Ah, Tax Time!

Last week's post got torpedoed because of federal income taxes, but never fear--I'm back! I actually look forward to doing my taxes, because it shows me what activities are productive, and what activities are non-productive. To that end, in the aftermath of doing my taxes, I've made some decisions.

Income Taxes Norman Rockwell

First off, the internet writing definitely stays--from a tax perspective, internet writing is definitely worth the effort! I've even upgraded my internet connection and I'm going to be investing in a new computer: a Mac Mini (I have not had an Apple product since the days of the Apple ][e).
Because the internet writing is starting to pay so well, I'm going to be investing more time in the process, and probably moving articles around for a while, or rewriting them and posting to other sites.

Also this year, I'm reviewing my record-keeping practices, and investing in some low-tech devices to keep my tax records organized. While I may make a little less money this year (after all, I won a ton of writing contests last year), I'm expecting that on my 2012 taxes, I will see a huge jump!

By the way, you should have to write out a check at the end of the year to the IRS. If you are getting a tax refund, you need to rethink your investment strategy.

The Value of Your Online Properties

I was speaking with my financial advisor last week, and adding my $60 per month in predictable online income to my retirement calculations, to come up with a plan for the next few years. When she heard $60 per month, she was shocked, and she pulled out one of her own financial statements: she was making about $60 per month on the best investment she could find, with an investment of $20,000. If I took an hour to write each of my 600 articles, she explained, I was making the equivalent of $33.33 per hour, after taxes.

Now some articles earn more, so obviously, those are worth more. Many haven't earned me anything at all to date, although it's impossible to tell what indirect effect they have (for example, they could generate interest in other articles, or generate Amazon sales. In any case, on most sites, each article provides a backlink to your other online properties, and your profile page (or should, at least). So when your friends, family, or financial advisors laugh at you for spending hours at the computer, typing away, remember that this is a serious investment of your time, and will pay off in the future, perhaps even in unexpected ways. After all, we don't know what is around the corner, and those of us with established online properties, especially on young sites, stand to benefit.

Green and Yellow Escalator Moving www Upwards

Someone may also offer to buy one or more of your articles (it's happened to me). The thing to do is to look at how much that article is earning you, both directly and indirectly. I have an article that currently earns me $10 per month, and it has numerous affiliate links in it. (If you're curious, it's 50 Ways to Make $1 a Day Online.) I replied with an initial offer of $6000, based on the amount of money I would have to have in the bank in order to earn $10 per month, plus the lost future revenue from affiliate signups and sales. Based on their reaction, I believe the figure the other person had in mind was about $200; that would not have come close to replacing my lost revenue. So make sure you are valuing your articles correctly, or you may wind up losing money to someone sharper than yourself about the value of your articles.

HubPages Applies New Quality Control Standards

In the aftermath of the Google algorithm change (nicknamed Panda), HubPages has employed a new set of rules. I have been busy, therefore, rewriting my hubs to meet their changed standards.

Wagon Wheels in Colorful ... Darrell Gulin

I didn't have to worry about copied content, fortunately, but what I did have to worry about were two things having to do with the Amazon capsules: first, that keyword products in a capsule would be limited to one; and second, that there must be fifty words of text for each Amazon product (the same rules apply for eBay, but I don't have an affiliate for eBay). Writing fifty words for each Amazon product was not that hard, but what killed me was going through and selecting products individually; some hubs had over seventy products featured!

Having just exhausted myself to meet the March 25th deadline, I must say that I think the rules changes improved my hubs remarkably, and I expect in a few months to see much higher Amazon sales as a result. In addition, in researching individual products to recommend, I now read the reviews and descriptions very carefully, and I feel that the products I selected in my hubs are much, much better than having Amazon simply search for a product. By hand-selecting these products, I have added value for my readers. So all in all, I feel good about the work I did on improving my hubs!

HubCamp

A couple of weeks ago, I went to HubCamp. Was it worth it? Absolutely!

Although I feel the class was intended for beginners, rather than experienced article writers, I was surprised to see that some of the people there who had written many (sometimes hundreds) of hubs were asking what I considered basic questions. The thing I found most useful was the networking with other writers, and and ways in which we could combine strategies to promote others' work, as well as getting to know two of the HubPages staff members.

The other thing I found useful was their suggestions about titles. I have been experimenting with tweaking my titles to be longer (I tend to be rather terse by nature).

The swag was nice, too -- a moleskine-type notebook with the HubPages logo and a T-shirt (which unfortunately, was not 100% cotton and I had to give it away).

The staffers also explained the April writing contest (where I will be republishing some of my suddenly-deleted eHow articles), and the HubPages changes (more about this later, as I am exhausted from complying with the new rules). And best of all, HubCamp is free, so if you have a HubCamp coming near to you, definitely try to attend it!

Why is HubPages giving free training to its writers? Simple enough. Like all revenue-sharing sites, when you make money, they make money. The more money you make, the more money they make. So revenue-sharing sites want you to succeed, and they'll do what it takes on their end to improve ad placement, attract better ads, and the like. Admins at most sites are working behind the scenes all the time, so as a writer for one of these sites, it's a good idea to remain on friendly terms with the admins. It's not an us-versus-them situation, but rather, "we're all in this together."

Fuelspace

Fuelspace is like Snipsly and Jevitt, although they share only 50% of the Adsense revenue. Still, it's worth the effort for the backlink.

Service Station in Space for Refuelling and Repairing Interplanetary Craft

I've been advised that Fuelspace may have malware on their main page, so I've given you the link directly to the login page. There are basically no rules that I can see for Fuelspace, so this is good for backlinks, affiliate links, articles with too many links for other sites, and so on. As with the other sites, be prepared for rules changes and make sure that you have backups. Again, don't just duplicate content from other sites; rewrite your content from another perspective, or try a new article or backlink your already-written articles. With the new Google algorithm, we can only hope that someday good-quality content will outrank bad-quality content.

I don't have much on Fuelspace at the moment, but like Snipsly and Jevitt, Fuelspace will definitely be part of my overall strategy. Don't forget to illustrate your articles with your art.com  and allposters.com pictures and links, since those are definitely allowed. Those images may show up in Google searches as well--if so you will have yet another chance of getting your articles viewed. Just remember not to be spammy or use the hard-sell techniques (or that really awful technique of trying to get your readers to click on an ad just to get away from your article--you really don't want a reputation like that, do you? Of course you don't. Quality will out over time, so keep that quality up.

Jevitt

Jevitt is just like Snipsly, and so is perfect either for backlinking or for those articles that are too short or have too many links, and so otherwise don't fit in elsewhere. Just like Snipsly, Jevitt gives you an 80% share of Adsense impressions, and is basically a free-for-all. Jevitt is flying under the radar for the moment, and will probably get slapped by Google, but since it's a leverage tool for already-written content, or for articles that will not fit elsewhere, it's definitely worth checking out. I get traffic from Jevitt, and in the end, it's eyes on pages that count.

In Chains Erin Clark

Jevitt, just like Snipsly, is another WordPress-powered site, so once you have mastered the use of WordPress, all these WordPress-powered sites should be a piece of cake. Like Snipsly, Jevitt is full of low-quality articles, but never mind--there's evidence that Google's new algorithm counts only individual pages for content, not whole sites. Time will tell, but in the meantime, you can focus on adding useful content.

Snipsly

One of the first WordPress backlinking sites I used was Snipsly. They pay an 80% share of Adsense impressions, and the posting is really a free-for-all, which is nice for those articles that don't fit in anywhere else (for example, see this article on secret Amazon deals). This article has too many links to the same site (at least until I get to be a Giant Squid) but works perfectly on Snipsly.

Stagehands Pushing a Pair of Giant Scissors Allan Grant

Snipsly has no moderation or flagging, so it's full of useless posts, and just got slapped by Google. However, the moderators have taken notice and I believe policing will eventually be the order of the day. As Google gives its customers (searchers) more of what they want, I believe that in the future posts will be ranked individually, rather than by site. In the meantime, build up great, informative content and backlinks.