Passive Income Idea: Article Writing for Infobarrel and my first FEATURED ARTICLE!

Article Writing: Featured Article!!!

After almost 6 weeks of article writing at Infobarrel, I finally got a Featured Article.  A featured article is one that is selected by the editorial team at Infobarrel to be featured on the main pages.  The feature was done on the weekend and so far I've noticed somewhat better traffic.  I would estimate that I have had about 50 or so page views over the course of the last few days.

Here is my featured article:  The Shocking Truth about the Ontario Debt

Niche Site Build Update:

This is a pretty amazing feat and I'm pretty proud of myself.  The rate that I've been writing has slowed down considerably in the past couple weeks as I've been busy with work, life and my other projects.  I did mention that I will reveal some of the other projects that I'm working on, but they are taking a lot more time than I think it would for it to be come to a stage where I think it's ready to launch.  Perhaps I'm spreading myself to thinly by trying to set up 4 different niche sites all at once.

How I've started the niche sites (something I'm still very green with) is through the use of keyword research.  Keyword research is so important.  What I've come to use is something that's a tight and powerful tool to screen out the great keywords from the mediocre ones.

How I used a Keyword Research tool to drive Organic Search Traffic

What I use is an easy to use keyword research software called: Market Samurai.  You might have heard of it and I encourage any of you out there who are article writers, and who are those just starting out to make their own niche website for any passive income ideas to start with using this tool.  It costs money, a one time fee for about 150 bucks, but it's well worth it as I'm getting traffic to my sites even though I haven't done much promotion for them.

If you're interested, here is an affiliate link to the website for you to download a free trial copy.  Note, it is my affiliate link.  Market Samurai.

I promise I'll devote more time in my next post to talk more about my niche sites and how I've used Market Samurai to achieve my goals of making an online passive income stream.

Week 4: One More Article and Google Analytics

Article Writing

I wrote one more article this week titled, How to Predict the Future.  One thing about this article was pretty awesome.  I'm not sure where I shared it that got a lot of traffic in the first 5 minutes of sharing it, but within a few hours, I had over 100 views on that article!!! That is amazing!!!  The pace of the viewing hasn't really kept up and I'm trying really hard to find out where I shared it that I got so much traffic from.

I also hit another milestone on Infobarrel.  I managed to finish 10 articles and that is the minimum amount of Infobarrel allows its authors to start being able to use Google Analytics and Google Adwords!  This is great news as I can now track my traffic, understand a bit better where the users are coming from and hopefully find some information from the viewer characterisitics that can help me retain and drive new traffic.  I'm pretty content now that I have all these statistics at the palm of my hand.

Other Projects

As I mentioned last time, I've been working on a few side projects.  They are very niche sites and I've been using some keyword tools to help me get there.  The projects themselves aren't ready to launch yet, mostly they are my own experiments, but I'll share my tips and techniques with all you in my next post.

Until then, take care!

Week 4: Niche Sites and Infobarrel Articles

The start of this week has been weak (no pun intended).  It's been a long week and I've been enjoying the nice weather outside and kind of neglected to write more material on Infobarrel or even work more on my niche sites.

I'm not ready to reveal the niche sites as they still need a bit more work (in terms of linking things) and also I would need a bit more content first.  The hardest part of working on so many things at the same time is that I have my attention and focus is scattered.  So far I have three niche sites sites set up all by myself through my host and installed Wordpress.  They are looking decent with the plugins I've found and it's starting to piece together nicely.

I'll promise to launch them soon and tell you all about it here.

I've submitted one more article to Infobarrel today.  It's still sitting in the Pending Articles section for one of the Infobarrel editors to proofread.  I hope it can be up by tomorrow and I'll share it with all of you.

For now, have a good night and please leave me a comment if you have any advice.  I can definitely use the help if you more experienced with making an income online.

Thanks in advanced!

Week 3: How referrals can allow you to reach your Online Passive Income goals (and mine too)!!!

Pat Flynn is the MAN!

First of all, I would like to give Pat Flynn (from http://smartpassiveincome.com) a shout out.  It's because of him and mainly because of your podcast that as made me start on this journey.  It's funny how I've had a blog ever since 2003 and it never occurred to me that this medium can be monetized.  So I'm starting to listen to all his podcasts and doing what he's suggested and what his guests have recommended.

That is really why I start joining the revenue-sharing article writing site, Infobarrel.  Pat said it was a great place for me to start and that is exactly what I've done.  Very much appreciated for all your advice.  Keep up the great work!

So the purpose of this blog was to really do some backlinking to my articles on Infobarrel, but also as a very for me to consolidate all my ideas, successes or not, onto this Online Passive Income Journal.

Besides promoting the articles, I also spread the word about how Infobarrel is helping me succeed in my goal to be obtain an online passive income stream.

Article writing for revenue generating sites like Infobarrel are a great place to start to make money online.  What I've learned from Pat Flynn is that to earn money online is not such a far-off goal.  It's within your reach if you can write quality content, help make the internet a better place by supporting each other, finding a great niche through the proper keyword searches and spread the word through doing SEO.

The Power of Referrals

So it really did come as a surprise to me that in promoting this site and promoting Infobarrel using my referral link that today is the first day that I got a referral.  I'm not entirely sure how the referral came to pass, but I'm pretty sure that it came from my posts on this blog.  That's just incredible.  I woke up today with a big surprise!

It would surprise me more that I found out later on in the day that I not only referred one person, but I also referred someone else later today.  That's another person that would support me and where I can support in our mutual passive incoming building.  This is absolutely incredible.

I didn't even know that someone was even reading my blog let alone someone being motivated enough to want to start venturing out by writing on Infobarrel too.  So thank you very much.  Thank you so much for allowing me to show you Infobarrel and let's mutually support each other in our online endeavors.

Cheers,
Ben

Week Three and Counting

This is the probably the hardest week so far.  I had some articles that I started writing and many more in sitting in my draft, but as life happens, it's just really hard to keep up the breakneck speed that I writing articles the first two weeks.  It's not that I've lost interest, but I've lost a bit of steam.

I'm a bit behind in posting links to the articles I wrote, so what I will do instead is post the links to all the articles I've written thus far.  Below is the list of the remaining articles I've written up till today:

• Unique Gifts and Novelty Items On Sale - Horse Head Mask

• How to Pass the ARDMS Exam to Become A Certified Sonographer

• The Shocking Truth about the Ontario Debt Situation

Part of the reason why I lost some momentum is because of writing my last published article, The Shocking Truth about the Ontario Debt.  I really wanted to write a piece that I've been interested in for such a long time.  I've done all this research over the years and I finally wanted to put it down on paper, even though there is no direct thing I wanted to sell or market.

However, when I went to publish it, Infobarrel's editor has said that my article's content was "better suited for a blog because of personal opinion."  I was kind of shocked to hear that as the article was very well researched and referenced and is from public documents.

I ask them later about giving me a better reason why and the response I got was that they reread my article and approved it.

I won't lie about it, but I really was a bit upset that this happened.  It really did halt the momentum I had.  Partly because I feel like even though I wrote a stand out article that it wasn't good enough for Infobarrel.  I also know that I have lots to learn about article writing that I should slow down a bit more to focus on writing quality content instead of just blasting them out.

Other than this hiccup, I'm really still very interested in writing new articles.  I'm starting to think about themes that I can write about so that I can have a series of interesting articles rather than writing.  More on that later.

So I totally encourage all of you to join me on Infobarrel.  Join me on this journey that I'm on and we'll help support each other to achieve our goals of obtaining Passive Online Income!

Week 3: Learning the Ropes

Week 3 has arrived.  And I'd say that I'm getting the hang of writing articles, but at the same time I'm having trouble thinking of what new topic to write.  I read from somewhere that the best way to gain more readers is to be able to use the right keywords.  One of the keywords I've found was acupuncture treatment.  This is the article I wrote on Infobarrel:

http://www.infobarrel.com/Acupressure_Treatment_-_What_is_the_Best_Method

The First Two Weeks of my Online Article Writing Journey

I've been pretty busy these last few weeks.  I've knocked off a few more articles the 2nd week and my live articles on Infobarrel has increased to 8!!!  This is all while I have a full-time job and a pretty busy life too.  I'm pretty proud of myself for getting to this point, but I also feel that in trying to get the quantities of my articles higher so that I may qualify as a pre-approved author in Infobarrel that my articles have suffers in quality.  It's not to say that they are poorly written, its just that I'm also the kind of writer that needs more time to incubate things.  I love writing, but I also perhaps need to be in the right zone for it.  I'm certain that writing more will help me get more efficient at writing.

Since my last blog entry, I've written a few more articles, one of which is:
One Simple Way to Make your Dish Washing Experience More Comfortable



So far my articles has been about topics and genres from all over the map.  Essentially it was whatever I could come up with in a dime.  I did basic keyword research and that steered me in the right directions.  I'm tracking my page views and clicks, though without Google Analytics it's not a useful information (something that would change once Infobarrel gives me pre-approval status).

One thing I find rewarding is to write articles like this one where I can give tips on how to get something faster, more productive and safer.  Granted, at the end of the day I am trying to sell a product and get a commission for it on Amazon Associates, but I also think there should be some kind of reward for pointing a great tip out, if it means in the long run it can save time, save money, and increase health and wealth for the readership.  That's true synergy.

My article has been up for about a week now and it's earned (so far) about 59 cents.  I hope that keeps up.  So far, I think there's a few clicks on Amazon Associates, but no one has bought anything so far.

Check out my article on Infobarrel and if you're interested in experimenting this passive income stream with me, I encourage you to sign up at Infobarrel as well (I do get a referral fee of 2% on the ad revenues if you sign up through me).