Xomba has once again reinvented itself, this time following the lead of HubPages and moving everything over to subdomains. Good news, you can once again backlink to your own work. In addition, Xomba has new formats, including lists, which may be useful for a lot of internet writers.
While I haven't had a chance to check out all of Xomba's features (to be honest, I'm still reposting old eHow articles!), I expect that the new freedom in subdomains will allow writers to be able to earn even more from their work. I'll be back with more after all the old eHow articles are reposted!
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Monday, September 19, 2011
Creating Time
We've all heard it: "You have only twenty-four hours in a day." And that's true--up to a point. However, that's not the last of it. The decisions you make about how you use your time affect how much free time you have.
For example, I usually spend about a half-hour a day cleaning my apartment, and that doesn't really keep up with it. I made two decisions about my cleaning that I am completely happy with. First, I invested in a Roomba. It takes me four minutes a day to clean my Roomba, and my floors are sparkling clean and vacuumed daily. For an investment of about $179 (plus tax, minus the 20% off coupon I had), I can eliminate 20 minutes per week of vacuuming and part of the dusting, and get a much better job on my floors (if you're wondering, the Roomba really does a great job, and really picks up that much stuff every day!). In fact, I am spending about 8 minutes more a week to go from a once-weekly vacuuming to a daily vacuuming, thus saving myself about 120 minutes a week in the transition. That's two hours a week to do something I like better than vacuuming, and I still get all the benefits of daily vacuuming!
The second decision I made was to hire someone to clean. Many people, including my parents, see this as an extravagance. I see it as time created. It takes me about 4 hours a week to clean, and I'm not spectacular at it. But in half an hour, I can make enough to hire someone to come in once a week to clean for four hours. Even if I spend half an hour supervising her, that gives me 3 hours a week to invest in writing more articles, or creating more backlinks, or designing more Zazzle products. And rather than interrupting my schedule with random cleaning bursts here and there, I start each Monday afternoon with a sparkling clean house!
In the same vein, I pulled out my slow cooker to cook, rather than cook on the stove for each meal. Four minutes' worth of attention, and in three to four hours, lunch or dinner is ready, and I have leftovers for when I'm pressed for time. (As a matter of fact, I have to drive about an hour and a half a week, and I'm considering a 12-volt accessory to use in my car to put that time to better use . . . but which one?)
So if you need more time for writing, or anything else, the best way to find that time is to isolate the least productive thing you do. In my case, it was cleaning. A year ago, the way my furniture was arranged, it was unproductive. An interior designer put it right in about three hours, and ever since then, I've been much more organized, and there's no telling how much time I've saved in the past year!) Then figure out an efficient way to outsource that task; barter for it if you can't afford upfront payments (even a three- or four-way barter, or some sort of time bank). By eliminating the most unproductive parts of your routine in outsourcing them to someone who either does it better and faster, so that you save money in the long run, or to someone whose time is less valuable than yours, you can get what amounts to more than twenty-four hours in a day!
For example, I usually spend about a half-hour a day cleaning my apartment, and that doesn't really keep up with it. I made two decisions about my cleaning that I am completely happy with. First, I invested in a Roomba. It takes me four minutes a day to clean my Roomba, and my floors are sparkling clean and vacuumed daily. For an investment of about $179 (plus tax, minus the 20% off coupon I had), I can eliminate 20 minutes per week of vacuuming and part of the dusting, and get a much better job on my floors (if you're wondering, the Roomba really does a great job, and really picks up that much stuff every day!). In fact, I am spending about 8 minutes more a week to go from a once-weekly vacuuming to a daily vacuuming, thus saving myself about 120 minutes a week in the transition. That's two hours a week to do something I like better than vacuuming, and I still get all the benefits of daily vacuuming!
The second decision I made was to hire someone to clean. Many people, including my parents, see this as an extravagance. I see it as time created. It takes me about 4 hours a week to clean, and I'm not spectacular at it. But in half an hour, I can make enough to hire someone to come in once a week to clean for four hours. Even if I spend half an hour supervising her, that gives me 3 hours a week to invest in writing more articles, or creating more backlinks, or designing more Zazzle products. And rather than interrupting my schedule with random cleaning bursts here and there, I start each Monday afternoon with a sparkling clean house!
In the same vein, I pulled out my slow cooker to cook, rather than cook on the stove for each meal. Four minutes' worth of attention, and in three to four hours, lunch or dinner is ready, and I have leftovers for when I'm pressed for time. (As a matter of fact, I have to drive about an hour and a half a week, and I'm considering a 12-volt accessory to use in my car to put that time to better use . . . but which one?)
So if you need more time for writing, or anything else, the best way to find that time is to isolate the least productive thing you do. In my case, it was cleaning. A year ago, the way my furniture was arranged, it was unproductive. An interior designer put it right in about three hours, and ever since then, I've been much more organized, and there's no telling how much time I've saved in the past year!) Then figure out an efficient way to outsource that task; barter for it if you can't afford upfront payments (even a three- or four-way barter, or some sort of time bank). By eliminating the most unproductive parts of your routine in outsourcing them to someone who either does it better and faster, so that you save money in the long run, or to someone whose time is less valuable than yours, you can get what amounts to more than twenty-four hours in a day!
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Whew! Scrubbing the Internet is Hard Work!
I have just started republishing my deleted eHow articles, only to find that some of my best earners were copied all over the internet, by places that should have known better. It took me several rounds of emails to get the duplicated content deleted from Yahoo!, but iVillage and others responded quite quickly. What I want to do is compliment HubPages on their site, as to how I learned from this experience. I copied my article from its cache on the Internet Wayback Machine and published the article (along with some great photos from art.com). Almost immediately it was marked as a duplicate. I sent an email showing them the cached page and that I was the original author, and they responded by immediately overriding the duplicate flag within minutes.
So I am impressed with the HubPages team for, first, alerting me that my content had been duplicated, and sending me at least one link to the duplicated content; and second, for reinstating my hub within minutes of the proof that I was the original author. And thank you to the sites that took down my duplicated content (including a lot of sites that should have known better). And boo to the sites that refuse to take it down, or have no way to contact them to ask that they take it down.
The fact is, it's almost impossible to enforce copyright on the Internet. But by posting it on a highly-trafficked site like HubPages, Squidoo, InfoBarrel, or another article site, it's quite possible that you will eventually outrank your duplicated content with your republished original content.
I'm off next to Google to ask them to de-index the offending sites until the duplicate content is removed.
Update: I'm lazy, so here's my way to combat the thieves.
So I am impressed with the HubPages team for, first, alerting me that my content had been duplicated, and sending me at least one link to the duplicated content; and second, for reinstating my hub within minutes of the proof that I was the original author. And thank you to the sites that took down my duplicated content (including a lot of sites that should have known better). And boo to the sites that refuse to take it down, or have no way to contact them to ask that they take it down.
The fact is, it's almost impossible to enforce copyright on the Internet. But by posting it on a highly-trafficked site like HubPages, Squidoo, InfoBarrel, or another article site, it's quite possible that you will eventually outrank your duplicated content with your republished original content.
I'm off next to Google to ask them to de-index the offending sites until the duplicate content is removed.
Update: I'm lazy, so here's my way to combat the thieves.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Zazzle
One account that has been doing well for me is Zazzle
. Zazzle is one of those print-on-demand stores, where you upload an image (or put text on something), and if you sell it, you get a royalty. If you sell something (your own product or someone else's) through your referral link, you also get a referral of 15%.
Why do I prefer Zazzle over the other print-on-demand stores? Simply because there is an integration that is user-friendly and allows for many options. For example, you can have separate stores, such as I have a general type store and one for specific music-oriented items. You get volume discounts if you sell large numbers of items, and by setting the royalty yourself, you can control the price of an item.
Another thing is that the payout level is low ($25), and I've achieved almost that in just over three months. In addition, the integration with Squidoo is easy and tagging the items helps them be found in search engines.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The End of eHow
I've written before about eHow. While I have fond memories of the Writers Compensation Program (hereinafter abbreviated WCP), when eHow quit accepting new posts, I decided to leave my articles where they were, and they continued to earn well.
However, with only a few hours' notice, eHow discontinued the WCP, a move I had been expecting, but not ready for. Having learnt something about which articles will do well on which site, I am now in the process of moving my 98 remaining articles to other sites. I decided not to take the buyout, as I received an offer of $160 for 90 articles, which I can make back in about five months.
So farewell, eHow. You were a great learning experience for me, and a lesson that I should diversify, diversify, diversify. Thank you for introducing me to writing articles for residuals, and for the cash that definitely helped me pay the bills each month--but I know more than I did then, and I expect to make much more with my work elsewhere than your offer. I leave eHow with a sense of relief, after their treatment of writers, and have set my sights on greener (and fairer) pastures.
However, with only a few hours' notice, eHow discontinued the WCP, a move I had been expecting, but not ready for. Having learnt something about which articles will do well on which site, I am now in the process of moving my 98 remaining articles to other sites. I decided not to take the buyout, as I received an offer of $160 for 90 articles, which I can make back in about five months.
So farewell, eHow. You were a great learning experience for me, and a lesson that I should diversify, diversify, diversify. Thank you for introducing me to writing articles for residuals, and for the cash that definitely helped me pay the bills each month--but I know more than I did then, and I expect to make much more with my work elsewhere than your offer. I leave eHow with a sense of relief, after their treatment of writers, and have set my sights on greener (and fairer) pastures.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
A Few Bad Apples . . .
After the Google Panda update, many revenue-sharing sites are changing the way they do business. Xomba no longer allows you to link to your own work, and now TheInfoMine and MyGeoInfo are closing their doors to new writers, and asking writers with less substantial bodies of work to move their articles to another site. Since these two sites had a responsible and responsive admin, and an 85-90% revenue share in favour of the author, the loss of these two fine sites is devastating to the revenue-sharing community. More sites, I am sure, will follow suit.
At some point you have to decide if you are in the making money online game for a quick buck or for the long-haul of providing valuable content or curation to the public. If you've been in the former camp, I encourage you to change, as you are spoiling the revenue-sharing sites for the rest of us writers, who work hard to come up with creative, original content. Your "Cheap ________ for Sale for Under $100" articles will not stand the test of time, and eventually you and the other authors of those articles will find themselves without any income as readers, search engines, and site admins catch on. In order to make revenue-sharing work in the long run, you have to take the high road. The site admin at TheInfoMine/MyGeoInfo recently emailed me and said, "I wish I had a hundred ethical writers like you." I think he's speaking not only for himself, but for all revenue-sharing site administrators, who had hoped to build a community of people willing to share their knowledge for free. It's time to grow up and stop gaming the system; otherwise, most, if not all, of the revenue-sharing sites will collapse under the mountains of spam and junk articles.
At some point you have to decide if you are in the making money online game for a quick buck or for the long-haul of providing valuable content or curation to the public. If you've been in the former camp, I encourage you to change, as you are spoiling the revenue-sharing sites for the rest of us writers, who work hard to come up with creative, original content. Your "Cheap ________ for Sale for Under $100" articles will not stand the test of time, and eventually you and the other authors of those articles will find themselves without any income as readers, search engines, and site admins catch on. In order to make revenue-sharing work in the long run, you have to take the high road. The site admin at TheInfoMine/MyGeoInfo recently emailed me and said, "I wish I had a hundred ethical writers like you." I think he's speaking not only for himself, but for all revenue-sharing site administrators, who had hoped to build a community of people willing to share their knowledge for free. It's time to grow up and stop gaming the system; otherwise, most, if not all, of the revenue-sharing sites will collapse under the mountains of spam and junk articles.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
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.
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.
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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.
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