Week One: No Clue What I'm Doing

Articles Written: 44
Total Views: 688
Total Earnings: $1.54
Biggest Day: $0.83

This week was extremely eperimental. My changed by the minute. So much in fact, that I don't really know who to track which strategies were successful and which were not. I would write a few articles, then research a little more (on how to write money-making articles), then write, then research again...

The "category" I have revisited the most is "how to draw _______." I have tried to think of simple things that wouldn't be difficult to explain or demonstrate in the eHow format. I also tried to target kids with this series (how to draw spiderman, pikachu, etc) figuring that kids are probably a little more click-happy with the mouse, and hoping that might translate to a little more revenue.

Here are some of the tips I have been able to find so far:

1) Don't write lame articles. The eHow community and managers will shut you down if you are violating the terms of use policies, and you simply will not earn money if you are writing articles with no substance. I intended to write quality articles from day 1 but I still have felt like I need to go back and polish a few. The bar is much higher than I initially though - if I want to actually earn money.

2) Become part of the eHow community. Accept friendship requests, comment on and rate others' articles, and participate actively in the forums. In the real world, this would be called "networking" and when you look at it like that, it makes perfect sense. The other eHow authors are not your enemy, they are your allies and your greatest single resource. They're really friendly too.

3) Promote your articles. Add them to websites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. This one was a bit of a let down to me, because I wanted to just write the articles and be done with it, and I don't know how to do it very well yet.

4) Write articles that are specific rather than general. The general topics are all covered. Period. Nothing left. You will quickly run out of material, and people know most of the "general" information you would write about anyway.

5) Keywords: Find keywords using google's keyword tool. This will give you the search data for any keyword or key phrase you enter. Use the same keyword in the title of your article, the intro, as many of the steps as possible, and in the keywords field that you fill out at the end of publishing wizard.

6) Balance quality with quantity. I found loads of advice suggesting quantity and suggesting quality. Time will tell, but to me it doesn't make much sense to spend any time writing an article that won't generate any income.