The Residual Writing Income Journey: Reflecting on Two Years

Two Years of Passive Income Writing Online

I've been trying to think of something to write my next freelance writing blog post about, and while hemming and hawing over which direction I should go next or what idea on a list of blog post ideas, it completely escaped me that the end of June marked my second year of writing for passive income. My writing for residual income started back in June of 2008, with a very inauspicious beginning as I wrote six blogger blog posts, put on some AdSense, and started link building. I looked around at websites like Squidoo, HubPages, and eHow, and started focusing on the pay per view aspect of Associated Content. But I have to be honest, it didn't start out strong at all!

The main reason was I had a great full time job in Austin, Texas, and at the time I made the most money I ever made, was in a great living situation, and really dug the town. I was spending most of my free time starting to think about where I really wanted to go in the future, if maybe in Austin I finally found a place to settle down (my apartment in Austin was the first address I had stayed at more than 12 months since I was 17 - a total of 10 years at the time), and working hard core on my fiction and some creative projects.

Because of all these things, my efforts towards passive income probably amounted to about two Squidoo lenses, a single HubPage, one how-to article, and I made 33 cents on AdSense. That's it. As the months went by I tried to put in 15 hours a week on passive income of some kind because even though it wasn't necessary, the thought of earning extra travel money seemed nice. The thought of trying to earn full time passive income didn't even occur to me at the time. Looking back, it was very safe to say I was too comfortable, and in retrospect (and granted, that's a big one since my job was eliminated mid November of that year) I wish the full potential of what passive income could be had hit me back then.

Thankfully, at least I ordered an audio book that had a huge impact on my life. Ironically I ordered the audio by accident, but I'm glad I did because the audio version of Timothy Ferriss's The 4 Hour Work Week became my constant background noise around September, and my efforts towards passive income grew.

That 33 cent month in June with AdSense became $40.77 by the month I was laid off, and I was already making that much on eHow, as well. Obviously a lot has changed in two years. I try to spend at least a quarter of my time on passive income work. After two hard years of work, and even seeing a six month span where freelance writers couldn't find work (and I had never even heard of a market like that) or struggled to get by, I know that working on articles, websites, and blogs that keep working for me even when I log off is the way to go and the way towards financial security. If it wasn't for the ridiculous amount of student loans I have to pay off (fat lot of good college did me), I would spend 75% of my time on passive income. Yes, it's that important.

So where am I after two years? I'm a heck of a lot closer to a full time income than 33 cents a month, that's for sure. There have been very few times over the last two years when I've been able to give the attention to passive income that I wanted, and because of a ton of bills to educational loans, medical bills, and credit cards (look at #2 to explain how this happened) the actual freelance writing has to come first. I'm not making enough in passive income yet to be to the point where I can work on what I want, but here are some numbers from June that have me very optimistic that things will work out:

Some passive income from June:
eBay: $29.62
Amazon: $40.75
AdSense: $237.52
eHow: $162.16
Squidoo: $75.14
ejunkie: $25.00
Constant-Content (referrels): $83.60
Associated Content (PPV): $36.92

This all adds up to $690.71, which is still a long way from full time, but living in the Midwest that's an awful lot of money for no work. And by no work, I mean that's a lot of money to get paid for not having to do any new work, because writing for passive income is very labor intensive. There are also some other affiliate programs building towards pay out that aren't included on that list.

What's most encouraging to me is that this year I've seen a huge jump in passive income, and I'm fairly easily seeing 10% growth a month right now. I also know that I've done more work in May, June, and July then in the past 12 months before that combined. This means that in 6 months when all this work starts paying off, things are really going to start getting pretty freaking cool. In fact, with the way the passive income is growing, it's going to free up more of my time from full time freelancing to do more residual income work, which will make more money, which will free me up even more, and the writing momentum and compounding continues!

This month has been an absolute bear as far as work goes, and the end of summer isn't going to be getting any better for me. I guess I want to finish this freelance writing blog post about passive writing income online with just some tips I'd give to anyone else who is looking at the same options, or just beginning to realize what earning 2, 3, 5, or even $10,000 a month in passive income would mean as far as security and a complete lifestyle change.

• Be ready for the long haul. Building passive income is very labor intensive, and you often hear that you don't see the full impact of your work until 6 months after it's done.
• Be persistent. Writing 300 words every single day and making it a habit is much better than a stop and go, stop and go approach.
• Always make AdSense a major part of your passive income plans (and make sure you understand all of their terms and conditions).
• Diversify, but not so much that you end up feeling slogged down.
• When in doubt, put most of your effort into making your strengths even stronger, not into fixing weaknesses.
• Don't underestimate what being an Amazon affiliate can mean in December.
• If you feel lost, spend six months making one HubPage a day, then spend the next six building links to all of them.
• Always keep learning.
• Find the goal that will keep you running through obstacles during all the hard times.
• Expect that most people won't understand what you're doing.
• Celebrate the small victories. This is critical to making it full time.

So that's some degree of reflection on where I've been and where I'm going. The coolest thing about passive income is that once you finally get stuff moving, it tends to avalanche in your favor after a certain point. So I'm going to post this, get back to work, and take a little bit of time to enjoy the ride. Keep at it, and don't give up! It's worth the work.

Freelance Writing: Why Is Full Time Residual Online Income so Hard?

Freelance Writing & Online Passive Income

Why Online Passive Income is Too Hard for Most Writers and Why They're More Likely to Become Mutant Super Villains Than Online Gurus

Freelance writers and would be freelance writers, yes, you read that title right. Let's be frank here: most writers are incredibly stubborn whether they have accomplished something or not. Or most would-be writers are stubborn. The ones who choose to learn, adapt, and change thrive. The others who don't call us hacks or liars when we say you can make a living writing online for money. But even beyond this, there is a difference between writers who always work extremely hard and never make much beyond the $20-30,000 a year range while working 70 hour weeks and wonder why things never get easier, and then there are the online freelance writers who learn to make really good passive income and have the freedom of time, place, and income that most freelance writers dream of, but never achieve.

So what's the difference? It rarely is the best writers who accomplish the dream freelance writing life style they envision, and many times it's not even the smartest. Why is making passive online income so damn hard?

Well I'm going to show you, using numbers of mine back when I had absolutely no clue whatsoever what I was doing and hadn't found any number of great blogs or mentors to learn from. A lot of these numbers will look familiar to struggling freelance writers, and underscores why you are more likely to work yourself to the point of mutation (and if you're going to I suggest going for telekinesis - the Fire Starter thing is so 1980's) than you are to make a full time living off of passive income if you're a stubborn writer, or one who simply doesn't understand how residual income works.

We'll call the old writer and his numbers "True Noob." This isn't meant to be mean, it was just a pretty accurate description. He's going to try to build passive income using AdSense (mostly through Hubpages & Xomba), Constant-Content usage rights articles, Associated Content's PPV, and Squidoo. Okay, the one thing the writer did right was thinking about multiple income streams. That way if one site folded down the line, all the hard work wouldn't disappear with it.

So at the time the writer figures out what each article, hub, or lens is making on average per day based on the passive income already coming in. This writer knows pretty much nothing about article marketing, back links, and hasn't found Justin's SEO blog or Court's Internet Marketing blog or Grizz's Make Money Online blog. So True Noob is swinging and missing, but credit where credit is due, he's persistent and does the numbers.

The numbers he comes up with: out of 200 Associated Content articles, he makes 1/2 cent per day per article in passive income. Constant Content with 100 usage rights articles makes about $1 per day with a little over 100 articles, Squidoo lenses make about 2.4 cents per day per lens, hubs make about 2.3 cents per day per hub, and Xomba articles make about a penny a day on average & ehow does the same, although he is just getting started there.

These are all mathematical averages, and depressingly low numbers. And to freelance writers who don't know anything about marketing their work or SEO, this probably sounds closer as opposed to the much higher numbers that writer who know what they're doing are reporting.

So based on how many articles (or hubs or lenses) True Noob can write in one 12 hour work day, he figures out how long it would take him to get to $100 a day passive income, assuming the numbers he had so far were accurate reflections. He then tried to figure out how long it would take working 12 hours a day, EACH and EVERY day, all 365 days a year.

For Associated Content, this was 4 years, 207 days. That's if he worked each and every day 12 hours a day, one article an hour.

For Constant Content, this was 5 years, 175 days.

For Squidoo, this was 3 years, 294 days.

For Hubs, this was 3 years, 348 days.

For Xomba, this was 2 years, 103 days.

If you're trying to translate that into normal 40 hour work weeks, take the numbers given and multiply them by 2.2, more or less. And then you're probably still hitting low.

These are unrealistic numbers for a life time. If you want the article break down for that, it's 20,000 articles for Associated Content, 8,000 articles for Constant Content, 4,167 Squidoo articles, about the same in hubs, and 10,000 articles on Xomba.

Not good and not a chance. If True Noob seriously tries this, he's more likely to develop multiple tumors that press into usually dormant areas of the brain, creating the ability to read minds, move objects, or possibly start fires with no more than an angry thought. At this point, becoming a super villain and fighting for world domination is more likely than ever making $100 a day in passive income.

But some of you are asking, "Wouldn't you have to be a total idiot to be able to write 10,000 articles and not make solid passive income." Most definitely. Or at least ignorant.

Some of these numbers are off. There are many problems with this idea. With that much sheer writing, even by accident True Noob is going to hit some "home run" articles that hit well above average and earn well above the average. Second, there are other options like ehow that this writer didn't even know about.

But this idea of just making it by sheer effort is idiotic, and these numbers prove it. So what's the difference? Knowing just a little bit about marketing, SEO, and learning about the real ways to make money with AdSense will boost earnings way up dramatically. Instead of just throwing up articles on any and everything, use keyword research and SEO to earn a LOT more per article, hub, lens, or whatever else. Also keep in mind, that True Noob figures out keyword research, and suddenly less time is wasted with useless articles that will never make serious (or any) passive income, while every article after that will make a lot more.

That's part of writing online. If you are an online freelance writer who wants to be able to make a full time living on passive income (a la "The 4 Hour Work Week"), then you MUST learn SEO, keyword research, and how to make money with AdSense.

Could someone make a full time living on passive writing income with Squidoo, Hubpages, ehow, Xomba, Associated Content, and the other sites? Sure, but it's a lot harder and knowing SEO and keyword research is still critical. There's no way around that.

Anyone who is trying the results by volume approach like the old True Noob, here's one last bit of evidence. When I really had no idea what I was doing, 140 articles on Associated Content made me about $13 in passive income a month. When I began to learn about SEO and keywords, I took one single article on AC and got it 4 back links. The result? That one article makes me $10 a month in passive income each and every month. Now if every article you wrote made $10 a month or more in passive income, 300 articles or less would make you over $36,000 a year in passive income. That's much better than 10,000 or 20,000 articles. One good article a day that earns that much, and the back links, can get you where you want to be.

Is it "just that easy" to get that level of articles? No, it's not. You have to do the research, write the article, collect the back links, and then sometimes you have to wait for the articles to age and gain authority. But it is far more plausible.

Learn about AdSense, and you can do even better. Have multiple income streams, and learn SEO and keyword research, and you will definitely be on your way to the freelance writing dream. Either that or try it the old way, sprout some horns, grow some awesome telekinetic powers and wreak havoc. But either way, it's easier to just learn SEO and keyword research. Even a basic knowledge of these skills can be a godsend for a prolific writer.