September is the last month of my writing experiment!  I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a year already.  It seems like time keeps flying faster and faster.

My goal for this month is simple: earn $100 from Demand Studios.  All I have to do is write seven articles-worth $15 each-and I will surpass $100.  Believe it or not, I don’t think it will be easy.  I’m going to have a busy month as it is: deadlines at work, travel, and family visits.  I think a measly seven articles will actually be challenging, but not impossible.

A hundred dollars isn’t much.  It’s not like I can quit my job now and live off my writing.  But seeing my PayPal account grow is going to excite me and make me want to keep writing.  A hundred bucks in one month, after 11 months of earning very little, is going to end this writing experiment with a bang!

At the end of the month I’ll think long and hard about this experiment and post an evaluation of the year’s efforts and results.  Stay tuned!

I did not finish my goals for August, but I wouldn’t call this month a failure.  I began writing eHow articles for Demand Studios, which is huge community of freelance writers.  I was accepted to Demand Studios automatically because I had already written for eHow.

Writing for Demand Studios is much more structured than I am used to.  The studio requires writers to follow style guides and list sources.  All articles are submitted to an editor for review.  The editor can approve, reject, or ask you to rewrite your article.  It’s a lot more work than it used to be to create an eHow article.  I think the extra work is good, though, because it will force me to write well and I’ll learn a lot from the editors.

The studio has a list of thousands of titles you can claim.  I searched within their computer category and found several articles I could write.  Each article that is accepted earns a flat fee of $15.  There are some articles that follow the old model of revenue sharing, but the selection is more limited.  That obviously makes good business sense for Demand Studios: they would rather pay someone $15 one time for an article that could possibly earn hundreds for the studio over the long term.  I’ll probably try to write more revenue sharing articles because I think they’re the better deal for the writer over the long term.

I wrote one article so far and started a second.  My first article was accepted and I was so excited to earn my fifteen bucks!  The article took about 2 hours to write, so I only earned a measly $7.50 an hour.  But it’s still cool because it’s extra money and I didn’t have to wait months to see earnings like I did with my other eHow articles.  Also, this instant payment is giving me an excitement about writing I haven’t felt in a long time.  Seeing my PayPal account grow is just the motivation I need to get me back into the writing mood!

I don’t think I’ll stick with this arrangement long term, because it’s not a realistic way to earn a living.  Even if I could write 10 articles a day, I’d still make far less money than I currently make at my day job.  But it’s nice to know that I can knock out a couple articles whenever I want to earn some extra bucks.  The money I earn from these articles is truly extra; my day job pays all my bills, so anything I earn here can be used as play money, put back into my business plans, saved for travel, or whatever!  I’m looking forward to writing more articles and earning a few bucks while I figure out my long-term writing plans.

In the past couple months my writing pursuits have stagnated.  I worked a lot, traveled a lot, and was often tempted by fun distractions from everyday life.  Now I feel like I finally have some motivation to write again.

I have still been (barely) keeping up with my newsletter about achieving goals.  I have received a lot of positive feedback from subscribers that motivates me to keep writing, week after week.  Now I have decided to try to get ahead by writing several newsletters in advance.  For the month of August, I want to write eight newsletters – two each weekend.  This will give me several newsletters stored in reserve in case I neglect to write some weekends.

I signed up for a six-week online writing course in July, which ends this week.  I have done none of the reading or assignments!  I have printed them all, though, so that I can go back and do the work later.  I won’t have the benefit of a teacher to answer questions, but I can still learn much from the material.  The title of the class is Introduction to Internet Writing Markets, which is just what I need.  I plan to do half of the assignments in August and the other half in September – about one or two per weekend.

I’m going to try much harder to set realistic goals from here on out.  I have come to accept that I have a stressful job and a hectic life, so it’s OK – and probably necessary – to pursue my writing and other goals at what feels like a snail’s pace.  I really want to avoid recurrences of the current burn out that has halted me for over two months.

It’s good to be back.

Here we are, a third of the way through June and I don’t know what hell I’m doing yet!  I suffered a pretty big disappointment with the total flop of my eBook, which I lost several hundred dollars on.  I believe that failures aren’t a bad thing if you don’t let them get you down – just learn from them and move on.  Unfortunately this failure got me down, and I haven’t had the motivation to analyze it.

Since I haven’t had much motivation lately, I’m going to take the month of June just to figure out what to do with the rest of my writing experiment.  I only have a few months left and haven’t found a way to make good money from my writing.  So I’m going to spend this month researching different writing jobs/careers and figuring out a plan for the rest of my experiment.

All I really want is to see some potential.  If I could just make some money on something I would feel better and be motivated to continue.  I know my eHow articles are still earning me $5 per month, but it doesn’t seem feasible to grow that into a livable income.  I really want to see some evidence that I could turn writing into a career.  If I can find just a shred of evidence, I’ll call this experiment a success and probably extend it.  If not, I think I’m going to end up more discouraged than I am now.

So, I have a lot of thinking and researching to do.  I’ll keep you updated on my plans along the way.

May has been a disappointing month as far as my eBook is concerned.  I had over two thousand visitors from Google ads and 0 sales from them.  The only two sales I made were from newsletter subscribers, giving me a grand total of $10 of earnings.

• Advertising dollars spent in May: $300.00
• Revenue earned: $10.00
• Balance: ($-290.00)

I thought that writing an eBook would be the magic ticket and that writing articles for eHow was a waste of time.  But my eBook is not making money, while eHow continues to pay me about $5 per month.  Actually, this month’s eHow earnings went up to $6.36, which is the highest ever.  So maybe I’m going about this all wrong.  It might actually be easier to make money by starting with an established web site like eHow.

I’m going to stop advertising my eBook on Google Adwords until I figure out what to do, because obviously my advertising money is going straight down the drain.  I might need a better sales pitch, a lower price, better marketing, or something as simple as a different color scheme on my web site.  Who knows?  Or maybe I should just move on to a new project.  I have a lot of thinking to do before I decide my next move.

I sure hope I can improve the outlook of this project or have better luck with the next one!

Today is the half-way point through the month of May, and I can’t believe it.  This month is flying by!  It has been an exciting month because I turned 26 and went on a cruise to the Bahamas!

My eBook, How to Achieve Any Goal, is not selling as well as I’d hoped.  I have only sold two copies so far, and these were discounted copies to newsletter subscribers.  I have not sold any full-price copies to visitors who found my site from Google Adwords, which means I have a lot of advertising money going down the drain right now.

• Advertising dollars spent from May 1-15: $142.20
• Revenue earned: $10.00
• Balance: ($-132.20)

I am definitely grateful for my two sales, though!  I have also had several of my newsletter subscribers express interest, but some are unable to purchase the book because they don’t have credit cards.  So I am looking for other payment methods and for better ways to market the book.  I will be posting more to the blog when I figure out what to do.  Stay tuned!

April Results

How to Achieve Any Goal

My eBook is done!  Hooray! Go to accomplishingyourgoals.com to check it out!

I worked very hard in the month of April to finish this book and get it online.  It has been online for a couple days now and I haven’t seen any sales, but I know it will take time.  I am anxiously awaiting the time when I sign into Paypal and see my first sale.  I’m really excited to see if this eBook experiment is going to work!

The only tasks I didn’t finish were optimizing my sales page and creating a multivariate test in Google Optimizer.  Right now my sales page is pretty bland, which is certainly why I haven’t sold anything yet.  So I’ll work on these things in May.

May Plans

Right now I am exhausted.  I’ve been sacrificing sleep and working all day, every weekend day to finish my book.  I definitely put too much on my plate in April and it just wasn’t much fun.  I need to make time to relax and get a better balance back in my life.

So in May I am going to relax my writing.  I’m not going to make any writing goals or start a new eBook or anything like that.  I’m just going to tweak my sales page and monitor the progress of this eBook.  I’m going to record statistics like visits per day, advertising dollars spent per day, sales per day, conversion rate, etc.  I’m going to track all this stuff in a spreadsheet and each week I’ll post the stats to this blog for people who are curious about the results.  I don’t have anything else planned, but I might write some other blog posts if I feel up to it.

Toward the end of May, I’ll use the statistics I gathered to plan changes to my web site and advertising to try and increase my conversion rate.  In June I’ll implement these changes and possibly start a new eBook!

I’m really looking forward to seeing how well my eBook sells in May, and I hope you are too.  Stay tuned!

Writing a disclaimer has been the most worrisome aspect of writing my eBook.  I am totally paranoid about being sued!  I scrapped together bits and pieces of other peoples’ disclaimers and then had an intellectual property lawyer review it.  It turns out the lawyer was not worth the time and money.

I rewrote the disclaimer again and went with my gut feeling.  I feel like this is one of those things you just have to figure out on your own, because that’s all I could do.  But here’s my advice for anyone out there writing their own disclaimer:

• Check out books from the library and use one of their disclaimers.  Look at the disclaimers in “Idiot’s Guide” books, “Dummies” books, investment books, and self-help books.  I pieced together a few things from multiple books to make my disclaimer.  I figure if these disclaimers are good enough for these big publishers, they’re good enough for me.
• Selling a book or product is a business risk. If you sell anything, there will always be a risk of a lawsuit against you.  You have to do what you can to mitigate this risk and then decide if you accept it or not.  This is where I had to go with my gut feeling.  I feel that my risk is low enough to accept it.
• To mitigate the risk for my eBook, I decided to put the disclaimer on my web site in addition to the front of the book.  Customers must check a checkbox to agree to the terms before they can purchase my book.  Lots of huge corporations use that technique on their web sites, so it should be good enough for me, too.
• Have a lawyer review your disclaimer if you want to get a warm fuzzy feeling.  However, make sure you get the right kind of lawyer and be aware that lawyers cannot eliminate the risk.  At the end of the line you have to decide if you accept the risk or not.
• If your product does well and starts making good money, consider starting a business for it.  This is what I plan to do in the near future if my eBook does well.  Then any lawsuits will be against the business and not you.  If you get sued and lose, your business might go bankrupt, but at least they can’t take your personal savings account, house, car, etc.

Again, I can’t stress enough that lawsuits are just a risk you are going to have to accept if you want to sell a product.  I was very paranoid about it, even after seeing a lawyer.  But I finally just went with my gut feelings, wrote my own disclaimer, and I’m going for it.  We’ll see what happens.

Disclaimer: The above advice contains the opinions and ideas of its author.  It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subject matter covered.  It is written with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering professional services in this post.  If the reader requires personal assistance or advice, a competent professional should be consulted.  The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose.

If you’re working on a large piece of writing, it’s a good idea to have a some “test readers” read your work.  Test readers can help you find problems (like typos and grammatical errors) in your work and can also give you good, honest feedback about it.  Did your writing draw them in?  Did it help them somehow?  Did it conjure the right images and provoke the right ideas?  Seriously, having test readers is a no-brainer.  Just hand out your work to a few trusted friends and see what they think.

When you hand out your work to multiple people, each person is going to have different comments and will try to give you those comments in a different way.  It can get pretty time-consuming to address each reader’s comments.  How do you handle that complexity?  By developing a system and soliciting comments from everyone in the same way.

Track Changes

Change Tracking and Comments in action.

First, you need to get familiar with “track changes” and comments in Microsoft Word.  Before you send out your work, click the Review tab and then click the “Track Changes” button.  Now Word will track all changes made to this document by showing them in a different color for each user.  Now your test reader can type or delete anything they want in the document, and it will be highlighted as a change for you to either approve or reject.  Change tracking lets your test readers go nuts and rewrite anything they want without permanently altering your work.

Comments are also helpful for reviewers.  Select the Review tab again, highlight a block of text, and then click “New Comment.”  A comment bubble will be shown in the margin and will be attached to the text you highlighted.  For example, a test reader can highlight a word of your text, attach a comment to it, and type “Are you sure you want to use this word here?” in the comment bubble.  Comments make it incredibly easy for readers to share their thoughts with you.

Step-by-Step System

Here’s the system I follow to send my work to test readers and then incorporate their comments when I get the files back.

1. Explain track changes and comments to your test readers.
2. Create a copy of your file for each test reader, preferably with their name in the filename.  For example, you could have “Copy of book for John.docx” and “Copy of book for Sue.docx”.  This will make it easy to track each reader’s comments.
3. In each copy that you will be mailing out, open it, turn on Track Changes, save and close.
4. Email the copies to each respective test reader.
5. Make a folder named “archive” in the folder where your book is stored.
6. When a file is returned to you with comments, immediately make a copy and rename it as an original.  For example, you could end up with these two documents: “Sue’s comments original.docx” and “Sue’s comments.docx”.  Move the original into the archive folder.
7. Now open both your master copy of your work and the test reader’s copy.
8. In the test reader’s copy, click the Review tab and then click the “Next” button.  This will take you to the next change or comment they made in the document.
9. If you accept the reader’s change or comment, make the change in your master copy.
10. When you are done considering that change or comment, accept, reject, or delete it from the reader’s copy.  You can accept or reject changes with the “Accept” and “Reject” button under the Review tab.  You can delete readers’ comment bubbles by clicking the “Delete” button under the review tab.  This will make the list of changes in the reader’s copy shrink and help you keep track of what you have already considered.  Remember that you won’t lose their comments forever; you still have the original in your archive folder.
11. Continue clicking the “Next” button until you have reviewed and handled every change and comment your test reader made.
12. Move that test reader’s copy into the archive folder.
13. Repeat steps 6-12 for each copy you get back from a test reader.

This system can save you much time and frustration in getting comments back from test readers.  By using this “soft copy” system, you make it easier for yourself to track and handle all the different comments from different readers.  And because your test readers are working with copies, you can maintain complete control of your master document and incorporate only the comments you want.

This system is working for me, but I’m always interested in improving my productivity.  Do you have a system for managing comments from test readers?  If so, please comment below.  Thanks!

You can easily make some extra money online by joining affiliate programs and promoting other people’s products.  First let’s use a simple example to explore how affiliate programs work.

Make a business arrangement with affiliates to share profits.

Joe invents a widget and is trying to sell it for $20 profit per widget.  He approaches his friend Bob and says “Hey Bob, if you get people to buy my widget, I’ll give you 50% of the profit.”  Bob thinks this is awesome, so he proceeds to tell everyone he knows about how Joe’s widget is the coolest invention on the planet.  A few days later, a customer approaches Joe.  The customer says “Hey, Bob told me about your widget.  I want to buy one.”  Joe sells his widget, keeps $10 for himself, and gives $10 to Bob.

Notice that Bob earned $10 and he didn’t have to do anything other than tell his friends about the widget.  He didn’t have to invent the widget, he didn’t have to process the sales transaction, or anything else.  He made 50% profit just by promoting Joe’s widget.

Sounds like a sweet deal, right?  Well, it’s pretty easy to get started with affiliate programs online.  Online affiliate programs use special hyperlinks to track where each sale is coming from.  When you join the affiliate program, you will get special links related to your account.  If someone clicks on your link and then buys a product, you get credit for the sale and earn a percentage of the profit.  It’s the equivalent of having the customer say “Hey, Bob told me about your product.”

So, if you do any kind of writing online – blog, email newsletter, eBooks, Twitter, or whatever – you have an opportunity to post these affiliate links and make some extra money.  It’s not going to be a magic ticket to getting rich, but it might help you make some extra cash.  If your writing does have a large following, you could actually make pretty good money.  I know some Internet marketers who are earning a lot from affiliate programs.

Look at Amazon’s affiliate program (they call it Amazon Associates) for an easy example.  You can earn money by promoting products on Amazon.  So for example, you could join the affiliate program and get a special link for a certain book.  Then you can go on Facebook and post a message saying “Dudes, you have to read this book.  It is so good!” and post your special affiliate link to the book on Amazon.  If any of your friends follow your link and buy the book, you’ll earn a percentage.

Here’s the catch: you must disclose (by law) the fact that you will benefit financially from your affiliate links.  This might make some people not want to follow your links, so you have to come up with a good way to disclose this.  I personally think the best way is to include a note on your web site or your terms of service, and then to only promote products you are familiar with.  Don’t just promote any product to try to make a quick buck.  Build some trust with your readers by promoting products that you personally believe in.  Your readers will respect you for it and will be willing to use your affiliate links.

Again, this probably won’t make you rich or anything.  But if you are already writing online and have a following of readers, you should include some affiliate links to try to make some extra money from your writing.  To get started, go look at clickbank.com and e-junkie.com to find some products to sell.  Good luck!