Melinda's Wahm Blog

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?

This post lays out exactly what I’ll be working on in 2010. All of these goals are writing-related and some goals are specific, some aren’t. What I like to do is just stay focused and keep working. I’m a horrible procrastinator and if I’m getting some work done each and every business day, I know I’m working towards my monthly income goal.

Passive Income

I’m a big believer in passive income. I think it’s a great way to get your work out there and then continue to reap the rewards for as long as the work remains online. I was turned on to passive income in June of 2008 when I purchased Maria O’brien’s (WriterGig) ebook about Ehow. Since then, I have added 192 articles onto the Ehow site and continue making right around $190 per month, every month. If I ever decide to contribute more articles there, I know I can increase the amount of money I’m making. I’ve had dozens of articles deleted there in recent months so I have been hesitant to add anything more at this time.

Article Revenue Sharing Sites

• Ehow – As of 12.29.09 I have 192 articles published. Earnings are anywhere from $160 to $230 depending on the month. I’m not currently active there (that is, submitting new articles), but I do earn okay money there and may start contributing more. I just hate logging in to see articles have been deleted and not knowing why, or even which articles, without manually looking through all 192 of them.
• InfoBarrel – As of 12.29.09 I currently have 13 articles published here. I submitted my first couple of articles a few months ago and started earning pennies and even since I’ve added 10 additional articles, I haven’t seen any earnings from IB in weeks. I’m hoping as time goes on and I’m able to build backlinks to these articles that they’ll start generating some more pennies.
• HubPages – As of 12.29.09 I currently have 30 hubs published over at Hubpages. I’ve only been a member for about 4 months but have contributed 28 of 30 hubs within the last 8 weeks. I’m making a few dollars a month with Adsense. I’m sure I would make more if I wrote using keywords with a higher value, but I just don’t. I find it easier to write about what I know and enjoy writing about and I basically write Hubs to create backlinks to other articles and sites of mine anyway. Hubs are kind of a creative outlet for me and I have fun creating them once in awhile.

Paid Bookmarking Sites

• Xomba – I create Xomblurbs for a number of different articles I have online. I’ve just recently begun to use this website but I am earning money with them. I’ve already written about Xomba on my blog but if you aren’t sure what it entails, read this post I wrote all about Xomba.
• SheToldMe – This is a relatively new website that is very similar to Xomba, but instead of Xomblurbs or Xombytes, you write “Scoops”. I wrote a blog post about SheToldMe as well.
• RedGage – I haven’t dabbled with RG much, but it’s an easy way to create a backlink. I’ll be looking into it further before I decide whether or not to utilize it.
• Snipsly – This is a very new website where you can earn 80% of the ad revenue your posts generate. Read more about Snipsly on my blog. I haven’t generated any money from this site yet, but have only submitted a handful of posts and I incorrectly added my Adsense code so impressions weren’t being tracked for my first couple of weeks. Derrrrr…but the admin kindly emailed me to let me know that they had corrected it for me so kudos to them for that.

Blogs

I don’t really believe that blogs are a solid source of passive income so I have created a separate section for these. Sure the content will remain online for as long as you choose, but if you slack off and stop writing for a site, your SERP rankings can drop dramatically causing traffic to decrease, right along with earnings.

I have this blog and a fitness blog that I currently write pretty consistently on. I plan on increasing the frequency of posts on this blog, maintaining my fitness blog posting frequency and adding 3 to 5 new niche blogs into the mix. In order to do this, I will be hiring blog writers to help me because I know I won’t succeed going at it alone.

What I’d Like to Be Making Per Month by 12.31.10

$1,000.00 in passive income

I’m currently making around $300 per month in passive income. This means I need to increase my earnings by $700 per month by 12.31.10. Another $700 per month breaks down to another $23.33 per day. I plan on doing this through 5 to 7 blogs (3 to 5 new ones), article rev-share sites and paid social bookmarking.