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

NaNoWriMo action plan.

Like every good writer who started by writing fiction I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo this year.

But unlike every other year, I wont be working on any story. Even though like every year I have my original novel ready to go back to as well as three other ideas that I'd love to turn into full on novels.

I decided to make this NaNoWriMo all about my non-fiction writing. Like a Helium Summer Reward-a-thon, only without actual upfront payment. I want to write at least one article a day. Which, given that each of my articles is a 500 words avarage, would set my goal at 15000 words written in articles in November.

I do realize that it's nowhere near the actual 50000 words goal all the NaNoWrimers have, but I'm pretty sure that if there's any muse left in me, I will probably write some more on my novels in progress.

Wish me luck :)

Article SOLD!

This might not seem like a lot, but the article I've submitted to the Helium Marketplace have been purchased.

Yeah, I did a little happy dance and re-read the notification e-mail that informed me of that fact.
I think I feel slightly excused for not writing anything recently. Though I'm painfully aware of the fact that if I want to be serious about my writing and earning a living with it I will have to start writing everyday...

Read my Helium Articles: http://www.helium.com/users/431779/show_articles

New writing platform

I decided to give AssociatedContent a try. The first time around, when I was looking into websites that would pay me for my writing, I dismissed AC because as a Non-US citizen I didn't qualify for the Upfront Payment. However, right now, I understand it's not the most important thing...
I like the fact that their minimum payment is $1.50 (unlike Helium, where it's $25)

I want to submit 5 articles there so I could qualify for the October bonus of $10. WE'll see how I manage with that, because at the same time I want to try to enter one of Helium's Writing Contests.
Do keep your fingers crossed for me :)

Unfortunately it's been crazy at my daytime job and I wasn't able to concentrate at home to write anything new. But I'm still waiting for the decision about the Helium Marketplace article I submitted.

Getting backlinks

Backlinks and Page Rank are very important to promote one's work. And since I'm just starting I figured that while I might not be able to write everyday, I should at least make sure my writing is read.

I decided to promote my work via various sites.
First of all, I use Twitter to post links to articles I just published. It might seem like not much, but it actually adds some readers.

I post about my articles to my personal blog and that gives me some more clicks.
When I'm talking about some subjects in forums, discussion boards or my blogs and I know I wrote an article about that already, I link to it as well.

And recently, I started to use a site called Qassia. It allows you to earn Qassia dollars that can be spent to get quality backlinks to your sites. I think it's a great idea as backlinks apparently influence page rank that has an impact to where your site is positioned in search engines...
So yes. I use Qassia to get this blog higher in the ranks.

Read more on the subject:
Promoting your writing on the Internet

Reality Check

So my very ambisious plan to write something profitable everyday were really cool, but apparently I cannot just jump into the whole writing business. Not with a full-time job and classes on the weekends. I will have to adjust the plan to the life that I have... Hmmm, I wish I wouldn't have to.

Fortunately I'm still capable of working on my PTC sites because they can be open in the background while I check my emails and relax after the whole day of classes. They don't offer much, but it's still something. And I'm patient :)

Unfortuantely due to a lot of work next week at my full-time job I won't be able to do much writing as I will be too stressed and mentally exhausted to come up with something good. But I'm hoping I will be able to come up with some ideas I'll be able to turn into writing during next weekend. I really want to write something for triond.com and maybe give assosiate content and suite 101 another look... I'll have to think about it some more.

Money records and keywords

So because I'm a freak yesterday, in between of posting to MyLot, I was playing in Exel (yes, I actually have Microsoft Office and I actually like it better than Open Office, sue me). I created a nice spreadsheet to keep track of all my earnings online.

I do realize it's a bit anal, but I actually had fun creating it. I like to have stuff organized and written down.
Besides, I write for more than one site and I'm also on three Paid-to-click sites (Bux.to and Clixsense and Hits4Pay) and to be able to better manage my time (I do waste 8 hours in my regular job, you know?) I want to see which sites are actually worth bothering with.

I want to see which sites are worth the investment (getting a premium account or writing more articles for that particular site).

So far I like Helium the best. I recently submitted an article to Helium's Marketplace and we'll see what will come of that.
I actually wrote about subject I know little to none about (tattoo removal). But I did extensive research and was able to write a nice 600 words article.

I worked with keywords for the first time (conciously putting them in), so I can't say I haven't learned anything new ;)
I think now my articles will be slightly better in that area.

Read my past articles at Helium