My Info Barrel Experiment

Things are Moving Along

2011-02-19T22:04:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post a quick update to say that I went over $100 in Google Adsense. This means I'll be getting my very first check from Google next month. The next $100 should come much quicker. After a slow beginning to the month, things have been picking up. I made an amazing amount today in Adsense - $6.39 and the day isn't done yet. I never wrote a January report - sorry about that! I made $18.79 in Adsense, $0.88 in Amazon, and $1.09 in Chitika. It was worse than December but I expected that. The first two weeks of February were a bust as all of my articles were de-indexed with Info Barrel 2.0. The articles are back in the rankings and the last week has been amazing for earnings. I'm hoping it continues and it isn't a fluke.

I've been trying to keep up on my school work which doesn't give me much time to work on my Info Barrel experiment. However, I made a major investment in the experiment a couple days ago. I purchased Market Samurai to help me keep track of where my articles are ranking for their keywords. For each article, I choose 3 keywords I'd like to target and I input the information into Market Samurai. That's as far as I've gotten so far. I am also thinking about purchasing Article Marketing Robot to help with backlinks. It takes me forever to write an article to post on article directories. AMR makes it easy to spin that 1 article into 100 different articles and submit them to thousands of article directories at one time. This would save me a lot of time which I could then use to write more articles. I used the AMR free trial to submit backlinks to one of my articles and it has seen a record amount of traffic. I really wish I wasn't broke or I would purchase AMR immediately. Maybe I'll use my first Google check to purchase it.

I probably won't have time to work on Info Barrel for at least the next couple of months. I am dedicating my summer to building my Info Barrel article library and adding backlinks. I will have nothing going on this summer to distract me. I still need to make enough upfront money to pay my bills but that shouldn't take very long each day. Speaking of summer, I think I have cabin fever and to make it worse, we are under a Blizzard Warning. Stay safe everyone and hopefully my next post will come before the snow melts.

December Review and 2011 Goals

2011-01-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't mean to wait this long to post but it was a busy month. I only wrote a few articles in December. I had wanted to continue my November pace and write 1-2 articles a day. You can read all about December here: http://www.infobarrel.com/Allys_December_2010_Infobarrel_Earnings_Report

2011 Goals

In 2011, I want to reach my goal of $2,000 per month. I have other monetary goals as well, such as saving for a cruise, paying down debt and going on a road trip this summer. It is only the 5th day of the month and I have already changed my goals a bit. My original goal was to write 5 articles a day, 5 days a week. I have now realized that it isn't going to happen. I have too much going on and I have to write upfront pay articles so I can pay my bills. My new goal is to make $100 in upfront pay at Demand Media during the day, Mon-Fri. Nights will be spent doing homework. On weekends I will do my best to write as many articles as possible. Hopefully, it will be enough to reach $2,000/month by the end of the year. I should have more time for writing InfoBarrel articles once I get my credit card and car loans paid off in full. I also want to do a lot of backlinking in the summer. I would love to reach my goal by November when I go on a cruise. Then I can sit back and relax on the deck while still making money. I'll try to update this blog regularly.

I hope all of you have a happy new year and good luck on whatever your goals may be,

Ally

November Earnings and December Goals

2010-12-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

You can read my November earnings and December goals here:
http://www.infobarrel.com/Allys_November_2010_InfoBarrel_Earnings_Report

My article on Cat Christmas Cards did get approved in time so yay!! I also finished 3rd in the contest so I'll be getting a $25 gift card to Amazon. I'm off to bed - gotta get up early tomorrow to start working on December articles;)

End of the Month Rant

2010-11-30T12:04:00.000-08:00

I spend the past 24 hours working on a great holiday article for the contest so I can get my 5% rev share. I went to submit it today and it says it has to be approved. It's about Christmas cards so I have no idea why it needs to be approved first. Ugh!!! It has to get accepted today or I won't get the 5% rev share. Maybe I should write two more holiday articles as back-up. I have a huge school project due today so I don't really have time to write any more articles.

The second thing I need to rant about is two-faced liars. There is someone on Infobarrel that I HATE with a passion. Every time I see one of their posts on Infobarrel, I want to kick their ass. I really hope there is an ignore button on the Infobarrel 2.0 forum. It makes my blood boil whenever I see this person's avatar. They think they are posting helpful advice but it's stuff that people already knows anyways. Sometimes I want to tell this person, "Really, it took you this long to figure that out!!" There is someone else who I don't like but they don't post very often. I would just stay away from the forum all together but Travis and Ernie are very inspiring and I learn a lot from them. I should stay away from all forums but I wouldn't be where I am today without forums.

Here's an example of stuff I hate: I belong to two forums: a Bonnaroo forum and a Rothbury forum. There's this girl on both forums named Clair. Clair will go on the Bonnaroo forum and says how much she loves Bonnaroo and how she can't wait until the next festival. She also tries to tell us how awesome Rothbury is. She will then go to the Rothbury fourm and say how much she hates Bonnaroo and how she will never attend ever again. She will completely bash Bonnaroo. She is a two-faced liar and I hate her. What's worse is that everyone on both forums like her and they will defend her if someone says something bad about her. I finally hit ignore on the Bonnaroo forum but she's the mod on the Rothbury forum so there is no ignore function. I was so mad at her one day that I tried to spam her email and got banned from the forum. Oh well, at least I don't have to see her ugly face anymore.

Anyways, I think there are people like that on all message boards. I just need to learn to deal with them. That's why I love the ignore function. In the next week or so, I'll post my November earnings and my December goals. I'm very happy with my November earnings and I think they will surprise many people.

My First Order on Amazon!

2010-11-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning and checked my Adsense, expecting another click, like I do every morning but there was a big fat zero. So I went to check Amazon and there it was. Someone ordered something using my referral link! I couldn't believe it. I immediately went to see what they ordered. It was a sewing machine that was only $20 but I should still get 80 cents (if my math is right). I'm thrilled and I hope I see more orders soon. Maybe I should write some articles on expensive items instead of cheap items;)

How is my Adsense going? It is going great! I've had at least one click every day this week even though I'm only on track to make what I made last month (unless I get some really high clicks). I'm currently at $7.28 for this month. I'm up to 65 articles.

I got accepted to Chikita last month so this was my first full month with Chikita. I have had two clicks for a total of 19 cents. Both clicks came from the bottom ad block. This means that people are reading all the way through my articles which is great but it makes them less likely to click on the Adsense ads. After I get to 150 articles, I'll experiment with some shorter articles.

How's the contest going? The contest is going okay. I'm working my butt off trying to get caught up. I took a day off to do homework and fell behind. I'm almost back into first. I just have to keep writing the same amount of articles as the first place person and try to do one or two more each day. You are probably wondering how I'm writing so many articles each day? I've decided to stop doing keyword research and SEO until December. I pick a topic and I search for it on Ezine Articles. I choose three articles about that topic and I quickly read through them. I close them and open a word processor and start typing. I type the article based on what I had just read. I can get an article out in an hour this way. Before it would take me at least two hours to research and type out the article. That time doesn't include the time it took to find the pictures and add links. I don't really expect to make much money off these articles but winning the $100 Amazon gift card and getting 50 achievement points for winning a contest would really be awesome.

I'm going to be really busy this week. My professors apparently don't care about Thanksgiving and they piled on a ton of homework this week. I'm going to my aunt's house in Iowa for Thanksgiving so I have to get all my homework done by Wednesday. My aunt doesn't have Internet. It's going to be crazy. I'm still going to keep writing articles for the contest. On Thanksgiving, I'll write articles on my laptop and just save them on my computer. I'll have to wait until I get home on Friday before I can post them. I'm getting stressed just thinking about all the stuff I have to remember to do. I probably won't update the blog until after I get back next weekend. I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful Black Friday!

Back on Track

2010-11-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

As you can tell by the last post, I got distracted from why I'm doing this. I'm not giving up on the contest but I'm not going to stress about it anymore. I'm going to write as many articles as possible and whatever happens, happens. I'm doing this to build up a passive income - not to win a contest. It looks like I should get at least 3rd place in the contest and I can be happy with that. I think I'm going to try to write as many articles as I can each month and save whatever winnings I get. Someday, I'll be able to use my winnings to buy a netbook. Here's the netbook I'm going to buy with my winnings: HP Mini 210-2050NR 10.1 Inch Netbook Lavender. I should have enough to buy it around March.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that I'm planning on going on a cruise either during spring break in March or next November. I'm hoping to get a nice passive income built up by then so I can still make money while I'm on the cruise. The power of passive income is awesome!

It Makes Me Sick!

2010-11-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

Warning: Rant
I am so very annoyed right now. I really want to win the contest bad so anytime I'm not doing homework, I'm writing Info Barrel articles. I've written around 24 1,000 word articles so far this month. It seems like I'm writing from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. What makes me sick is how others can post 20 or more articles a day. I don't get how they can write articles this quickly. I don't even have a job and I can't even write that many articles in a day. I'm beginning to think that they outsource their articles. If they do then I can't keep up. I'm barely keeping up as it is. I didn't write any articles on Tuesday because I was behind in my school work and I fell from 2nd in the contest to 5th. I'm trying so hard but I'm still failing. It makes me want to cry. I actually did cry when I saw I fell in the points. I want a netbook but I can't afford one. I might be able to get one if I can win the contest but there's no way. A couple months ago, someone could easily win the contest with 30 articles but now, I'm not sure if someone can win with 60. I know I said I was going to write articles to build up my library and not worry about the contest but that netbook is calling me. Anyways, I need to write 7 articles tomorrow to get caught up with AJ and that's if he or the other 3 people in front of me do not post any articles. The most I've written in a day is 4 and that's when I got behind on my homework. Ugh! Why didn't I try to win the contest back when I actually had a chance to win:( I guess I'll get to bed since I need to write 7 articles tomorrow and I have 3 assignments due for my Graphic Design class. This sucks and I'm getting sick of it.

Power of Passive Income

2010-11-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

A lot of people, including my parents, have a hard time understanding why someone would want to work without knowing exactly how much they are going to be paid. Whenever I tell my parents that I'm writing an article, they ask me how much I'm going to get for it. I always tell them that I don't know and that I hope it's a lot. They look at me like I'm crazy. Passive income is a powerful thing that most people don't understand. If everyone knew what you could do with a passive income, everyone would be doing it.

I'm assuming most people reading this blog know what passive income is and what it can do but if you don't, here's what it's all about. For example, let's compare two articles. One article is a guaranteed $20 and another article is revenue share. Let's assume you make $2 a month from that article. After a year, you will have $20 for the guaranteed article but you will have $24 for the revenue share article. In two years, you'll still have $20 for the guaranteed article but you'll have $48 for the revenue share article. In five years, you'll probably have spent the $20 for the guaranteed article, however, you'll still be making money on the revenue shared article which will be at $120. So what would you choose to do? Write an article for $20 or for $120. Remember that the revenue share article will still be earning past the $120.

Most people on Info Barrel have concluded that it takes 150 articles to earn $100 a month. I've seen a few people with 250 articles and they seem to make around $300-350 or more per month. They will make this amount for the rest of their lives. It's like the Publisher's Clearing House prize of $5,000 a month for the rest of your life. If you write enough articles, you could easily earn that much money. I am plan on making $5,000 a month off my articles within 3-5 years. I will diversify with a thousand articles on Info Barrel, a thousand articles on Hub Pages, a couple hundred on List My Five and a couple hundred between the rest of the revenue sites. With $5,000 a month, I can retire (or at least not have to work if I don't want to) and actually start living my life. Who knows how much I could actually make - far more than $5,000 a month is possible. I'm motivated by the thought of being able to do whatever I want without having to worry about money.

November Goals & Contest

2010-11-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

My goals for November are to write 2-3 1,000 word articles a day and to keep up with my school work. So far, my goals are doing well. I have a ton of homework to get done today so I'm not sure if I'll have time to write any more articles. I've written 8 articles in 3 days and made $0.91 so I'm doing very well. So well that I'm thinking of going for the November contest. I'm currently in second place - AJ is in 1st place. He wrote a ton of articles on the first of the month and a few smaller articles on the second and third. If I keep up this pace, I might be able to win the contest. It would be nice to get an extra $100 and it would give me motivation to keep going. Plus, I would get 50 achievement points. I would love to get into the top 100 for achievement points someday and 50 points would help me out. If I'm still in the top 5 on November 15, I'll step up my game to try for first place in the contest.

Side note: I've closed the comments on this blog. All comments so far have been great but I've got social anxiety when it comes to comments on blogs. I'm always worried about comments that will derail me and cause me to give up. Instead of worrying, I thought it would be better to just close comments. If you still want to comment, you can email me by clicking on my name on the right.

Success is Contagious

2010-10-30T22:54:00.000-07:00

Like I predicted, I am drowning in homework. I'm taking 5 art courses and each class has one art project, one reading response and one critique due each week. Some classes have exams due every two-three weeks. It feels as if I'm always doing homework and I'm still behind on some of my classes. I haven't done any of the reading for my web design class. My rough draft is due in two days and I don't know anything about HTML. I'm going to be doing a ton of reading tomorrow while watching the Vikings game. I'm also behind on all my bills and I've completely ignored the new health blog I started.

The only reason I'm going back to school is to make my parents feel better that I'm actually doing something with my life. It is buying me time to build a passive income. If I wasn't going back to school, I'm sure my parents would have kicked me out of the house by now. By the time I get out of college, I hope to be making a full-time living from Info Barrel (and a few other passive writing sites - I won't put all my eggs in one basket). Then I won't have to get a job in web design (I don't really like it all that much). I will be able to spend my time doing what I want to do and not what my parents want me to do.

Because I was spending all my time working on homework, I was starting to wonder when I would have time to work on writing for Info Barrel again. I'm never going to build a passive income if I don't work at it. I was reading a thread on the Info Barrel forum titled "Getting to $100 a month...how much content?" Most people agreed that one would need 150 articles to make $100 a month. If I could get to $100 a month, then I could easily get to $200 a month and then $400 and so forth. I figured that I need to write 3 articles a day to get to 150 articles by the end of the year. I made a list of 300 low competition, high paying keywords that I can write about. I'm going to go down the list and write a 1,000 word article for each keyword - hopefully writing 3 articles a day. I really want to get to $100/month by January 1 (also happens to be my birthday).

Here are the articles I have written in the last two days:

Top 5 Hand Held Vacuums

Top 5 Backpack Vacuum Cleaners

Top 5 Central Vacuum Systems

Top 5 Hard Floor Vacuum Cleaners

*Notice that they are all top 5 lists. My highest earning article is Top 5 Zip Line Kits for Children so I know Top 5 lists work well. People searching for specific products will find my articles along with people looking for a general review of many products in a specific category. All the articles are about vacuums. I'm going to write 10 articles related to vacuums and link them together. The next 10 articles will also be centered around a specific category and linked together. This way, I'm hoping to get more views from one person. The more they look at my articles, the more likely they will see an ad they want to click on.

Why Do I Do This to Myself?!

2010-09-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

I started ANOTHER blog. I don't have time for another blog. It's a self hosted blog about becoming a healthier person. I didn't start the blog to make money. I started it to help me get into better shape. I am so unhealthy. I sit on the computer all day without any exercise. I eat out a lot and I eat a lot in general. This new blog will keep me accountable for taking care of myself. Because I started another blog, I will have even less time to work on my Info Barrel experiment. I'm hoping that being healthy will make my online time more productive. I should be able to better focus on work if I keep up on exercise.To end this post on a positive note, I made another $0.14 today!

Quick Update

2010-09-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

The weekend was very productive. I got EzineArticles written for all but two of my articles. I'll get that done tonight. I also got 25 forum back-links for each of my articles and I got some more social bookmarking links. I'm planning on writing 10 articles this week. I still have a little bit of back-linking work to do for my current articles but I think I'm pretty much done for a little while. I'm starting to see regular clicks. I have one click today for $0.22. I'm up to $7.53 so far this month. I hope to get to $10 this month. My goal is $50 next month so I have a lot of writing and back-linking I need to do by next month but I think I can get it done.

Productive Weekend and Concerns

2010-09-13T23:03:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was very productive. I was able to create at least 10 forum back-links to each of my articles. I found a really easy way to find forums that allow links in the profile. I'll go over that in a later post. Next, I need to get 10 blog comment back-links. This is going to be tough because I don't want the comments to look like spam, otherwise they will get deleted. I also need to get all my sites bookmarked. I would like to get them all bookmarked on Xomba, Redgage, SheToldMe and 10-20 other social bookmarking sites. I still need to get an Ezine back-link to 8 of my articles.

I didn't realize that back-linking my articles would take up so much time. I'm having concerns and it's making me rethink my strategy. Sometimes I think that I should be cranking out the articles. I need lots of articles to make money but those articles won't make money unless they are ranking well. Info Barrel isn't like eHow - Info Barrel articles don't rank instantly and they need back-links to rank well. I got three clicks today for a total of $0.58 so that gives me hope that the back-linking strategy is working. I'm going to continue with the current strategy and I'll see where I am in three months.

I'm not going to be able to spend much time working on the experiment this week. I've got homework due every day. It's overwhelming but I'm going to try to do some Info Barrel work at night after I get done with homework. I want to be ready to write more articles next week. Anyways, I just wanted to give a little up date on my progress. If I don't post again for a while, it's probably because I'm drowning in homework.

Clicks!

2010-09-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

I woke up to three clicks today for a total of $1.41. I'm thrilled! I haven't had any clicks for about two weeks so this is a relief. I was starting to think that I was doing something wrong. I still haven't written anymore articles. I really want to get this whole back-linking thing down before I start adding to my article pot. Yesterday, I signed up for each of the top 50 article directories. Well, it's down to 45 since some of them are membership sites and a few other sites require you to apply to become an author and I don't have that much time. My new back-linking plan is to write 10 Info Barrel articles and add 10-20 social bookmarking links to each of those articles. Then I'm going to add 10 forum back-links and 10 blog profile back-links. Lastly, I'm going to add one EzineArticles back-link to each article. I'll then write 10 more Info Barrel articles and repeat. When I get to 100 articles, I will see where each of my articles are ranking for their main keyword and add 10 social back-links, 10 forum back-links and two article back-links to any article that isn't ranking on the first page. I'll do that at 200 articles, 300 articles and so forth. This way, I'm getting a lot of back-links to my articles but I'm not spending all my time back-linking.

One last thing before I end this post. I really hope the Saints don't cheat again. I wouldn't think they could cheat two years in a row but I've seen bad refs keep their jobs after horrible calls. Anyways, I'm confident the Vikes will win as long as the Cheatin' Saints (not to be confused with NASCAR driver Jimmie "The Cheater" Johnson) don't cheat. Go Vikes!!

I'm Preapproved!

2010-09-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

The Labor Day weekend was not productive at all. I had meant to get registered at all 300-some social bookmarking sites but I didn't register at a single site. On Friday, I spent all day doing homework. My graphic design classes have a crazy amount of homework and I'm barely keeping up. Saturday was spent shopping with my mom and a family barbecue and bonfire that night. Sunday was spent all day at my grandparents house. I had gotten a Wii when I was shopping with my mom on Saturday so I spent Sunday night playing video games. I was having trouble getting exercise so I figured that a Wii would at least get me off the couch. I ended up getting a sporting game with tennis, bowling, golf, basketball and other outdoor games. It's a fun way to get moving. Labor Day was spent doing more homework. My brother stopped by and, of course, wanted to try out the Wii. He already has a Wii and brought some games with him for me to try. I loved Super Mario Brothers. I'm glad I don't have it cause that could really suck up the time.

Even though I didn't do any work on my Info Barrel experiment, I have some good news about it. I got my preapproval e-mail! I had posted in the forums that I have ten articles posted and not an hour later I received the email. I have around 50 or so eHow articles that I removed in July that I want to get moved over but I was waiting until I was preapproved first. It will take some editing to get the articles to the correct formatting and I didn't want them to have to get approved each time I made an edit.

Today, I wrote two articles for EzineArticles for back-links to my oldest articles. I hope they get approved. I'm still not sure exactly what they want but I've seen some pretty bad articles on there. Mine should get approved with no problems. I'm planning on writing and publishing two Info Barrel articles tonight before I go to bed. I'm also going to try to write two other articles at the same time to use as back-links on EzineArticles. My plan for the week is to write 10 Info Barrel articles and to get all articles back-linked on EzineArticles. I made out a schedule for the week so I can get all my homework done by the due date and still have enough time to make money to pay bills, write Info Barrel articles and maintain my niche site.

Time Consuming Work

2010-09-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

This is day two of my Info Barrel experiment. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll get any articles written today. I already have ten articles written and I'm currently in the process of back-linking them. I made a list of every social bookmarking site listed on the share box on the Info Barrel articles. There's something like 250 sites listed. I also found some other bookmarking sites while browsing the forums. I have a total of 334 social bookmarking sites. I also have a list of 49 article marketing sites and I'm hoping to get another 25-50 back-links from forum profiles. I've been registering at social bookmarking sites all day and determining which ones are worth using. It's tedious work that is going slowly. I've only registered at 50 sites so far. I haven't even started back-linking. Once I get registered at all the sites and get the profiles set up, it should be pretty easy to go through and bookmark all my articles. I'm planning on adding 5 bookmarks per day for each article. I also need to do some article marketing. I heard that you can use the same article for most of the sites so I'm planning on writing 3 short articles for each Info Barrel article to use for back-linking. I'm going to spend all weekend registering at bookmarking sites and will hopefully have them all set up before Monday. It's going to be a boring weekend!

Going on a Journey...

2010-09-03T00:38:00.000-07:00

...and I want you to follow along with me. I'm Alecia Gibson. Online, most people know me as Ally or AllyG47. I'm 26 years old and I know exactly what I want in life but I have never figured out how to do it. My goal is to live my life without worrying about money but, at the same time, not having to spend my life working for someone else. I've tried many different professions. I'm currently a freelance writer and I'm going back to school for Web Design and Development. I've decided that the two best ways to achieve my dream is to create a passive income writing and to start niche websites. I'm going to try to make $2,000 a month writing Info Barrel articles and I'm also going to attempt to make $1,000 with a niche website that I started in July. I hope to reach my goal by next June.

Why Info Barrel?

I choose Info Barrel for a few different reasons. I never used to like Info Barrel because I always felt the people that used Info Barrel were snobs. They would hijack threads in forums I visited and go on rants about every site except Info Barrel sucked. I hated it. I decided on Info Barrel to make my $2,000/month because I've found that it's the easiest site for me to use . I've already posted some articles there and they went past the editors with no problems. I made $5 with Info Barrel last month with only 2 articles which is pretty good. I also found that not everyone that belongs to Info Barrel are snobs, only a few people and I can put up with them.

Why a blog?

I started this blog so I can keep track of how far I am from my goals. I also figured that it would be a good place to get back-links to my articles. I'm currently doing The Challenge with Ed Dale and I've learned that a back-link is a back-link whether it's no-follow or do-follow, PR0 or PR6. Of course, some back-links are better than others but the point is to get as many as you can (without spamming). I'm also going to start a Wordpress blog and the same information here will be posted there. I'll be posting monthly reports on how close I am to my goal. I'll probably write the post reports in an Info Barrel article and link to it from here but I'll also post some mid-monthly reports on this blog so keep an eye out for that.

What's the Plan?

The plan was going to be that I write 12 articles per day Monday through Friday but I've realized that I can't do that when I'm working full time, maintaining a niche site and going to college. I'm going to write 3 articles a day to start with and see if I can keep up. They key is to write something every day and to keep the momentum going. I will adjust my daily goal if I can't keep up. I'm also going to try to stop at every 10 articles and add a couple back-links to each article.

So there's my experiment laid out in front of you. As you can see, I've got a lot of work to do. I'll be adding more posts in the coming weeks discussing keyword research, proper SEO, getting back-links, optimizing the author's box and more. If you are interested in joining Info Barrel yourself, click here to join.