Writing My Way To A Dell UltraSharp 2407FPW 24 inch LCD Widescreen Monitor – Part 4
Associate Content approved my recent articles today and made me offers. That is the fastest turnaround I have had with them so far. Up until now it has always taken me at least a week to get offers for anything (but I was also submitting more articles. They might deal with them in batches and the ‘bulk’ submissions are slowing them down???)
The speed of approval was the good news. The actual offers weren’t that great. My article titled “Speed Write Your NonFiction Book Using Dictation” got a whopping $5.10 offer and my article titled “How to Fly Without Getting Sick” got a truly underwhelming $4.61 – and that one was an exclusive submission. Since it ended up taking me about and hour to write and submit each, I’m way off my target goal of earning $20/hour.
On the slightly brighter side, I’m $9.71 closer to my new monitor. That is better than last week, but I’ve got a lot more writing to do!
Since I didn’t see much benefit to submitting an exclusive article, I think I will submit most as non-exclusives so I can use them again and squeeze some more money out of them (but that money will not be counted toward the new monitor purchase.) The writing article will be going up on this blog immediately – I might get some Adsense income from that one.
So here is the running tally:
2 Articles Sold – $9.71
Balance Required to Buy Monitor – $590.29 – $790.29
Remaining Number of Articles to be Written at Current Average Price ($4.85/each) – 122-163
Looks like I have a ways to go. I had better find some more profitable subjects if I want to get this done before my 14 week old daughter graduates college.
Back to the article mines,
Hi Andrew,
You’ve already submitted your article on writing faster to Associated Content, and now you’re planning on posting it here? Be careful … duplicate content. You’ve now got it in two places.
Ana,
I may go back in and rework the text a little to offset any duplicate content penalties I might get with the search engines.
My main concern is that I have several related articles and want visitors to those pages to be able to discover this on my site rather than directing them elsewhere or relying on them finding it on their own.
I’ve done this republishing with a few other older articles and not experienced a significant change in traffic to the site.
It is a good issue to point out to others reading this series. I should have mentioned it.
Thanks,
The Go-To Guy!
Hello, Andrew:
I am just reading this article, so I suppose you have your monitor by now.
As I read I realized that what you are doing with writing I am doing with illustration.
I am creating a series of small and simple but unique illustrations to license to card companies. I first thought of Adinkra symbols from North Africa. As I was working on that series another idea came to me: Egyptian symbols. Then Native American symbols and several other themes.
I am creating 12 of each to market to the companies. Once these small ones are done I will have time to work on my larger and more complicated illustrations that will hopefully bring in a larger commission.
I never wanted to sell my work outright because once it’s gone, it’s gone. Besides, I get a kick out of seeing my work in print. 😀 I just put up an online shop: not to make a fortune, just to “get my feet wet”. I submitted one design to a company a long time ago and am still getting checks. That’s so nice.
Selling work this way is always a gamble. I could make $5, $500 or $5,000 from one piece, depending on how many the company sells.
Regarding that $20 an hour idea: I was actually thinking the same thing. I am worth more than that in the corporate world but I work for small non profits so I will never get paid that.
Virginia
Virginia,
I’ve been in the midst of moving for the past 8 months (buying and selling real estate in Manhattan is way more complicated than you might expect.) We’ve also got a baby who is just turning 1 year old this month.
As you might have already guessed, some of my projects fell into neglect – and this is one of them. But, now I actually need a flat screen and I’ve come across a much more effective and fast way to generate income with my writing. So, I’ll be making entries in this series when I clear some time to restart this project.
Best of luck with your art. I checked out your site and you’ve got some good work and used an approach (Cafepress stores) that I have often recommended to artists I know as a way to get some income while they build an audience for their work.
Keep up the great work,
The Go-To Guy!