Update on eHow Earnings

It has been a few months since my last update. Life has been exceedingly busy and I have just not been able to find the time to update this blog. However, I really have been encouraged, excited, motivated to share my results through eHow. If you remember, back in March 2010, I joined eHow. I had extremely high hopes for building a credible stream of passive online income. I realized that once again, my daydreaming got in my way, and I quickly learned the reality was not as beautiful and easy as i had once hoped. That was month 1. I wrote 29 articles and earned $5.01 from ad revenue. Those 29 articles took me an average of 30 minutes a piece, so 14.5 hours of writing time equates to $0.35/hour. Not exactly the barn burner I was hoping for. I was not discouraged and had high hopes for Month 2.

Month 2

Articles written = 31. Ad revenue earned = $4.97. Hourly wage = $0.32/hour. Stellar. Blackpedaling.

Month 3

May brought on a strange series of events, where eHow completely changed their guidelines and users were no longer able to submit articles the usual method. There was a completely new service which involved submitting your article to an editor. I tried two articles, both were rejected and I gave up. Articles written = 0. Money earned = $3.82. Hourly wage = $0.19/hour (Even though I did not get any articles published, I spent 20 hours writing and editing the two articles that were eventually rejected…). Massive fail.

Month 4

Completely demoralized. I just spent the last 3 months pinning my future passive income earnings on a big, fat, flop. However, by month’s end a strange thing happened. I earned $5.22. A record month. I did not write a single article, or really think about Ehow that much, except to lament my plight. So I earned $5.22 for doing nothing. Not bad. Nothing to get excited about. But, not bad.

Month 5

Still doing nothing on eHow. Earnings = $10.34. Not bad. Doubled my money from last month. Still doing nothing.

Month 6

Total earnings = $26.41. Hold the phone. You mean to tell me that for not doing a single thing or even spending brain power THINKING about Ehow, my articles have continued to gain ad revenue, and they want to send me a check for $26? I’ll take it.

Month 7

Total earnings = 27.58. Sitting pretty. But I keep telling myself not to get excited. This latest amount was from September 2010, and I have continued to be disinterested with eHow and frustrated over the loss of my passive income stream. Suddenly I realize, that *gasp* I have created a passive income stream. From the misery of my loss, a passive income stream has risen. Granted, still not enough money to be a game changer, but who would not want $27 extra per month. The best thing, every month is gradually getting better.

Month 8

October 2010. I eagerly check my Paypal account and *BOOM* , total earnings = $39.36. I am speechless. That is real money. They just paid me almost $40 to do nothing. I will take and run….to the bank.

With the current earnings from November I have earned $138.45. Total hours invested 50. Hourly wage = $2.77. Still nothing to brag about, but the great thing is that since I am not putting any additional work into this income stream, that hourly figure will only rise. Who knows what it will be in a year from now? Maybe 2? 3?

The moral of this story is that there is an actual way to make money from home in a passive income model. Even though I was only able to write 61 total articles, my earnings have continued to increase each month and I look forward to increased earnings in the future. You can absolutely replicate this same success with a little hard work. Your dream of a home based business is not a dream at all. In fact, your home based business is simply waiting on you to take the plunge and open up shop!

eHow switching to 100% Demand Studios Publishing Platform

If you are an eHow writer you have probably received an e-mail by now announcing that the Writer Compensation Program will cease to exist to new users. They also announced that current eHow writers will now solely produce content through Demand Studios. This marks an extreme change for Demand Media which is one of the largest content creation companies in the world.

Current eHow writers will either be pre-approved, based on their current article acceptance rate as of April 1st, or they will be given the option to apply for a writing position at Demand Studios to continue producing content for eHow.

A lot of people who receive a passive income from eHow should pay attention to these changes. All of your old articles will not be touched and you can continue to receive revenue sharing from your articles as you have been, however, for any new articles you submit, you will have to go through Demand Studios.

Thankfully, I was pre-approved into Demand Studios based on a 92% acceptance rate.  Here is the e-mail that I received from eHow earlier today.

Demand Studios is now the exclusive writing platform for eHow.com. Hi strongside, Today, we are announcing that Demand Studios is now the exclusive platform for writing new articles for eHow.com. Congratulations, you have automatically been accepted into Demand Studios. This change will not impact any of your existing articles or payments currently affiliated with the Writer Compensation Program (WCP). Demand Studios gives eHow.com’s writers a more robust publishing platform including copy editors, quality assurance and a number of great, new resources for the writer community. We are committed to providing a quality experience and are excited for you to get started. How does this impact you? Demand Studios has a rigorous writer admission process to ensure quality. Writers, like you, were pre-approved, because of your excellent track record. Quality is paramount, and our criteria for accepting eHow.com writers into Demand Studios were based on writer activity level andmoderation history. By the end of March 2010, you should have published five or more articles, of which at least 80 percent were accepted. Also, you must have been a member of the WCP. Having written 64 articles with a 92% acceptance rate, you should be proud of yourself for being pre-approved. We are migrating thousands of writers on eHow.com over the next few weeks. We appreciate your patience and will notify you via email when you can begin writing for Demand Studios. In the meantime, it’s business as usual, and you can continue to publish on eHow.com. What are the benefits? Demand Studios now offers the benefits you are accustomed to on eHow.com, with added flexibility. You can suggest your own titles and write articles that pay monthly on a residual basis. In addition you can select assignments that pay upfront. The combination of these options gives you the opportunity to make more money. You choose what articles you write and how you get paid. Next Steps: Continue to write using eHow.com’s publishing tools and watch for an email notification from us regarding your transition into Demand Studios. For additional questions, please visit the FAQ or email us at writers@ehow.com. Thank you, The eHow Team

Important Changes Ahead

Here is an additional graphic provided from eHow that will hopefully illustrate some of the differences between eHow and the new Demand Studios publishing platform.



What do you think?

Will you continue to write for Demand Studios?

Make Money Online with CashCrate

In my continuing quest to earn a passive income online, I have stumbled across a website that I plan on implementing into my passive income plan.

CashCrate is simply a service that compiles paid trial offers and surveys. You complete offers and surveys, and you earn a small fee for your time.

I went through their introductory program, completed my first 3 offers, and have earned $2.40. This is not a lot of money by any means, but it does go to show that there is money to be made…and quickly. My total time for that first $2.40 was approximately 10 minutes ( on pace for $14.40 an hour).

The beauty of the CashCrate system and the reason I am excited about it, is their referral program. Theoretically, you could never complete a single survey or trial offer and still earn money through their referral program. here is how it works:

For the first 50 referrals you earn 20% of their earnings. That’s right, without lifting a finger, you earn 20% of the money that your referrals are earning. On top of that, for every second level referral (one of your referrals refers someone else) you earn 10% of their earnings.

You can literally build a small army of referrals that may complete a few offers a day, but earn big bucks for you!

The CashCrate referral program also gets better as you increase referrals. When you reach Elite status and have over 500 referrals, you will earn 30% of your referrals earnings, and 20% of your second level referrals.

If you do the math, you have already realized that there is serious earning potential here.

The trick here is obviously going to be getting referrals. The more you get the more you earn. Simple as that. So how do I plan to go about getting referrals?

• Promote here at Ascent to Freedom.
• Include my referral link in my e-mail signature
• Create free business cards at vista print with my referral link
• Put up pictures of my earnings checks (once they start rolling in)
• Create a website dedicated to CashCrate. This will allow me to display banners for CashCrate.

So all in all, I think this can be a very lucrative activity. I will let you know how I am progressing, and if I am actually able to gain any referrals who will earn any money.

Do you have experience with CashCrate?

Do you participate in their referral program?

eHow Earnings Update: 20 Days In

It has been 20 short days since I registered with eHow.com and published my first article. I have learned a lot about the inner workings of eHow and been frustrated along with all the other eHow community members  at the publishing glitches. But through all that frustration, I have managed to publish 35 articles on my own.

Here are links to some of my favorite articles that I have written:

How to Graduate College For Free

How to Recycle Your Old Blog Posts Into eHow Articles

How to Get Free Stuff For a Product Review Website

How to Quit Your 9-5 and Live on Passive Income

How to Earn a Passive Income on eHow

How to Create a Niche Website that Makes Money

As of the writing of this article I have gained 434 article views. I have earned a total of $2.25. Not exactly a goldmine but I feel like I am well on my way to earning a steady residual income.

You can check out my eHow profile here.

Do you have eHow articles up? What have you found are the best methods for gaining traffic to your articles?

Break Down Your Goals Into Bite Sized Pieces

What are your goals?

What are your dreams?

Do you want to quit your job and live on passive income?

I know I sure do.

I also know that it seems like a crazy far-fetched dream that I will ever be able to make it there. I posted a while back about finding your number, the amount of monthly income that it will take for you to quit your job, and live life on your own terms. For me, that number is $5000 per month. That may seem like a huge number to some of you and probably a small number to a lot of you, but for me, that’s all I need.

But $5000 per month is still a lot of money!!

That number becomes even bigger, and even more unattainable, when I look at my paltry earnings so far online. I’m not ever gonna make it to $5000 per month making a few dollars a day through ad revenue.

On the flip side, I also just started this experiment less than a month ago. I actually have made money and have a positive cash flow (my expenses are $0 so far, so any cash flow will be positive!).

It really is all about perspective and putting your goals into perspective. If I continue to focus on the $5000 per month goal, I will get discouraged and frustrated along the way, and give up on my dream (I know myself too well, I know I cannot sustain this forever with an unattainable goal).

Have you ever heard of the Debt Snowball? Ever heard of Dave Ramsey? His now famous Debt Snowball plan works because it focuses on psychology not finances. Obviously, he is a financial guru, but he has learned that it is the psychology behind the finances that is the core of the problem. His program teaches you to set a small debt reduction goal, pay off one small amount, then apply that monthly payment to the next amount, pay that off, add the monthly payments together and apply it to the next biggest amount. Financially, this is not the smartest plan, but psychologically, it works! It just makes sense! You set yourself attainable goals, you get encouraged from your success, and you move on to the next goal!

I break my goal into bite sized pieces, I will be able to make it. Say I focus on the first $100 per month goal. This is a big milestone as it is the minimum payout for revenue sharing programs (Google Adsense). Once I reach $100 per month then bump up to $500, then $1000, I will progress on until I really have met my goal.

That may sound a little trivial, but for me I know it works. I imagine that it could work for you too! Breaking down your goals into bite sized pieces will give you the confidence that you need to surge on towards your goals.

Photo by: Dunilo Rizzuti