All this means I was forced to take a third of the month off. I really only started writing again around mid-month. Despite this fact, I still added twelve articles and basically rewrote all the work I had lost on my old mac. There were some very weird developments this month as well. I had a short but very eye opening email conversation with one of my editors at Bright Hub. It was a discussion about the SEO benefits of using Wordtracker for keywords versus the Google Adword Keyword Tool. I have always used the Google tool but with a little encouragement I did some research into Wordtracker. Using Wordtracker, I changed some keywords for a bunch Bright Hub articles that were not performing as well as I would like. So far it has really seemed to make a difference. This has been the first month I have reached over ten thousand views on Bright Hub! There was also a glitch on Triond this month. This glitch miscalculated my earnings, meaning I made some extra money for views. To be fair, it still isn’t a lot of money, the majority of my earnings from Triond, again, have come from Adsense. I was also lucky enough to have another photo featured on Red Gage. This has helped me come just out of reach of my first Red Gage payout.

I mentioned last month that I had been accepted as a writer with Factoidz. I attempted one article this month. I had it rejected twice and I can’t seen to figure out why. At first I thought it was was because I offered up an opinion in two separate sentences and they request that articles are “mostly fact adn not opinion” but when my article was rejected a second time I couldn’t see any other rule that I was breaking. I instead uploaded the article to Triond and will try writing something new for Factoidz and see what happens.

Near the end of the month I also answered a Craigslist ad for a travel writer. I got the gig a few days later. Because this is a private contract, I am unsure how much they will allow me to publish here but I will post what I can next month!

Here is my word count for August:

Earnings from writing online:

My photography earnings have again performed exactly as expected. It’s summer, and sales are down. Although, sales are down, I have done exceptionally well with fotolia. I also mentioned last month that I had planned on uploading a photo every evening. Unfortunately that plan died with my old macbook. Hopefully my wife and I can start this up once again in the near future.

I also applied for a new agency this month. Freshstock was created by the makers of StockXpert. I sent in my application on August 22^nd but have yet to hear anything. We will just have to wait and see. If I am accepted I will write up a review as soon as I start uploading.

Photography earnings:

Hopefully my computer problems are over, because I have another plan for this month. I have three goals. On their own they are attainable but reaching all three is pretty unrealistic. The idea is to come as close as possible. The first is to double the amount of traffic to this site. Now that I am back, and in full swing, I want to get things rolling on the Online Paycheck again. Second, I would like to double the amount of article I have up on Triond. Between the small amount I make off of views and the relatively okay amount I make via Triond Adsense share, I actually do pretty good on a per article basis. I would like to make this revenue grow. Lastly, I want to double the amount of page views on Bright Hub for the month of September. This is going to be the hardest goal to accomplish but with some of the SEO strategies I learned this month, I expect that I might be attainable.

As I mentioned earlier this month, I am updating many of the resources on the Online Paycheck. This has also been going well, with many of them already done. This is also not reflected in my word count as it was already published work. I will be adding new markets soon, including Factoidz. I have already been accepted as a writer for them but I haven’t had a chance to submit anything yet. I am a little hesitant because I have read many articles about Factoidz, some very complimentary and others the polar opposite. I just don’t want to get burned like I did with Today.com. Regardless I hopefully get something written for them this month and I will be posting my experiences afterwards.

On to business, here is my word count for the month of July:

July was an excellent month for article views! The addition to Adsense to Triond has really helped boost my income from them. So much so that I am going to start writing for them with much more frequency! As I mentioned in my updated review of Triond they now pay both in view (as they always have) and share 50 percent of Google Adsense if the writer has an Adsense account and places ads into the body of their articles. This month I made 75 cents from views and $3.23 from Triond in Adsense revenue. It may only be 26.5 cents per article for the month but it is a significant improvement and something I would like to build on. All in all my revenue total for writing has remained almost the same as it was in January which is encouraging after so much time away.

Earnings from writing online for July:

Considering it is the middle of summer, the deadest time for photo sales in the microstock world, I am pretty damned pleased with my photo sales. Really, it’s not much but it is enough to make me really happy. My wife and I have also started uploading a little too. We used to have access to a lot of cats to take photos of. We were doing the photography for an animal rescue organization. We would give them quality photos to help them adopt out their rescues and in exchange we would have the rights to sell the photos in whatever manner we chose. It was a really good experience for us both emotionally and financially, and it was a great cause. Of those pictures we set some aside for stock and others were saved to submit to magazines or book publishers once we had enough. We no longer have access to so many wonderful furry models but the photos we uploaded to stock have been doing really well so, a couple of days ago. we decided to start upload the rest. We’ve been uploading them one photo per day and will continue doing so until we have no more.

Photography earnings:

I have a great plan for August and I am really excited to get it going. I suspect my hours are going to get cut at my day job for the month of August since business has been really slow. I don’t mind at all since I know that things are going to really explode once September hits. In the meantime I get to do lots of writing and outdoor photography!

And another month has come and gone. The first half of September was awesome, unfortunately the end of the month fizzled. Photo sales were not as high as I had expected, even with the new uploads. I also didn’t hit my word count goal either, although I did come close. Despite these setbacks I am happy with the improvement in writing revenue. I tripled my pay-per-click revenue and almost doubled my earnings at Bright Hub. I’m looking forward to next month’s Bright Hub check. It will have the regular $10 per article, but for the first time, it will have some of my earnings from the ad revenue share program too.

I spent a lot of time applying for both writing and regular day jobs this month. All the writing I do for cover letters are obviously not counted in my monthly word counts as they are not published anywhere. I wrote one proposal for Elance, but was declined. I will be writing more proposals for Elance in the coming months I am sure.

One challenge I have consistently run into is avoiding a website that I believe to be a scam called Freelance Home Writers. I keep applying for jobs found online, only to receive an email a day later stating that the specific position I applied for was filled, but please visit freelancehomewriters(dot)com to find other work. A quick Google search will show you that many many people have written about troubles they’ve had with this website. I have yet to find someone who has found work through Freelance Home Writers, so be wary. If you are going to try them despite my warnings, then please Google them and have a good understanding of what you are about to get into. If you have had actual paying work with Freelance Home Writers, please drop me a line.

Here are my final word counts for September, the total is 2650words short of my goal:

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
blog	9	2955
Triond/Bukisa/Red Gage	2	507
Xomba	7	459
Bright Hub	7	7433
Short Stories	2	1877
Schvoong	1	136
	Total:	13367

And here are my earnings from writing this month:

Location	Total Amount of Articles	Monthly Income
Triond	13	$0.27
Bukisa	13	$0.72
Red Gage	13	$0.20
Adsense (Blog,Xomba, etc)		$3.80
Bright Hub	11	$70.00
Schvoong	1	$0.01
	Total:	$75.00

Last, and this month least, is photography. As I mentioned, I was hoping to have done a little better than this. Things did pick up near the end of the month, but over-all this is still a touch low for September, especially since I added a few new pictures to each site. The new shots helped a little, but I am still under my average. Besides submitting new photos, I also added CutCaster to my list of agencies and have already sold my first photo with them. I also sold my first photo ever at YaY Micro this month.

Agency	Number of Photos	New photos added	In Queue	Earnings
Shutterstock	146	3	0	$3.75
Dreamstime	222	9	0	$8.12
iStock	53	9	3	$3.79
StockXpert	144	10	0	$2.40
fotolia	207	7	0	$0.36
BigStockPhoto	202	8	0	$1.50
Image Catalog	180	0	10	$0.00
Feature Pics	251	10	0	$0.00
StockPhotoMedia	258	10	0	$0.00
The Photo Storage	187	10	0	$0.00
123rf	193	9	0	$5.08
Canstock Photo	232	10	0	$0.30
YaY Micro	160	6	0	€1.00
CutCaster	136	136	0	$0.50
			Total:	$25.80 & €1.00

I started getting photos ready for my first submission to Alamy as well. We’ll see how this goes over the next month. I’m not really setting many writing and photography goals for October as finding a day job has to be my main priority this month. All writing and photography will be set on the back burner until I find a something full-time.

Details:

URL: www.123rf.com

Industry: Microstock Agency

What they are looking for: Royalty Free Stock Photos and Royalty Free Illustrations

Pay: Commission

Alexa Rating: 3,163

123rf is a micostock agency. They currently feature 4.5 million photos and illustrations for download. 123rf is a great company to upload to. Their upload tool is very different when compared to most other microstock agencies. You use an FTP account or a web form, fill in the title and keywords if they are not in your IPTC data, and then that’s it. You can submit batches with just one click instead of submitting each photo individually. If a model release is needed, you go to the release page in the site, choose the appropriate document and check off all photos in your portfolio that it applies to. It’s simple and extremely fast once you get the hang of it. 123rf will also provide steady sales, making them a definite winner for any photographer or illustrator.

Submitting to 123rf

This site has no initial submission requirements making them an excellent site for those with a larger library and those just starting out in the microstock business. As I mentioned, uploading to 123rf is easy thanks to their FTP access. If you don’t want to use FTP they also have a web form but this is a very VERY slow option to use. All in all, this site is easy to use and worthwhile. If you are not submitting your microstock portfolio to them, then you should be!

Cool 123rf Features

• Great upload tools

• The site is smooth and easy to navigate for buyers and submitters.

• They have a great referral program (10% for referred photographers, 15% for referred buyers!)

• 123rf has a watermark tool, this allows you to move the watermark to any portion of the photo or illustration that you like.

• 123rf also has a blog that is full of awesome photography and Photoshop tutorials

If you have found this article to be helpful and plan on checking out 123rf, please consider using my referral link below. Thanks!

Well, it’s time to give you guys some numbers. They will be pretty skewed this month for a number of reasons. I spent a lot of time designing and researching for this blog instead of writing. Since I still have bills to pay, I am still also desperately looking for a regular day job. Much of this month was also dedicated to learning and using social networking sites. Anyway, here are this months numbers.

I’m going to start with my word count for the month. This is as much for me as it is for you. I want to get faster each month, without compromising the quality of my writing, and this is one statistic I will use to track that.

All in all, I can’t say I’m impressed with my word count. I hope to double this in September and I think that is achievable, especially since I only really dedicated half of last month to article writing. There is also no new photography being added this month. My wife and I are looking for a space to set up our studio again and shoot. A studio setting is where I thrive. I can shoot outdoors but to really do this well, I need to be in an area that I find inspiring. This city, the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, just does not provide for me in that capacity. As soon as we have a space to shoot in, we will start adding photos to the monthly tally.

Now on to the dollar count.

Obviously I won’t be living off this months earnings, but it’s a start. Now let’s move to photography earnings.

Agency	Number of photos	Earnings
Shutterstock	143	$30.30
Dreamstime	213	$10.53
iStock	44	$3.85
StockXpert	134	$3.10
Fotolia	200	$3.19
BigStockPhoto	194	$1.50
StockPhotoMedia	248	€2.50
123rf	184	$0.36
Canstock Photo	222	$0.75
Scandinavian Stock Photo	187	€1.00
		Total: $53.58 & €3.50

This, I am more impressed with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not near enough to live off of either, but considering this is the off-season for microstock sales and that I haven’t been uploading new photos, I am happy with this months results. I did sell an extended licence with Shutterstock this month for an extra 28 bucks, but even without the EL I would have been happy. I hope over the next month, if we are unable to gain a space to start shooting, to at least upload five more shots. If we can gain a shooting space, to upload more than five.

We’ll see what the coming month brings. That’s it from this front, it’s time for me to start my next Bright Hub article.