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.

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

As I expected, photography sales were 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.

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!

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.

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.

Details:

URL: www.elance.com

Industry: Freelance Agency

What they are looking for: Freelancers, each contract has specific requirements

Pay: contract

Alexa rating: 806

Elance is a freelance mecca. It is a website used by freelancers and companies looking to hire freelancers for jobs. Elance is a great place for writers and photographers to find work. It is also a place where many other types of freelancers can find work as well.

To gain work through the Elance system, you have to bid on jobs. Elance works in a reverse auction fashion. Each time you want to bid on a job you need to use one or more “connects”. The amount of connects you need to use to bid on a job depend on how much the job pays. The higher the job’s pay range, the more connects are needed. The amount of connects you get each month depends on what kind of account you have. If you use up all your connects then you can buy more as needed.

Working with Elance

Each job is only posted for a limited amount of time. Bids are only accepted during this time. To apply to jobs you have to write a proposal. The person or company offering the job can read your proposal at any time. Once the time limit is done the job will hopefully be awarded to one of the freelancers. The reason I say hopefully is because so far I have written proposals for three contracts. One was awarded to another writer, the other two have yet to be awarded. Unfortunately this seems to be almost normal on Elance. It seems only 50% of contracts get awarded.

So the question remains, can a freelancer make decent money via Elance. The answer is maybe. It would take a good, if not great, writer who dedicates a lot of time to Elance. That writer would also have to have a reserve of money to live on until they start winning enough contracts to make a living. When you start out, you will have to take a lot of contracts at very low pay to build up good feedback. Even bidding at the website’s lowest allowed bid, you still may not win the contracts you bid on. Elance is a hard road but a living can be made here, it just takes the right kind of person. Personally, I am not giving up on it.

If you are just starting out with Elance I would recommend only trying the free account. You will get three connects a month and some information about jobs will be obscured to you but this will give you a good idea of how the website works and whether or not it will work for you.

]]> http://www.theonlinepaycheck.com/2009/10/12/elance/feed/ 1 http://www.theonlinepaycheck.com/2009/10/01/earnings-for-september-2009/ http://www.theonlinepaycheck.com/2009/10/01/earnings-for-september-2009/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:28:21 +0000 dgrwriting http://www.theonlinepaycheck.com/?p=108

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.

It’s now past the mid-month mark, and I thought I would give another update. I won’t talk earnings until the end of the month, but I can give some word counts and let you know what I’m up to. I’ve spent most of my time writing for this blog and Bright Hub, but I’ve also answered a couple of calls for short stories. I haven’t heard back from either of the publishers I’ve submitted to yet, only time will tell.

As for Bright Hub, I have seven articles assigned to me for the month. I’ve written four so far but only one has been published. One is awaiting approval, another has been submitted and sent back for revisions, the last still needs to be uploaded. I have also created an account on Elance, a freelance marketplace which I will be writing about soon for The Online Paycheck. I wrote my first proposal to an Elance client today. Check back at the end of the month to find out if using this site has paid off.

My goal for this month is to at least double last months word count and I’m right on track. Here’s the count so far:

Uploading photos has also been going well. Five of the shots I pulled out of my archives have been uploaded but many microstock websites I submit to still have them pending in their upload queues. Most of the remaining photos I chose from my archives have been worked over in Photoshop so they will be uploaded before long. I’m also selecting some landscapes that I am going to try on Alamy. Alamy is a traditional stock photography agency that I will soon be adding to the photography resource on this site but only after I’ve looked into them a little more.

That’s it for now, see you at the end of the month!

Details

URL: www.shvoong.com

Industry: Online Publishing

What they are looking for: Non-fiction

Pay: Pay-Per-Click

Alexa rating: 2,815

Shvoong is a pay-per-click online publisher. This site only publishes summaries and short reviews of books, movies, articles and websites. Each summary or review can be no longer than 900 words and shorter articles seem to be the norm. Shvoong would be a great site if they paid more per click. Their present pay rate is only 10% of their ad revenue share. This is a good place to practice writing reviews. It’s pretty easy to pump out three or four reviews of this size in an hour if not more, but you will only make a few pennies in return. I doubt this would be a place to gain a decent monthly income because of the poor pay rate, but you still might find worth while if you enjoy review writing.

Submitting to Shvoong

Submitting to Shvoong is as simple as it gets. Make sure you sign up for an account before uploading. You can upload material without signing in, but it won’t make you any money. They have a simple text editor for uploading reviews and summaries. The text editor does not accept any HTML, but you can add reference links in a tool just underneath the text editor.