September 2010 – Virginia Allain

Lots of my old writing buddies from eHow are trying out the site List My Five. Many of them felt rather lost after eHow forced them over to Demand Studios to publish their how-to articles. They didn’t like the restrictions on topics and the editorial meddling.

I’d encouraged them to try Squidoo which was working out great for me. I don’t know if they were daunted by learning the module system on Squidoo or what, but few seem willing to try it. That’s why I started my Squidoo lens about my earnings on Squidoo so they could see how it pays off.

I was curious about all the buzz being generated about List My Five, so I took a look at some of their articles they were posting there. What the heck, I thought, I’ll try a few. After posting a couple of articles, I could see what was exciting them. You can choose any topic you want, so my first one was The Top Five Reasons to Love Squidoo and my second one was The Top Five Ways to Get Rid of Chipmunks Without Killing Them. Within a few days, I’d made 3 cents on the chipmunk article. A few pennies doesn’t sound like anything to get excited about, except the eHow crowd remembers how they started with pennies on there.

As I built up a library of over 400 articles on eHow, it went from pennies, to dollars, and now I earn residuals of over $300 monthly. Think of it like a savings account. You bank your articles, then wait for the interest to accrue. Maybe that’s a bad example with interest rates being so low. The really great part is that they articles keep paying back over months and years, so eventually the pay is quite good. In the short-term it looks petty, so you need to remember to keep the long-term in mind.

I’m compiling comments from fellow eHow and Squidoo writers plus other information about the site on List My Five: A Fun Website Where Writers Earn Residuals.

My Two Cents worth by gravityx9

Wow, this month was my best ever for earning online. Both eHow and Squidoo have their payday around the 15th of the month. For Squidoo, I made $138 which was a new high for me, plus I was paid $99 for my reward in the Summer Sunshine Contest on Squidoo. The lens that won that for me was Ramona and Beezus: from a Book to a Movie. It was a great contest and the designated charity on the lens (Room to Read) also received $99. Add my $99 to the $138 payday and my Squidoo earnings came to $237 for the month.

On eHow, I haven’t published anything since the site switched to Demand Studios for editing (over 6 months ago). The articles I wrote for that site over a two year timespan continue to earn residuals for me. The September payout was $376.49. The past four months have been fairly stagnant for my earnings on the site. To give it a boost, I should make an effort to build some backlinks for the articles. I’m not complaining, as it is quite nice to receive over $300 a month for past work.

Anyway, the total online earnings from Squidoo and eHow make a grand total of $613.49. It was my best month of online earning so far. That doesn’t even include the couple of dollars that I made from Zazzle products and Zazzle referrals.

If you’d like to see the progression of earning on Squidoo from a few dollars a month up to the current month, bookmark my lens Squidoo Payday – My Earnings Record. Check that lens around the 15th of each month to see how I’m doing. If you are a Squidoo lensmaster, there’s a duel on the lens where you can add your own earnings. It’s interesting to see how well some lensmasters are doing on the site.