November

So November came to an end and I've decided to sum up what happened this past month.

I've written over 7000 words in reviews and articles. I was planning on writting 15000 words, but obviously it didn't work out. For December, I'm planning a more realistic number: 10000 words. This time I'm taking into the account all the free days I'll have because of the Christmas AND at the same time, I'm not assuming I'll write 500 words a day.

I wrote ONE article for Helium Marketplace. I was planning on writing more, but titles were completely out of my area of expertise. Researching legal matters online turned out to be slightly more difficult than I thought. So for now, I'll stick to something that gives me less problems.
The title I did write for is currently pending final decision. I'll let you know when the publisher decides which article (out of 34) they will buy.

I started to write for two new sites. Ciao and AssociatedContent. While I'm sort of indifferent to Ciao (it's nice enough though not brilliant), I am slightly irritated with Associated Content. I've written 3 articles for them, two of which are still pending. I am told after 3 first article are published, it should go much faster. But for now I'm not feeling much love.

I sent my bid for 3 jobs. One of which is really interesting and I will thank all the Gods if I actually get it. But this is somethin I started doing only recently, so I don't know when it actually start paying off. Though I'm checking ads every day. So keep your fingers crossed.

And finally:

I requested 2 payments. From Ciao and myLot. I should get them at the beginning of December.

All in all, while I think November could've been better, it wasn't bad either. I'm sure December will be better :)

Writing bids and other writing related things

So far I'm writing reviews for both Ciao and Reviewstream and articles for Helium and AssociatedContent. I also write for Helium Marketplace (I'm waiting for a decision on one of the topics I submitted my article to. Keep your fingers crossed).

But I decided not to limit myself to just those venues... I've read a lot about writing jobs that you can bid on and the client decides who they want to hire. So I decided to start submitting my bids to jobs that interest me.

Since I'm not very experienced in that area, I'm not sure how long one have to wait for the final decision and whether my bids are written the way they supposed to be.
But I'm not planning on giving up.

I did some research on what is expected and what should be written in a bid. But it's all theory and I need to get some first-hand experience. Wish me luck :)

Research

Since it seems like I will have some serious expenses next year, I decided to get it all together and start earning. Preferably, earning a lot.

So I decided I not only need to start writing more articles for both AssociatedContent and Helium, but also start seriously writing for Helium Marketplace. Unfortunately all articles that are on offer there require serious research on my part as I know very littleon subject that seem to be popular there.

Thank goodness for search engines. They allow me to do proper research and write a good article. That's exactly how I wrote my article on tattoo removal techniques that sold.

I'm also glad that I'm a member of Homepages Friends. I use their browser for research and it brings me extra money. So even time spent on research isn't lost. It still earns me something.

Wish me luck. I never anticipated that I will need to start earning big that fast... Oh well, keep your fingers crossed.

Related articles you might find interesting:
Refferals to Homepages Friends that will produce maximum income
Can you earn money with Homepages Friends just for searching the net?

Not like I planned

Yeah, it's almost the end of the month and I'm nowhere near the word count I had planned for November.

I can't blame anyone but myself for being so lazy, but now I know I need to set myself a little more reasonable goal for December. Hopefully, with more days off from my day-job, I will be able to write more.

I'm also happy to see my earnings climb up faster than before and I'm thinking that it's connected closely to the fact that I link to my articles in this blog. I've written an article about that and submitted it to AssociatedContent. I will post a link here as soon as the publish it. That said, I also want to post on similar topics at Helium to see how that new upfront payment would work for me... I'll let you know how it goes (need to write said articles first :P)

For now feel free to visit my profiles on both AssociatedContent and Helium.

Helium Paid and other things

Yes, I got Payment from Helium. Over $30 as a first payment isn't all that bad, don't you think? That got me really excited about my writing and for the first time I really got the feeling that my writing can pay for some stuff that I need.

That said, unfortunately I haven't been writing at all lately. Mostly because my favourite TV shows came back and I just can't seem to say no to them, or even watch them at the later date... Yes, I have no self-control. I hope though it will not go wasted, and I'm thinking about writing reviews of my favourite episodes for reviewstream. Something short and worth that $0.40. Don't get me wrong, I love getting paid full rate at reviewstream, but I wrote reviews of single episodes for that site in the past. It's not exactly sought after material, and therefore, it's not worth a full rate. But I'm not about to say no to getting paid.

I hope to get back on the writing horse soon, though I might have a small case of writer's block. Hopefully, by the end of the week, it will be all gone. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I have potential topics I could write about, so now I just need to get it together.

Another thing is setting up priorities. MY friend asked me to write a story for her. You know, fanfic... Completely probono writing, gosh, do I even remember how to do that? Writing fiction was fun, I should definitely at least try to go back to that. Okay, enough venting. Work to do :)

Time Off

Yes, I admit that. I took time off during weekend. Mostly to watch the second season of Profiler. But I really didn't feel like writing anything. I'm still waiting for the payment from Helium and that being my first payment, all the waiting is making me anxious.

My article at AssociatedContent got published and I wrote a review of Profiler Season 2 DVD pack for ciao and reviewstream, so I'm back on the writing horse :)

Profiler Season 2 DVD set. (ciao.com)
Get Paid to write with ReviewStream.com.

Writing Pays

Yeah. I think it's high time to talk about the money that I earn with my writing.

November is actually the first month hat I will be receiving a payment. It's mostly due to the fact that I became serious about my writing only las month and I actually pursued the paying aspect of the net.

So, any day now I should be receiving money from Helium. Most of it will be for the article I sold, which actually made me qualify for payment. But not all. Almost $8will be the performance payment. Meaning the money I earned from the page views of my articles. And given that I have only 21 articles, I don't think that it's such a bad turn out.

But I can be proud of myself, because after 5 days of November (implementing my November plan) I managed to finally reach payout at mylot.com (after months of slacking and half a month of actual participating) and payout limit on ciao.com (I've been a member there for like 3 days).

So it's 2 payments I'll be receiving for sure in December. And knowing that at the very beginning of November makes my mood a lot better.

And to close the tpic, I'm still waiting for AssociatedContent to publish my first aticle there... We'll see how that plays out :)

The Boondock Saints review
A Dog's Breakfast review
My Ciao profile
My Helium portfolio

Ciao Baby!

Because I've read a lot of positive things about Ciao on MyLot, I have decided to give it a try. And not just registering with the site and not writing for it. I decided to actually be active there. It took me some time to actually understand how Ciao works. 
But I don't think I will really get it untill I see the results.

Ciao (like Reviewstream) is about writing reviews. But it has a far more professional look to it.

You can rate, review and comment on products. And even more, you can friend people and rate their reviews. From the first look of it, it really does look far better than ReviewStream.

It pays for the ratings your reviews get. Though apparently some ratings are worth more than others and some aren't worth anything. I am yet to learn which are which (though it's safe to assume electronics are worth more than the rest as it's a really hot topic).

If you're already a member at Ciao, do tell me, I would love to add you as a friend.

I think I will end up reviewing a lot of DVDs and books as those are the subjects I really like writing reviews about. And to be honest I think I will try to write a good review for Ciao and then re-write it for ReviewStream. That way I'll be able to cash twice on the same subject. I'll let you know how that goes. :)

My Ciao profile.
Profiler Season 1 DVD pack review.
Stargate: Ark of Truth DVD review.
Stargate: Continuum review.

Also. In the navigation bar on your left you can see my progress on my November challenge. It's going nicely so far. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

Get paid for reviews

I write for many different sites. Most of them are sites that accept only articles (like Helium) or many media outlets (like AssociatedContent). But one site pays its contributors for writing reviews of anything.

Yes, you've read that one right. ReviewStream pays you to review basically anything. You can write a review about a restaurant, a hotel, a lipgloss, your newest iPod, website you visited, book you've read, movie you've seen. And according you the site's own FAQs, you can even review your doctor.
So anything goes and that's the beauty of it.

Your reviews have to be minimum 200 words (though to be on a safe side, 300 words is a better choice). You can either get paid a full rate (which is $2, so not so bad) or a "bulk rate" ($0,40). It all depends on how original, well written is your review. Though it's safer to assume you'll get paid the lower rate.

To get paid you need to write 125 reviews (assuming each of them will get you a bulk rate), because they transfer money onto your PayPal account once you reach $50.

Additionally your reviews can get votes and each vote pays. Once you earn $5 worth of votes, the ammount will be transferred to your PayPal account. The beauty of it is that you can vote for your reviews.

To give you some idea this review was paid full price and this one got a bulk rate (Yes, I would appreciate a vote :))

Read more about my experience with ReviewStream.com:

Experience with ReviewStream.com
Get Paid with Reviewstream