuses on driving traffic to your niche site through article marketing. According to the plan, I need to send about 120 visitors (17 per day) to my site each week in order to bring in $5 of income per day. Up until a few days ago, I was only averaging about 7 pageviews per day.
Just in the past couple of days, I have seen a sharp increase in the visitors and pageviews to my niche website. At this point it is hard to tell if it is just a fluke or a result of some of the hard work I have put into this project.
Here are my pageview results to date -
- Week #1 – 59
- Week #2 – 39
- Week #3 – 79
The number of visitors to the site also jumped in the past couple of days. The next couple of days will be an important indicator of the sustainability of this increased traffic.
Earnings
My earnings have really started to take off which is a huge motivator for me. I can finally see all those hard hours I put in paying off. I am very pleased with my choice of keywords and know that as I continue to send more traffic to my niche website, the more my earnings will increase.
Here are my earnings results to date -
- Week #1 – $0.44
- Week #2 – $2.32
- Week #3 – $16.16
I averaged $2.31 in earnings over the past seven days. I am almost half way to the $5 goal and I have not even finished 50% of the required tasks laid out in this formula. While I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I can really see the potential income that this site can bring someday!
Final Thoughts
Over the next several days I will be publishing the articles provided to me by my ghost writer which should help increase traffic and earnings overtime. In addition, I am writing all of my content to publish on EzineArticles and still have 15 to go (only have published 12 so far). I hope to knock several more of these articles off this week to see additional earning growth.
The past couple of days have been a real eye opener for me. Maybe there is some other explanation for the jump in traffic and earnings, but I believe it is a result of my hard work. I am very excited about the potential this niche website can bring and look forward to sharing my results with you!
In case you missed them, here are my first two status reports detailing the The $5 Mini-Site Formula –
How are your niche websites coming along? Are you using the $5 Formula?
FTP, also known as file transfer protocol, is a common protocol that is used to transfer files between two systems. According to The Free Dictionary Online, FTP can be defined as – “A communications protocol governing the transfer of files from one computer to another over a network.”
An FTP Client is a piece of software that lets a user move a file from one computing system to another. In the past, these client software packages were command based applications that required some technical knowledge. Nowadays, there are plenty of graphical user interfaces making it very simple for the average person to use these applications.
Common Uses
File transfer protocol is used everyday by companies and organizations worldwide. Data files sent between two parties leverage file transfer protocol programs all the time. How do you think your paycheck gets direct deposited at the bank every payroll cycle? More than likely through a secure FTP application that sends a file from your company to the bank.
Did you know that file transfer protocol is not just an application that companies and major IT organizations use? If you run your own blog or website, you have probably used an FTP program to move files from your hard drive to your hosting account.
FREE Applications
If you want to start running your own blog or website, there are plenty of free FTP applications that you can download and use directly from your computer. Here is a list of some common FTP Client applications used by bloggers today -
Please note available applications may vary based on your operating system. Check the application specs to determine if your system is compatible.
Running Your Own Site
For those of you who currently use a blogging platform like Blogger, I urge you to make the switch over to a platform like Wordpress where you have total control over the site. While there are some costs involved, the trade-off is worth it to owning your site. Now that you know a little bit more about file transfer protocol, don’t let technology get in your way.
For more information on FTP, check out the file transfer protocol definition.
Where were you during the Tiger Woods press conference last week? Based on all the media hype and coverage, this must have been a story that you needed to be informed of. Fans, haters, and everyone in between tuned into coverage of Tiger’s apology all around the world.
The press conference was so important that it even caused a wall street slowdown in trading during the coverage. Media outlets and news channels continued to cover the story analyzing every single word of the speech for hours and hours over the following days.
Was this news story that important that it caused you to stay glued to the television to see what all the “experts” were saying? Fortunately, I was traveling with my family during the press conference and didn’t even realize it was on. I have enough problems trying to stay focused and don’t need anymore distractions holding me back.
Media Distractions
The Tiger Woods press conference is a perfect example of overblown media coverage forcing news stories on us that don’t have any impact on our lives. It is hard to stay focused when these types of stories hit. Even if you are a huge Tiger fan, does it really matter what he has to say? Your still a fan and you know he will be back on the links soon. Is it really worth getting sucked up in this hype and being distracted?
Media distractions can be a huge productivity killer, especially for those of us trying to stay focused and run a business online. Here are a couple tips you may want to try to filter out media distractions and focus on what’s important. Both can help you put time back in your day.
- Media Diet – I talked about going on an earnings diet recently (which is going very well by the way) and how much time I can save. The same can be done with the media. Let’s be honest, how relevant is Tiger’s personal life to your own? The media has a sneaky way of pulling you into stories that are not relevant to you and holding you there. Break that hold they have on you and do something useful with that time!
- Productive Work Environment – Do you keep the radio or television on while working? Creating a productive work environment in your home is very important when it comes to removing distractions from you life. Do yourself a favor and flip the television off while you are working and see just how more efficiently you work. You will be able to stay focused on your most important tasks at hand an filter out unwanted distractions.
Final Thoughts
It can be very difficult cutting the cord from the media. I still find myself wandering about the internet from time to time and don’t even realize I am doing it. Constantly checking email accounts, reading pointless stories the catch your attention, and getting sucked into social networking sites are a few of the distractions that I try to avoid everyday. It doesn’t always work for me, but when it does – I can tell a huge difference in my life!
How distracting are news stories like this for you? Do they make it hard for you to stay focused?
Website search engine optimization (SEO) is something that I know very little about. When I first launched Passive Family Income almost two years ago, I did not really understand the importance of backlinks, keywords, SERPs, and other SEO lingo. Overtime, I started to realize the importance of writing for both your readers and the search engines, but still didn’t grasp the big picture.
For the past year I had been using a variety of search engine optimization practices that I believed would help potential readers find my content easier. It wasn’t until just recently that I realized I still had not been fully optimizing my content. What brought me to this realization? A new optimization tool that has changed the way that I structure and publish my content.
Brian Clark of CopyBlogger has introduced a really cool tool that can help bloggers like me improve their website search engine optimization. The tool is called Scribe SEO and can be used to help the average writer follow SEO best practices in the content they publish. If you are interested in improving your search engine page rank, eliminating the guesswork on which keywords to use, and increasing your targeted traffic – then you may want to check out Scribe SEO.
Scribe – What is it?
Scribe is a WordPress plugin that can help you optimize your blog posts. When you have completed drafting a post, you simply launch the application and within seconds have a set of results. The analysis provides problem areas in your content and lists suggestions on how you can fully optimize your post. It is truly a very powerful tool that can help you improve the readability and search engine optimization of a given post.
The plugin works directly with the Thesis WordPress theme or by using the All in One SEO plugin if you are currently using a different theme. The installation and setup of Scribe is quick and easy.
Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!
While Scribe is currently only available for WordPress users, future versions will target other blog platforms. There are also plans to roll out a Microsoft Word plugin which I will be looking forward to using.
What I Like About Scribe
All the hype aside, there are a lot of reasons why I like Scribe and will be leveraging it heavily in the coming months. Here are a few of the benefits I am already finding by using this tool.
- Old Posts – I have been trying to go back and clean up a lot of the older posts here on PFI. This plugin can be used on new and old posts which gives me the opportunity to easily fix and improve older content.
- Backlinks – I understand the importance of internal and external backlinks when it comes to proper website search engine optimization. What I didn’t realize is that I was not including enough of them in my content. Scribe has help me understand that I need to include more backlinks in all of my articles.
- Tags – I struggle with adding tags to my posts. This tool will actually provide some suggestions on what tags you may want to use in your content. I have been using a lot of these suggestions now in my posts. The list of tags provided also has help spawn new ideas for future posts on related topics.
- SERPs – I never paid much attention to SERPs in the past. I rarely added custom title tags or meta descriptions to my posts. In order for Scribe to analyze your content, it requires you to add this information which automatically improves the optimization of your posts.
- Keyword Density – A really cool feature of the tool is the keyword analysis that is provided. Scribe will tell you if your keyword density is too high. While I never purposely shoved keywords into my posts where they didn’t belong, the tool has taught me to keep them in balance. If your keyword density is too high, your results will show this and give you recommendations to fix it.
Final Thoughts
Is Scribe the perfect tool? No. Will it help me improve my content, readability, and search engine results – Absolutely!
I think that the tool is a perfect way to leverage technology and save time, while improving your content. While Scribe won’t write my content for me, it will help me deliver the best possible information to my readers while making it search engine friendly!
There currently is no affiliate program for the Scribe tool. I get no compensation for promoting the product if you choose to purchase it using a link on my site. I do, however, believe that it is important to signal out helpful tools when I come across them.
Are you using Scribe? What are your thoughts on this product?
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