Thursday, July 26, 2012
Daily Update 07/26
Today went better than yesterday but not by much. I wrote 3 and 1/2 articles. I woke up nice and early and was planning to write 3 articles, take a break, write 3 more articles, take a lunch break, write 3 articles, take a break, write 3 articles, take a super break and write 3 more articles for a total of 15 articles. I wrote 3 articles and then got really tired so I took a nap. After my nap, I just felt blah. These articles are really boring and I'm starting to find it hard to come up with new things to say about the same type of products. How many different ways can you describe a dry erase board? Ugh. I tried to write another article but, combined with my sleepiness and how boring the topic was, I just couldn't do it. Tonight I have the house to myself so I am going to take a relaxing bubble bath. Watch a good movie (this movie about the Nazi's that I'm watching right now is kind of depressing) and then read a book. Tomorrow I will, hopefully, wake up refreshed and ready to write. I'll have the house to myself all day so I can turn up some good music, such as Bob Dylan, and get to writing.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Daily Update 07/25
Today was all about motivation and distractions. Those are the two main reasons for failure in the internet world and I battled both of them today.
Distraction
Distraction isn't just about real world distractions like phone calls, television or taking a nap instead of working. Distraction is also about other ways to make money online. Some people call it shiny object syndrome. I have been battling that since I started. In fact, this isn't the first experiment I started this month. I have another blog and I started an experiment related to my niche website. I got bored after a week, gave up and started this experiment. I'm not bored of this experiment or am planning on quitting but I've found other places to make money that I'm itching to try. For example, last week, I read an article about how Squidoo is a good place to get backlinks to your niche sites. I then remembered that I have two lenses on Squidoo that I made a year ago so I decided to check them out. They were both WIP (work in progress) and weren't published but it got me thinking about how much money you could make on Squidoo. I found the SquidU forum and started reading and got really into it. I found some people making thousands of dollars a month on Squidoo with less than 500 lenses. I would love to try to make some money with Squidoo as it looks like a lot of fun to make lenses and the lenses work better for the type of articles I'm doing on InfoBarrel. Today, someone on the InfoBarrel forum was asking about Squidoo and it made me want to completely abandon this experiment and switch over to Squidoo. I'm not going to do that because this experiment is specifically aimed at InfoBarrel (even the name of the blog has InfoBarrel in it). I am not going to give up on this experiment. I will write 1,000 articles and I will make $1,000 a month. After I reach $1,000 a month, I will switch over to Squidoo.
Motivation
The second thing I had to deal with today was motivation. I woke up pretty late this morning - actually it was after noon. I did a bunch of chores around the house that I was neglecting, ate some lunch, put some stuff on eBay and when I sat down to write my InfoBarrel articles for today, I just had no motivation. I ended up writing one article and giving up. I hope I have more motivation tomorrow. I need to get these articles written. My parents are going to be out of town tomorrow night and all day Friday so I will have peace and quiet. I will get all of these articles written by Friday because I need to get them earning money. I want my own house and the only way I'm going to get that is by being successful online. I put a deferment (I think that's what it's called) on my student loans and if it's approved, I won't have to pay my student loans until December 7, which means I need to get these articles earning money by then. That's my motivation and I need to constantly tell myself what will happen if I don't write these articles. I also need to think about life would be like making $1,000 a month. It doesn't sound like a lot but that's enough to pay off my car, pay my student loans each month, pay back my parents and have something leftover each month to save. I can live on my own when I'm making $2500 a month which is my ultimate goal.
So that was my day today, battling motivation and distraction. I wrote 1 article. I didn't even post the draft on InfoBarrel. Tomorrow I will write 15 articles no matter what. All I will do tomorrow is write. I will set my alarm and get up early. I'm going to go to bed shortly and, hopefully, I can fall asleep right away so I won't be tired tomorrow. I will get the other 15 articles written on Friday.
Distraction
Distraction isn't just about real world distractions like phone calls, television or taking a nap instead of working. Distraction is also about other ways to make money online. Some people call it shiny object syndrome. I have been battling that since I started. In fact, this isn't the first experiment I started this month. I have another blog and I started an experiment related to my niche website. I got bored after a week, gave up and started this experiment. I'm not bored of this experiment or am planning on quitting but I've found other places to make money that I'm itching to try. For example, last week, I read an article about how Squidoo is a good place to get backlinks to your niche sites. I then remembered that I have two lenses on Squidoo that I made a year ago so I decided to check them out. They were both WIP (work in progress) and weren't published but it got me thinking about how much money you could make on Squidoo. I found the SquidU forum and started reading and got really into it. I found some people making thousands of dollars a month on Squidoo with less than 500 lenses. I would love to try to make some money with Squidoo as it looks like a lot of fun to make lenses and the lenses work better for the type of articles I'm doing on InfoBarrel. Today, someone on the InfoBarrel forum was asking about Squidoo and it made me want to completely abandon this experiment and switch over to Squidoo. I'm not going to do that because this experiment is specifically aimed at InfoBarrel (even the name of the blog has InfoBarrel in it). I am not going to give up on this experiment. I will write 1,000 articles and I will make $1,000 a month. After I reach $1,000 a month, I will switch over to Squidoo.
Motivation
The second thing I had to deal with today was motivation. I woke up pretty late this morning - actually it was after noon. I did a bunch of chores around the house that I was neglecting, ate some lunch, put some stuff on eBay and when I sat down to write my InfoBarrel articles for today, I just had no motivation. I ended up writing one article and giving up. I hope I have more motivation tomorrow. I need to get these articles written. My parents are going to be out of town tomorrow night and all day Friday so I will have peace and quiet. I will get all of these articles written by Friday because I need to get them earning money. I want my own house and the only way I'm going to get that is by being successful online. I put a deferment (I think that's what it's called) on my student loans and if it's approved, I won't have to pay my student loans until December 7, which means I need to get these articles earning money by then. That's my motivation and I need to constantly tell myself what will happen if I don't write these articles. I also need to think about life would be like making $1,000 a month. It doesn't sound like a lot but that's enough to pay off my car, pay my student loans each month, pay back my parents and have something leftover each month to save. I can live on my own when I'm making $2500 a month which is my ultimate goal.
So that was my day today, battling motivation and distraction. I wrote 1 article. I didn't even post the draft on InfoBarrel. Tomorrow I will write 15 articles no matter what. All I will do tomorrow is write. I will set my alarm and get up early. I'm going to go to bed shortly and, hopefully, I can fall asleep right away so I won't be tired tomorrow. I will get the other 15 articles written on Friday.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Daily Update 07/24
I wasn't feeling very well today. I have a headache and I'm very tired. Other members of my family were sick last week. I hope I'm not coming down with anything. I was able to find pictures and Amazon links for all 30 articles. I wrote 1 article and posted the rough draft on InfoBarrel. All I need to do is hit publish and I will be done with it. I'm going to wait until I have a couple more articles saved up and publish them all at once. I don't think I'm going to hit my Wednesday deadline for getting all of these articles done. I should have them all completed by Thursday. I'm going to take the rest of the month off so I can come up with some money for my car and student loan payments. I'm hoping that I'll have enough articles written to win the contest.
I think I'm going to change up the experiment a little bit. I'm still going to have a goal of 1,000 articles by November but instead of writing 10 articles a day, I'm going to write 100 articles a week. That's 400 articles a month. It will take me two and a half months, or mid-October, to get to 1,000 articles. I think I would have better luck doing a batch of 100 articles in a week than I would trying to do 10 articles a day. I can get the folders ready to go on Sunday, find the pictures and Amazon links on Monday and Tuesday, get the intros written on Wednesday, get the article bodies written on Thursday and Friday and publish them on Saturday. I think that's a good time frame for getting those tasks done. If I get a little bit behind, there's still a couple extra days at the beginning or end of the month to get caught back up.
I think I'm going to change up the experiment a little bit. I'm still going to have a goal of 1,000 articles by November but instead of writing 10 articles a day, I'm going to write 100 articles a week. That's 400 articles a month. It will take me two and a half months, or mid-October, to get to 1,000 articles. I think I would have better luck doing a batch of 100 articles in a week than I would trying to do 10 articles a day. I can get the folders ready to go on Sunday, find the pictures and Amazon links on Monday and Tuesday, get the intros written on Wednesday, get the article bodies written on Thursday and Friday and publish them on Saturday. I think that's a good time frame for getting those tasks done. If I get a little bit behind, there's still a couple extra days at the beginning or end of the month to get caught back up.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Daily Update 07/23
Things are chugging along - maybe a bit slower than I would like but it's going. I got an Adsense click on one of the articles I posted on Saturday and made $1.30! I didn't expect those articles to make money so quickly. I hope that's a good sign of what's to come.
I decided that I really want to win the contest this month. I think my best bet to win is a sneak attack. The current leader is dj who won the contest last month. Whenever anyone gets close to him in points, he posts 10 or so more articles to get ahead. The articles he posts are "reviews" but they are all quotes from other people. I don't know where he's getting these quotes from as they don't show up in the search engines so either he's making them up, which is just plain wrong, or he has a survey on a private message board where he asks people what they think of these products. His articles aren't very helpful - they are mostly quotes like "I would never buy that laptop computer. I hate the color. I would spend my money on a laptop that looks good." Anyways, I'm not here to flame dj but I'm just saying that anyone can crank out hundreds of those type of articles a day - which is what he is doing. That's why the sneak attack will work best. I will save all of my articles as drafts and then post them an hour or two before the contest ends. He won't expect it and won't have enough time to get more articles posted (I hope). Last month, he won the contest with 311 points. If I can get to around 350 points, that should be enough to beat him - as long as he doesn't expect it. If he realizes what I'm doing, he might post 50 of those bad review articles to try to counteract me. I think I'm going to post just enough articles this week to get me into third place and then save the rest of the articles for July 31 at 11 PDT. Some people on InfoBarrel get mad when people use the sneak attack to win the contest. Yes, it is sneaky but dj won the contest last month. He should give others a chance to win. I probably wouldn't do the sneak attack if dj's articles weren't so, uh, thin. When the entire article is quotes and he hasn't written a word in the article that is his, it seems like he is cheating even though I don't think he's breaking any rules. So, yeah, that's my plan for winning the contest. Shhh...don't tell anyone!
As far as my progress for the experiment, I didn't write any new articles today but I spent all day finding pictures and Amazon links for the articles. I'm almost done with this task and then I can write the articles. I'm hoping to have all pictures and Amazon links saved before I go to bed tonight. Tomorrow I will try to get as many articles as possible written. I wanted to get all 30 articles saved as drafts on Infobarrel by Wednesday but I don't think that will happen. Maybe by Thursday.
I think I've covered everything. I'm off to Amazon to find some pictures.
I decided that I really want to win the contest this month. I think my best bet to win is a sneak attack. The current leader is dj who won the contest last month. Whenever anyone gets close to him in points, he posts 10 or so more articles to get ahead. The articles he posts are "reviews" but they are all quotes from other people. I don't know where he's getting these quotes from as they don't show up in the search engines so either he's making them up, which is just plain wrong, or he has a survey on a private message board where he asks people what they think of these products. His articles aren't very helpful - they are mostly quotes like "I would never buy that laptop computer. I hate the color. I would spend my money on a laptop that looks good." Anyways, I'm not here to flame dj but I'm just saying that anyone can crank out hundreds of those type of articles a day - which is what he is doing. That's why the sneak attack will work best. I will save all of my articles as drafts and then post them an hour or two before the contest ends. He won't expect it and won't have enough time to get more articles posted (I hope). Last month, he won the contest with 311 points. If I can get to around 350 points, that should be enough to beat him - as long as he doesn't expect it. If he realizes what I'm doing, he might post 50 of those bad review articles to try to counteract me. I think I'm going to post just enough articles this week to get me into third place and then save the rest of the articles for July 31 at 11 PDT. Some people on InfoBarrel get mad when people use the sneak attack to win the contest. Yes, it is sneaky but dj won the contest last month. He should give others a chance to win. I probably wouldn't do the sneak attack if dj's articles weren't so, uh, thin. When the entire article is quotes and he hasn't written a word in the article that is his, it seems like he is cheating even though I don't think he's breaking any rules. So, yeah, that's my plan for winning the contest. Shhh...don't tell anyone!
As far as my progress for the experiment, I didn't write any new articles today but I spent all day finding pictures and Amazon links for the articles. I'm almost done with this task and then I can write the articles. I'm hoping to have all pictures and Amazon links saved before I go to bed tonight. Tomorrow I will try to get as many articles as possible written. I wanted to get all 30 articles saved as drafts on Infobarrel by Wednesday but I don't think that will happen. Maybe by Thursday.
I think I've covered everything. I'm off to Amazon to find some pictures.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Daily Update 07/22
I didn't get much done today. I hope this isn't TMI but AF (short for aunt flow - you ladies know what I'm taking about) came today and I felt horrible. I slept until noon but was still wiped out all day. I got one rough draft posted - I just need to add links before I publish it. I got pictures collected for another 7 articles. So much for getting pictures and intros done for all 30 articles. My goal for tomorrow (if I have time - I promised a friend I would help them with something) is to write 14 articles and get a start on the intros for the other 15 articles. I hope I feel better tomorrow.
Daily Update 07/21
I'm going to make this a quick update because I'm really tired and need to go to bed. I got all 18 articles posted today. This gives me a total of 20 articles posted since I started this experiment and I moved into 4th place in the contest - 1 point out of 3rd place. I am 30 articles behind my goal. I made folders for all 30 articles and saved a Word template into each folder. I would like to write 15 of those articles tomorrow but I don't think that's going to happen. I think I will focus on writing the intros and conclusions for all 30 articles and add an outline to the body of the articles. I may also try to find pictures to go with each of the articles. I would like to have all 30 articles written and posted by Wednesday. We'll see if I can do it. Here's an outline of this week's plan:
Sunday:
Total Articles Posted: 20
Articles I Will Post: 0
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 60
Articles I'm Behind: -40
Tuesday:
Total Articles Posted: 20
Articles I Will Post: 0
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 70
Articles I'm Behind: -50
Wednesday:
Total Articles Posted: 20
Articles I Will Post: 30
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 80
Articles I'm Behind: -60
Thursday:
Total Articles Posted: 50
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 90
Articles I'm Behind: -40
Friday:
Total Articles Posted: 65
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 100 (yeah!)
Articles I'm Behind: -35
Saturday:
Total Articles Posted: 80
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 110
Articles I'm Behind: -30
Sunday:
Total Articles Posted:95
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 120
Articles I'm Behind: -25
Monday:
Total Articles Posted: 110
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 130
Articles I'm Behind: -20
Tuesday:
Total Articles Posted: 125
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 140
Articles I'm Behind: -15
Wednesday:
Total Articles Posted: 140
Articles I Will Post:15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 150
Articles I'm Behind: -10
Thursday:
Total Articles Posted: 155
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 160
Articles I'm Behind: -5
Friday:
Total Articles Posted: 170
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 170
Articles I'm Behind: 0
Okay, so that 'outline' was actually for two weeks. I just wanted to see how long it's going to take me to get caught back up. It's seems like it is going to take a while. It'll be nice to get caught up though. Maybe I can get this next 30 done before Wednesday.
Sunday:
Total Articles Posted: 20
Articles I Will Post: 0
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 60
Articles I'm Behind: -40
Tuesday:
Total Articles Posted: 20
Articles I Will Post: 0
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 70
Articles I'm Behind: -50
Wednesday:
Total Articles Posted: 20
Articles I Will Post: 30
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 80
Articles I'm Behind: -60
Thursday:
Total Articles Posted: 50
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 90
Articles I'm Behind: -40
Friday:
Total Articles Posted: 65
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 100 (yeah!)
Articles I'm Behind: -35
Saturday:
Total Articles Posted: 80
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 110
Articles I'm Behind: -30
Sunday:
Total Articles Posted:95
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 120
Articles I'm Behind: -25
Monday:
Total Articles Posted: 110
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 130
Articles I'm Behind: -20
Tuesday:
Total Articles Posted: 125
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 140
Articles I'm Behind: -15
Wednesday:
Total Articles Posted: 140
Articles I Will Post:15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 150
Articles I'm Behind: -10
Thursday:
Total Articles Posted: 155
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 160
Articles I'm Behind: -5
Friday:
Total Articles Posted: 170
Articles I Will Post: 15
Total Articles I Should Have Posted: 170
Articles I'm Behind: 0
Okay, so that 'outline' was actually for two weeks. I just wanted to see how long it's going to take me to get caught back up. It's seems like it is going to take a while. It'll be nice to get caught up though. Maybe I can get this next 30 done before Wednesday.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Daily Update 07/20
I had a very busy day today and only got 5 articles written. I now have 17 articles that I need to post to InfoBarrel. I have 1 article that is almost done. After tomorrow, I should be at 50 articles posted. When I post those 18 articles, I will be at 20 articles total so I will be 30 articles short. The plan for tomorrow is to make 30 folders, find pictures for all of the articles, gather Amazon referral links for the articles and save the product pages. I am going to try to write all 30 intros and all 30 conclusions. On Sunday, I can get to work on writing the articles. Hopefully I can get 15 articles written on Sunday and 15 articles written on Monday. Then I will post them Monday evening. I will do the same thing on Tuesday and Wednesday with 30 more articles. I should be caught back up by that point. Then I will try to get ahead with my articles so I can take a day or two off at the beginning of August. I really don't want to burn myself out. I'm already sick of writing articles. I just need to keep up this pace until the end of October or beginning of November. It seems like a long ways away but the time will go by quickly and before I know it, it will be October.
Another thing I need to start thinking about is how to pay my bills next month. I have a car payment due August 5, a student loan payment due August 7 and my favorite band is coming to town on August 21 and I would like to buy tickets to see them. I need to come up with a total of $600 and quickly. I'll be getting around $110 from Adsense and $25 from Amazon at the end of this month. Where am I going to get the other $500? I suppose I should be working Mturk but I hate doing those boring hits. I could also write articles for iWriter or Textbroker but after writing all of these articles for InfoBarrel I'm not going to feel like writing. I could probably come up with something to sell on eBay. I'll have to see what I can scrounge up. In less than 6 months, I shouldn't have this problem anymore. I'll be making at least $800 a month from InfoBarrel - hopefully more. I'll have money to pay all my bills and maybe I'll even have enough money to save. This is my motivation and I have to keep reminding myself this to keep me going.
Another thing I need to start thinking about is how to pay my bills next month. I have a car payment due August 5, a student loan payment due August 7 and my favorite band is coming to town on August 21 and I would like to buy tickets to see them. I need to come up with a total of $600 and quickly. I'll be getting around $110 from Adsense and $25 from Amazon at the end of this month. Where am I going to get the other $500? I suppose I should be working Mturk but I hate doing those boring hits. I could also write articles for iWriter or Textbroker but after writing all of these articles for InfoBarrel I'm not going to feel like writing. I could probably come up with something to sell on eBay. I'll have to see what I can scrounge up. In less than 6 months, I shouldn't have this problem anymore. I'll be making at least $800 a month from InfoBarrel - hopefully more. I'll have money to pay all my bills and maybe I'll even have enough money to save. This is my motivation and I have to keep reminding myself this to keep me going.
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