1st Quarter Earnings and Future Directions

I have grossed many many multiples of 5 figures so far this year. If I did the math it would probably be 5,000% more than I made last year.

Mostly from leveraging stuff I wrote years ago into income.

And it's not reproducible or sustainable long term, so it's more a windfall.

A very nice one. Which is nice since my adsense tanked with Google's latest update (so much for niche content doing better, I guess mine qualified as spam, which it isn't, not even close, but okay).

Which leads me to write this: I love passive revenue. I love building passive income. I made $500 from eHow in March alone (for a gross of more than $1500 for 3 months).

What I don't love is how Google can jack you up any time they feel like it. Without even really telling you. Or providing a bonafide opportunity for appeal.

The latest algo update destroyed the current passive revenue paradigm. Utterly demolished it and the industry has been very slow to retool and rebuild. So slow, I've given up on waiting for them.

I also dislike how you are vulnerable to poor management or drastic management changes. For instance, Suite101 is in the toilet and they may get flushed. eHow closed their program rather abruptly last year. You just have so little control.

Passive revenue is just not income you can rely on. It's rather high maintenance too, what with Google changing the game every 3 to 6 months and then the platforms themselves changing almost daily it seems.

The people selling niche blogging and passive revenue as easy peasy money, go live your life on the beach? Are lying. You gotta pay attention in this business. Be ready to hit the curve balls out of the park over and over again. The paradigm is not stable. It's ever shifting and sometimes you get swallowed up. More than once.

So I am thinking to go in a new direction.

Actually make that, directions, plural.

One, ebooks are going to be the next hot thing. I'm calling it right now. Niche blogs are so two thousand and late. So I am working on several projects in that vein. This also fulfills my desire to get out of the web content article format and delve into my areas of expertise the way I want, how I want.

I have my first ebook up as a test run and I'm learning all sorts of things I didn't know and always always always finding yet one more typo I missed. I think they breed when I'm not looking! I consider the first project a throwaway, my learning curve ebook. So I don't expect much.

Another ebook is with a professional editor getting a nice polish.

Having worked in revenue share for the last 3 years, I know the trend is always toward better quality. I aim to produce high quality ebooks from the start. Some form of sweeps will occur once there's too much junk content clogging the pipeline. There are so many people online trying to make a buck, there will be a filter of some kind at some point.

Two, a longer term goal is creating an actual product that will create a new paradigm for fashion. That sounds pretentious, but that's the best way I can describe it. It's a whole other learning curve. Once I get the ebooks moving, this will get my attention next.

Wish me luck.

Year In Review

Hi. I am still niching around the internet, you? Just not blogging here much. I continue to have a lot of health and personal issues that are very time consuming.

However, in terms of year on year growth, the niche blogging thing performed well.

Here's how the earnings stack up.

eHow: I made over three thousand dollars with a percentage increase over last year of 60%. On 100 articles. Not bad, eh? We'll see how long it lasts.

Amazon: around $600. Not great, but not bad considering this is about 150% more than last year.

Adsense: (includes, blogs, Infobarrel, and Hubpages): Roughly $300, an increase of 200% over last year. Month on month earnings seem to be growing. I was making like $20 a month, now it seems to be $30+ so progress.

Main source of income is Infobarrel and Hubpages, not my niche blogs. Interesting!

Suite101: Roughly $200. I don't even have 30 articles up but I will say, even though I haven't achieved significant volume, Suite is much slower than eHow was with earnings growth. Given that I have proven SEO results and a good track record on a site like eHow, I tend to lean toward the conclusion that Suite's SEO to promote the site is not so hot.

They are a good organization but they seem to be flailing a bit. Also, I have a hard time publishing any article with product tie-ins on Suite, I hate not being able to use Amazon affiliate links. So this has meant, I've not been writing as much for Suite. I still really want to get to 50 articles to see what happens to earnings, but between the personal BS and my interest in pushing my Amazon affiliate earnings, it's not easy.

I haven't seen any major innovations in writing online. Although I do see people out earning me for the first time. Just haven't seen any mention of a new and improved strategy to explain their earnings.

Right now my thought is to focus on pushing products.