Melinda's Wahm Blog

During the past few days I have learned that I will absolutely have to back out of this challenge. I am completely bummed. I really wanted that mousepad! During the first few weeks of the challenge, I was able to post 19 new Ezine Articles which is more than double of what I had before and I also earned Expert author status on the site. So I do have that much to be proud of. Maybe at a later date I can try a challenge like this again, but for now I just can’t do it.

Here’s the deal: Read more…

I’m now just over two weeks into this challenge and I have written 17 articles. Being that it’s the 19th today, I need to do at LEAST 2 articles to get back on schedule. I didn’t write any articles this weekend, I was too busy watching the NFL playoffs. (GO VIKES!)  I think I’m just going to crank out the two articles this morning and then I’ll do some more later if I can. Read more…

A few days ago, I decided to tackle the Ezine Articles Challenge where you have to write 100 articles in 100 days (HAHD) to be eligible for their prize package. It’s been just a little over 1 week since I started and I’ve submitted 7 articles so far and all have been approved. After my 1st submission, I was granted Expert Author status over at Ezine so my articles have been approved very quickly. I was thinking I had to submit 10+ more articles before I achieved that, but apparently not. Read more…

Just about a month ago now, I started a Xomba backlinking spree and I’m here to post an update about what’s been going on over there so far. All in all, I’m pleasantly surprised at my earnings because putting up a Xomblurb is completely easy and takes about 1 or 2 minutes to write at least 50 words of unique content. Sometimes I just copied intros from the articles I was bookmarking, but I would say about 85% of the time I created new content just for the Xomblurb. Read more…

The New Year is here and I have earnings to report for the last month of 2009. I added one new income source this past month (December 2009) and that is FireHow. It’s a site very similar to Ehow. I contributed just 2 articles about mid-month and they generated a few pennies. Not bad for getting only 11 views between the two so far though. The articles haven’t been promoted at all yet either. I may start adding content to FH occasionally. If I do, it won’t be very much to begin with because I have an EzineArticles challenge ahead of me for this month. Read more…

I received an email from EzineArticles last night about their 3rd HAHD Marathon Challenge. HAHD is an acronym that means Hundred Articles Hundred Days. Basically you have 100 days to submit 100 articles and then you are eligible to receive their prize pack which includes the following: Read more…

It’s that time again. It’s almost a new year and before the new year starts, I like to think about what I’d like to accomplish in the next 12 months. I believe that if you don’t set goals, then what are you working for? Or towards? It’s very easy to get off track and lose motivation if you don’t make small goals for yourself. How else can you measure how far you’ve come? Read more…

On my Xomba backlinking spree, I came across a site called Snipsly. It’s basically a site that you can use to create backlinks to anything on the web that you’d like. For example…articles you’ve written, niche blogs and you can also insert affiliate links and link to a product that you promote.

Snipsly gives writers a generous 80% of the Adsense revenue. In order to make money with Snipsly you’ll need to have a Google Adsense account. Your earnings will show up directly into your Adsense account. If you want to know if you’re earning through Snipsly, don’t forget to setup a URL channel to track the impressions and clicks of your ads on their site.

To do this: Read more…

Xomba is a website where its users can write short articles of at least 50 words, called Xomblurbs or longer articles of at least 150 words, called Xombytes. Adsense ads are placed alongside your articles and this is what enables you to earn some extra money. More specifically, users earn 50% of the Adsense revenue. Basically, your own Adsense ads will be shown 50% of the time and Xomba’s Adsense ads will be shown 50% of the time. You must have an Adsense account linked to your Xomba account to start earning.

A few other benefits to note: Read more…

It’s already December, I can’t believe it! I did not meet the goals that I had made for November so my earnings haven’t changed much since last month. Preparations for Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping, not to mention my children, have all had an effect on the amount of work I didn’t complete this past month. Ehow earnings are WAY down from last month. Doesn’t help that they deleted another 15 articles of mine. GRRRRRRRRR.

Here’s the breakdown: Read more…

Ehow is starting to prove to be exhausting for me. In recent months I have learned that I have no idea what they’re looking for. Sure, I’ve had crappy articles deleted, most are from when I first started, I’ve had article requests deleted (which are checked before they’re published) and I’ve had really good articles deleted too! Of the 10 new Ehow articles I submitted last week, all of them are still live on the site. I’m hoping their new pre-approval system means that if the articles go live, they won’t be deleted, but who knows Read more…

It’s been a little over a week since I started my very own personal Ehow challenge. I love Ehow because of the fact that you can make money online from home (or anywhere) for writing “how to” articles and as long as your articles remain on the site, you will continue to earn money in the form of passive income. I want to increase my monthly earnings over there so in the beginning of November, I set a goal to complete at least 30 new Ehow articles in 30 days. I’m currently 1/3 of the way there as I have published 10 new articles this week. None of them are currently showing any earnings, but combined they have produced a total of 57 views. Three of those articles were published yesterday and have no views at all.

I have been using Micro Niche Finder to find some great Read more…

A new month means a new experiment! For this month I’ve set a goal to complete 30 Ehows in 30 days. I love the format at Ehow. It’s so easy to write and I can get most articles done in less than 30 minutes. I generally stick to topics I already know a lot about to make the writing process faster.

Way Back at the Beginning of the Year…

I set a personal goal to add an additional 222 Ehow articles by the end of 2009. So far I have Read more…

Just over a month ago, I set a goal for myself to begin using Hubpages as another revenue stream. The goal I set was to complete 30 hubs in 30 days and I did fall a bit short of my goal. I finished off the 30 days having completed a total of 24 hubs. I wouldn’t call this experiment a complete failure though, the good part is that I did finish 24 hubs with at least 450+ words of high quality content that link back to Read more…

Okay, this last week I wasn’t able to add any new hubs. In fact, I haven’t done much work at all for myself during the past 7 days. I have no excuses, I think I just needed a break. This means I still have 11 more days to get 9 hubs done. I can do it. My mind feels refreshed and ready to go. It’s also nice to see the activity in my Hubpages account after not doing anything in it for 7 days so I’ll get into all that during this week 3 overview. If you missed it, here are my week 1 and week 2 overviews.

So far, 22 of my 23 published hubs have been Read more…

Now it has been 2 full weeks since I started the 30 hubs in 30 days Hubpages experiment. In case you missed it, here is my week 1 overview of this same experiment. I now have a total of 23 hubs published. Remember I had 2 I had written about 1 or 2 weeks prior to me starting this challenge, so to be fair, I actually have 21 that have been completed since I began the 30 day experiment. This means I only need to publish 9 more in the next 2 to 3 weeks!

This week I have 13 hubs out of 23 that have been Read more…

Okay. I am all about Ehow and I have honestly agreed with the articles of mine that have been deleted up until this point. The ones that have been deleted were deserving. They were articles I had put up when I had just begun my career of web writing. But this time…I have a problem with an article they deleted. Problem being: It was a requested article that THEY had to APPROVE before it went live. It was very well written, contained actionable steps that you could perform to complete the said task.

What really makes me mad is that Read more…

It has been 1 full week since I began publishing hubs to Hubpages. I am hopeful yet discouraged. I have published a total of 15 hubs and out of those 15 hubs, I’m only seeing 1 of them in the SERPs right now. I should note that 2 of the 15 hubs were actually published prior to me starting the challenge and it’s one of those 2 that is indexed. I haven’t fully decided if those will be a part of my 30 in 30, but I figure they might as well be. The other 14 have yet to be indexed by Google.

This means that during this next week I will plan on building at least 1 backlink to each hub in hopes that Google will crawl and hopefully index my site. I thought Hubpages articles were indexed fairly quickly but I’ve been reading that some aren’t being indexed for a week or more, so I will be patient. My primary focus is to publish hubs, but since I’m further ahead than I thought I would be, I should have some time to spend on building backlinks this week.

Earnings Read more…

Okay, so here’s what has happened during the past few months. Ehow had their first article sweep when I got to about 220 articles, they then wiped out 22 of my articles. Then I got back up to about 212 articles and they took 18 more. More recently I got up to 202 articles again and then they removed 4 so now I’m back down to 198.

First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with most of the articles they took down. Truth is, they are all from when I first started writing for Ehow, before I bought Maria’s Ehow Ebook and before I knew much at all about SEO (search engine optimization). The articles I had that got deleted were Read more…

Way back at the beginning of the year, I laid out the goals I have for 2009. After looking through that post, I’m proud to say that I have achieved all but one of them so far. I planned my wedding and got through it without being a nutcase. I lost all of my pregnancy weight and am now back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. I have continued getting niche blogs online.

My last goal was to add 222 new articles to the Ehow site which I have not done. I have added only 64. That means I need to add 158 more before the end of the year. Hmmm…. Read more…

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve been really busy writing for DS to get some up front money, as well as building up my article bases on Suite and Ehow, plus I’ve been building niche sites. I’ve learned quite a bit in the past few months and I’ve decided to try some other things to increase my income streams.

I’ve decided to take the plunge and create at least 30 hubs in 30 days. I have been himmin and hawwin about trying Hubpages and I’ve finally decided to give it a go. I have seen mixed results from reading other people who have done similar experiences but I’m willing to give it a try to see what I can accomplish. Read more…

See that?? I finally got my first payment from “the big G” AKA the Google Adsense program!

When I first joined the program, I honestly never thought I would ever reach payout. After learning about niche blogging from Amy’s Niche Blogger program, I started seeing pennies and then dollars coming into my account each day. (I chose to receive EFT payments and not paper checks, so the picture is a screenshot of my bank account.) Read more…

I’m so excited to have another writing site (that is a real money making opportunity) to be a member of! I have to admit, it took me a few tries to get on with Suite101. It was an adjustment for me to not write in the 1st or 2nd person and to write solely in 3rd person, but I’ve gotten the hang of it pretty quickly and it’s easier to write articles for Suite now. Read more…

If you are currently a contributor over at Ehow, you know that they have been seriously cleaning up the site lately. I was waiting for my turn and it finally happened yesterday. I logged in to find that I was 22 articles short of what I had the day earlier. So I went from 212 back down to 190. Boo!

It’s a little frustrating but I can understand why they’re doing it. They state on their site that they want actionable steps and many “How-to’s” on the site are in list form and that isn’t how they want their content written. Read more…

If you are looking to promote articles you have written that are posted online, one way to do so is to use Xomba. It’s a free website that you sign up at and you can then post articles (aka Xombytes) or links (aka Xomblurbs) to articles you already have online to promote them and all the while, Xomba will give you 50% of the Adsense revenue that each Xombyte or Xomblurb makes.

This is far from a money-making method that you can live off of, but it’s a nice chunk of change that you can make just for promoting articles that you already have out there on the net. Plus they’ll earn backlinks which can help your article improve it’s rankings in the popular search engines!

Here is what Xomba states about earnings: Read more…