September Passive Income Online

My passive income online in September 2011 came so very close to $1,500 ... just a few dollars shy. I know I won't be in the $5,000 a month range by the end of the year, but it's definitely attainable by the end of 2012. Right now, I'm building the foundation for future earnings through my network of websites and niche blogs, especially two in particular. Of course, I'm looking forward to my efforts paying off; but I'm also having fun as I go.

September Earnings:

Adsense $592.72
cj.com $349.27
RA commissions $154.24
Clickbank $149.81
Amazon Associates $132.57
Demand $84.08
WA commissions $65
NB commissions $39.92
ShareASale      $8.70

Total $1,492.23

 In addition to online income from websites and blogs, my husband and I earn a somewhat passive income from two two-bedroom rental homes here in our county. I'm planning to blog about that this month, just to give some insight into another residual income model with which I have experience. Diversification really strengthens your ability to survive economic downturns and industry changes, and diversifying offline makes sense to me.

How were your online earnings in September? If you're just starting out, what's the main challenge you face to building a reliable online income?

July Residual Income Report

My  July residual income from affiliate sales, Adsense and online writing was higher than June's, thankfully. I took most the month off writing and blogging to prepare for, welcome and enjoy my new baby.

I think that writing for passive income is one of the very best work at home jobs for moms you can find -- there is nothing like checking your accounts on a Monday morning (after spending Sunday hosting a post-baptism reception) and seeing a $250+ commission from a large sale over the weekend. That's the site that greeted me August 1, a great start to a new month.

I'm back at work now, getting up early when I can (baby Mark likes to wake up and eat at all hours, the little stinker, I mean sweetie) and writing during nap/ quiet time. I'm still working to build up my monthly income back to the $5k/ month mark ... as you'll see from the numbers below, I have a ways to go.

July Residual Writing Income:

Adsense    $577.30
cj.com      $338.15
Amazon   $114.73
Demand Studios $107.78
Clickbank $101.32
Wealthy Affiliate $66.50
Niche Blogger $29.94
Squidoo $5.62


Total $1,341.34 

I'll be writing, formatting, linking, backlinking and working on all the other fun tasks that writer-webmasters do throughout August to hopefully increase my numbers.

What are you working on? I love to hear about others' online projects!

June Residual Income Report: Lowest Month Ever

 One of the downsides of a residual income is that it can decrease from one month to the next,  with fluctuations caused by factors from the season to online competition in your niche to search engine changes. A roller coaster ride comes to mind as the perfect illustration for this reality.


During my highest months, I've earned $5,000+. last month, in stark contrast, was a fraction of that at less than $1,000 earned from residual income sources online. In fact, it's the lowest month I've had since I embarked on my residual-only business plan.


As those of you who follow my blog know, the largest source of my residual income, eHow.com articles, were purchased from me by Demand Media in March. Thus I no longer have that revenue stream, am and relying on my own small sites and blogs to earn money through ads and affiliate links.


2011 Still a Record
On the positive side, my residual income for this year as a whole will be my best ever, since the one-time buyout payment was also residual income. So, when I look at this year as a whole, I know it will be a great success income-wise. The monthly picture, at least during the summer when interest in my top niches wanes and traffic to my sites is down, is less encouraging. But, and here's the good part -- it's truly motivating. I have to re-focus my efforts, build up my best sites and work harder to make a go of this so that my 2012 income is back where it need to be.


Here are my sources of income and numbers for last month:

June Residual Writing Income

• Adsense   $488.89
• PCo affiliate $104.19
• Amazon    $92.07
• Demand Studios   $91.35
• WA affiliate  $66.50
• NB commissions $49.90
• clickbank $40.04
• cj.com     $5.40

 Total $938.34

 See what I mean? Nothing exceptional -- everything was down compared to May, the previous month, which saw over $2,000 in revenue. Time for me to get back to work -- what about you? How are the summer months treating your income?

Residual Income Report May 2011

 May was a great month for residual income, beating out April's earnings by more than $550, despite lower Adsense earnings due to the seasonal nature of my pets site (it tend to peak in March - April every year). The increase was due to higher afiliate sales at cj.com, which i explain in more detail below.

I added a couple more pages to my pets site and expect next year to be excellent, with even higher traffic and earnings than these past few months. As for the home/ family site, I keep adding a few blog posts every month and will be focusing more on it this fall, since fall and winter are the best time of year for this particular topic.

May Residual Writing Income

• cj.com     $1,060.81
• Adsense   $530.72
• PCo Affiliate $205.08
• Amazon    $150.85 
• WA affiliate  $89.00
• Demand Studios residuals   $88.20
• NB commissions $49.90
• clickbank $41.26 
• Squidoo    $5.66 
• Misc         $1.20 

 Total $2,222.76

As you might have seen from my earlier post about my niche blog income for May, my two best-earning sites made $771.93 combined. The rest of my passive income for the month ($1438.53) is from Adsense on other, smaller blogs and niche sites, as well as HubPages and Squidoo royalties, and affiliate commissions via my older Demand Studios and eHow articles.

When I first started writing for eHow's WCP and Demand Studios, there were no rules against affiliate links in the resources section, so I added a couple topic-specific ones to each of my articles. Even though the articles are no longer mine, they continued to earn money for me this past month -- I had two $400+ sales days in May thanks to my old eHow articles via cj.com links.

But as you might surmise, I can't depend on affiliate sales form those old articles lasting for any time -- they could be gone tomorrow as I no longer control the articles or their links.  That's why it's doubly important for me to build up the income through my sites, blogs and other projects.

Are you building up your online passive income? How did you do in May?

Five Reasons Why You Should Write for Residuals

 There's a good deal of how-to information when it comes to building a passive residual income online and in the real world, but not much about the benefits, about the why of residual income efforts. Until you've achieved your passive income goals, the efforts to get there can seem enormous compared to the returns: you might write 50 website articles in a month and only see a few dollars in revenue during those few weeks.

That's when a reminder as to what you're aiming for, and why, is important.

Having built up to a full-time residual writing income in the past, and earning one this year as well, I've experienced firsthand the peace and freedom that comes from passive income. A residual income allows you to:

Diversify your income sources: In an unstable employment market, adding to and diversifying the places from which you receive income is especially important. The more income sources you have, the better better you can weather most financial storms in any economy.

Increase earnings potential: By building a residual income stream that doesn't need constant attention, you can can earn more money over time. The more residuals you build through websites and digital media, the higher your overall earnings will be, even if your boss never gives you a raise at your 9-to-5 (assuming you have and keep a regular job). As a work at home mom, I am able to earn far more through residual sources than if I only wrote as a freelancer for hire.


Retire early or on time: Build income source for retirement through your own niche sites, blogs, revenue-share articles, ebooks, apps and the like. While many Americans are facing the threat of less less money in retirement, delaying retirement or even no retirement at all due to lack of savings and investments, savvy online writers can build an income stream to last throughout their retirement years with basic upkeep and maintenance.


Work less hours: If you want to quit your day job and work only as much as you like, building a full-time passive income is the way to go to achieve this without living on peanuts or handouts. Since passive income allows you to reap the benefit of years' worth of efforts, you can work much fewer hours -- even take off for weeks at a time -- if you aren't trying to build up to a higher level.
 
Enjoy life more: Whether it's a long commute, stressful deadlines, or plain old burnout in your current job, many people find their work stressful and their family and personal time too limited. With a strong passive residual income from writing, you can plan your days, have more time with children, a spouse, friends and the adventures and activities you enjoy.


What your motivation for working for a long-term passive income?

Niche Site Profits April 2011

 With the eHow WCP closed for good and taking with it the backbone of what was a full-time passive residual income from writing, I've been working harder than ever on my own properties to rebuild my monthly residuals. I recently shared my residual income without eHow. In April, I focused efforts on two of my own sites to begin rebuilding monthly cash flow. I'll share their income reports below.

Facebook Fan Page
In April, I added some backlinks and set up a Facebook page for my pets site.  The Facebook page has 15 fans and I've posted links to articles on my site there, receiving a few comments and a sprinkling of visitors. With the Google changes, social media is increasingly important for traffic and rankings.

Outsourcing Content
While the pets site was previously written entirely by me, and is on a topic with which I am very familiar and work with in real life on a daily basis, I decided to hire a freelance writer to help me add more articles to it in May. The writer has personal experience in this niche as well, and I'm confident I'll see quality work from him. I'll update on that front next month.

Pets Website Earnings
Income for this niche hit its peak in March, as was the case in 2010 and 2009, and will wind slowly down from here, with the fall months typically the lowest-earning.

Adsense      $557.74
Clickbank   $220.18
Amazon        $16.44

April total   $794.36

(-$10.33 compared to March 2011)

Family Niche Blog Income
Just the other day, I lamented to my husband that my newer niche blog on a family-related topic was only earning about $10 a month from Adsense, whereas the pets site at the same age was making $80-$100 a month from ad clicks and affiliate commissions. It wasn't until I listed and tallied all its income sources that I realized it's actually doing very well.

Started last August, it's less than nine months old and has just 15 blog posts and four pages. I discovered this niche from one of my eHow articles that did exceptionally well (it earned over $3,000 in revenue share and more than $1,500 in affiliate commissions in 3.5 years).

Family niche blog income sources in April 2011:

cj.com       $29.75
RA sales    $21.82
Clickbank  $21.24 
Amazon     $17.06
Adsense      $9.82

Total         $99.69

Thus my total earnings from these two sites in April was $894.05 -- to me, a very encouraging number. I have over a dozen domain names, most sitting unloved with just a few pages or posts apiece (or in some cases, nothing), but by focusing my efforts on one or two sites at a time, I hope to bring them all up to at least the $100/month mark by next year and keep growing from there.

•  Check out my Tools & Training resource page for links to the products and services I use and recommend. If you haven't made your own profitable website yet, everything you need to get started is right there.

Do you have a niche site or blog? How is it doing? If not, what's stopping you from moving forward?

WriterGig's Residual Income (sans eHow)

My Residual Writing Income
With the official closure of eHow's Writers Compensation Program (WCP) on May 5, 2011, my monthly residual income took a dramatic shift downward. As much as I have been working to diversify my online income sources over the past year, I was still very dependent on eHow for the bulk of my monthly earnings (I made over $3,000 from my articles there in March 2011).

I have worked on my websites almost every week, sometimes daily, but having met my original income goals, and busy with little children, I didn't have quite the drive and intensity that I did when I first began my residual income adventure.

One of the silver linings to the end of the WCP is that it has re-inspired me to build my residual income platform through my online properties, with quality content monetized by ads and affiliate links.

The Numbers
April 2011 Online Residual Income Report

• Google Adsense:                                                   $647.96
• Clickbank affiliate commissions:                             $241.42
• Amazon Associates affiliate commissions:               $239.42
• Other (NB $59.88 ; RA $21.82; WA $66.50)      $148.20         
• Demand Studios residuals                                      $117.22
• Commission Junction affiliate commissions:                  $40.27

Total                                                                             $1,434.49

Future Writing Income Goals
Obviously, my writing residuals are much less today than they have been in years, especially compared to this past March and November and December of last year (those were my three $5,000+ passive income months). But even with no eHow and very low cj.com numbers (my best selling product was out of stock from the vendor all month) I still broke $1,000 and came close to $1,500. If this is my basis going forward, I think I am in good shape -- not starting from zero, at least. I'm going to work to build back up to a $5,000 month by the end of the year.

Will I make it? I hope so. I have a plan, which involves quadrupling the amount of quality content I have online currently in order to see the same percentage increase in my earnings by late 2011 or early 2012. Stay tuned in here to see if I make it.

What about your goals? How will you build your residual income, or freelance writing income, or work-at-home-mom business, going forward?

Note: Due to a Blogger glitch, most of the comments on this post disappeared. I've re-posted them below. 

Double Your Residual Income in 2011

Have you set your goals for residual income in 2011? I did -- my reach-for-it goal is to double my monthly residual income within the next 12 months. If it sounds a bit impractical, especially since it's taken me three years to build to my current level, here's why I think it just might be doable -- and how you can do it, too.

Why I Can Double my Writing Income in 1 Year

Since I already have niche websites, blogs, and articles and profiles on revenue-sharing content sites, doubling my current residual income should take much less time than it did to get to the point where I am currently. Three years ago, I was starting from scratch -- any niche sites I had were brand new and not on Google's radar. Now, I have the advantage of domains that are several years old, and hundreds of articles that have already been online for years or at least several months.

This means that any new articles I add to my established sites in the coming months should theoretically  earn more, and faster, than previous articles. As I've shown recently, I can increase my earnings on existing eHow articles by adding backlinks.

Furthermore, I am aware of what niches, topics and affiliate products have been profitable for me and those that have shown promise and need more exploration. I wrote plenty of articles for eHow.com that earned very slowly and, conversely, dozens that have been great earners -- all of these give me an idea of what works, and how to duplicate success.

My skills in setting up niche sites, creating attractive, informative blog posts, researching quickly, and incorporating adwords and affiliate links with quality content have all grown over the years, putting me in a better position than ever to leverage my abilities to build long-term residual income.

Hopefully, much of what I've just described applies to you, too.

The Plan: How to Increase Your Passive Income by 100%

Double the amount of residual-earning content you have online.

Will it be that simple? I think so -- but will it be easy? Probably not -- it takes effort, discipline and dedication to work every day toward your passive income goals. This is especially true when you have a primary full-time job, whether it's as an employee or a stay at home mom to young children.But if you break it down into monthly goals, weekly lists and daily action items, you may be better able to follow the plan.

For starters, add up the number of articles, website pages and blog posts you have online -- even if you don't have an exact number, get a rough estimate. For example, someone who has 100 eHow articles, plus 20 at Bukisa, a blog with 52 posts, a niche site with 20 pages, three Hubs and four Squidoo lenses, plus 10 ezine articles, is looking at a portfolio of just over 200 pieces of content currently earning residual income. Adding 200 more in the next 365 days should certainly be doable.

Focus on building the niches and sites that are earning the best, adding more keyword-targeted pages and quality backlinks to your best-earning sites and pages. Don't try to start three more blogs in the coming year -- work on building your current sites to perform better. If there's a niche you just can't resist trying, build a Squidoo lens and a Hubpage on it and use them to test the market before diving into a new property.

If You're Just Getting Started

If you are new to making money online from writing, you'll have a different goal -- there's not much to double at this point and you need to get started and build, build, build in 2011. Use sites such as HubPages and Squidoo to experiment with writing and marketing, exploring different niches. When you find something that interests you enough and shows promise as a money-maker, start a blog or niche site on the topic, adding a page or a backlink every day as you work to gain traffic and eventually, affiliate sales and advertising revenue.

For those who really don't know where or how to start, as well as those who are serious about taking their online income to a higher level, I recommend that you look into WealthyAffiliate and give it a try. This is the only service (other than web-hosting and ejunkie checkout) for which I currently pay money to use. They have an amazing collection of resources, including step-by-step action guides, all in one convenient location. I've attended several recent WA Webinars on affiliate marketing and backlinking and those have been very helpful to me.

Using the WealthyAffiliate Article Club method to build and promote a new niche site, I was able to earn over $1,000 in affiliate commissions from a niche site I built in 2010 -- it has been hugely successful for me so far and I have to attribute much of that success to what I implemented after taking the WA course.

However, if you don't have the money for that right now, don't worry about it because you CAN make a go of this on a shoestring budget. It make take longer and there will be more trial and error to find what works best, but it can be done -- it's how I started out and so did many other work at home moms.

Best of luck in 2011 -- will you try to double your residual income this year?

August Earnings from eHow, Adsense & Affiliate Sales (and Bukisa)

I know how much people enjoy seeing earnings reports from writers and internet marketers -- it can be both encouraging and reassuring that making money online is really possible. When I was first starting out it was a real boost to my confidence to read updates from bloggers making $500 and $1,000 or even $10,000 a month. It was very inspirational to me. So ... here are some of my earnings from August 2010:

eHow                $1,825.05

Google Adsense   $332.77

cj.com                 $224.92

Amazon             $168.25

WA                   $110.00

 
Clickbank             $60.06

Bukisa                  $53.27

 Total reported here:             $2,774

(I also have miscellaneous earnings from single-company affiliate programs, my ebook, and a few other sources.)

August was a very good, although not record-breaking, month for eHow earnings. (The number here is just for my earnings under the WriterGig profile; I also have residuals from Demand Studios eHow articles and from another eHow profile not included here.) After checking the month's earnings, I found myself wishing I'd written just a few hundred more eHow articles than I did over the nearly 3 years the eHow Writers' Compensation Program (WCP) existed. Yes, I'm building up my own sites and blogs ... but these articles and pages take much longer than eHow articles did to start earning. You really can't beat eHow's great pagerank and traffic. But I digress.

Google Adsense was also strong, my second-highest month by a few dollars. This is encouraging as my main Adsense earner actually does best in the spring, so a strong August is very promising. My other niche sites are starting to show up with Adsense impressions and I'm looking forward to seeing these numbers grow as I add content and build backlinks.

My cj.com sales were more than $200, and the bulk of that is for a specific product I started marketing three years ago simply by adding a link under one of my eHow articles. I have four eHow articles that link to this product; those few links from 2007 have brought in over $2,000 in sales commissions. That is about as passive as income gets.

Clickbank is on the rise for me, which is a direct result of putting into practice the methods taught at the new affiliate marketing membership site I joined back in June (I'll blog more about this in an update post soon). It's great to see these sales, especially since they amount to $20 per sale. So three sales for the CB product I promote yields $60 ... I had to sell 123 products on Amazon in August to get the $168 listed here. But I'm not complaining about those Amazon earnings ... most of them are from years-old links as well and are a great boost to my monthly earnings total.

Was August a good month for your online earnings? Have you added any new residual income/ passive income streams this summer?

Bukisa Article Earnings Update

I decided to experiment with Bukisa almost a year ago (see eHow vs. Bukisa), when the site was still fairly new and unknown in the writing/ online marketing world. I tried writing several articles from the get-go to see how they would do, and was impressed by the site's structure and potential.

My strategy with Bukisa, after trying the site and doing my homework on its reputation, was to spread the word among my work at home mom friends and various online networks (such as Facebook and Twitter) to build my network. Since Bukisa compensates writers for referring others to the site, it pays to build your network from the start. Network earnings are pure passive income -- you don't have to write or promote anything to see income from your referred members.

My Bukisa Stats

Articles published: 13
Content earnings: $45
Network earnings: $364

My Bukisa earnings to date: $409

Of my own content, the top earner to date is "Free Budget Worksheets." While per-article earnings are lower than my eHow average, I have so few articles on Bukisa it's hard to make an accurate comparison. It's certainly true that eHow has site traffic and page rank that beat Bukisa hands down, but with time I think Bukisa will move up in the ranks and earnings will also increase, perhaps impressively.

Also, Bukisa is a good alternative place to post deleted eHow articles, as long as they are quality content and worth republishing.

Have you published content on Bukisa? What's your experience been so far?

How to Make Money with a Website

Figuring out how to make money with a website is a learning process, one that has certainly been simplified by the plethora of informative guides, blog posts and articles available online for free. One of the best resources I've seen recently is the How to Build Passive Income with Article Sites Series by Lindsay at Writing for Your Wealth. If you're new to creating niche sites, or want to take your earnings to a higher level, pay attention to Lindsay's advice. She knows what she's talking about -- she earns over $100,000 in Adsense a year.

I have several sites online making money and several domains that I plan to bring online this year. My non-Blogger sites consist (so far) of the following:

• A nutrition site created with SiteBuild It! in December 2007
• A home and garden site & Wordpress blog started in June 2008
• A pets site created in December 2008
• A mini-site for my eHow eBook
• Several other domains with one page or none, needing attention

For all except the nutrition site, I use HostGator hosting and can have unlimited domains under that account, paying about $15 to register each one and then $10/ month to host them all. I decided to go this route rather than purchase multiple SBI sites because, under my one membership, I have access to all the tools and can use the Brainstorming tools, keyword information, forums and networking/ link building aspects for any of my sites. Also, I am not expecting to make a large amount of money from the sites right away, so HostGator was more affordable than SBI! for multiple small sites. The education I received at SBI! was invaluable and I continue to use those resources on my SBI site as well as in my other website ventures.

My pets site, whose link I will share sometime later when the site is more complete, has 9 pages and has been indexed by Google. I have earned just over $10 in Adsense and $4 in Amazon referrals since I published the first page in mid December.

I'm doing this site partially as a case study, to see how well it will earn and whether it is a better method than writing for content sites with better page ranks. I also want to diversify my income.

Some quick stats on the site:

• Domain name is a three-word search term.
• The topic has low search engine traffic and low cost Adsense ads.
• Competition for the keywords isn't bad.
  

I'll be interested to see how it earns as I add more pages and do a little site promotion. As always, I'll post updates.

Do you make money with your website or a blog? I'd love to hear how it's going.

Photo by Eylem Culculoglu

Maximize eHow Earnings with Affiliate Links

Do you earn income from affiliate products you recommend in your eHow articles? If not ... it's time to start. I encourage you, if you have a library of eHow articles, to take some time to add affiliate links or links to your other sites and blogs, under the Resources section of your articles. Don't waste time on social promotion, Digging and Stumbling articles that really aren't going to appeal to those social communities. Instead -- maximize your earnings potential by adding another residual income revenue stream to your content.

For this post, I'm going to assume you've joined the affiliate programs and can navigate them enough to generate the code for the products. Here's how to add affiliate links to your eHow articles for several of the affiliate programs I use.

Amazon.com

To build affiliate links to Amazon products, choose the "text only" option, to simplify the HTML code you'll see. While the program generates HTML code, you are just after the link -- you can NOT copy and paste the entire HTML code into your eHow article or Resources section.

Here's what it looks like when you're getting the affiliate code for Amazon products (click to enlarge):
Select the URL that begins http:// and is located between the quote marks. Do not inlcue the quotes, but make sure you have highlighted every character in between. Copy this web address to your clipboard by keying CTRL + C or by right-clicking your highlight link and then selecting "Copy" or "Copy to clipboard" in the menu that appears.

You now have the affiliate code for the product you wanted to recommend -- and if someone buys it form your link, you'll get credit -- and money. Scroll down to "Putting it All Together," below, to see how to add this link to your eHow articles.

CJ.com

Commission Junction is a great affiliate network, and I'm averaging around $100 a month from affiliate sales through CJ, even with a very low number of links online. I'll be adding more CJ links to my articles and sites in the coming months.

After choosing the product or site you wish to promote, choose "Get HTML" for the link you want. You'll see the following dialog box:

Select the affiliate link between the quotes. You'll use this in your eHow article ... scroll down to "Putting it All Together" to see how.

eJunkie

My ebook is hosted with eJunkie, and there are scores of information products on the site that offer affiliate programs. (If you're not an eHow ebook affiliate, you should be! You can earn $12.50 per sale by promoting my ebook in eHow-related articles, money-themed how-to's and even your blog. )And then you'll have the code:


Select only the link between the quotes, which in this case I have underlined in blue.

Putting it All Together: Adding the affiliate links to eHow articles

After generating your HTML code, selecting the appropriate link, and copying it to your clipboard, you're ready to add the link to your eHow article. Open the article for editing, and scroll down to the last few sections of the Write Article tool.

Screen shot of the eHow Write Article tool, to illustrate (click to enlarge):

Paste the affiliate link in the "link" section and then write or copy and paste a descriptive phrase about the product or site. Keep it short and simple. Hit publish. Now view your article, and click the link to make sure you added it correctly.

From the outside, your affiliate link simply looks like a helpful resource (which it is):



There you have it. Easy-peasy, right?

Don't expect huge overnight earnings ... the Resources section is so far down that most readers never see it. But some, intrigued by the information in your articles and wanting to know more, keep scrolling and see your resources. Some click, some don't. Some buy the products you recommend. Most don't.

But just like the adsense clicks, day in and day out, it adds up over time. A few minutes to build a link can translate into many dollars over time. My best-performing link has earned me hundreds of dollars over the past few months. This is passive income at its best -- enjoy it.

Site Build It 2-for-1 Holiday Sale

My niche sites are a small but growing part of my residual income streams. My fist site, one on health and nutrition, I built with Site Build It! last Decmeber and January. The step-by-step guide was a crash course in web content writing and SEO, providing me the skills to build my pages as well as write profitable content articles for eHow and other sites.

My experience with Site Build It! is a large part of the reason I have been able to build residual income online--the knowledge I gained was well worth the subscription cost, and then some.

If you are interested in building a niche website, and don't know where to start ... you need Site Build It!

If you are already a webmaster, but you've seen lackluster results with your sites ... you need Site Build It!

Now is the best time to buy SBI!, as there is a Buy One, Get One Free sale in progress that ends December 25 -- take advantage of this special if you have any plans to create profitable niche websites in the coming year. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you aren't satisfied, your price will be refunded ... but chances are, you will love the incredible wealth of resources provided by SBI! and become one of their many success stories.

In addition to eHow, Bukisa, my eHow ebook and my blog, I will be increasing my residual income in 2009 by building up my Site Build It! website and creating another 2-4 niche websites.

I think diversification is key to maximizing your profits online -- so if you are currently working for clients or writing for content sites but don't have your own, consider brainstorming a niche topic and starting your own site as a way to write for yourself as you build your online income.

Best of luck in all your endeavors, and have a very happy holiday season!

Bukisa Earnings: Report from Month One

My Bukisa earnings are impressive to me considering the number of articles I have on the site, Bukisa's young age and the amount of traffic on the site (it's not terribly high yet). I joined Bukisa on November 8, 2008, and wrote five pieces of content, which have simply been sitting there for the past few weeks.

I also promoted my sign-up link in order to build my network, which is now 50-members strong, although only about half have contributed content and earned money. I think that building a strong network is key to Bukisa success, as it is a secondary income stream that could easily rival or beat the earnings from your own content.

Following is a screen shot of my Bukisa after one month:


For five pieces of content on a new site, $17.20 is excellent. That is a better outcome than my HubPages and Associated Content experiments. The network potential is one of Bukisa's main attractions to me. That, coupled with the ability to create in-text links in my articles, is why I've diverted some of my online writing time to this new start-up site.

The only negative aspect of Bukisa, as I see it, is the "Index" that can change and which determines pays per view. Since some writers socially promote the heck out of their articles, bringing the less-quality traffic that rarely clicks ads or follows through, the overall profitability of the traffic goes down and the Index -- which went from 4.2 down to 3. 95 over the last month -- changes to reflect that. Personally, I did not use social promotion on any of my Bukisa articles -- social promotion has its place, but not for your average content articles. Save the Stumbles and Diggs for your stellar pieces.

Are you on Bukisa? What do you like -- or dislike -- about the site?

eHow vs. Bukisa

Bukisa, a new online content website with its own revenue-sharing compensation program, has captured my interest in the past few days. I signed up ten days ago, following covewriter's lead. I have to say, I am impressed with the site's structure, layout and possibilities.

I really like their three-tier earnings structure, where users make money for their own content as well as a smaller portion of the page view revenue from writers they refer to the sight. This means two ways to earn income and eventually, two residual income streams: your articles and your network's articles. 

In my quest to build up a variety of residual and passive income streams through online writing, I've added Bukisa to the mix. I began writing for eHow's new Writers Compensation Program (WCP) as an experiment, and I'm happy to jump in with Bukisa in its early stages too. 

Several readers have asked me if it's okay to copy their eHow articles onto Bukisa. While it's allowed by both eHow and Bukisa as long as the material is owned by the author, I wouldn't reccomend doing it that way. Here's why.

Duplicate content, in general, is not well ranked by Google. It appears as having been copied, and Google likes original content. Secondly, since you can choose to allow syndication of your content on Bukisa, there is the possibility, at least, that the same article will be published multiple times online.

Some argue that eHow has sucha  high page rank that it's better just to write there, but I disagree. I am doing well with eHow, but diversifying and having a variety of sites -- both for income and increasing traffic and backlinks --  is important. 

So, for the successful eHow writer who is, what is Bukisa good for?

• Original content that doesn't fit on eHow (i.e. not how-to format) or has already been written about by another eHow author.
• Re-written articles from your other sites or content database profiles.
• Articles written specifically to drive traffic to your blog, websites or other content.
• Diversification.

After ten days, with five articles to my name, I've earned $4.85 on Bukisa. Half of that is from page views on my content and half is from my network's earnings. This is the first article promotion I've done as I've been focusing on eHow and a few other projects.

Ways that eHow is better than Bukisa:

• High page rank, established site, credible company (Demand Media).
• Strong user community.
• Amazing monthly traffic stats.
• History of prompt payments.
• Good to excellent earning potential.
• Revenue sharing is based on actual earnings.

Ways that Bukisa is better than eHow:

• Allows far more flexibility as far as article structure, layout and title format.
• Can link to resources and other sites or articles in body of article.
• Allows do-follow links, building back links to whatever you like.
• Earnings are based on page views, so popular topics pay well regardless of ad revenue generated.
• Tiered earnings structure allows more residual income streams.

I'll blog more about Bukisa vs. eHow in regards payment and other aspects as time goes on.  Long term, I have no idea yet which will win out, eHow or Bukisa. I suspect a combination will be ideal. In the mean time, check out ... 

eHow articles I've written about Bukisa:

• Use Bukisa to Earn Residual Income Online
• Use Bukisa

Bukisa articles I've written:

• Optimizing Revenue on Bukisa
• Make eHow Money
• About Marketing eBooks
• Free Budget Worksheets
• Affiliate Marketing Tips

Do you write for Bukisa? Let me know your thoughts! Want to sign up for Bukisa? Use this link to join my fun and growing network!

Passive Residual Income Monthly Report

Interested in my passive, residual income progress? Well, my monthly report is here ... but I must be honest, it is with some trepidation that I post this month's totals.

I have never written about my "regular" freelance writing money, as it's not my style to discuss personal income. However, I have shared my residual income and eHow earnings from the beginning, since this was just "extra" and with eHow's vague earnings detail, I thought of it as an encouragement and service for others.

But as my readers know, I have been slowly replacing my active income with residual income streams. While I am still doing some paid freelance writing and editing, I'll soon be focusing all my work time on building ongoing income sources.

For privacy reasons, I've decided that I will no longer give monthly totals. However, I will explain HOW to achieve significant residual income, talk about maximizing income streams in detail, and I may let you know income amounts for specific sources throughout the year. For example, one month I might talk about my eHow income and the next, about Bukisa residuals.

I think through this blog I have clearly demonstrated the value of residual income streams, the unlimited possibilities of online income and that it is achievable, even by busy, overworked stay at home moms like myself.

WriterGig's Residual Income Report October 2008

eHow $1,615.17

eJunkie $646.72

CJ $115.72

Lulu $111.79

Amazon $110.38

HostGator $50.00

Adsense $4.40

TOTAL $2654.18

It was my best month ever for online residuals, and exceeded my expectations by quite a bit. My only overhead was getting my computer fixed (tax deductible $150) and webhosting ($15). I already deducted the cost of affiliate payments and host fees from the other numbers.

Sales of my eHow eBook (which is a great guide for those trying to maximize eHow earnings, by the way) were good, and I expect them to be even higher in November with the revamped sales page.

P.S. If you know me in real life ... no, I'm not rich yet. My residuals covered property taxes and unexpected income loss this month. We're still working toward our debt-free goal. ;)

P.P.S. I'd love to hear about your residual income progress or new sites you're trying. Also, let me know if this was an encouraging post for you. Please share in the comments section, below.

eHow Earnings Just Shy of $900 for September

My eHow earnings jumped considerably this month, even with little new writing and minimal article promotion (it's been a busy month for this WAHM!). At $892.78, it was my best month of passive income to date.

With 202 published articles, I have just 11 more than I did in August when my earnings were $617 for the month. My article on How to Survive Total Economic Collapse (Google it--it's on the first page of the search results) earned $10 a day during the past week due to the economic turmoil. It was also listed on eHow's front page under "Top 10 eHows," along with my article on How to Earn Extra Money. I am sure that boost helped, in addition to increased searches on these topics.

The following screen shot shows my eHow residuals to date, by month. Click on the photo to see it magnified (and legible!)

I include my earnings information in great detail, as well as my strategy for success, in my eHow eBook. In addition to the residual income from eHow, I also earned several hundred dollars in other sources tied to my eHow articles. Tips on this topic are also included in my book.

I've set up an eHow eBook Affiliate Program and my affiliates have found great success promoting the book on their own blogs and sites, and earning money through these sales. In fact, eBayCoach Suzanne Wells won my September 2008 affiliate contest and a bonus for bringing in the most sales.

Do you write for eHow? How did September treat you? I'd love to have your comments!

Residual Income for July 2008

July was my biggest month so far for eHow earnings, and affiliate sales were good as well. One reader asked me by email if my only writing income is from these sources--the answer is no. I have several freelance writing clients and several editing gigs that keep me busy in addition to writing "for myself" as much as I am able. I don't share my regular writing income because it's just not my style, but I do like to show others how certain residual income streams are producing. I hope it's encouraging and helpful. Here's my newest tally.

July 2008 Residual Income

eHow earnings $500.56
SBI affiliate sales $74
eBook $71.52
Amazon $25.78
Google Adsense $3.20

Total $675.06

These are all true residuals. The links for Amazon books and other affiliate earnings were put up months or even a year ago in one case. I don't have time to promote my eHow articles, so those are also quite passive.

If you aren't focusing on building your residual income streams on the side, I highly recommend that you start today, even if you just write one eHow article. Start simple, and keep it up. Try setting aside 30 minutes or one hour of each day to your own writing that will continue to produce income long after you've left the computer.

Passive Income Report for May and June 2008

I took a minute to total my passive income for the past couple months, and thought I'd share the results here. I really want to encourage you to build up a passive income stream (several streams!) because the reality of earning money for articles you wrote months ago or links you posted last year can really change how you view your work and your approach to earning money.

May 2008

Residuals from my eHow.com articles: $427.13

Affiliate sales:
SBI $74.83
Amazon.com $19.35

Total May passive income: $521.31

June 2008

Residuals from my eHow.com articles: $397.20
Sales of my eHow eBook (after fees): $126.40
Affiliate sales:
Implix affiliate sales $67.90
Amazon.com $22.43

Total June passive income: $613.93

My bank of eHow articles is my biggest passive income generator, followed in June by eBooks and then affiliate sales. I have not marketed my eBook at all, except for posting a link on this site and in my WAHM profile. After I build the sales page and a little campaign around the eBook, I expect to sell quite a few downloads.

The non-Amazon affiliate sales are always a pleasant surprise. Amazon always averages about $20 a month, which is not much but it's a little extra that just comes in without effort. Implix has several software programs, but I've only linked to and sold the eBook Gold program so far.

I wrote my first eHow article less than a year ago, and in January 2008 made my New Year's resolution to build my passive income streams in 2008. In less than eight months, I
consistently earn over $500 a month just in passive income, which is in addition to my paid articles and writing done for clients.

My next goal is to reach $1,000 a month in passive income. As a work at home mom, my time is very limited. The more I can build my passive income streams, the higher my overall income potential. I can't create more hours to work, but I can maximize my earnings by focusing on work that keeps earning money long after I've put down my pen for the day.

I wish you the best success in your own passive income endeavors... get started today!

Passive Income through Affiliate Programs

Some of my passive income this month has been through affiliate programs, which was very encouraging (and exciting!) for me. One of the sales was for SiteBuildIt, which is a great website building program and educational course for creating successful websites. I have Site Build It! for my nutrition website and love it. That sale earned me about $75.

Then, I received emails on June 11 and June 15 from Implix letting me know someone had purchased eBook Gold through my affiliate link, for a total of $67 in affiliate sales commissions.

This is one of the things I love about making money online ... I am not a saleswoman by any stretch of the imagination in person, but with my words and an unobtrusive text link, written months ago and posted online, I earned over $140 with no further effort.

Here is one of the ads generated through my Implix affiliate account:

Turn your brain food into a $300 a day income stream, fast and easily. Click here to discover how.

But to be honest the ad that brought me both my June sales was simply "eBook Gold Writer Home" in an article about using eBook Gold. If you're interested in becoming an Implix affiliate, please click that link to sign up and then email me for tips and ideas on getting started. That's another great thing about this affiliate program--you earn a small amount for sales through affiliates directly under you.