List My Five: Not eHow, but ...

"Writers Compensation Program." "Residual Income." "(Your Name Here)'s Articles." Sound familiar?

No, it's not eHow. It's not even close. But the name of their revenue-sharing program, also abbreviated by its initials, WCP, and the promise of residual income based on user-submitted content's popularity, topic, quality and number of pieces written, sure sounds like it comes from somebody at least familiar with the eHow model.

It's called ... List My Five. 

And while the ListMyFive.com site is brand-spanking new (the first time I searched Google for "List My Five" it wasn't even on the first or second page) it's well done, with a simple, attractive, user-friendly interface. The content submission form works properly and has already evolved since my first perusal: you can now add links in a resources section after the article's content (hmmm, where have I seen that before?).

Sadly, the RRC folks will have a field day on ListMyFive: their FAQ includes the following as a factor that will increase earnings: "User response to your lists, such as positive ratings and comments." Oh, dear. Do they realize what they have unleashed? [For those unfamiliar with the day-to-day life on eHow forums during their WCP heyday, there was  Read, Rate, Comment Club on eHow whose devotees would spam inboxes and forum posts with pleas for other site members to "Read my articles so I can earn more! I'll return the favor!"]

List My Five Communication ... not great.
On September 6, I requested via email to interview the site owners or representative via email or phone. I received a prompt reply:

Maria,

Thanks for taking interest in List My Five.  We would be happy to provide information about our website and opportunities with our WCP for your blog.  We would ask that you send us an email or form with a list of questions we could answer for your blog, along with your blog's URL. We will return your requested information asap.

Sincerely, 

The List My Five Team.

I sent the required information and waited. I followed up politely, and then heard back on September 9:

Maria,

We have forwarded your request and it should be completed by the founders at their earliest convenience.

Thanks for your patience,

The List My Five Team.

 

But despite two follow-up emails from me since then, I haven't received another reply and none of my questions were ever answered. I wish they had been, because I could share the information and probably help them increase interest in the site.

Just today, a new "Support" tab appeared in the user panel. So it's clear the site is being maintained and updated; I wouldn't be surprised if they add forums soon too. Perhaps as the site grows there will be better response from the folks behind it, but I had better communication from eHow, InfoBarrel and Bukisa in those sites' early days.

ListMyFive for Residual Income
There's no way to know, yet, what to expect from earnings at this new site. It's just way too young and there haven't been any results to analyze yet. Well, one of my articles has earned a penny ... but I wouldn't stake your hopes and dreams on a penny.

Since the site is so new, it doesn't have the page rank or search engine strength to boost your submitted articles to the front page of Google the way eHow did. To achieve this, your strategy would have to be very heavy on building backlinks to your published top-5 lists.

In which case, adding content to your own niche sites and topic-specific blogs would be in may ways superior as you OWN them. As someone whose monthly online earnings are still top-heavy with eHow, I am focusing on building my residual income through affiliate marketing and personally recommend that at least half your web-based income come via sties that you personally own and control.

That being said, my hunch is that ListMyFive will grow quickly and have a wider user base than other rev-share start-ups, such as InfoBarrel. The site is so easy to use and the articles are quick and fun to write: that's hugely attractive to web writers. The talk of residual income will be endearing as well. So in a nutshell ... write a few articles, link to them, and see where the site goes.

I'll be keeping an eye on ListMyFive ... and publishing my own lists there from time to time. What about you?

Demand Studios: My Experience

I joined the Demand Studios (DS) community as a writer in March of 2008 and in six months wrote over 180 pieces of content for eHow.com and Livestrong.com using the DS writing tool. (note: in an earlier post I said it was 130 but my DS account shows 187) I did this while building up my residual income, and stopped writing for the flat upfront fee when I reached my residual income goal.

My experience with Demand Studios was very good -- I chose their titles from the list of available assignments, wrote efficiently and was paid promptly. I made more money per hour than I had as a full-time editorial assistant/ reporter for a weekly newspaper in Washington, DC only a few years previous. I never experienced the overly picky or crazy Content Editor (CE) rewrites many DS writers detail. Only 2 or 3 of my early articles ever came back for edits and were subsequently approved.

Last spring, April-May of 2009, I wrote 15 Demand Studios revenue-sharing articles to compare the DS rev-sharing model to the eHow Writers Compensation Program (WCP) with which I had already experienced a great deal of success. I found there was no real advantage at the time, and felt the eHow platform was more lucrative for me and gave me more freedom as a writer. Over the past year, the articles have earned over $10 each on average, and of course are continuing to earn.

As I noted in my previous post, the reason those rev-sharing articles didn't earn as well as my eHow.com WCP articles, in my opinion, is that I didn't pick the titles -- DS did -- and their pagerank (PR) was not as high as those posted under my well-ranked WriterGig profile in the WCP. Further, I did absolutely no promotion or linking to the DS rev-sharing articles. I simply wrote them and left them and saw a PayPal deposit every month for the residual income. At the time, the revenue-sharing was capped at five years from the time of publication. Thankfully, DS has now lifted this cap and the articles will earn into perpetuity as they do with eHow's WCP.

Now that the eHow WCP has been closed to further publishing, I'm revisiting Demand Studios as one of the many facets of my residual income business. There are many things to like about publishing articles on eHow.com, most notably the high page rank and monstrous traffic to the site. The main difference now is that the writing platform has changed from the eHow tool to the Demand Studios tool, and that the rights to the articles written through DS now belong to the company and not to the writer.

There is no reason to cut yourself off from the excellent earning potential that is eHow. If you are worried about the ownership of the content, save your favorite niche writing or material you want to use in your own publications for yourself. But with the ease of rewriting content and the gazillions of niches available, there are scores of titles you can write for eHow through Demand Studios to which the copyright is a moot point because you have no need for or interest in publishing the material in a book or website not owned by yourself.

Demand Studios made a business decision--  to merge eHow writers with Demand Studios -- that will benefit the company as a whole and its writers, too, in many aspects (less spam and a higher quality standard). Now the business decision of where to write and how to earn money online is yours -- just as it has always been.

Revenue-Sharing Articles at Demand Studios

With the recent changes to eHow, many eHow writers question the profitability of the revenue-sharing model at Demand Studios (DS). Since I've been a member of eHow and a Demand Studios writer for more than two and a half years, I've had time to experience both platforms and communities.

Last spring, April-May 2009, I wrote and published 15 revenue-sharing how-to articles through my Demand Studios account. This was intended partially as an experiment to see which was more profitable, and in response to a DS incentive in which the articles received both an up-front payment as well as long-term revenue-sharing.

To date, not including the up-front bonuses, the articles have earned a combined total of $172.84, over a time period of almost 12 months. This works out to $11.52 per article so far (of course, they are still earning money). As you can see, this represents a fairly long ROI (return on investment) for eschewing the up-front payment of $15 and opting for the revenue-sharing model. Still, these articles have a higher earnings potential than the articles written for a flat, one-time fee.

My eHow articles written as WriterGig for the WCP have earned much more per article, even when accounting for the longer time period that most have been online. However, there are several factors that contribute to this discrepancy:

• I wrote my eHow-WCP titles, but had to choose DS-generated titles for their rev-sharing articles at the time.
• My WriterGig profile page on eHow has a higher pagerank (PR) than my DS profile on eHow; also, the DS profile does not include a page with links to all of my DS articles.
• I've worked to backlink my eHow articles to improve their pagerank and traffic. 

I'm confident that, with enough effort and following the same method I used to maximize eHow earnings, I could build up another profitable article library through DS for long-term residual income (I'm thrilled that they've dropped the 5-year cap on revenue sharing).  We've been assured through the eHow forums that the DS revenue-sharing formula is as good as or better than the one currently in place on eHow.

I recommend that current eHow writers merge to Demand Studios, or apply if you were not automatically approved, to give yourself the ability to publish through that platform if you so choose. This will not affect any WCP articles you have already written, but will allow you the opportunity to build a library of articles on DS that earns well in its own right.

Have you tried the DS rev-sharing model? What's been your experience so far?

eHow Anniversary: 2 Years, 2.3 Million Views

Today marks the second anniversary of the date I first created an eHow profile, WriterGig, and clicked publish on my first eHow article. What an adventure it's been! What started out as a casual experiment introduced me to the very real concept of residual income and led to a complete shift in my business model and life as a work at home mom.

My post Work from Home Writing eHow Articles was the first time I blogged about writing for eHow, about a month and a half after I started on the site. I had already seen the earnings potential and encouraged my fellow writers and work at home moms to give eHow a try. Needless to say, I'm glad I gave it a go.

Eight of the articles I wrote in late 2007 have earned over $100 each; several of those have more than $500 apiece accumulated thus far ... and continue to earn. Compare that to most of the writing freelancers do on a daily basis for one-time pay that's not always very good -- this is why I do virtually no conventional freelancing at this point: I've transitioned to writing primarily for "myself" and retaining rights, and the resulting revenue, to my work.

I have tried several revenue-sharing content sites and while each has its own merits, eHow remains my top site for residual earnings on a per-article basis. Its age, page rank, site layout and article/ ad format create a combination that is favorable to writers and allows me to spend more time writing and less time on promotion. The fact that I have received 2,369,954 page views to date is a testimony to eHow's ranking as a site (and of course, keyword research and basic search engine optimization on my part).

Last year, I attended weHow, the 2008 eHow User Event held in Santa Monica, CA and had a wonderful time, as well as received the Top Earner community award -- it was a thrill! This year, I won a place on the trip through the Passionate Project People contest for my "I Did This Project" on making window cornice boards. I was really excited about the trip this year, which was held in San Francisco this past week, but was unfortunately unable to attend due to the timing.

As part of my eHow adventure, in 2008 I wrote my eHow eBook, How to Earn Passive Income on eHow.com, in response to the many inquires I received from other writers and work at home moms who wanted to know how to succeed on eHow. It remains a strong seller to this day, further increasing my eHow-related income while giving others valuable information.

How has your experience been with eHow so far? If you're not on the site, why not? Would love to hear your thoughts!

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?

Starting with Squidoo

While I actually signed up with Squidoo over six months ago, I just went back to the site recently and started creating a few Lenses (that's what Squidoo articles, or pages, are called). Like eHow, Bukisa, and HubPages, Squidoo is a revenue-sharing content site written primarily by freelance writers and internet marketers.

Using the money-making modules built in to the Lens creation tool, such as those for Amazon and eBay products, allows users to profit from their Lenses. From what I can tell, average earnings on Squidoo are not incredibly impressive. But there are users, or Lensmasters, making hundreds and $1,000+ a month from their collections of Lenses.

More impressively, by adding affiliate links and properly marketing their Lenses, some Lensmasters, such as PotPieGirl, have earned six figures -- yeah, over $100,000 a year -- through Squidoo.

I've read PotPieGirl's ebook, which I will review for you soon, and plan to follow her method to build another residual income stream -- hopefully a sizable one. I already have a few Lenses up, but instead of tweaking them for her method, I plan to start new ones and put her one week marketing plan into action starting Monday (when my new computer cord arrives. I'm typing on borrowed time on my husband's laptop before he needs to start work for the day).

Are you on Squidoo? What's your experience there so far?

Bukisa Payout Reached

I've hit the $50 payout level on Bukisa and will receive payment next month, in February, according to the terms of use. I'll let you know how prompt the payment is after it's received.



As you can see, 1/5 of my earnings are from my own content and the other 4/5 is from my network's earnings. My strategy with Bukisa was to build up my network at the get-go, as soon as I heard about the site and had tried it out and considered it legitimate, since network earnings are 100% passive income.

I'm using Bukisa to publish high-hit articles, since the site pays by view and not by ad clicks. I'm also using the site to build backlinks to some of my eHow articles and blogs, to improve page rank with Google and other search engines.

As Bukisa grows and revenue sharing sites increase in popularity, I expect it to be a good earner and another key ingredient to making money online through content, both for its own earnings and for building links and traffic to my other work.

Have you used Bukisa to build backlinks to your other sites? Are you building your Bukisa network (without using spammy PMs!)?

Revenue Sharing Sites: eHow, Bukisa, and InfoBarrel

Revenue-sharing content sites are a great way for writers, stay at home moms, hobbyists, college students, retirees, eBay sellers or anyone interested, to make money online. Writing talent -- or at least the ability to string together coherent sentences and present a topic in a logical step-by-step manner -- comes in handy, as does a little web savvy and knowledge of keyword optimization. But it's not a difficult process, and is one of the most legitimate ways to make money online and build residual income streams.



I write niche content sites and maintain a few blogs through Wordpress and Blogger, but revenue from eHow is still a large portion of my monthly income. Writing for eHow has been a great experience for me ... publishing a new article there is as easy as it gets, the site's page rank ensures my articles do well with the search engines, and the amount of monthly traffic can't be beat, an the revenue sharing model seems fair to its contributors. All of these aspects together make content writing on eHow quite profitable, allowing me -- and so many eHow writers -- to create a residual income stream that keeps generating income month after month and yes, year after year.


While eHow is the best paying revenue-sharing content site I've tried thus far, there are a couple others that are quite promising in regards future earnings as the sites grow. They also have some excellent features that aren't available at eHow yet, including the ability to link to other sites and articles within the body of your piece, and a freestyle template that lets you get away from the how-to format.


With an eye toward residual income and promoting my other work, I've been contributing to Bukisa, and wrote about my Bukisa earnings last month. I am nearing the $50 payout, and will let readers know when that occurs and how timely the payment from Bukisa is made. Bukisa pays based on page views, so the best strategy for Bukisa is to concentrate on high-traffic keyword titles that receive many searches, and not worry about the cost of related ads. User questions and inquiries to the the site receive prompt reply.


InfoBarrel is a promising new content-based community. I have two articles online and ideas for many more (of course). After emailing a few times with Kevin, one of the site's founders, I am satisfied enough to write for the site and hope for long-term success. Once you have written 10 articles and been a member for at least 14 days, your articles will be published right away instead of being held for approval. They pay 75% of the Adsense revenue your articles generate.

Other revenue-sharing content sites I've tried include:

• HubPages: Wrote my first Hubs about the same time I wrote my first eHow artcles. One is on a similar topic, but has earned far less than, one of my high-earning eHows. Have had some decent earnings here, but eHow is more profitable for me.
  
• Associated Content: Have only written a couple AC articles. There pay is so little, I'd rather post my work almost anywhere else.
  
• Xomba: Good way to promote my other content, short blurbs there have earned a few dollars each over time, not bad for length of pieces, but really only use as way to get links.
• BrightHub: Was better in the beginning but now the article suggestion, permission and writing cycle is too complicated and annoying. You have to apply and be accepted to be a writer for the site.
  

What revenue-sharing content sites do you write for online? Have you tried any of the above-mentioned, or places like Squidoo, Suite 101, Helium? I'd love to hear your comments!