My Second Month of eHow Unwrapped

• Tweet
• Buffer

In my second month of writing articles on eHow, I decided to let my articles marinate on the web without writing any more. I did this half because I was super busy, but also because I wanted to see how much more money, if any, I would make by just letting my articles sit. I’m actually very pleased with my results.

In my first month of writing on eHow, you may remember that I made $20.02 after reaching my goal of about 150 articles, or 5 articles a day. I’ll estimate that I averaged a generous 2 hours a day writing, or 60 hours in total. In order to see this in a way we can all relate to, that’s about $0.33 cents per hour of work. On paper, that’s chump change. But, as Yoda would say, “After some time, see results, you will.  Herh herh herh.” (I used Yodaspeak.co.uk for this, lol!)

The Results

In my second month, my 150 or so articles earned me a total of $96.87. This, for zero hours of work. (Note: I did write 6 extra articles in December, because I found some keywords that I had to take advantage of…for the purpose of this report, I have excluded those articles in my results.)

So, zero hours of work in December earned me $96.87. That’s pretty darn good passive income right there. That’s a total of $116.89 in 60 hours of work, or $1.95 an hour. Still, that’s much less than minimum wage. But, remember what Yoda says. Let’s actually do a hypothetical calculation of the future. For this calculation, let’s assume I do not write any more articles, and I only earn $96.87 per month from now on. This, of course, assumes my rate of earnings does not grow at all, which is probably not true – but for ease of calculation, let’s just assume my rate of earnings stay the same at $96.87 per month after the first month, for 6 months:

$8.41 an hour – now we’re talking. But the most impressive thing is – notice how many hours of work was put in between December and April – absolutely none! After a year, I’d have over $1000 and $18/hour. Again, this is what earning a passive income is all about: doing the work now, and reaping the benefits later.

This only means one thing – I’d be dumb just to let the articles sit and do nothing. After my wedding planning and moving into a new apartment – I’m definitely going to crank out some more articles. I would love to earn a total of $4000.00 in 2009. This seems doable, as long as I’m persistent and stick to a schedule, which I’ll figure out later. How many articles are you going to write in 2009…or I should say, first – how many articles are you going to write in January of 2009?

The Growth of the Rate of Earnings

Here is a chart of my earnings per day (in blue) and my average earnings per day over time (in red):

You can see how each day, the earnings may vary, but over time – they will go up. After 2 months, I now average $2.02 a day in earnings. Remember, in December – I did not write any more articles, so I attribute all of my earnings in December to my patience while waiting for Google to pick up more of my articles in their search engine.

Gosh, I wish there was a way to track where all of the viewers came from. It would be really easy to implement, and it would make our lives on eHow much more interesting. Just imagine finding that a website has linked to one of your articles – then you can thank the author for posting the link. Or, a pie chart (google analytics-esque) showing where all of the readers come from, or even better, where all of the people came from who clicked on the ads on your articles. Find that out, milk it, and you’re gold. As much as I love eHow and the opportunity is presents to people, there is still a lot they can improve on. Anyways, I digress. I may write a post in January with suggestions and improvements – we’ll see.

The point here is, as I’ve said before, if you write articles on eHow, and maximize your chance to be ranked on Google through smart keyword research and smart content writing, your earnings will grow over time – even if you don’t write any more. Obviously, the more articles you write, the more chances you have to earn more money.

My Top Articles

If you remember in my last eHow report, my top earning article was How to Be Financially and Location Independent, which I published on November 27th, earning me $1.72. It was pretty cool because it was one of the last articles I wrote right before my 150 article experiment ended. I figured I hit a “golden article”. Today, that article has earned me a total of $3.43 – not the rate of growth I was expecting.

I noticed that my Google ranking for a keyword: “location independent”, had dropped. It is now on the second page, when in the first few days, it was actually ranked 4th or 5th on the first page. This is why I think my earnings weren’t quite as impressive for this particular article. Just another confirmation of how important keywords and Google Rankings are.

Here is a list of my Top Earning Articles since I began:

1. How to Buy Stocks in a Recession: $9.79, 193 views
2. How to Get Paid to Advertise: $9.76, 243 views
3. How to Print Pretend Money: $6.74, 781 views
4. How to Become a Penpal to a Soldier: $5.05, 694 views
5. How to Become an Internet Entrepreneur, $4.49, 227 views

About My Top Articles

All of my top money earning articles, about 21 out of my top 25, were all written after 11/16/08, which is when I purchased and read Maria’s (aka. TheWriterGig) eBook about how to improve earnings. It makes me sad that I didn’t purchase this eBook earlier, because I could have definitely used the information inside to make my numbers look even better. I pretty much wasted the first half of November…let’s take a look:

• Articles written before 11/16/08: $19.71 total, 19,288 views
• Articles written on 11/16/08 and later: $100.68 total, 16,390 views

Very, very interesting, and again it’s obvious that keyword research and content writing is key. I know I’ve said that a few times now, and I hope it’s annoying you, because if you’re not doing the research, you’re wasting your time (if your goal is to earn as much money as possible). I just want to thank Maria again for her book and very sound advice.

My later articles were exclusively about topics that I found doing keyword research. My earlier articles were exclusively about topics that I thought would be good, or just things I had in mind – without research. Writing about keyword terms is a little harder, and a little less interesting, because it’s not necessarily something that inspires me, but knowing that it may earn me money in the future is enough to get me through writing them.

Why I Keep Track of all this Stuff

Well, for one – it interests me (I LOVE math), but really, it’s all for you. I hope you can learn from my experiences and earning reports, so that you can begin to produce a passive income stream online using techniques such as writing articles on eHow.

Not only that, but I am learning a lot as I go along too, and I’m hoping to pass along reports of what I’ve learned and the mistakes I’ve made to you – so YOU can improve your earnings and ultimately, your lifestyle.

Keeping track of all these numbers and earnings is not easy. Again, I wish eHow made it easier for me – but each day I wake up and see how much I’ve earned and plug that information into an excel file. I manually find the articles and information that seem interesting, in hopes that you and I both learn and increase our earnings. I just want to say thanks for your comments and encouragement, for if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have the energy to do these reports, that I hope help you out.

To Sum It All Up

In conclusion, I would recommend that you keep writing as much as possible, making sure you do the necessary keyword research and content writing techniques to improve your articles’ Google rankings and click-throughs.

I would create a schedule or goal of how many articles you want to write each week, and stick with it. Even if it’s just 1 article a week – you gotta do it, because time is on your side, as long as you take advantage of it.

Also, if you have been writing and you haven’t seen much in terms of earnings, it could mean…

1. You didn’t do adequate keyword research – meaning you’re writing about an article that not many people are searching for.
2. You’re writing in a niche that does not produce many ad clicks. As most of us know, recipes aren’t that good, but you’ll have to look at your own articles and stay away from the topics that don’t do well for you and your writing style, and milk the ones that do well for you.
3. You did the keyword research, but someone else has beat you to the punch. Writing about something someone else wrote about already will decrease your chances of earning money, obviously. But, you can improve your earnings, if you want to write about that particular topic, by making sure the title of your article is unique, and the content of your article is better.
4. You need to give yourself more time. Be patient, trust your research, and you’ll do great!

I hope this post was informative. Good luck to you, and I wish you the best!

P.S. – Useful eHow Books to Increase your Earnings

If you haven’t read one of the following eBooks, you may want to if you want to increase your earnings. I’ve only read Maria’s, but I’ve heard that Janet’s is just as good. Good luck!

• Maria’s “Increase eHow Earnings” eBook
• Janet Ford’s “How to eHow” eBook

Have a wonderful day!

Tagged as: ehow

• Tweet

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 25,000 people who receive exclusive weekly online business and blogging tips, and get a FREE COPY of my eBook, eBooks the Smart Way! Just enter your name and email below: