Returning and Revamping

I had to disappear again. Sometimes life gets in the way no matter how badly you don’t want it to. At least in my case it was something I chose, and I chose to disappear because I knew I would be able to return. This was not going to be a lost effort. I basically disappeared at the same time that I got my day job. I knew when I took the job that it would be a struggle to continue to write while was in training. That proved to be quite true. During the first few months I wrote exclusively for Bright Hub. I did this solely for the money. Since Bright Hub is currently the only publisher that I write for that offers upfront pay for articles, I had little choice but to write exclusively for them. After being unemployed for most of 2009, I needed that upfront pay to put gas in my vehicle just so I could make it to work. Luckily things improved rather quickly. I am very lucky to have a great boss and a wonderful, supportive wife.

I worked during the day, and sometimes in the evenings and on weekends. Whenever I wasn’t working, I was writing. I haven’t made an update since mid January. In that time I added 35 articles to Bright Hub, bringing my total to 49. I am also now getting a healthy amount of reads per month on Bright Hub, the past two months have each been around 9000 pageviews. Almost every cent I made from my day job went to paying off the debt my wife and I had accumulated while we were both unemployed. Much of that debt still remains but the most pressing things have, or will soon be, paid off. To a degree, I can relax a little and refocus on writing for multiple publishers again and for myself, on this blog.

Three months ago my boss made me an offer which ensured that I would not have much time for writing until summer arrived. He offered to allow me to work from home, meaning I could eliminate the hour long commute I was doing every day to get to and from work. To do so I had to help him catch up on all his orders and email and learn how to run almost every aspect of the business.

Before hiring me, he had some employees that took advantage of him and in the end left him high and dry. He had decided that it might just be easier to run his businesses on his own but it turned out to be too much for one person to handle, so he hired me. My boss isn’t just my boss. He has been my friend for the past eight years, so when he told me all the troubles he had with past employees I wanted to make sure he knew that he wouldn’t have the same kind of troubles with me. I helped him rearrange his business and, to a degree, his life. Now I run the majority of his businesses and he has semi-retired, all done in six months. It’s only been three weeks working from home but things are running smoothly. He even hired my wife to work for 25 hours a week and cut my hours from 40 to 25 hours a week. This allows me to have more time to write and means my wife and I get to work together and get paid for 50 hours a week instead of 40. In my opinion it’s a win, all the way around.

Now that things have settled down, I am trying to decide where to focus my efforts. A lot has changed when it comes online writing and to microstock photography which, if you’ve been following my blog at all, you know are my two main focuses.

The first thing on my to-do list is to revamp this blog. I was able to start this process over the past few days. I created a new page with all the referral links to the publishing and stock agencies that I currently submit to. I have also revised many of the entries I have written and added links, where appropriate, to my other online work. I still need to rewrite some of the past entries. Many, many things have changed with each publisher I submit to. For example Triond still pays for views but they now also allow writers with a Google Adsense account to ad Google ads into their articles and make 50% of the ad revenue off those ads. They have also added a referral program. This is just one indication on how out of date the resource section is. I will be fixing this over the next few days, piece by piece, article by article.

I also plan to create another new page listing all my published articles in chronological order and another linking to my microstock portfolios. This is not only to advertise my work but to show the amount of effort that is put into my writing and photography. I have been showing people the amount of money I have been making but how can a reader gauge how much they will make off my stats if they can’t see the work that is producing those earnings. You might be a better photographer or writer than me, so you might earn way more than me with the same amount of work or you might realize that you are not at the level you need to be to make the same money I am making. It will also show readers the amount of time that it takes to create a photography portfolio or write an article. It won’t just be numbers and that is important. I also plan on making a list of places and things I want to photograph this summer and fall. This list will help me to grow my stock portfolios and start to create a portfolio that I will be using to contact publishers.

I hope you check back. I have the drive to create a lasting income source online and I am willing to show you how I did it. I may not be earning much now, but I will be in the future.