Paid for Reviews and Votes

Last few days has been very productive. I've written an article for AssociatedContent (which still haven't been published) and lately I've written seven different reviews for ReviewStream. And now I'll be waiting for all that material to get processed and published. To be honest I'm really frustrated with Associated Content as their submission procedure takes the longest of all revenue share websites I write for. I simply hope my newest piece for them will get published before New Year. It sort of seasonal content and I really don't want to wait an entire year to see it perform well.

In other news, I decided to do a little experiment concerning ReviewStream. It's a slow one, requiring at least two months.

See, I decided to test their 'every vote pays' policy. Every day, for the next two months, I will be voting on my reviews. I need 50 votes to receive the payment (at the moment $5). I'll be voting on all of my reviews as the FAQ state that votes only accumulate per each review (votes don't sum up, no matter how much I wish they would). So it is my understanding that once one of my reviews get 50 votes, I should receive in my PayPal that $5.

I do realize it seems like a lot of work for a little payout. But I already have over 10 reviews on the site. I open each in a separate tabs (thank gods for the tabs, I have no idea how I managed before them) and click vote in between other tasks. Like I said. It's an experiment. If it works, I get additional payments for my reviews. If not, no harm done, I'll simply stop voting.

I will keep you updated, so no worries.

Learn more about ReviewStream:
Experience with ReviewStream.com
Learn how to earn with ReviewStream.

In between

So I earn money for my writing. Easy to say. Even easier to conclude that the more I write the more money I should be able to earn. Well that's technically true. But at the same time, no matter how much I want to write, it will never be the actual amount that ends up, from lack of a better word, existing. Some days it will be more, some days it will be less. Like every other writer, I am not a robot. I don't have subscription to creativity (even though I would very much love to).

In my recent post to Inspired, I write about what you could do in between creating. It's short and to the point, because my opinion on the subject is short and to the point. If you don't have it in you to create anything, learn how to be better at what you do.

As a freelancer of any kind, you get paid for your time. So every time you're not working, not creating, not writing, you're losing money. Or so they say in those various self-help blogs and articles...

I see how that might be the case. Though I have to admit that since I'm not doing freelance full-time, I'm not that obsessed with money yet. Or at all. Nonetheless, I don't really like wasting time when I know I could somehow forward my career. But even though I can sometimes write 4000 words for paying clients, there are days when I can't put together a simple sentence... And those are the days I tend to procrastinate more than usual.

Don't get me wrong. I tend to procrastinate more than your usual freelancer. Mostly because I don't have this shadow over my head created by unpaid bills and stuff. But there's only that much blog posts I can comment on, that much fanfic I can read before I feel like I should be doing so much more... By then I usually try to write something and fail miserably.

And then I go read some articles about freelancing, seo, marketing and such. I even bought a book by selfmadechick on how to start a freelance business for under $50. I learned a lot from that one. Just like this past month I learned a lot about SEO and how it can affect the pageviews. See, I believe that there's no such thing as knowing enough. There are always people who know more, or are better at what they do. And I could learn from them.

That's why on my RSS feed, next to job listings I have freelanceswitch, about freelance writing and other sites with lots of tips on how to improve myself

Writing Update

I've been doing a lot of writing lately. So I figured, right before Christmas, I could probably share with y'all (you know, since I can barely move after cleaning all day).

Scribophile, a really great site I'm blogging for, published two of my articles so far. "Writing Bootcamp: Writing Whenever, Wherever, Whatever" which is a nice little piece which I commited to ease myself into the job and get to know the audience. The second article is "Of Editing And Evolution: Why You Should Find The Perfect Editor" which is actually one of the articles I had a lot of fun writing. And I think it shows. I've written one more article for them but it will either be published after Christmas or at the beginning of the New Year.

I have to say, so far the site has been a blast and I'm looking forward to writing more for them. I actually have few ideas in my head and I'm wondering whether or not should I write them down... We'll see how much of actual free time I have during Christmas.

In other news, the article I've written for Helium Marketplace just transitioned to Helium regular title. It's about the effect catnip has on cats. I have to say, researching for that particular title was a blast. I now know more about drug using cats more than I wanted to.

I've also submitted another article to AssociatedContent about how freelancers can further their career in the new year. Again, it will probably take ages for AC to process the article, but I think it's worth the wait.

Of Deadlines and New Year's Resolutions

So I have this love/hate relationship with deadlines. I love them because they force me to write, but at the same time I hate them because they force me to write...

Yes, I know it might sound slightly confusing, but I am perfectly capable of loving and hating something for the exact same reason. See, sometimes I need a push to do something. Deadlines provide me with that push.
But sometimes, I really don't have the muse to write anything but I have to force myself to do so, because... well, I'm on a deadline....
Getting into freelancing I was aware that I will have to make nice with the deadlines, because once I start getting work, I will start getting deadlines as well... Doesn't stop me from whining about it to my cat. Thankfully, my cat ignores me no matter what I whine about.

So that is my little rant about deadlines.
Next step: New Year's Resulutions.

Everybody I know always makes some sort of resolutions come New Year. I decided that I should do something similar regarding my freelance career.
Especially since soon it'll be Christmas and I will have some extra free time.

So here is the Great To-Do List for the year 2009:

1. Start using BizReef, Guru, Elance and oDesk. Complete profiles and start bidding on jobs that interest me.

2. Create a profesional website for my freelancing

3. Pay more attention to my blogs

4. Go back to writing for Helium, AssociatedContent, Ciao and ReviewStream.

Yes. Only 4 points. But when I look at them I see a lot of work before me. Especially since I also have a full-time job, school and family life to take care of.

But I'm sure I will be able to handle it all. Because I rule and it's Christmas soon. What with miracles and stuff :)

Happy Holidays everyone!

On a roll, baby!

So, AssociatedContent finally published the last article I had in the queue, the one about how to make a smooth transition from day-job to freelance writing. I myself am still in the middle of that transition, but I hope I will be able to into freelance writing full time at the end of 2009. Yes, it's a huge plan but I'm hopefull. Plus I do have a contracted day job till September 2009...

Apart from that, I also got my first freelance job. Remember how I wrote that I bid on some jobs and I had one i like best and hoped I'll manage to land it?

Well, the good news is that I actually did. I got an e-mail from the site owner and I'll be starting the job soon. Of course the moment I do, I'll give you lot a link. Mostly to show of, how awesome I am :P It's a meta-writing gig, so just right up my alley. I hope I don't have t tell you how excited I am...

On a slightly worse note, I didn't do much of actual writing. Yes, I a very ashamed of myself. Not even a short review and 've been watching some very review friendly movies lately... Maybe instead of reading stories online, I could go and write something... Procrastination is evil, let me tell you. But it feels so damn good...

New Month New Attitude

Okay, so maybe the attitude isn't all that new. I still have problems managing my time and actually telling myself to write instead of watching newest episodes of NCIS. But I really am trying to work on this one.

What else am I working on?
Well two things. Qassia and Inspired.

Qassia is a place I already wrote about. IT helps you get backlinks and improve the page rank of your site. And if you're a writer (or owner of any kind of website), you know how pagerank and promotion and improve your earnings and stuff.

Inspired, on the other hand, is a new themed blog I started. I want to share or sorts of inspiration and creativity boost. Ideas for work for all creative types. And not only writers (though as a writer I"m mostly focusing there) but also artists, filmmakers and people who create things for other people's pleasure. I missed having athemed blog and I want to make this one work. Especially since it's so close to my area of expertise.

In other news, Associated COntent finally published one of the articled I had in the publishing queue.

It's called Why Having a Blog Can Improve Your Earnings. Feel free to read it and tell you what you think.

I wrote more on that subject over at Helium:
Promoting your writing on the Internet

Read more from my Helium portfolio.

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

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

Get paid for your writing

Make no mistake. This is not a blog that will tell you how to get rich as a freelance writer. Rather this blog was created to document my journey. And if you can benefit from my experiences, well good for you.

You see, I want to be a professional writer. I want to be able to support myself with my writing, or at least have writing add to my monthly income. Preferably in a significant way.

And because the Internet is a place of many possibilities, I think it's the right place to start.

So what have I achieved so far?

Well I have/had a blog where I wrote articles with a sole purpose of giving people advice how to become a better writer of fiction. But due to my real life I had to put it on hold in June 2008. Then, I moved to actual writing that could profit me. I would want to keep on posting there, however, I don't know if I'll be able to do that.

As to the actual paid writing.

I have 21 articles published on Helium. They don't bring me any huge income yet, but they all earn few cents here and there. I also took part in Helium's Summer Reward-a-thon. I only wrote  4 articles thought. Still, it's extra $4 apart from the income from ads displayed with my articles.

I wrote few reviews for ReviewStream, unfortunately I'm still far away from payout there. At the moment, I really don't feel like writing reviews, but since I want to get paid there, I will have to get over that little block.

I am semi active at mylot as well. I am sure I will meet payout in October. I really like it there because starting and responding to discussions don't take too much of my creative juices and yet, it still offers some extra dollars. I do realize this little venue will never become a significant part of my income, however it will do just fine for the small pleasures :)

I also have profiles in few other places, but I haven't posted anything there yet. When I finally do, I will post about them here. Though you can find the links to those places in the sidebar. If you decided to check them out, do drop me a line and tell me how they are working out for you. :)