Vegan Momma

When it comes to my personal websites, writing on a schedule is something I don’t normally do. I write when I feel like it; however, I do have a few websites that I’m thinking about putting on some type of schedule. Why? They are making me money even though I haven’t touched them since last year. One of them makes me more money monthly (with Google Adsense) than I do here on Vegan Momma. I can only imagine how much more I would make if I posted on it regularly.

I guess that is a fairly good example of passive income. Initially, I had to do something to get the traffic. I had to write quality content; however, after it was there I was able to walk away and focus my energies on other projects. I thought that very impressive. I have a lot of ideas, and I put a lot of them online mainly to see how they do.

Its tight niche and is something that many people are interested in and it’s a topic I’m very knowledgeable about.

Although I definitely won’t be writing on those websites daily, I’ll try to post something at least twice weekly. My goal is to make those websites a one stop resource for information on nutrition and alternative healing. 

I’m at the point now where I can expect to receive a check from Google every month and that is based on one website, when I combine all my websites it brings me a nice stream of cash every monthly. I started monetizing a few of my websites last year I now am making enough to pay my bills and put money in savings and stocks every month, not bad at all.

Regarding making money online what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another person. Knowing this I tried a lot of different methods and settled with what worked best for my websites.

Question: Are you making money online?

[tags]writing, make money online, Google Adsense[/tags]

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I didn’t get a chance to work on my WordPress theme here on Vegan Momma this weekend. Surprise! Surprise, however, I did spend a lot of time with my father and of course my favorite person in the entire world, my daughter Aiyana.

I’ve been slacking considerably when it comes to marketing vegan momma definitely not intentional I just have so much on my plate that I haven’t been giving it the attention as I would like however over the next few months I’ll be doing a few changes here and elsewhere that will hopefully up me to the next level.

The good thing is even when I took a break from writing, almost three months, it didn’t stop my traffic it increased. I have a lot of content on here and I talk about a lot of subjects so there is usually something that will interest someone who surfs onto my website.

• Web Designer
  I found a web designer that I like so you will be seeing a change to my theme within the next few months. As the time gets closer I’ll let you know. Some of you have noticed that I’m using Vegan Momma again it’s part of my long term goals for this website so on my website I’ll be signing my posts as Vegan Momma; however, when I visit everyone nothing will change so yes you’ll still see me signing as Opal @ Vegan Momma.
• Interviews
  In the future, I’ll be interviewing people on my website. I’ve written about it before but really didn’t have the time to devote to it so that got tossed onto my “to do” pile. Having interviews featured on the website will be a way to introduce others to some of the fabulous people I’ve met over the years. I’ve been active on the internet since 1994 so that is a lot of years, and I’m still in contact with some of the people I’ve met in the beginning.
• Posting questions I receive from readers
  I receive a lot of emails from readers every week, definitely in the hundreds. I’m thinking I’ll start including a question and answer day here. Naturally I’ll keep the readers information anonymous. I’ll include my response in the post. The majority of the questions I receive are related to health & nutrition, fitness, and how to make money online. It’s also a great chance for my readers to give their advice on the topic.

Question: Have you made updates or are you going to make updates to your website?

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It seems as though my activities have been kicked up a few notches thanks to the new freelance positions I’ve picked up. The great thing is I have a handle on the jobs, and it really doesn’t take me long to write for the website perhaps two or three hours daily and I’m done. That’s it, of course it’s about a topic I’m fairly knowledgeable about (Apple technology) so that is extremely helpful so I really don’t have to think too much about what I’m writing. Sure I check sources when I have questions I have to make sure my facts are accurate but other than that I just sit down and write.

You see that image to the right? Look at the top story that is one of my articles. I was happy to see that one of the articles I wrote yesterday made the feature on the website. I reviewed a game, Cooking Academy, to be specific. It’s a casual game that has come to the Mac, not content to write an announcement about the game I decided to play it myself. By the way, it’s a delightful time waster and even though I consider myself a hard core gamer FPS all the way baby I had fun playing it.

The majority of my articles, for the blogs, I write for make the top page of Google news, which is great for myself since part of my pay is based on page views. It’s not a bad way to make money. As I mentioned many times before I’m now at the point where my online monetization pays for all my bills, not bad at all.

Anyway back to blog writing initially I found it challenging. I was writing for a news website after all and I struggled with my writing style, not content with what I was doing I adapted a similar writing style as I do at a few of my other websites.

You know what? I didn’t struggle after that. I won’t be doing too much documenting of my freelance journey’s here; however, you will find me writing about it on Addicted to Writing my readership is small only one RSS reader it receives a little under 100 that stop by daily however I’m enjoying writing their immensely.

One interesting topic I wrote about yesterday was the iPhone. IG Fun is developing Bioshock for the iPhone. Although I don’t own the iPhone (yet), it’s powerful and definitely capable of handling the game. It’s going to have 3D graphics, sweet!

Once the iPhone opens up to other providers (AT&T service stinks in the areas I frequent), I’ll purchase an iPhone. Yes, I know I can jailbreak the iPhone I just don’t want to. Any game developers checking out my thread please make this game for the Mac? I would love to play it on my 17″ MacBook Pro.

Great News - I’m being published in a national magazine

In other news I heard back from a national magazine. I submitted a query letter for an article I wanted to write. They liked my idea so I get to write my article. The pay is $1.25 per word. Typical projects for that magazine pay $700 - $900, not bad at all. Naturally it’s about something I’m passionate about, alternative healing. I haven’t written on my alternative healing website in months however I’m going to get back into it this week. I’ve missed writing their.

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Earlier today I heard back from another position that I had I applied for. It wasn’t publicly advertised, never stopped me from applying before even when I was in the corporate setting. I thought why now. I enjoy the website. I read it several times weekly so I thought I would put out some feelers.

Surprisingly the website owner got back to me the same day, and one of the questions she asked was how could I enhance their website. I thought about that for a moment, had the perfect response, wrote it down in my email and on a whim I told her to do a search for my name and a specific keyword. Naturally, the keywords matched what her website was about.

In her response, back to me she told me how impressed she was with the amount of content she saw attributed to my name and that keyword. She also said she did other searches using different keywords, and my name was appearing on the first page. I wasn’t expecting her to do that but I found it interesting.

The thing is I’ve always known keywords were important, I could see that when I would occasionally peruse my website stats seeing what brought people to my website. It really stuck home how powerful certain words can be on the internet. Even so, I really didn’t do too much with it until I received my first blogging job.

With some blogging positions a writer can receive a significant boost in their pay if they use keywords effectively and of course write content that will make people want to read what they have written. It made sense to start focusing not only writing good content but also think about keywords and actually start to use them. Has it paid off? Yes, it didn’t happen overnight since I had to work on building content at the website but in time more people were being brought to my articles because of the words I use.

Now that I think about it the same can definitely be said about monetizing some of my websites it didn’t happen overnight but in time my efforts paid off. Of course, it helps that I write about topics that I truly love so for the websites that I monetize it doesn’t feel like work and the keywords I use don’t seem out of place. It flows naturally as it should.

Regarding the new job, it’s a temporary assignment lasting about three months the pay is excellent and the experience I’ll receive is priceless.

As a child my parents, especially my father, would tell me that at times you cannot sit on the sidelines and wait for things to happen many times if you want to be noticed, you have to get out there and make those opportunities happen for you. It’s definitely a motto I live by.

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Earlier this month I took a position as a freelance blogger/journalist. If you enjoy blogging and have always wanted to work from home it might be something to consider. Naturally, your writing skills and you have to write articles that people are interested in. I though, I can do that so I applied for the position. I received the freelance blogging job, and I now write for a technology website. I mainly write about Apple and the Mac OS, but occasionally I’ll write about other things that are related to technology. Technology is something I enjoy, and read about daily, so it’s nice getting paid for what I know.

The beauty of writing on the WordPress platform is that I can utliize advanced posting so although I post on a daily basis many of the posts have been created in advance. One of the many things I like about WordPress is the advanced posting feature. It allows me to schedule posts well in advance. I use an offline editor for my personal website along with the website I write for so this greatly reduces the amount of time I spend in my Word Press admin.

The amount of people that make their living freelance writing is fairly high. Naturally, how well you do is based on your writing skills and how much effort you are willing to apply to land a job. If I wanted to I could depend on the money I make from freelance writing since it covers all my expenses. Personally know several freelance writers who make their entire income writing for other blogs.

When I see a position, I usually will forward it to someone I think would do well. It’s usually someone that has expressed an interest in working from home. At times, I’m surprised when the person doesn’t act on the job. However, I have had a few buddies that have. One of my buddies left his job six months ago and is now working for himself full-time. Guess what, many of us have that dream but how many of us are willing to do what it takes to turn that dream into a reality? I know I was, and I did it. If I have any say in what will happen I won’t be going back to working for someone else.

What’s his position? He’s a technical writer. He also writes for a variety of clients. He also works as a consultant. Thinking outside the box landed him the positions he has. He now can work from anywhere thanks to modern technology. The last job he acquired I sent his way. He received the position because he was qualified. It was blogging job. The website needed a blogger who had a strong background in Linux. He definitely fits that criteria. Many blogging jobs I’ve encountered the writers are paid a flat rate, after a set amount of page views they are paid either a percentage of the proceeds, or they are paid by page view. From that position alone he’s making over 3k monthly. That’s not a bad way to make a living, is it?

Although I haven’t been writing with the website for long, I’ve passed the flat rate, and now I’ve moved onto being paid per page view. The website owner has given all the writer’s access to the stats reports so we are able to see which stories are doing well. The majority of my stories have ranked #1 when you search Business in Google news. Having that top position usually guarantees you will get a lot of traffic. Writing at a highly trafficked website has given me ideas of how I want my network of blogs to grow. If you think, I had been planning to write for a large blog network you are correct. I figured if I wrote for a highly trafficked website I would get ideas of what I need to do to make my own blogging network thrive. What I’ve learned has enhanced my blogs and the amount I’m making is increasing.

If you search “blog writers” on any of the search engines you usually will find numerous websites that are looking for blog writers also frequenting websites like freelance writing gigs can score you some valuable jobs but you do have to apply, and write good content. I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing skills so I write often, interact with other writers, and have purchased books that have helped me enhance my writing.

In other news I’m still having email issues.

Question: Getting paid to blog, would you do it?

[tags]freelance blogger, blogging for pay[/tags]

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