The Rules:

1. On your blog, write a fable (a short story with a morality message) that is appropriate for your blog’s audience.

2. The story must be written by you.
3. The story must be no more than 300 words.
4. To enter, leave a comment on this post with a link to your entry.
5. You may link to this site (i.e. to explain why the heck your very serious finance blog now has a story about animals on it), but a link is not required.
6. Everyone is eligible whether you’re related to me or have worked for me or not!

Entry deadline:

Tuesday night, November 25th at 11:59 pm (your time).

The winner will be announced (and paid) by Friday night, November 28th.

The Prize:

One winner will receive $250 USD.

Your choice of payment via Paypal or Amazon gift certificate (Christmas shopping money, woohoo!).

Everyone who enters will receive a link to their fable.

Who’s the Judge?

Just me. I’m not too picky about whether a story fits the exact definition of a fable, but I want to see a worthwhile message.

(If this works well, I’ll see about finding a panel of judges for future contests.)

Who’s Sponsoring This Shindig and Why?

That’s me too!

I’ve seen tons of contests around the blogosphere, and they usually want me to sign up for feeds, leave a bajillion comments on the blog, or spam my friends with links to said blog. But, but, but… I want to write!

This is my chance to run the kind of contest I’d like to enter.

This is a contest is for the writers out there… Fable on!

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

$250 Writing/Blogging Contest — Write a Fable for Your Blog and Win!

I’ve since diversified my income streams a bit and earn money from other advertising programs and independent link sales as well, but Adsense continues to be a cash cow for me. Some people might begrudge Google the cut they take, but since I’m an introvert who hates anything remotely customer service related, I don’t mind at all.

For those who don’t know already, I edged up into the six figures bracket with Adsense income this year. This was accomplished by, as always, working an hour or two a day on my sites. I don’t spend any money on Adwords or buying traffic, so just about all that income is profit (I spend less than $1,000 a year on hosting and domain name registrations).

That said, I’m not a “guru” by any means, and I don’t think you have to be either. I don’t spend a lot of time studying the system or trying to game the search engine results, and if you’ve seen some of my sites, you know they’re pretty simple and not anything spectacular. The biggest thing I have going for me is that I enjoy creating content and I’ve been doing it for four years. As I’ve mentioned before, the “sticking with it” factor is huge.

I’m pretty open to talking about my strategies for making money with Adsense, and that of course leads people to ask questions. I got a slew of them from Glenn at Cool Health Secrets, and I figured it’d make sense to post the answers here instead of just emailing them. If one person asks, there are usually lots of others who are wondering!

So, here we go…

In your experience, does a site have to be fancy looking to get good traffic?

Fancy, no. In fact, a busy site with a lot of widgets and design elements can be detrimental to your Adsense earnings. The more things there are competing for people’s attention, the less likely they’ll notice your ads and click them.

I generally find blogs less lucrative than straight article pages, and I think a lot of that is that you’ve usually got more extensive menus and busier headers and sidebars with blogs. The more options (to click or look at) you give people, the less likely they are to take the action you desire.

I’m a big fan of simple sites. Google is a great example of a site that is simple but useful and efficient. Their search page loads quickly, and there’s nothing confusing about it. Even if it was your first time there, you’d know exactly what you were supposed to do.

I do, however, try to avoid building sites that are straight out ugly or designed to trick users into clicking on ads. There’s a lot of truth to the ugly-sites-get-higher-click-through-ratios saying, but at the same time, people don’t usually link to ugly sites. If you’ve got some good and unique content, you have a shot of attracting free links, but if someone visits your site and rolls their eyes because it’s all in-your-face ads, they’ll probably avoid throwing you that free link.

Do you do any extensive keyword research?

I do some, but I’m probably not as extensive as some folks. I generally use it to select a niche and for writing articles, but don’t worry about it for blog posts. I’ll use the keywords I’ve selected in the headers and body of the article, though not to the extent that non-SEO-studying folks would notice.

Before I pick a new niche, I’ll look up related keywords and see how many people are searching for those terms each month. I’ll also see how much Adwords advertisers are paying for their high bids in that sector. If not many people are researching the topic and/or advertisers are bidding much, then I’ll usually pass on that niche.

I’ve always found the free keyword tools helpful enough for my purposes, and these days, I use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool more than anything else.

How did you select your niches? Personal interest or as there was money there?

Yes.

If there’s something I think I’d be interested in writing about, I’ll spend a bit of time looking up keywords and seeing how much advertisers are paying in that niche. If Adwords users are bidding more than a couple of dollars for clicks, then that’s usually good enough for me.

Next I’ll check out the competition. If there are already comprehensive, well-ranked information-based sites out there, I’ll typically pass unless I can come at things from a unique angle and I’m really interested in the topic. (Competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean you’ll have to work hard to get to the top.)

If, on the other hand, the top ten results in Google are all for e-commerce sites, then I know there’s probably a need for a solid non-biased information site in the niche.

I have confidence in my writing ability. I have a degree in English and have a few sites and have even published a few articles in magazines although I’m not a seasoned pro there. Any tips here, though?

Well, in most cases, this is your “day job” and not an art form. I spend a lot of time varying sentence structure, choosing action verbs, creating compelling action, and editing for concision… when I’m working on my fiction.

For the non-fiction I write for the web, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I put quantity over quality, but I’ve generally do the research, whip out articles, proofread them, and put them up, in a fairly short time. They’re straightforward and informative, but probably not scintillating.

Fortunately, if you are a writer at heart, you can probably construct articles hastily that are a lot better than 95% of what is out there. Most people would rather buy “PLR” articles, blatantly copy and “spin” other people’s articles, or hire someone to write for a penny a word or less. In other words, there’s a lot of crap out there, so it’s possible to do well just by being a solid writer who communicates well through words.

I will admit that you probably have to work a little harder today to stand out. The success of Adsense has spawned millions of article-based sites that are “straightforward and informative, but probably not scintillating.”

So… what was the question again? *pauses to scroll up*

Ah, writing tips. Okay, here we go:

Write content that is informative, but it’ll help a lot if you can also be entertaining or remarkable in some way, because there is a lot of information out there. Ask yourself: how can I make this better or more interesting than what’s already up on the subject at Wikipedia?

Seth Godin’s Purple Cow is worth a read if you haven’t checked it out before.

Also, work on building not just a collection of articles but a community of people who will help promote your work for you. I was slow to jump on that bandwagon, and I wish I’d worked more at it earlier.

Any unique tips on getting links? How much time do you spend on that?

I’ve changed my link-building strategies over the years, as what works and what doesn’t (for getting search engine love) is always evolving.

I started out doing link exchanges and submitting to directories, but that won’t get you far any more. I have written a lot of articles (with links to my sites in the bios) for ezinearticles.com and other article databases and continue to do that today, though so many people do that now that I’ve really seen the returns go down.

I have also experimented a bit with buying links as a means of reinvesting my earnings, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, since Google frowns upon those who attempt to boost their site rankings this way.

These days, I’m doing some guest blog posts (writing articles for existing blogs in exchange for a link to my site), and if I were starting from scratch, that’s the method I’d put the most effort into. You get free, permanent, one-way links from established sites, and that is one link-building method that has always worked.

Of course, the best links are the ones you get for free through no extra effort of your own. These are the links that I’m always most pleased to get since it means someone found my site useful/informative/entertaining enough to write about without any added incentive to do so.

The main ways I’ve noticed for getting those types of links are:

1. Write the definitive guide for something–create a post or article that wows people with the information and/or insight.
2. Be the first to write about something cool.
3. Be provocative and write what others are afraid to (I’ve never used this strategy, but I’ve seen it work for others).

The Catch-22 is that you usually need to be on someone’s radar before anyone will notice how cool, informative, and insightful you are. It helps to leave comments on the blogs of people you really want to notice you. (And it helps if you want to be noticed by bloggers who don’t already get 100 comments per post–shoot for your “popularity peers” or those slightly above you.)

How many sites do you have?

Somewhere between 10 and 15 with the majority of my income coming from the top 2. One site is updated daily, three or four sites are updated weekly, and the rest I’ve lost interest in and update sporadically if at all.

I’m actually trying to get to the point where I let most of the others go, focus on one or two sites, and turn them into real businesses. With my main home and garden blog, I want to experiment with hiring other writers to expand the content at a more rapid pace. That’s something I’ll probably try in 2009.

Do you prefer your blog(s) over static sites?

For the ease of updating, my vote goes to blogs. That said, my static article sites always have higher CTRs than my blogs. As I mentioned above, I think that has a lot to do with the busier nature of blogs. My article sites don’t usually have pictures or anything except the content, the ad blocks, and a simple menu. My blogs certainly aren’t as busy as some, but when you’ve got comment boxes, blogrolls, etc. there are still more things to distract your readers.

What I’m doing with my biggest site now is going a bit hybrid. I’ve got the blog, which I update daily, and I’ve started adding an article library. The blog posts tend more toward this-is-cool-and-or-helpful-so-check-it-out while the articles are longer and more this-is-what-you-need-to-know-before-you-undertake-this-home-improvement in nature.

Do you plan on building more and more sites and/or blogs?

No.

Yes.

Maybe.

I don’t really believe in building tons of sites or blogs in the hopes that each one makes a few dollars a day (in fact, I wrote about why it’s better to focus on one or a few sites than many), but…

I’m an idea junky, and I have a hard time restraining myself. Just last week, I started up a new site, heh heh.

Okay, that’s it for this blog post. Anyone still reading, or did you fall asleep?

If you have more questions, you’ll always welcome to hit contact and send them in, and of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

What It Takes to Make $100,000 a Year from Adsense

The Difference Between a Dairy Farmer and a Cattle Rancher

A dairy farmer raises cows in order to milk them daily and profit from the milk.

A cattle rancher raises cows in order to slaughter them and profit from the meat.

For a dairy farmer, a cow must be fed and cared for and raised to adulthood. It then lives for many years, producing milk day in and day out. All you have to do to continue getting that milk is toss in some food for the cow and spend a few minutes each day milking it (you can even get machines to milk the cow for you!).

For a cattle rancher, a cow is fed and cared for and raised to adulthood… and then slaughtered. Short-term, the rancher makes good money on the sale of the meat, but for the next week, the next month, the next year, no more money comes in. The rancher must go through the whole process of raising a cow again in order to profit again.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be a dairy farmer. Not only is there less blood involved, but you get to keep your asset alive and well, generating a steady income for you day in and day out.

Dairy farmers and cattle ranchers in the world of writing

You can probably think of ways people act as cattle ranchers or dairy farmers with their writing.

For example, a freelance writer is like a cattle rancher. She spends time finding a client, she spends time researching the topic, and then she spends time writing the article. When everything is done, she sells the article and gets paid once for the work. Usually the rights are sold along with the words, meaning she can’t profit from that particular article again.

Another example of a cattle rancher is someone who flips websites. I’ve noticed that “site flipping” has become popular of late (or at least selling products on how to flip sites has become popular). This is where you put in the time to build up a basic blog or site, write some content for it, get some links to it, and then sell it once it becomes profitable.

If you sell your asset, you can usually make more money upfront than if you kept it (a cow’s worth of steaks doubtlessly brings you more than a pint of milk). This is where people lose their way. They chose immediate financial gain over long term cash flow. As the saying says, they don’t do the math.

If you sell the cow and make $1,000, that’s a good deal of money. But what if you kept the cow, and it produced $5 worth of milk a day, and it lived for 10 years? That would be $1,825 a year and $18,250 for the lifetime of the cow!

Your writing can do exactly the same thing.

But what if you invest your money?

This is the argument the cattle rancher type invariably makes. What if I sold the cow and invested the money? Couldn’t I get rich that way?

Here’s my response to that argument:

How many people do you actually know who are financially independent thanks to saving and investing money in stocks and bonds?

I’m willing to bet it’s not very darned many. The slick talkers on Wall Street (AKA the people who make money by taking a share of your investment money) like to talk about how much the market increases every year and how much you can make with compound interest, and yada, yada, yada.

At the end of the day, very few people make enough to be financially independent this way. And they’re never truly secure. Their financial fates rest on complex markets and companies they have no control over.

Just look at what the stock market has been doing lately. My parents are of the retirement age, but there’s no way they can do so right now. They invested all along as they were told, but their portfolios are way down right now. And chances are things are going to get worse for a lot of people before they get better.

Now that you’ve dredged your mind trying to think of people who have truly gotten rich in the stock market by investing and diversifying and following the Wall Street propaganda, think about the people you know who are financially independent and maybe even rich.

The people I know who fall into that category have all gotten there by buying and holding rental properties or starting their own businesses (or both). They’ve made their money–and created true financial independence–by owning and controlling assets that create positive cash flow every month.

Real estate is one way to create financial independence, and building a business is another. What’s the third?

Create something and get paid by royalties, licensing fees, advertisers, etc.

Traditionally, for writers, our only route was to write a book and hope it was picked up by a publisher and hope people bought it.

Today the internet makes it much easier for us to turn our words into profitable intellectual property that we own and control. Blogs, books, ebooks, subscription newsletters, membership sites, e-courses… we can do it all without querying agents or appealing to publishers.

It’s entirely possible to get started with nothing but your time and a few bucks for webhosting (heck, you can even start on a freebie blog site if you need to).

By investing in assets you own and control, you create security you don’t have when you’re investing in someone else’s company. Also, you don’t worry about retiring. As soon as you get to the point where your assets are earning you more money than you spend each month, you’re financially independent.

It took me about three years to get to that point, and that was with working at it part time.

Of course, everyone is going to have different results (some people who aren’t as lazy as I am have done it a lot faster, and others take longer to find a route that works for them), but if you work toward creating ongoing cash flow, instead of getting paid a dollar’s wages for a dollar’s work (or raising a cow and sending it to the slaughter house), you can become financially independent a lot sooner than if you set 10% aside and invested it in the stock market each month.

How to be a dairy farmer (create profitable intellectual property assets) with your writing

This whole site is about building assets that create cash flow, so it’s hard to condense all the good stuff into one post, but here’s my attempt at the brief version:

1. Keep the rights to your writing and publish in a model that lets you get paid again and again — If you sell your work to someone else, you get paid once. If you keep your work, you can publish it in a way that you get paid again and again. One way is to write books and/or digitally delivered information products that let you get paid every time someone buys them. The route I’ve taken is to build websites and blogs and charge merchants to advertise–no one buys anything from me, but it averages out to me making money every time someone reads one of my articles.
2. Build up a fan base — Anyone can write and publish a book, but if no one buys it, then you’re not going to make anything. If you use a mailing list to build up a fan base you can contact any time, then you’ve got a ready-and-waiting group of people who will buy your products or visit your blog posts whenever you publish something new. It’s a lot easier to sell products to people who are fans than to try to sell to strangers.
3. Start a blog — Right now, there’s just no better way to find those fans than by starting a blog. It’s a way to attract your target audience, establish your authority, and build something that will become an asset in and of itself. You can make money directly from your blog (i.e. by selling advertising or promoting affiliate programs), or you can use your blog as a way to attract people who will buy your books, information products, etc.
4. Write what people want to read — This is huge. A lot of writers flounder because they’re writing about what they want to write about. Figure out what people want to read about and write that. Writing for profit is just like starting a business. It can’t be about you; it has to be about your customers. That doesn’t mean you have to “sell out.” Chances are there are places your interests intersect with the wants and needs of a potential audience. Popular topics are making money, diet/health, and finding love. Of course you can find other topics to write about–just make sure there is an audience before you sink too much time into creating an asset.

Those are the basics, and if you know that, you know more than most.

Now, for all you freelance writers out there who have your hackles up over being accused of slaughtering cows, let me finish by saying, I know we all live in the real world here. We have bills that need to be paid today. We can’t spend five years without pay in order to build up our assets. And I’m not telling you to.

However, what you can do is keep the “day job” and in your spare time work on building assets that produce cash flow. This is where true financial independence comes from.

Good luck, everyone!

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

How to Create Financial Independence with Your Writing (AKA Be a Dairy Farmer, Not a Cattle Rancher)