write4money

I started this writing assignment some time in November. The deadline was mid-January this year. In the beginning, I was quite excited about it all and submitted one section every week or so. Then I went on a short trip, and all my schedule was haywire.

I began to procrastinate writing it. When the new year began, it made me realise that I only have two weeks left before the deadline. I tried very hard to find time to write. In November and December, my husband was around and helped looked after my daughter. In January, he went back to work and left me typing away only when my daughter is napping or sleeping at night. I was also exhausted from her change of sleeping pattern. She was sleeping later and later, and I had to work on adjusting her routine. Subsequently, I cut her nap time during the day and she slept all night from 9pm to 7am. Although I had a shorter work time during the day, I still had some energy to work till about 11pm at night.

One week after the deadline, I have finally completed the assignment. My friend who got me the contract said not to worry about the deadline, and gave me till the end of the month to complete everything. But I have finished it all now. It felt great sending off the final piece.

Now I have more time for other things I like to do - mylotting, writing reviews, writing articles and searching for ways to make more money online.

I have not blogged for a couple of days now. It’s primarily because I was trying very hard to complete the assignment. The deadline has come and gone, I have not completed it. I’m very angry with myself for procrastinating and it’s probably going to affect my freelance writing career.

I have made quite good progress today though. There were six sections of the assignment that I need to complete, and as of today, I only have one section left. I did not write them in sequence though. I was stuck on the fourth one for a long time, and decided that I should proceed to finish off sections 5 and 6 first, before coming back to it.

I was stuck at section 4 because I was trying to complete what someone left off. In an attempt not to offend the first writer, I had to make sure that most of his writings are not cut out. It would have been better if I had been given the free reign to write whatever I wanted. But since he has already done some research on it, I did not want them to go to waste. It’s difficult trying to fit everything in.

Anyway, I’m glad that this is the final section I need to complete, as I’ve got so many other things I need to do that I have put aside, because of this project. One of the things that I want to do would be to resume blogging again on a regular basis. The second thing would be to start writing on the book I had wanted to publish together with a group of writers. Last of all, I want to resume writing articles, something I really enjoyed doing last year. Soon, very soon…

In December, I concentrated on just two wriitng sites, Triond and myLot. I thought that my earnings would touch $15 at Triond, but it fell short by a few cents. My earnings at Triond is only $14.94. In December, I did not write many articles, but I focused on promoting the articles in various social bookmarking and networking sites. My earnings rose a little from $12.98 in November.

At myLot, I did not achieve minimum payout for November, thus my earnings were carried forward to December. On average, I was earning $5 per month and finally reached payout plus a little more. My earnings at myLot amounted to $11.58. There seems to be very little interesting discussions towards the end of the year. There were a lot of Christmas and new year resolution discussions which I was not interested to respond to. I hope the new year brings in better quality discussions at myLot.

Thus, my earnings for December came up to $26.52. I must qualify some things. I have a couple of things which has not achieved payout just yet, like my earnings in Review Stream, Comparedby.Us and Today.com. I look forward to getting bigger paychecks from writing in January.

I started making money online since the beginning of 2008. I discovered legitimate sites that pay gradually. I first discovered Triond, and maybe that is why I have stuck to it for a long time. Then I discovered some other sites in teh middle of the year. I tried a couple of writing sites, but did not like many, not because they were not paying, but because some had rather complicated systems that discouraged me quickly.

Anyway, I have tallied my earnings from various writing sites and it looked rather minuscule. It came up to $260 for the entire year. It did not sound quite good. I want to at least double or triple that amount this year. For a start, I’m going to be paid a small sum of money from writing a lesson plan for General Paper course for a company. It is not an online oppportunity, but it also deals with writing. This will definitely boost this year’s earning from writing. More details about this later.

On average my earnings came up to about $20 per month. It managed to pay for my cell phone bills. Well, that’s a start. I am hoping that this year, my earnings will be able to cover my other bills at least. Thi smay be a big jump but I’m staying positive. I’m sure that there is a way to achieve it.

If you are looking for legitimate writing jobs on a freelance basis, you may want to check out Elance. It is a marketplace where freelance providers meet with buyers (job suppliers). These buyers put up their job proposal on the website and have the freelance service providers bid for the job. If you have any kind of service that can be done online such as writing, illustrating, programming, accounting and such, you can try to find a job here. Some buyers require a freelancer to complete the job on a regular basis, while others require a one-off assignment.

I have not tried bidding for a job, but I have personally tried to get someone to perform a writing task for me. There were many writers who came forth to offer their services. Some are individuals while other work in a team. There are advantages and disadvantages of both groups of service providers. Anyway, what I liked about Elance is that they have a secure payment system, which makes it impossible for buyers to run away with the completed assignment without paying the freelancers. It is also impossible for freelancers to run away with the money without completing the agreed assignment. Here’s how they ensure there is no fraud cases.

Once the buyer has agreed to accept a freelancer for a job, they have to remit money to the Escrow account in Elance where it is safe and secure. Once the money has been remitted, the freelancer will then begin with the job and complete them within the designated time agreed. Once the freelancer has completed the job and the buyer is satisfied with it, the money will be transferred from the Escrow account to the freelancer’s account. If there is any dispute, Elance may step in to mediate the situation.

I think that if you have the time to spare to follow through a writing job, this is a great way to venture into freelance writing. It would definitely expand your online earning opportunities. As for me, I don’t think I will have that much time at this moment to concentrate on writing on demand like this, but it is a consideration in the future, especially when I’m in desperate need for more income.

I don’t have a writing schedule and maybe that is one of the reasons why I have not been very consistent with my writing. Recently a discussion at my favorite forum, myLot, jolted me into the importance of having a writing schedule.

I would define a writing schedule as a designated time for writing on a regular basis. I have decided to create one for myself. I believe that I’m most productive in the morning. As such, I will wake up early in the morning in order to do some writing. Another important time in the day would be when my daughter takes her afternoon nap. It used to be that she naps for three hours, but now it’s getting shorter. So I need to split the time between household chores and writing and a little rest for myself. At night after she has gone to bed, I would have to check my energy level. If I’m up to it, I can do a little writing before I go to bed.

But I think I need to further break down the time in the day for different types of writing. I generally have blog posts, my writing assignment, articles and reviews, and mylotting. I have five writing types and only 2-3 different opportunities to write in a day. I think I shall spend my mornings doing my writing assignment until it is completed by the middle of this month. Afternoons should be spent writing articles or reviews, evenings should be spent on writing blog posts.

In this case, I’m going to have no time to forum at myLot. What am I going to do? I just have to cut down the time I spend on mylot. It is not the best way to earn money anyway, since it does take a long time to reach payout. If I can keep to my writing schedule, I should see an increase in my online earnings. Do you have a writing schedule?

That is the term I use to describe myself when I feel very lazy and not up to any writing task. There are some things you can do to encourage yourself to get rid of writer’s procrastination.

1) Warning! Low Earnings Ahead!
Well, you can tell yourself that if you continue to be in this lazy, procrastination mode, you will not be earning as much as you would like that month or the folowing month when the earnings are due. What I will do is to check my earnings in my writing sites to scare myself that I’d probably not reach any targets that month, if I don’t get off my butt and start writing. It does work sometimes.

2) Warning! Deadline Ahead!
If you are writing on a freelance basis online, you may want to scare yourself by marking with bright, bold, red letters the deadline for the assignment you are currently doing. At this moment, I have one deadline looming ahead and I’m heading nowhere with it. So, I’m telling myself that I must complete it within a certain number of days. The best is to set yourself shorter deadlines. I hate long deadlines. I take longer to complete them.

3) Do what you have to do!
There are times when I tell myself that I will write once I have completed scrubbing the floor of this toilet, or once I have cleared my desk of clutter. I used to have such thoughts when I was in school when I was procrastinating about studying for major exams. I told myself that I will start studying when I finish tidying up my room. But it worked! Once I cleaned my room and rearranged my notes neatly, I was doing better at keeping to my study schedule. Same goes for my writing! Sometimes you just need to do what you have to do to overcome this procrastination.

Just to remind myself about writer’s procrastination: I’m now off to complete my freelance writing assignment since it’s deadline is very close or I will not get paid by them!

Many people who own blogs will tell you that it is possible to monetize them with Google Adsense. I have registered for an account and added some ads to my blog. However, I do find that the earnings are rather slow at this moment. It’s probably because I don’t get too much traffic to my blog.

Besides my blog, I have also joined writing sites such as Hubpages. When you publish with them, they will publish your article on a page which has Adsense ads. When people click on them, you get a percentage of the ad revenue. So, I have a couple of sites where I’m generating Adsense revenue.

But up till now, I have to be frank, I have not been paid by them. And the $100 minimum payout does seem like a long way to go. I’m not even close to the quarter mark. There has also been situations whereby people click on your ads on purpose, causing Google to think that you are clicking on your own ads or getting someone to click on your ads. It is easy for others to manipulate the system and you will not get paid because Google would have suspended your account.

I have a close friend who experienced that too. Her friends were helping her to click on the ads, which resulted in her account being suspended and all earnings wiped out. She lost more than $50 there. So, in a way, I don’t really mind that my earnings are a little slow. At least Google would not suspect that I’m launching a click fraud. Slow and steady wins the Adsense race!

Facebook is a social networking site. Many people use it to find friends, look for long-lost friends, colleagues and even relatives. Yup! I use it to do this mainly. Initially I was quite fascinated with the different kinds of applications, games and groups that you can add to your profile.  They were fun and addictive. I wasted a lot of time on them.

But once I realized that they were not making me productive at all, I stopped completely. I deleted all the applications that were useless to me and did not help me add earnings to my pocket. I deleted them all. I left my writing site application, Triond, and Twitter to help promote my articles.

Whenever I publish new content on Triond, I will log in to Facebook to share it with my friends in Facebook and put it up on my profile page, so that my friends will know about them when they read the newfeed about me. You can add URL in the same way. So even if there is no application with your writing site, you can still do this with your article URL.

I also broadcast my blog in Facebook. I have added a newsfeed for my blog in Facebook, so that my friends can read them as well. Once updated, it will automatically capture new content on my blog. It’s a great way to get an audience for your blog too. So make use of Facebook, not just to play Sudoku or throw sheep at your friends, use it to promote your articles instead.