Perhaps it’s a bad reference to some of the language faux pas made by America’s 43rd president, but the theory is still applicable. The same holds true of the term “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”, if something happens to that basket you’re out of eggs and out of luck since there isn’t a way to get more, at least until tomorrow. The same holds true of revenue streams. If you only have one source of revenue, you’re up a creek at those times when income is slow or worse, simply dries up.
I talked about using differing streams of advertising revenue in an earlier post, but advertising is only one of the methods a blogger can use to generate income. Remember this; The only difference between a blogger and a professional writer or journalist is perception. If you blog every day or even every few days, you are a writer. The same skills you use in your blogging can be leveraged outside of your blog to help you earn a recurring income.
So just where can I use these skills, oh opinionated one?
There are several different services on the Internet today that will pay you to write content for them. The three that seem to have the most potential at the time of this writing are Associated Content, Helium and Triond. All three services offer to pay you to write and I know of several people who are making a pretty little income doing just that, and I’ve joined in on the fun myself, though not for long enough to see any results yet.
The basis for payment from these services is simple. You are paid a percentage of advertising revenue based on the number of times your article is viewed. Broken down to its most simplistic, this simply means that you have what, in essence, is an unlimited earnings potential. If you write the hot article for the month and pull a million views, you can expect a pretty hefty payment to be coming your way down the road.
Of course the chances that anyone will be able to pull of the perfect traffic generating article on a regular basis is pretty slim. The best strategy in a pay-per-impression marketplace is to write quite a few articles and then keep them coming on a fairly regular basis, which will bring people back to read more, which in turn generates more money for you
Sounds a lot like blogging doesn’t it? I told you that you already had the skills.
So why don’t I just do all this on my own blog?
That’s a good question. I’m just glad that I have a good answer for you.
Marketplaces like AC, Helium and Triond offer you opportunities that your own sites simply can’t offer. Unless you happen to be an A-List blogger who is receiving tens of thousands of visits a day, these content networks allow you to get your writing in front of a much larger potential audience than your pieces would have had before. To top it off, they have already developed advertising partnerships, brand recognition and monetization streams that it might take a single blogger years, if he or she ever managed to do it, to achieve. They are doing all the really hard work for you. All you have to do is what you’ve been doing every day anyway. You write.
Another advantage to these services is that once you’ve written a piece, you can simply forget about it and let it continue to make you a few pennies here and there for as long as it is displayed by the service. This means that each and ever piece you submit has the potential to catch a large number of page views over time, and the more you have published, the more you’ll make in the long run.
Also, each piece has the potential to find a large readership at some later date, especially if you are writing content that may apply to your subject matter in the future. For example, a piece written about Obama three years ago probably wouldn’t have gained much attention, but as soon as he decided to run for President that piece would be extremely relevant and might just become a great money maker for a month or so. You just never know.
For me the best of all advantages to this type of service is that I don’t always have to use it to serve my niche. Each of my blogs is subject specific, which generally means that I write specifically for the target audience of that type of blog. With content publishers I can cover any topic I feel like tackling today, regardless of which one of my interests it covers. I can start on Monday with ways to increase your food budget, move on to a rant about something I saw on the news on Tuesday and on Wednesday I can write about my opinion on the newest line of children’s toys. The subject matter is flexible, and there is always someone who wants to read it. I just don’t have that amount of freedom on any of the blogs I currently run.
Which one of the three should I use?
That’s a decision that you will have to make on your own. I personally signed up with all three services and will eventually publish articles with all of them. Currently I’m focusing on Associated Content just to get a feel fro the site and how business is done there. Once I’ve gotten my feet wet, I’ll check the others to see what’s getting read, then I’ll dive in with something that will (hopefully) catch their readers attention.
Each service offers different terms, options and payment rates. Each also differs in their specific readerships, so it’s a good idea to see what is performing well in any one venue, then jump in on that topic or a subtopic once you have the lay of the land. Of course, I just have some pretty oddball things I want to write every once in a while, so I never hesitate to publish those as well.
A few articles that may help you decide:
(Note: these articles tend to be written by members of one or all services and may be biased towards one or the other. Take them with a grain of salt.)
And that’s all the time I have for today kiddies. It seems there is an orkish invasion to be halted, and only I can do it. You can’t let responsibility like that go, so I must be off.
Until next time. Keep workin’ it. Your effort will be rewarded in the end.
Jerry Uncategorized
