Residual Income Challenge After 1 Year:

Earlier this month, June 7th to be exact, was the 1 year anniversary of my Residual Income Challenge blog. I have tried out many different residual income opportunities over the past year, and now is a perfect time to evaluate what opportunities are working the best. I am half way through my challenge, but way behind where I should be. I should be earning over $27 per day at this point, but unfortunately I'm still in the $1-$2 per day range. Obviously, this challenge may take a lot longer than just 2 years, and I may have to adjust accordingly.

1 Year Pie Chart of Residual Income

From June 7th 2009 to June 7th 2010, I managed to earn $635.85 or $1.74 per day. Many bloggers earn that in just 1 month, but it is still a nice chunk of change that has helped me pay some bills. Here is a pie chart of my residual earnings for my first year.



Okay, so this pie chart totally puts everything in perspective. What's the big problem? eHow and Examiner accounted for 95% of my residual income over the past year. 70% alone came from Examiner. Sure, the earnings were nice but I need to diversify my writing so that each opportunity makes up 10-20% of my total income.

An Even Bigger Problem:
Since I have spent so much of time writing for The Examiner, my residual income is lagging. I have written well over 120 Examiner articles and aside from the initial spike in earnings after writing a new article, I still tend to earn around $.50 per day on all of these articles. I definitely need to shift the bulk of my writing focus to a site like Suite 101 to see my residual earnings really pick up.

Looking Forward to My 2nd Year of The Residual Income Challenge:
Going forward over the next year, I will probably spend less time searching for new opportunities and more time writing on sites that really produce. Most likely, I will focus on sites like eHow, Suite101, Examiner, and Infobarrel. They have proven to provide consistent and worthwhile earnings. This past year has been a great learning experience, and has been a lot of fun. There is nothing like waking up to a huge residual income day for work that was completed long ago. Thanks to all of you who have been following along and providing encouragement over the past year!

May 2010 Earnings:

Okay, quick earnings update. I apologize. I know it has been awhile. I went on vacation for a week to Myrtle Beach over the Memorial Day holiday. It was wonderful, and made it very tough to get back into work and writing. I've also been completing a 3 month Securities Industry certificate at work which I completed today. All excuses and events aside, I am ready to continue onward with my challenge.

May Residual Income Higher than Minimum Wage!
I am very impressed with my earnings for the month of May, especially considering I didn't do much the last week of the month. I only put in just over 8 hours worth of writing for the month and I had my best month so far in 2010. It actually put me over the minimum wage mark for online writing. Woohoo! It's about time!

In comparison, I put in 16.25 hours in April and even 26.5 hours in March and earned nearly half as much. Looks like my efforts are starting to pay off. I averaged $2.19 per day for the month of May and earned a total of $67.76 for the month.

Suite 101:
My Suite 101 earnings really picked up in May, and I want to continue writing for them. My contract ends in a few days, I need to ask for an extension. Hopefully, it is approved because I only wrote 5 articles in 3 months and needed to write 10. Does anyone know if these are generally approved?

Residual Income Results:

My efforts are really paying off, as I had the bulk of my residual income opportunities produce some income for May. As usual, Examiner produced the highest earnings as I continue to focus a lot of my effort on this site.

Here is a Breakdown of my May 2010 earnings:

The Examiner: $46.77 (125 Articles)
eHow: $12.37 (52 Articles)
Suite 101: $5.06 (5 Articles)
Infobarrel: $3.06
Xomba: $0.26
Associated Content: $0.15 (3 Articles)
FireHow: $0.05 (8 Articles)
Residual Income Challenge Blog: $0.04

Total: $67.76

My Goals for the Rest of June:

Hopefully, I will get an extension on my Suite 101 contract because I see a lot of promise there if I can produce a lot of content. I earned a $1 per article for the month of May on my Suite 101 articles. As always, I will write as much as possible to increase my monthly residual income. Thanks for all of the comments lately; I will get caught up on those in the next couple of days. I appreciate you following along and helping me out. Good luck on your goals, and feel free to let me know how you're coming along!

April 2010 Earnings:
Earnings were about the same as March, which is a little discouraging but there are some promising aspects. For instance, I only put in 16.25 hours of writing compared to 26.5 in March. I needed to average $18.32 per day in residual income, but I only managed to average $1.26 per day. I might definitely have to revise things soon if I can't make a significant gain in the next month or two.

Little Disappointed with Suite 101 Earnings
I was approved to write for Suite 101 in March, and I jumped right on it and now have 5 articles. The earnings have been less than impressive. I only earned $1.16 on these 5 articles for the month of April. I really hope this picks up, but a lot of writers are complaining of less than stellar earnings.

Residual Income Results:

The best part of my April earnings is the fact that Suite 101 joined the earnings list. Everything else performed as expected.

Here is a Breakdown of my April 2010 earnings:

The Examiner: $20.82 (114 Articles)
eHow: $14.90 (52 Articles)
Suite 101: $1.16 (5 Articles)
Residual Income Challenge Blog: $0.60
FireHow: $0.15 (8 Articles)
Associated Content: $0.12 (3 Articles)

Total: $37.75

My Goals for May:

Last month I put a fair amount of focus on writing Suite 101 articles with high paying keywords. I wrote a couple decent articles with extremely high paying keywords and they have yet to pay off. I'll try to continue to add more since I have such a small sample. My biggest goal for the month will be to write a significant amount of content at The Examiner. Unfortunately, the residual income can be lousy but I have a big cash crunch right now and my articles pay well when I write frequently. I am ready for my first $100 month, let's see if I can make it happen.

eHow is Moving to Demand Studios
eHow, one of the best residual income producing websites is now gone! Today, they announced that they will be moving the platform over to Demand Studios. Fortunately, all previously submitted content will continue to earn residual income under eHow's terms. Many writers are concerned with how long these articles will remain published and available as more sweeps will most definitely be made.

eHow Will Live On
eHow will live on through Demand Studios. The terms will change, but at least the how-to platform will continue. Demand Studios has stricter requirements, and new articles will be subject to editorial review before they are published. I'm okay with this; it kind of reminds of Suite 101s guidelines which I have recently started to get used to. New writers will have to apply and be accepted by Demand Studios. I was one of the lucky ones that were automatically accepted, but I haven't written anything new yet.

Concerns about eHow Residual Income
It hurts to see eHow go away as it was the first site that I started writing for in hopes of earning residual income. It has been a cornerstone of The Residual Income Challenge, and I hope the residual income continues to come in on a monthly basis.

My biggest concern with eHow going away is the terms that new how-to articles will be governed by. I'm pretty sure residual income based articles written for Demand Studios only pay residual income for 5 years. Does anyone know if this will be the case? I really hope not, the goal of my challenge is to create residual income that lasts.

I'm sure this will all become clearer as the days and weeks unfold. Hopefully, this is a great change for all of the old eHow writers that have been so passionate about this site. I wonder how WriterGig and others with eHow ebooks feel about this and what they plan to do. For now, I will continue to focus my efforts on Suite101 and just wait for the dust to settle.

The Moral of the eHow Story
I have had an idea for a content site for awhile that is similar to the eHow model. Now would be a perfect time to launch this site. The site would also allow users to gain residual income in a different manner than all other publishing sites, and it would thrive on user generated content. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to iron out all of the details, and I am clueless on whom to hire to build a website of this scale. If anyone has any suggestions, I would to love to hear them. The moral of this whole eHow problem is something I have been stressing for a long time, it is extremely important for writers to diversify their residual income online.

March 2010 Earnings:

Earnings are starting to pick up, and March was my highest earning month this year. I managed to put in 26.5 hours of writing this month. I am very proud of that amount of work as it is in line with my 2010 goals. I feel like a lot of this work has yet to pay off, especially with the time I have put into Suite 101 so far. I needed to average $15.11 per day in residual income to stay on pace with the challenge, but I only averaged $1.48 per day.

New Residual Income Opportunities Added this Month:
I reapplied to Suite101 this month, and was approved. I decided to give it another shot due to the great success I am seeing other writers have. Suite101 definitely demands higher quality articles, but I think the extra effort will be worth my time. I've only written 3 articles so far, and they have each taken about 2.5 hours to write. I know that's a long time, but I'm trying for quality and these articles have been between 600-800 words long. I almost had 100 views by the end of March, but still no earnings.

Residual Income Results:
I don't have any big surprises this month. Most of my residual income sites performed as expected which is fine with me. I have a decent size list of earnings this month, and I hope to have 20-30 residual income producing sites by the end of 2010.

Here is a Breakdown of my March 2010 Earnings:

The Examiner: $29.62 (107 Articles)
eHow: $14.51 (51 Articles)
Residual Income Challenge Blog: $1.29
Infobarrel: $0.32
FireHow: $0.25 (8 Articles)
Associated Content: $0.09 (1 Article)

Total: $46.08

My Goals for April:

I have a lot of goals for the month of April. I need to finish my last article on Infobarrel to complete a 10 part series. I should have had that done already, but it will definitely get finished this month. I also think Suite 101 is going to drive my monthly earnings to a new level, so I need to write about 5 new articles this month. I have come to the conclusion that I need to write some articles that use high paying keywords. I have already found some high paying keywords, and have some potential article titles, now I just need to do the research. I think this strategy will significantly boost my eHow and Suite 101 earnings in the future.

How Suite it is:
After seeing the recent success that Melanie from How Not to Work From Home was having at Suite 101, I decided to try applying for a second time. When I first applied in July of 2009 my application was denied. I think I used 2 eHow articles which are probably not the best types of articles to use. This time around I was armed with a better library of content and my application was approved!

Meeting the Standards of Suite 101:
For my second application, I dug through my content and chose two articles that better suit Suite 101’s style of writing. I chose my associated content article on The Return of High Gas Prices, and an Examiner article titled What is Technical Analysis. Needless to say, my application was approved within a few hours and I am ready to start writing.

Balancing Suite 101 Vs. Associated Content:
Suite 101 demands higher quality articles that are evergreen in nature. It will be harder to create content, but I am sure I will catch on to the writing style. When I come up with a topic to write about, I will have to evaluate if I should place it on Suite 101 or Associated Content. My plan at this point is to send evergreen content to Suite 101, and then articles that are a little more time sensitive to Associated Content.

Suite 101 Might be the Best Residual Income Site:
I am under the impression that Suite 101 is the best residual income site for writers. Most writer seem to earn $.50-$2.00 per article per month. That blows away the other sites that I am writing for right now. I am excited to add Suite 101 to my list of residual income sites. I think it will provide the income boost that I am looking for to meet my challenge. I’m curious to know, how much do you earn per article per month at Suite 101?