No one likes to waste their time, energy, and intellectual steam…But sometimes a person can’t help themselves. In these tough economic times, (I know, I just lost my day-job yesterday. Anyone hiring?) people want their efforts to pay off. I put a lot of time and effort into finding and learning this job I just lost after only three months. The time I put into the job took time away from what I am trying to accomplish here at Factoidz.com with my online writing. It even cost me a $400.00 per month, steady writing gig…There are only so many hours in a day. When you invest time and effort, you don’t always know until much later, if you will ever earn a return on that investment.
A new member Tara, (welcome to Factoiz.com Tara!) asked this question about AdSense revenue paid out on factoidz:
What is the most revenue someone has made on Factoidz?
Click the above link to tell the rest of the community your stats, that is, your experience with earnings here on Factoidz.com. How many factoids written? How many views total? How much revenue earned? Remember that this community is a co-op. We are not in a competition with each other at all. We need to openly share information, and help promote each other’s work as well as our own. Because of the way people arrive at this site, or more specifically, at an article, it isn’t like a bookstore. It isn’t like they are holding a kdelik article in one hand, and a musemomentum article in the other, and they decide to buy Erin’s instead of Kevin’s.
We are in a competition (To see how the race is going: Use and understand the Alexa.com site.) with other article submission sites. This could be compared to Borders Books vs. Barnes and Nobel. In Rhode Island, Borders is usually in a mall. Barnes and Nobel is usually a huge stand alone building where they serve coffee and sometimes even have a girl playing the violin. They have stuffy, comfortable chairs, and patrons are encouraged to hang around and read. Both environments have their own edge and their own drawbacks. Factoidz.com is more like Barnes and Nobel. People spend a lot more time on the site (12 minutes average) than on other sites like AC (5 minutes average) they seem to visit twice as many pages while they are here. Alexa.com reveals this kind of info.
Is there a value in that fact? Yes and no. Take an article like Jerry Walsh writes for instance. He writes “how to” stuff that is so complete and so well written and informative that it leaves the searcher for that information lacking nothing. You don’t get quality like that at EzineArticles. Here’s the rub: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? EzineArticle writers are trained to do the opposite. They write “teaser” articles: Many, many a redundant bag of smoke -with the right keywords and keyword density to draw the traffic, but not enough info to completely satisfy. When the traffic arrives they don’t get a comfortable chair and a cappuccino. They just get shown the way to an Adsense ad, or an Author’s resource box, which is a link to their site where they sell something.
Am I saying that we should follow suit? Not at all! Writers here in the Factoidz.com community seem to be in agreement that we should keep the quality up. Let’s not write teaser articles. Let’s not write AWSEO (articles written for SEO). Let’s not be a humungous MFA (made for AdSense) site like some of these other article submission sites. There may not be upfront advantages, but the pay-off over the long hall will be sweeter, especially if Web 2.0 becomes the improvement to Web browsing that is being promised. If you are a serious professional writer like Jerry or aspiring to be one, like me…Don’t sell out quality for some extra clickthroughs. Stay the course. It seems that we are seeing an eCPM of around $3.50 anyway –not bad. We could do things at the expense of quality to raise that number. Factoidz.com Admin is doing things with layout and such, which does NOT affect writing quality, but does in fact, raise that number.The number we want to try to increase is the “visit” number.
C’mon fantasize with me a little bit. Really, this helps me get through the day!
Factoidz Admin’s tweaking gets that number up to $4.00 or more per 1000 views. Factoiders figure out how to write quality articles, preceded by good topic research, and followed up with thorough promotion and search engine marketing, some of which get 500 views per day / 20,000 views per week. It has happened with more than a few factoids already. Some of us have seen $40.00 in 14 weeks, while we established 100 Factoidz with a total of 20,000 page views -starting from nothing. In this fantasy we are going to visualize exponential growth in our article views, their revenue, and the popularity of the Factoidz.com site. Why? Because that is how growth happens Online –it’s viral! Plus, this is my fantasy -the kind where a viral situation is a good thing.
April, 2010: Factoidz.com is ranked at 1000 on Alexa.com. They are seeing millions of hits per day. They have 1000 incoming links. 30% of posted articles are coming up above the fold (front page) of a Google search. Each of the top 10 Factoiders has established a base of 700 articles, with a total of two million page views that were connected to their AdSense account at $4.00 per thousand. Can you say $8,000.00? I thought-cha could.
I’m thinking as I un-day-dream my way out of this fantasy that $8000.00 for 700 articles that realistically took over 1000 hours to produce and promote -is about minimum wage. But then I remind myself that over the course of the year, using Factoidz.com to promote my SEO / SEM work as well as my copy writing and speech and presentation services brought me another $12,000.00 (400-500 hours) worth of work…Back to the Fantasy:
June, 2010: On the way to a night out for dinner, that AdSense is paying for, I pull my new, used Jeep Wrangler that AdSense also paid for, into the parking space. My wife asks, kinda sarcastically because she knows better than anyone how much time I spend in front of the computer, “How is the Internet writing working out for you?”
She is angling to shame me into paying for dinner. I already decided to do that, so her ball busting for motivational purposes is futile.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you?” I ask, sounding genuinely concerned that I may have been remiss in updating her.
“No. I don’t even know how much you have in your PayPal account right now” she answers -still trying to prove to me, after over 17 years of marriage, that she is in no way shape or form controlling when it comes to what I do with my time, how I earn money, or what I do with the money I earn. In stark contrast to the sincerity I just faked, a fully sarcastic smirk accompanies a snide twinkle in my eye as I respond.
“How much did you make from the 1500 hours of TV you watched this year?”
The fight ensues. We will both take a few more shots at each other through dinner, and probably on the ride home too. We are both die hard UFC fans. To us, dinner and a fight is about equal in entertainment value as dinner and a movie, or dinner and positive, uplifting conversation is to other couples. Don’t be concerned. We’ll get home, I’ll check my e-mail and my Adsense account. Then, I’ll read, comment on, and vote up some factoids. She’ll watch a couple Seinfeld reruns and some AFV. We’ll go to bed and spoon and snuggle alternating throughout the night: Nut to butt then bush to tush. It’s all good. The next morning as we drink our coffee, Wifey in front of the tube, me in front of the computer, I’ll open an e-mail in my inbox: “Please contact us at your earliest convenience to discuss a book deal we would like to offer you”…Yes!
Don’t forget the entertainment value behind blogging on Factoidz. For those of us who like to read and write as opposed to watching the boob tube…This is an excellent paying hobby, even if it forever falls short (I predict that it won’t) of being a good paying job. And there is much opportunity to get discovered. Let’s keep at it! Or, go watch TV.
