Trying Project Wonderful

The key to succeeding as a freelance writer today is to have a large variety of revenue streams going on at once.

Here's what I have: I edit a real estate trade magazine in Chicago. That provides an annual, steady salary. I freelance write for print and newspapers. That used to make up the majority of my yearly income. In today's economy, though, that's changing. I also write for six different blogs, some of which are pay-per-post and some of which I operate on my own. Finally, I've entered the world of content writing, which, despite its generally low pay for each assignment, has boosted my monthly revenue quite nicely.

Now I'm hoping to add more ad revenue to this mix. I do have AdSense on the blogs that I run myself. The money from that comes very, very slowly. It's hard to get people to click those ads. But I have made some money. I'm not at the $100 that Google requires for payout yet, but I should get there in two months or so.

I'm also trying Project Wonderful. This ad-revenue option is popular among Web comic artists, but can be used for most any Web Site that isn't pornographic.

Basically, you sign up and wait. Project Wonderful staffers look over your site and then either approve you or tell you "no thanks." Once you're approved, you add code to your Web site -- this is very simple to do -- and wait for companies to bid on advertising on your site.

When you start, you'll get very little bidding action. And if your site isn't that popular, that probably won't change. My first Project Wonderful ad paid out exactly $0. But one day later, I had a company paying 1 penny a day to advertise on my site.

Whoopee! That's $3.65 a year! However, as I build up visitors, I hope to see that per-day figure rise.

And if it doesn't? It costs me no work to have Project Wonderful ads running on my Web sites.

Be careful of click fraud

This site is equipped with Google AdSense ads. Of course, I want my readers to click on them. Every time they do, I get a tiny bit of money.

However, I won't ever consider click fraud as a way to get more money from my blogs. Click fraud, apparently, is a pretty big problem these days for AdSense and other pay-per-click services.

The fraud happens in a few ways. Most common is that blog owners somehow try to click their own ads for extra dollars, perhaps from an outside computer, such as one at their place of employment or at their local public library. Other times, site owners tell their friends or family members to click on their ads to help them make a few extra pennies.

Both are considered fraud because the folks clicking on the ads have no interest in the company's placing them.

The New York Times ran an interesting story recently about click fraud.

The Times details the steps online advertisers are taking to make sure that the clicks they do receive are from Web visitors truly interested in their products or services.

If you run AdSense, don't be tempted to engage in click fraud. The folks at Google monitor these things carefully, and if they determine that you're trying to game the system, they won't hesitate to give you the boot.

Gotta' love those 6-cent days at Suite 101

I earned six cents at Suite101 yesterday. Yikes. And that's with 32 stores posted, all focusing on either freelance writing, residential real estate or mortgage lending.

And yesterday wasn't the first extremely low-paying day for me this month at Suite 101. Earlier this month, I had 11-cent and 10-cent days.

I thought I was choosing topics and writing stories that would encourage Adsense clicks. After all, the ads alongside my freelance-writing stories feature links to sites such as Triond, sites that freelance writers desperate for writing work would probably click, right?

And the ads alongside my mortgage-loan stories all send visitors to mortgage companies. Why aren't more people clicking?

I suppose this lament is far from uncommon with Suite 101 writers. There are plenty of writers on the site who make solid -- and by solid, I mean $200 to $500 a month -- from their Suite 101 stories. But these are the same writers who, usually, have more than 200 stories on the site. That's a lot of writing for income that is nice but certainly not a king's ransom.

I'll keep plugging away at Suite 101. But, to be honest, I'm not looking forward to throwing up 60-some more stories to get to that magical 100-story point.

Doubling my pennies at Examiner.com

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. But I've always figured, if something doesn't work, just pound at it a little harder.

That might explain why I've signed up to take on a second Examiner.com "blog," this one on residential real estate, a specialty of mine.

I'll be able to write these posts quickly because I know this subject well. So time won't become an issue. But I'm still not sure that Examiner.com will ever become a reliable source of income. That's because my first Examiner.com site isn't doing so well.

In case you're not familiar with the way Examiner pays, its writers get a penny for every page view. That's not exactly big bucks, especially when you're bringing in the page views I am.

My best day I generated 77 page views. That's 77 cents for those of you stumped by basic math.

In all, I've made about $13 for a month-and-a-week's worth of work. On the good side, I'm more than halfway to my $25 payout. On the bad side, I'd hate to calculate my per-hour rate.

We'll see what happens with the second Examiner site. Maybe I'll double my earnings. Maybe I'll just waste more time.

An Adsense update: Two weeks ago, I created five niche blogs and equipped them all with Adsense. It's a sort of experiment. One blog I've promoted heavily on other blogs and forums. Three I've pretty much left alone so far. And one covers a topic that should be a natural for traffic, but perhaps not for clicks. In all, I've generated $4.25 on my niche blogs. Lord, this online writing is tough stuff.

Giving Adsense a try

Fans of this blog -- Hello? Anyone? -- know that it started life over on Wordpress. I really like Wordpress. Problem is, you can't put Adsense ads on Wordpress.

At first, that didn't seem like such a big idea. I hardly generate enough traffic to worry about making big money with Adsense.

Then it started nagging at me. I really wanted to experiment, to see how Adsense might work. How can I share my experience at making money online and with content sites if I don't try everything I can?

So, I've moved my stuff to Blogger. The move wasn't hard, actually, and the old blog wasn't around long enough to have drawn huge crowds yet. So there aren't a whole lot of people to tell that I've moved.

My first Adsense ads should be up now. That's one thing about Blogger: It's extremely easy to set up Adsense on it. There's a button on the top of your blog called "monetize." Click it, and you're on your way.

Will Adsense generate anything for me? We'll see.