What It Takes to Make Passive Income Now that Everything Has Changed

1. Write, write, write. In my opinion and experience, you need at least 100 articles per website. Try to increase length too, 600 words is the new 400 (but don't kill yourself to get one stinking article that's giving you a hard time up to 600 words. Leave it at 400 and move on.)

2.More of everything; content, more SEO, more back links, more words. 2009 was the last 'easy' year for passive revenue, in my opinion. 2010 is the year that the bad economy hit the internet and companies like eHow shut down their programs. You'll have to hit it harder to do well in today's net economy.

3.Work with several passive revenue websites. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

4.Figure out what you are doing wrong. If you aren't making any money and if your passive income isn't growing, you are doing something wrong. Take a class, read a book, lurk on message boards, ask for help--whatever, but you need to put the effort into tweaking your strategy so that passive revenue works for you.

For me, I often compare myself to complainers in forums. If established people or newbies aren't making money,but I am, I consider myself to be doing okay--in conjunction with my income going up too.

5.Don't count on anything. The net lifecycle is short. Websites come and go. I no longer believe that you can earn on articles or one website forever--even if you run your own site. Sooner or later Google will make a change that will bury you. It happens. I see lots of 'old timers' giving up as their revenue plummets instead of realizing the business landscape has shifted under their feet and that they need to revamp, renew and rework.

You can't count on writing an article once and making money forever. Not anymore.

6.Rework old articles to extend their net life. Improve the SEO. Give them more back links. Make your older stuff work for you somehow. Be creative about it.

7.Don't expect much. Passive revenue is all about hitting critical mass which takes time. Gone are the eHow days of instant earnings, we are in the new era of 'slow and steady wins the race.' Content may take months and months to mature. My Hubpages that earn income have taken a year to show a profit (although I don't promote them so maybe I could've shortened that timeline a bit).

8.Don't buy a bunch of gimmicks and expensive gear. I see a lot of people trying to sell various 'make money online' products when I know they themselves are not successful. They're selling a product of dubious quality, not their personal experience and expertise.

9.Start blogging to create back links. This is a good way to immediately give your content a boost. There are many free platforms. Start several blogs in your topic areas, update as you wish and use them for backlinks. So long as you post unique content every once in a while, the blog will eventually rank as a good do follow back link. Much easier than writing a bunch of ezine articles. Plus, if one of the blogs gets good traffic, you can monetize it.

10. Get into social media. Google now gives weight to social media back links. So get people talking about your work. Start with Twitter and Facebook and branch out from there. However, be careful not to let social media become a time suck.

Earnings for July 2010 & Making eHow Work For Me (For Once!)

Before I forget...

-eHow: $300 and change. Up about $100 from the last month. Nice.

-Amazon: Still less than $50

-Adsense: More than $20 but not by much. Most of this is Infobarrel, particularly one article that seems to be doing well.

-Suite: Roughly $20 for the month, but actual income was more like $40 since they paid me for accrued earnings from previous months as well.

-Online used book sales: This is a new thing I've been experimenting with. Not sure I'll stick with it, but I did make $200 in used book sales.

My laptop is dying--it was a lemon from day one, the power jack has had constant problems. Replaced it once, it's dying again. New laptop comes in next week! Thank goodness!

So, quickly because my battery is dying and I can't get the power cord to work at the moment...

I am pruning my backlinks today. I even went into my eHow stuff and added links to new articles. So long as I hit the save button, the article doesn't run back through the plagiarism filter. eHow is not an 'official' back link, but it does drive traffic and a lot of my eHow articles get great traffic.

Just thought I would mention that in case any one is trying to get some traffic to new articles since the eHow WCP closed.

Cheers!

Catching Up

Wow, I haven't posted since May! Didn't think it was that long!

Quick earnings update:

May
eHow: $260
Adsense:$20
Suite: $0
Amazon: Less than $50

June
eHow:$200
Adsense:$20
Suite: $0
Amazon: Less than $50 but up $10 over May

So that's that for earnings. I've been pretty bummed about passive income because it seems like eHow killed the entire concept when they changed the WCP program. Niche blogging continues to be the slowest horse in the race for me.

Suite is slowly taking off and is showing the most potential right now, in my opinion. I am also very slowly adding content, so it's partly my fault that I'm not earning more. (My health is better, but I still struggle and have just now regained my strength. Since colds and flu make me super ill, I'm not likely to stay healthy for long. My baby starts preschool this Fall and you know preschool is just code for 'germ factory.' Sigh.)

But I sometimes feel as if the internet changed when eHow changed. The opportunities aren't there like they used to be. Is this the bad economy finally hitting the internet? Will things perk up next year? I don't know.

I was scanning various writing message boards and forums and I don't see anyone crowing about making a ton of money at any one site. There's not a lot of positive chatter about niche blogging either, although maybe people are keeping quiet to cut down on competition--I don't know. From what I see, people seem to be cobbling together income from multiple freelance sources.

I thought it was telling when the Keyword Academy dropped their fees from $66 to $33. People can't or aren't willing to pay $66 in this economy.

I also don't see all the people with e-books on eHow pushing their product. I thought at least someone would rewrite their book for the 'new eHow' because a lot of the info still applies. Just retool a few chapters, cover Demand Studios and you have a saleable product again.

But nope, don't see that happening either.

It's weird. Hopefully this is a lull and sites like Infobarrel will rise to fill the eHow gap.

How's it been for you, since the ehowpocalypse?

Mid-Month Check In

Chugging along.

eHow earnings are 1/2 of what they were last month so far. Not good. I'm sorry to see it drop so soon--I was hoping for a few more months of love.

I have to say I am kind of curious on the radio silence now that everything goes through Demand Studios. No one is raving. No one is complaining. What gives? I checked the Alexa rank and ehow is holding steady so they aren't tanking. It's just odd to me that all the chatter has gone mute. I would think that people's ebooks could easily be retooled and sold to newbies same as before--the income stream is still there. So what is going on? Anyone know?

Is Demand Studios offing anyone who dares to talk? I may write a revenue share article for them just to see what's going on for myself.

Adsense took off like a rocket and then petered out before it completed the mission. So I am not sure where I will end up for the month there, but I had hoped to go up another $10 in income at least. Things could still turn around.

Amazon has been dead dead dead. I wonder if their sales are down or something? It is just beyond dead!

Other than that, I'm writing writing writing. Trying to heal still. Getting ready to renew my domains and reflecting on the fact that out of 10 sites, only 3 are showing signs of life. I will probably sell the other domains sometime next year.

Oh! And one of my sites finally hit page rank of 2. Woot!

April Earnings

I am still alive and kicking, although barely it seems. My health continues to be a challenge. Hopefully this is the last of the bad ju-ju for a while.

Earnings chugged along nicely and boy am I grateful for the power of passive income.

eHow--Almost $400 for 100 articles. It won't last, I know but it was nice to see. I hope to see a few more good months from eHow before they screw us over completely--you know more sweeps are coming once they hit critical mass on content submitted from the DS platform.

Also, it was interesting to see the earnings be so high considering that I have copied some of my content on other sites. So perhaps the penalty of duplicate content is not immediate or a myth? Time will tell.

I do need to get the rest of my content established elsewhere and aging so when eHow pulls the plug on us 'old timers' I still have earning potential.

Suite101--Is going slowly for me because of my health--less than $5. I will make the 10 articles in 3 months deadline by the skin of my teeth. Some of the editors are really picky and the style guidelines feel like a minefield. Every content editor has their own take on the rules so it can be annoying.

However, the editors have been unfailingly professional. Which is a huge and welcome change compared to Demand Studios.

Infobarrel--Is going to be a moneymaker in my humble opinion. I make more there than on Suite101 so far (and I've been targeting good keywords on Suite too). Today I had a $2 click.

Niche Websites: Are chugging along. More on them when I talk about adsense.

Hubpages: Not producing much for me. I still love the format. I suspect they are going to suffer a google smack because there's a lot of crappy spam and international scam types on there churning out low grade content. If they don't clean that up, I think their days are numbered.

Amazon: Could have been better but not horrid either. Less than $50.

Adsense: Hey, whaddaya know? I'm making almost $1 a day. Now to grow that by a factor of 100. My adsense income breaks down roughly like so 40% Niche blogs, 40% Infobarrel, 20% Hubpages. In terms of age, the Hubpages are the oldest in terms of age, followed by the niches, with Infobarrel being my 'youngest' content.

Now to get healthy and find more time in the day to write more content!

Not Dead, But Sick Yet Still Working Hard

I am still struggling with my health and therefore am running behind on everything.

Earnings last month... were better by about $50. I'm not going to go back and look it all up to do a break down here at the moment. So we'll leave it at that.

Of course when eHow closed the WCP program, that was a setback. Current earnings are good on eHow, but not what they were last month. I expect it to decline.

My niche blogs seem to be in a steady state. I earn something almost daily BUT I am not making the big bucks yet. I'm trying to really focus on this as I have a few sites that are really taking off. Note that it took me almost a year to get this far, which is not very far. Still it's progress. I am happy to see it's not been a total waste of time.

Also, niche blogging is a SLOW income stream. If I was a better backlinker I probably could've done this faster, but not by much more than a few months. Niches have to age like wine. For the love of blogging...Build that time into your business model!!!!

I have an ebook that I had hoped to publish next month and ummm, yeah, that's probably not going to happen. I haven't been able to work on it for the last month due to illness and medication that gives me the attention span of a hummingbird on speed.

So that's that. What's new with you?

The Deal with Demand Studios

Okay, folks, here it is in a nutshell, the down and dirty on Demand Studios.

Their editorial process (and frequently the editors themselves) suck.

This will be the single biggest problem with the change in how eHow operates. Hobbyists who flourished at eHow will not be able to cope with the mercurial nature of Demand Studios editorial review.

If Demand Studios had made a concurrent commitment to improve their editorial process (which has been a big complaint among their writers for years) I would be more optimistic about the big changes at eHow.

But they aren't.

Which means when/if I (or you) write an article about the color Blue and get an editor who tells me I must also mention the Moon Landing or else I'll get a rejection, I will be sh*t out of luck. As will you. This is a common editor issue and Demand Studios has consistently done nothing to address it.

For the time being, until the dust settles, I would do nothing for Demand Studios except upfront pay assignments. With upfront pay, they can't suddenly come back and pull the rug out from under your feet. You know you will never have the rights to the work vs. one day you have them, the next day you don't. I would take the income hit and just focus on other websites to diversify my earnings while waiting to see exactly what rises from the rubble.

And FYI the writing was on the wall for this change according to this interview:

"Large authority site content mills are all the rage in early 2010. Will they still be an effective business model in 2013?

It's tough to see how this could be quickly and effectively reined in, at least not by algorithm. I assume that this kind of empty filler content is not very useful for visitors — it certainly isn't for me. So I also assume it must be on Google's radar.

I'd say there's a certain parallel to the paid links war, and Google's first skirmishes in that arena gave then a few black eyes. So I expect any address to the cheap content mills to be taken slowly, and mostly by human editorial review.

The problem here is that every provider of freelance content is NOT providing junk - though some are. As far as I know, there is no current semantic processing that can sort out the two."