With no further ado, here are my mid-month numbers:

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
blog	2	1148
Bright Hub	5	4845
Xomba	4	277
	Total:	6270

I also have a ton of plans for The Online Paycheck that may not happen this month. We’ll just have to see how things go. That’s it for now, I am off to go write more Bright Hub articles.

I love December. There is something about the coming of Christmas that puts me in a good mood for most, if not all of the month. Despite my holiday spirit, this was a hard month for me. I spent December doing the same thing I have been doing for the past 3 months: trying to find a day job and writing as much as I can. My plan was to apply for three jobs a day before writing anything. This would would have meant that I would have applied for 93 jobs by the end of the month. I realized, after making this plan, that it was already the eighth. This meant I was already 24 applications behind for the month. Also, obviously, no one was posting jobs over the holidays. I was unable to find anything to apply for, from Christmas Eve on. Regardless I still applied for almost 50 jobs in December and had multiple job interviews. Still, no one has yet to offer me a position.

After applying for my three jobs I set to writing each day. I was still able to add five blog posts here and six articles on Bright Hub. The Online Paycheck has seen a great increase in traffic thanks to my meagre efforts, where my Bright Hub portfolio on the other hand, saw no increase in views even though I added six new articles.

Here is my word count for the month of December:

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
blog	5	1891
Xomba	7	508
Bright Hub	6	4083
	Total:	6482

Earnings from my writing have been fair this month. Red Gage has been really good to me this month. I had two pieces featured, giving me a small bonus for each, and I was a featured member. Being a featured member gave my profile, along with nine others, some face-time on Red Gage’s main page which drove up our traffic. Both Bukisa and the Online Paycheck brought in extremely low amounts this month but Bright Hub did rather well. I have changed the way I am keeping track of my Bright Hub earnings. Bright Hub used to have a 60 day hold on revenue share earnings. They have changed this starting this year. To do this, they paid two months of revenue share and articles written in November on the December paycheck. They are now paying at the beginning of the month following publication. This means, for example, I would get paid for my June revenue share earnings in early July rather then in August as was previously the case. I am going to start using my pay stub amount from Bright Hub in each months stats. The amount shown in this stat is my November earnings, but I was only paid on December 10^th. This is the most accurate way to do things for Bright Hub since you never know how much the revenue share will be with them because it fluctuates from month to month.

Earnings from writing online for December

Location	Total Amount of Articles	Monthly Income
Triond	14	$0.33
Bukisa	11	$0.09
Red Gage	68 (writing and photography)	$4.32
Adsense (Blog,Xomba, etc)		$0.06
Bright Hub	19	$52.26
Schvoong	1	$0.00
	Total:	$57.80

As I expected, photography sales we abysmal. For some people December is their best month but for most the first half is ok and the rest of the month just plain sucks. For me, most of the month sucked. Hopefully January will make up for it, it usually does for me.

Photography earnings for December

Agency	Number of Photos	New photos added	In Queue	Earnings
Shutterstock	146	0	0	$2.25
Dreamstime	222	0	0	$3.02
iStock	53	0	0	$8.29
StockXpert	144	0	0	$1.50
fotolia	207	0	0	$5.54
BigStockPhoto	202	0	0	$0.00
Feature Pics	251	0	0	$0.00
StockPhotoMedia	258	0	0	$0.00
The Photo Storage	187	0	0	$0.00
123rf	193	0	0	$0.36
Canstock Photo	232	0	0	$0.50
YaY Micro	160	0	0	€0.00
CutCaster	136	0	0	$0.00
Scandinavian Stock	110	0	0	€1.00
			Total:	$21.46 €1.00

There have been a lot of changes, over the past few months, to many of the writing markets I have covered on the Online Paycheck. I will be revisiting many of them in January to give you all the details. I have a lot of work I want to do over the next year.

Let’s see what we can make of 2010. I look forward to giving a full annual report next New Years Day.

URL: www.today.com

Industry: Online Publishing

What they are looking for: Blog content

Pay: Pay-Per-Click

Alexa rating: 6,057

Today.com is a blog platform. They have a simple sign-up and approval process. You have to fill out some personal info, give an email address, choose a blog sub-domain name, and tell Today what your blog will be about. Back in October I started up a very short-lived blog on Today with the intention of earning a little money from them and, more importantly, promoting my writing on other websites.

I had already seen some pretty unfriendly reviews of Today on other writing sites. Most stories talked about how Today has been dropping the amount they pay their writers. When I signed up the pay was up to $2.00 per thousand page views and you may, at a later date, be brought into their circle of pro-bloggers who receive $1.00 per post on top of page views.

I posted six blogs in October, two of which Today featured. After two months I had almost two thousand views and I made one dollar. On top of that, in those six posts I referred to other articles I had written on Bright Hub and Triond. These links were removed by a Today editor. I should have read the terms of service more closely. Today.com prohibits any links in your blog that lead to other websites which pay by page views.

At that point I decided that Today was not the place for me. I also decided, since I can’t publish these blog posts elsewhere, that I would keep my posts up on Today and maybe someday I would reach the $50 payout. Well Today ensured that can’t happen either. After 60 days without posting a blog, my account was closed but my articles remain online with all the profit going to Today.com. I also have to assume that the one dollar I did make from Today.com is forfeit. Although they did invite me to reopen my account at any time. I doubt I will ever take them up on their offer.

If you are thinking about blogging for Today.com, I would recommend taking an in depth good look at experiences other writers have had with them. Know what you are about to get into and decide for yourself if it is worth it.

Here are five more magazines that advertise their writers guidelines on their website. These are all primarily fiction magazines in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres. Now you are armed and dangerous. Start smacking that keyboard and go make some money! These will also be added to the full writers guidelines list.

Abyss & Apex Magazine of Speculative Fiction

URL: http://www.abyssandapex.com/index.html

Guidelines URL: http://www.abyssandapex.com/guidelines.html

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Fantasy Fiction and Poetry

Pay: $0.05/word max $75

Electric Spec

URL: http://www.electricspec.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.electricspec.com/submissions/

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Fiction

Pay: $20/story

Shimmer

URL: http://www.shimmerzine.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.shimmerzine.com/guidelines/fiction-guidelines/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Formats

What they are looking for: Speculative Fiction

Pay: $0.01/word minimum $10

Talebones

URL: http://www.talebones.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.talebones.com/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Formats

What they are looking for: Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy

Pay: $0.01-$0.02/word

Zahir

URL: http://www.zahirtales.com/index.html

Guidelines URL: http://www.zahirtales.com/guidelines.html

Format: Print Magazine

What they are looking for: Speculative Fiction

Pay: $10/story plus 2 contributor copies

Wow, it’s the middle of the month already! We’re ten days until Christmas. So far this month has been unique in a few ways. My articles are getting more exposure on many of the sites that I write for (thus making me more money) but theonlinepaycheck has suffered some serious losses due to my lack of activity last month. My photography is doing what it normally does during December, it stops selling. Although this is the prime season for microstock, December (and for many photographers January too) is a time of dismal sales. It’s the unfortunate lull in the micorstock season. I am no exception, this month is going to suck for photography profits. I guess I should count myself lucky that my writing is picking up.

My last post was on the 8^th and in the last 7 days I have worked very hard on applying to jobs and writing Bright Hub articles. I have three new articles published and another written that I still need to upload. I’m pretty happy so far, I have been keeping to my schedule for the most part but it is time to ramp it up a bit more.

I have a loose plan for the rest of the month. First off, I need to work theonlinepaycheck a lot more, I really want to get it back to where it was a couple of months ago. Second, I had a goal of reaching an average of 500 views per day on Bright Hub by the end of the year. Basically taking November off destroyed that goal, so I have revamped my plan to 350 views per day, hoping to hit 500/day by the end of February. I’m not even sure if I can reach my 350/day goal this month but I’m going to give it a go. Lastly I have also started a blog on blogspot.com. I have yet to post anything but that is another thing that will have to be fixed this month. Three hardcore goals in my opinion. Time to give you guys some numbers and get back to work!

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
theonlinepaycheck	1	912
Xomba	3	201
Bright Hub	4	2761
	Total:	3874

See you guys at the end of the year! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.

Well, I am back. I’m sorry but I had to disappear for a while for personal reasons. I spent a lot of time job hunting for a day job and at one point thought I had obtained work in another city. My wife and I even packed most of our things to move. Then the job fell through so we were back at square one. There has also been an issue here affecting our entire condo complex which has been costing me an absurd amount of time. Regardless, I am back and hopefully won’t be going anywhere again anytime soon.

I am going to do a recap of the last two months for each category. I did spend the first half of October writing. I spent a lot of time writing for a blog I started on Today.com but as you will notice I have not added Today.com to my word count or earnings charts. You will find out why later this month when I do my write-up and add them to the list of writing markets.

Here are the word counts for October and November:

October

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
blog	4	2113
Triond/Bukisa/Red Gage	1	697
Xomba	5	225
	Total:	3035

November

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
Xomba	1	87
Bright Hub	2	1533
	Total:	1620

Since productivity was down, so are my earnings. My earnings from Triond and Bukisa saw no decline but I make so little from either company it made little difference to my bottom line. I had another photo featured on Red Gage in October which I am very happy with. I made an extra $5.05 bonus and being featured brought a lot more views, allowing me to make more money from them. October was also the first month I saw any profit from Bright Hub’s revenue share program. I admit I was a little disappointed in October when I got my pay stub from Bright Hub. The amount made from the Bright Hub revenue share program changes from month to month depending on how well Bright Hub is doing. October’s revenue share was rather low but November’s was much more uplifting. Even though I didn’t write any blog posts in November, I did write two Bright Hub articles. I wrote for Bright Hub only because one of my channels desperately needed articles so I tried to help out as much as I could.

Here are my earnings for the months of October and November:

October

Location	Total Amount of Articles	Monthly Income
Triond	14	$0.23
Bukisa	14	$0.20
Red Gage	14	$5.64
Adsense (Blog,Xomba, etc)		$4.57
Bright Hub	11	$5.71
Schvoong	1	$0.00
	Total:	$16.35

November

Location	Total Amount of Articles	Monthly Income
Triond	14	$0.22
Bukisa	14	$0.22
Red Gage	14	$0.37
Adsense (Blog,Xomba, etc)		$2.76
Bright Hub	13	$34.96
Schvoong	1	$0.00
	Total:	$38.53

When it comes to photography, October and November are the start of the good season for me. On a sad note though, one of my favourite microstock agencies has closed. Image Catalog is no more. Even worse, they didn’t payout any of the money they owed to contributors when they closed. I had accumulated $20.00. Granted 20 bucks is a not ton of money, but right now every penny counts and I could have used that cash. Apart from that gloomy bit of news, I am pretty happy with how the past two months have gone. I have added no new photos and probably won’t until I find a day job. This is just a little extra motivation for me to do so as quickly as possible.

Here are my earnings in photography for the months of October and November:

October

Agency	Number of Photos	New photos added	In Queue	Earnings
Shutterstock	146	0	0	$3.00
Dreamstime	222	0	0	$26.93
iStock	53	0	0	$3.08
StockXpert	144	0	0	$5.00
fotolia	207	0	0	$9.95
BigStockPhoto	202	0	0	$0.50
Feature Pics	251	0	0	$0.00
StockPhotoMedia	258	0	0	$0.00
The Photo Storage	187	0	0	$0.00
123rf	193	0	0	$1.30
Canstock Photo	232	0	0	$0.30
YaY Micro	160	0	0	€0.00
CutCaster	136	0	0	$0.00
			Total:	$50.06

November – Micros

Agency	Number of Photos	New photos added	In Queue	Earnings
Shutterstock	146	0	0	$4.00
Dreamstime	222	0	0	$22.72
iStock	53	0	0	$1.00
StockXpert	144	0	0	$5.00
fotolia	207	0	0	$10.95
BigStockPhoto	202	0	0	$1.50
Feature Pics	251	0	0	$0.00
StockPhotoMedia	258	0	0	$0.00
The Photo Storage	187	0	0	$0.00
123rf	193	0	0	$1.00
Canstock Photo	232	0	0	$0.30
YaY Micro	160	0	0	€0.00
CutCaster	136	0	0	$0.00
			Total:	$46.47

So it’s back to the grind for me but with a new plan. I have decided to apply for three jobs a day. After I have applied for those jobs, I can work on writing. So far this has worked out pretty good. In the past few months I have applied for nearly 170 jobs. If I apply for three a day I will add almost 90 more to that total by the end of December. On the writing side of things, I will be focusing most of my time on Bright Hub, this blog and a new blog I am going to start over at blogspot.com which will replace what I had hoped to create on Today.com.

That’s it for now, see you guys mid-month!

The second new section is a list of online and print magazines who pay, and list their writers guideline on their website. This new addition currently has 21 publications. Content varies from fiction to poetry to non-fiction. I started, for the most part, with markets that interested me: travel, fantasy fiction, technology and poetry. I will be adding to this section regularly. Thus far I have only looked at guidelines for writers. I will be adding another section with magazines who have their photographer’s guidelines listed on their website sometime in the near future.

Abyss & Apex Magazine of Speculative Fiction

URL: http://www.abyssandapex.com/index.html

Guidelines URL: http://www.abyssandapex.com/guidelines.html

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Fantasy Fiction and Poetry

Pay: $0.05/word max $75

Apogee Photo Magazine

URL: http://www.apogeephoto.com

Guidelines URL: http://www.apogeephoto.com/mag1-6/guidelines.html

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Instructional and review articles about photography

Pay: $0.10/word

Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture

URL: http://bitchmagazine.org/

Guidelines URL: http://bitchmagazine.org/contributors-guidelines

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Pop Culture Articles

Pay: $10 – $100/article

Cat Channel ( Cat Fancy, Kitten USA and Cats USA )

URL: http://www.catchannel.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.catchannel.com/magazines/catfancy/writers_guidelines.aspx

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Feature, department and Column articles

Pay: Unknown Pay

Defender of Wildlife

URL: http://www.defenders.org/

Guidelines URL: http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/defenders_magazine/submission_guidelines.php

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Articles about endangered species

Pay: Unknown Pay

Developer Tutorials

URL: http://www.developertutorials.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.developertutorials.com/writers.php

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Information Technology Tutorials

Pay: $50 – $100/article

Dungeons & Dragons Magazine

URL: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Default.aspx

Guidelines URL: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/submissions

Format: Online Publishing

What they are looking for: Articles about D&D and D&D Game modules

Pay: $0.06/word starting rate

Electric Spec

URL: http://www.electricspec.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.electricspec.com/submissions/

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Fiction

Pay: $20/story

EnRoute

URL: http://enroute.aircanada.com

Guidelines URL: http://enroute.aircanada.com/en/articles/writers-guidelines/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Travel and Lifestyle Articles

Pay: $1.00/word and up

Fantasy & Science Fiction

URL: http://www.sfsite.com/news/

Guidelines URL: http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/glines.htm

Format: Print Magazine and Online content

What they are looking for: Fantasy Fiction, Science Fiction only

Pay: $0.06 – $0.09/word

Fantasy Magazine

URL: http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/about-2/about/

Format: Online only

What they are looking for: Fantasy Fiction, non-fiction and reviews within the Fantasy genre

Pay: $0.05/word

GoMediaZine

URL: http://www.gomediazine.com

Guidelines URL: http://www.gomediazine.com/contribute/

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Multi-media and Web Development Tutorials

Pay: $300 – $400/article

GoNOMAD

URL: http://www.gonomad.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.gonomad.com/corp/writerguidelines.html

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Travel Articles

Pay: $25/article

Journey Woman

URL: http://www.journeywoman.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.journeywoman.com/writers_guidelines.html

Format: Online Publishing

What they are looking for: Online Only

Pay: $35 honorarium/article

Mindflights

URL: http://mindflights.com/

Guidelines URL: http://mindflights.com/guidelines.php

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Fantasy and Science Fiction and Poetry

Pay: $0.005/word, minimum $5 with a max of $25

Niteblade

URL: http://www.niteblade.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.niteblade.com/submissions.htm

Format: Online only

What they are looking for: Fantasy and Horror fiction and Poetry

Pay: $1 per submission

Online Dating Magazine

URL: http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/writersguidelines.html

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Dating, self-improvement and romance articles

Pay: $15/article

ProBlog Design

URL: http://www.problogdesign.com

Guidelines URL: http://www.problogdesign.com/write-for-us/

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Articles about Blogging

Pay: $50 – $70/article with a bonus $5 for replying to comments

Shimmer

URL: http://www.shimmerzine.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.shimmerzine.com/guidelines/fiction-guidelines/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Formats

What they are looking for: Speculative Fiction

Pay: $0.01/word minimum $10

SitePoint

URL: http://www.sitepoint.com

Guidelines URL: http://www.sitepoint.com/about/writeforus

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Software and Information Technology articles

Pay: $100/article plus awesome pageview bonuses

Snowrider

URL: http://snowridermag.com/

Guidelines URL: http://snowridermag.com/encyclopedia/contact-snowrider-online-magazine/

Format: Online Only

What they are looking for: Articles about snowmobiles plus four photos

Pay: $25/article and photos

Talebones

URL: http://www.talebones.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.talebones.com/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Formats

What they are looking for: Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy

Pay: $0.01-$0.02/word

Transition Abroad

URL: http://www.transitionsabroad.com

Guidelines URL: http://www.transitionsabroad.com/information/writers/writers.shtml

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Travel articles

Pay: $50 – $100/article dependant on length

Travel + Leisure

URL: http://www.travelandleisure.com

Guidelines URL: http://www.travelandleisure.com/contact/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Travel Articles

Pay: Unknown Pay

Walrus Magazine

URL: http://www.walrusmagazine.com/

Guidelines URL: http://www.walrusmagazine.com/queries/

Format: Print Magazine and Online Content

What they are looking for: Non-Fiction Articles, Fiction and Poetry

Pay: Unknown Pay

Zahir

URL: http://www.zahirtales.com/index.html

Guidelines URL: http://www.zahirtales.com/guidelines.html

Format: Print Magazine

What they are looking for: Speculative Fiction

Pay: $10/story plus 2 contributor copies

It’s now past the middle of the month and I am here to give you guys some numbers. As I mentioned in my last earnings report, I’m taking it pretty easy this month as far as writing and photography go, and focusing all my efforts on finding a day job. I have found a few prospects but any of them would mean moving as they are not in Edmonton, where I currently live. In my opinion this is not a bad thing. I am still pretty happy with how much I have gotten done this month. I have applied for nearly fifty jobs in the past two weeks and I find it encouraging that I found time to write anything. My photography has been selling fairly well and I got another EL sale, this time on Dreamstime. And if you are following me on Twitter, then you know I have also started a new blog on Today.com, which has been doing fairly well considering I only have six posts. Here’s the word count so far:

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
blog	2	1106
Triond/Bukisa/Red Gage	1	697
Xomba	4	224
Today.com	6	1796
	Total:	3823

That’s it for now. I have just finished up a three day job and I have a job interview out of town later this week so I doubt there will be many updates this month. I can’t wait until things settle down again so I can start posting more resources. I’ve been collecting bookmarks and reading all kinds of guidelines for great markets. I am looking forward to sharing them with you.