The Cheap Bastid» earning money

My One Year Anniversary!

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:21:10 +0000

A few of you may have noticed that I just hit my one year anniversary of publishing articles online to make extra money.

Well, what a year it’s been. I’ve learned so much about what works, and I think more importantly, what doesn’t work.

Most especially I learned that publishing articles online isn’t a race, it’s a slow, never ending process of building up passive, permanent income streams, always looking to improve your income with the least amount of work.

This past year income wise has been great, through my article income I managed to not only pay off all my credit card debts, but buy a new Harley! The cool thing is my online earnings are covering my payments, so it’s like getting a new hog for free!

I’ve learned a while back not to set lofty goals for myself when it comes to publishing new content, I think doing that just sets onself up for burnout, and, just as bad, publishing low quality content. I think my peers will agree that to succeed at this you must publish articles that are not only useful and informative, but high quality. Don’t allow yourself to put out rushed, 1/2 hearted articles designed for the sole purpose of making money. Go the extra yard and put some polish on them and you will be rewarded.

My goals are simple, I’ll just publish one, two or maybe three articles a week over the course of the next year. If I do that I’ll double my published articles by the end of the year, and certainly at least double my income.

Over the course of the next few weeks I plan on publishing a series of posts designed to teach a person new to the exciting (and profitable) world of online article publishing. I’ll start at the very basics and continue to more advanced concepts as the series progresses.

My goal with this is simple, if I can teach just one person how to make some extra cash online I will have succeeded. Lot’s of folks out there would love to make some extra money to help pay the bills but just don’t know how, or even where to start. I’m going to help them through the difficult process of starting out and ‘getting your bearings’

As you can see from my earnings last month that the extra money just keeps going up and up. Soon, even my car payments will be covered by my online income!

I must say this, just 4 days into December and I’m just amazed! I broke the $150 mark yesterday, at this rate I just might break the $1000 mark by the end of the month.

If you would like to learn just how to do this just make sure to come back here every few days over the course of the next month or so. I guarantee you will learn something. Now, I can’t guarantee you’ll make money, but I’ll give you the tools and skill you need to make it easier for you.

Happy holidays everyone!

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I’m Back!

admin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:01:28 +0000

Hi Everyone!

I’m sure most of you are wondering what happened to me and why I seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth for the last few months.

Well, there isn’t any amazing story about tragedy or some other life wrenching episode. Simply put, I burnt out.

You see, I put way too much ‘work’ on my plate. Near the end I was logging into eHow at 7am to rate some articles and make some forum posts, I would then go into work and during lunch research keywords. When I got home I would check my earnings and then write articles and blog posts until 10 or 11pm every day.

I put way too much on my plate, and, when I finished a project I just added more things onto my to do list.

I blame nobody for this, not infobarrel (for those contests) or One week marketing. I can only blame myself for not accepting the fact that I’m human and just need a break once in a while.

I’m back and I’m not going to set unreasonable goals for myself. If I do one article a week, that’s fine. If I do two or three even better. The important thing to remember that online article writing isn’t a race and, to be honest, there is no ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ it’s an ongoing, neverending process.

Now, even though I haven’t written an article in over three months it’s interesting to see that not only did my earnings not drop, but they actually went up.

This is the beauty of permanent passive income. It’s always out there, and always making money for you.

It’s good to be back. It’ll take me a while to get up to speed again but I definetly will.

There’s much I need to talk about, including a new project that I thought of a few months ago.

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What Makes People Click? – Why are they there

admin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:20:20 +0000

This is the last part of my series on what makes people click ads, and, in my opinion one of the most important.

Once I realized this reason for clicking ads, I completely changed my eHow strategy, and this is immediately apparent if you look at my article list in November 2008. In fact you can actually see the day I implemented it.

Once I did this my earnings took off, those first few articles are now my top earners, in fact every article I wrote that starts with ‘How to Buy….’ has earned money, with NO exceptions.

What is this frame of mind?? consider the following article titles:

How to Save Money on a New Coat
How to Buy the Best Coat at the Best Price
How to Cook a Great Onion Soup
How to Unclog a Sink

Consider the mindset of the person clicking a link to go to read your article.

This person is interested in saving money, in fact that’s the first capitalized word in the article title, will he click an ad? Maybe, maybe not, he’s there to save money so unless the ads specify saving money you probably won’t get a click.
Hmm, I think a person reading this article is there because he’s ready to BUY something, if the ads are relevant, you’ll probably get a click.
A recipe. Let’s look at this.. This person probably wants to make some soup but doesn’t have a recipe. He wants to log in, read (maybe print) a recipe then head to the store. Not much click possibility here.
This guy’s sink is clogged, again, get some directions print them out and leave. Higher possibility of getting a click if there are plunger and other REVIEW ads on the site. Remember he isn’t going to order a tool then wait a week for it to arrive while his sink is clogged.

Now, armed with this mindset information you can still make adjustments to your article content to get clicks. For recipe articles, mention some great pot/knife/stockpot or whatever to get a relevant ad on the page, in fact, say you use it, mention reviews to try to get a relevant ad. Best thing to do is put a picture (from Amazon, remember the computer setup article?) Pick out a great seller and put it in the caption. For the saving money article mention coupon code sites to get an ad on your page. And finally for the sink article mention a specific product type and reviews to get a review site ad on the page the reader might check before he heads off to the store.

Is he there to buy? To read reviews? To get instructions? To print something out and leave? Visit your article AFTER you publish it, if the ads are wrong include some more or new keywords, it only takes one to get an ad to show, and if you don’t believe me just look at this page. I mentioned electric shavers in a post last week and my sidebar is full of ads!

I’ll also mention that, for me anyway, I’ll find a nice keyword and after thinking about it I’ll just not use it because I feel the article will not evoke many clicks. I’m a BIG BBQ nut and can put dozens of barbecue recipes and tip articles up but I haven’t because I don’t feel they’ll earn money.

So, to summarize this whole ‘Why do people click’ series do the following…

Gain trust by providing quality content
Make sure there are relevant ads on the page
Try to get review sites or other interesting links on the page, either in the resource section or in an ad
Engineer something click able based on the visiting readers intentions by manipulating keywords

If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know! Any additional ideas on why people click ads?

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A New Direction For Me

admin — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:49:45 +0000

Hi there, and welcome to the Cheap Bastid. As some of you may notice this blog has a new look, and a new direction.

Yesterday I hit my two month anniversary of (trying) to make money online.

I’ve tried all the popular routes; surveys, pay per click, InboxDollars, ChaCha and so on.

My total income in two months in all those endeavors was exactly $31.16 Considering the number of hours I put in this is about .25 cents an hour, which, as i’m sure you’ll agree, is pathetic and not worth the time.

There was one shining star out there though, eHow, which is a site where you write articles, and make money off the ad revenue that those articles generate. In two months I wrote a total of 77 articles and my total earnings from eHow was an amazing $75, the great part about eHow is the income is passive and permanent.

Simply put this means that those articles are out there earning me money till the end of time, or the eHow site shuts down (whichever comes first). If I stop writing today I will continue earning money from eHow from those 77 articles.

Starting today I will no longer waste my time doing any surveys or whatever, I will write articles and get paid to do it.

At the beginning of January I had 50 articles published and had made $33.05 in the month of December. I had set my goal for January to have 75 articles published and an income of $100. I made my article publishing goal quite quickly, and considering where my earnings are so far for the month I think I have a good chance of making my income goal as well.

There are many ‘power users’ on eHow making over $500 a month, there’s even a handful making over $1500 a month. Income like this would honestly change my life as I would pay off my debt quickly and finally start saving money.

My goal for this year is get my monthly income to $1000 on eHow and my other means, which i’ll explain in greater detail in coming posts.

I’ll update my earnings window in the sidebar daily so you can track my progress.

I’ll also post up tips and guides so you too can join in on this and make some serious cash online writing articles.

If you have any tips of suggestions I would love to hear them!

P.S. If anyone knows of a WordPress widget that allows formatted text let me know. I tried adding my eHow income into a text widget and it looks terrible..

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