Update: Today.com is no longer a blogging website.

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.

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

November

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

November

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

November – Micros

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!

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.