Earning Money Online (Doing What I Love)

May has been my most successful month on Ehow. I'll be able to pay off my entire gas/electric bill with the money! Ironically, it's the month I wrote the fewest articles. For an entire week I didn't even log into my ehow account. As I do every month, I've updated my original blog post with my most recent Ehow earnings so you can continue to follow my success.  

Original March Post: 

I just did the happy dance. My hard work and dedication to writing ehow articles and trying to help my family's bottom line is paying off. The best part is my writing work is done online, from home (and in my pj's, if I want). It's passive residual income meaning it makes money even if I don't work for a few days and for an indefinite amount of time after the work is done. Three months in and I've already hit the lucky number!  

I hate to brag...but in my three short months as NewMama on ehow.com I've already earned over $100! My goal was to pay off one bill a month and in just three months I've done that and more! After all, it wasn't that long ago that I was so excited that I had earned my first 8 cents. That was at about the same time that my husband looked at my skeptically and said something to the effect of "this is a scam." A few weeks later he apologized, congratulated me and then asked how much I was transferring from my PayPal account to help pay off the credit card!

First I'll show you how my first three payouts break down, then I'll explain what I think is the key to my ehow.com success and the huge percentage increase each month.

November 22 (my first day)-December 31: $8.20
January '09: $26.75
February '09: $66.01

For a grand total: $100.96  (Read all the way to the end for continuing monthly updates)

It's hard to believe that I've earned over $100 just by doing what I love - writing. And by writing about what I know about! What's even harder to believe is that I earned 226% more in January than the previous month. And in February I increased my online earnings by another 146%! Have you ever gotten a raise like that? I haven't!

In three months I've written 93 articles. (As you can imagine it's difficult to find the time to write with an infant at home. Many dedicated ehow writers pound out 3 articles a day! Imagine how much they make!!!) The majority of my articles (60) were actually written before January 21. Why, January 21, you ask? Well that was the day I bought Writergig's Ebook "How to Earn Passive Income On eHow.com."  That was the day I realized, while my 60 articles were earning money, they could be earning so much more.  My articles weren't earning their full potential because I didn't know the proper strategies to follow. After reading this e-book I put the suggestions and techniques into practice..and, well, you see what happened.  I got a huge raise! 

Starting on January 22 I began writing a little differently, I promoted my articles differently, and I started seeing a huge earnings increase. I had a few articles that were already doing fairly well..maybe making $1-$2 a month. Those that were still sitting on a big goose egg I went in and tweaked. I changed their titles and their keywords to make sure the search engines were picking them up and I edited the copy slightly. I didn't want to spend too much time changing them since I decided to concentrate on the articles I was going to write from here on out. As of today the very first ehow article I wrote still hasn't made a cent. I'm done changing it. I have no idea why it's not making money, but I'm not wasting any more time with it. I've simply decided that's the way it is and fooling with it any more is only costing me more money.

On the other hand, I have one article that earned me $15.62 this month. I wrote it January 9th. That month it made $6.40 (since I can't see a history of per day payments I'll just say it average .22 a day). I went back and tweaked the title and added a few keywords according to ebook's suggestions and it's now averaging .56 a day. (If all 93 of my articles were making that much money I'd be making $1,453 a month! To that, my husband just said, "that's legit." Hmmm!) It's not a dated or topical article which means it has the potential to earn that much, or more, every month from here on out. I think I spent about an hour writing that one article. Think about that for an hourly rate. 

After purchasing and reading the book I also changed the way I pick article topics to write about. While I still focus on baby, parenting, and money topics (because that's what I know best) I've now tailored that focus to specific subjects that are highly searched in Google and other search engines. Out of respect for Writergig I'm not going to give away all her secrets...why would you buy her book then? But I will say there's a secret formula to earning big bucks on ehow. She should know..she's one of ehow's top earners! I only wish I had bought How to Earn Passive Income On eHow.com before I wrote those first 60 articles.

I know what it's like to go from two incomes to one. With the economy the way it is, many people are being forced into that situation. My family chose that situation. I left my job on my own terms so that I could be a stay-at-home-mom. Staying at home with my daughter is no sacrifice-I wouldn't trade it for the world. But living on one income means making lots of (simple) financial sacrifices. While Ehow certainly isn't a paycheck I would rely on, and it doesn't come close to matching what I was bringing in pre-baby, it gives me the satisfaction of continuing to contribute financially, and perhaps more importantly, it gives me the opportunity to have a creative outlet at the same time!

March '09 Update - 

Ehow: $84.35 

          + $52.00 (from a 2nd passive income stream that requires no work, as described in the ebook I read)

             March Grand Total $136.35!!! 

April '09 Update - 

Ehow: $121.67 

            + $12.50 (from a 2nd passive income stream that requires no work, as described in the ebook I read) 

            April Grand Total $ 134.17!!! 

May '09 Update -

Ehow $151.84 

           + $25 (for participating in a special Ehow writing program) 

           + $12.50 (from a 2nd passive income stream that requires no work, as described in the ebook I read) 

   May Grand Total $189.34!!!

Click here to view more details or to purchase "Earn Passive Income on Ehow.com"

Make Money Online: Write Articles That Pay

My Favorite WAHM Blogs: 

Make Money Writing at Home