Yesterday morning my brain engaged in a tug of war between online writing and investing.  It even further engaged in the age old battle of time vs. money.  Let me preface this post by saying, I’m not an investor.  My little dalliance with stocks, trading and mutual funds ended when I took a bath years ago on Lucent Technology stock.  I won’t even mention the depleted condition of our 401K value.

My Mental Gymnastics in a Nutshell:

Startup Costs

What do you need to invest in the stock market?

You need both time and money.  You need the time to earn the money (usually from a job) to invest in the stock market and then more time for it to grow and show a profit.

What do you need to invest in online writing?

Time.  The time it takes to write an article and the time for it to earn money.

Potential Financial Return

How much profit can you expect on average from investing in the stock market?
Hmmm, it varies.  As I said before, I’m not an investor.  So let’s say that you earn 25% return on your money annually.  This figure is probably way off, especially considering the state of today’s economy.

How much is the average return with online freelance writing?

This is also tough to say.  If you invest $0 and you earn 1 cent, how much of a profit is that?  On the other hand, if you invest $0 and earn $10,000 at the end of the year, how much profit is that?  Are they both 100% profit?  Not quite sure how to quantify that.  Either way, the percent of return exceeds the return on stock market investing.

Online Writing and Investment Similarities

A wise investor will diversify, just as a wise online writer would.  Putting your eggs in one basket is a no-no.[smartads]

Dollar Cost Averaging

Successful investors continue to invest when the market is up or down. If they habitually invest say $100 a month in stocks, when the market is down, they get more stock for the money, when the market is up the hundred dollars goes less far.  However, the value of the stock they purchased when the market was down has increased in value.  They slowly and steadily build their investment portfolio.

Successful freelance writers continue to plod along writing a set number of articles each day, week or month adding to their portfolio of online writing.  They spread their writing among various sites.  They don’t run from one new freelance writing fad to another freelance writing fad.  They find several legitimate opportunities and continue to write for them.  As their articles age, their income grows.

Unexpected Market Changes

If the stock market suddenly plunges, investors have lost not only their lucrative rate of return, they also lost their own hard earned dollars that they invested in order to get the return.  So, they have also lost their principal and their promise of income.

If a freelance writing site goes down, the writer has lost potential revenue, but an astute writer that has backed up her work has lost nothing but the promise of income.  She still has her principal (the original article).  She can always take those original articles that are no longer part of the defunct website and place them elsewhere, thus beginning a new cycle of profit.  Therefore, all she lost was the promise of income from that one particular site.  Since she did not place all of their eggs in one basket, she still has other sources of income generation.

Becoming a Lone Ranger

Unlike an investor, a freelance writer can create her own site and earn money through ad revenue.  Investors cannot create their own stock market.  Even if they do establish their own investment firm, they use the same Dow Jones and NASDAQ that the rest of the investors use, unless the name is Bernie Madoff.

Now I’m Awake

Once I woke up fully, I realized that this episode of my mental gymnastics wasn’t one of my crazier workouts. It was just a confirmation that I’m heading in the right direction. Where else can you earn so much by investing so little?

Another benefit of online writing is that if you stick with it long enough, you can become pickier about what writing assignments to choose.  As your residual income grows, you can weed out those assignments that you were forced to take because you needed the money.

After spending quite a bit of time wandering around the blog-o-sphere, I realized that I want my blog to sustain me financially. The question is how do I go about achieving it? I can sit around and read all about the folks with successful blogs and wish mine were one of them, or I can read about successful bloggers emulate their positive attributes and learn from their mistakes. As one of the more popular TV evangelist says, “What I need is a backbone and not a wishbone.” Wishing won’t make it happen, focused consistent action will.

A successful blog is not created over night

Having a successful full-time career as a blogger takes time. According to a post from Darren Rowse over at Problogger.com, the average age of the top 100 blogs is 33.8 months old (this was an older post, so the numbers might have changed since then, but check out his post to further prove the point). He’s been blogging since 2002, and started the very successful Problogger in 2004 (purportedly making a six-figure income from his blog). Jeremy Schoemaker, owner Shoemoney.com has been blogging for about a two and a half years (according to this March, 2007 post) and is earning $10,000 monthly.
[smartads]
These blogs are not the norm as many bloggers become quickly discouraged and give up blogging. However, Darren Rowse and Jeremy Schoemaker and others of their caliber soon realized that with consistent targeted effort and quality content, the sky is the limit. For the average Joe earning $20,000 $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 annually from a blog is definitely as a step in the right direction. Six-figure income is nirvana.

Successful bloggers are prolific

The one trait I noticed that successful bloggers had in common was that they are prolific. They post more than one post a week. Initially, some ambitions bloggers posted as many as 3 to 5 posts in a day. One case, Al. Carlton of Coolest Gadgets posted as many as 10 to 15 posts in a day (nope, that’s not a typo, 10-15 in a day). A rather respectable task, but quite obviously doable if the vision or the dream is big enough. It all comes down to how bad you want it.

There’s enough out there for everyone

I’m a firm believer that everyone can get a piece of the internet pie. You just have to put in the work, be consistent, write quality content and be patient. There are plenty of articles and posts on the internet on how to become a successful blogger, but none of it works if you don’t work it.

I don’t know about you, but after reading about the many successful bloggers on the internet, I decided that I wanted to be one of them. Why not join me. There’s plenty of room for all of us.

When No Job for Mom first came on the scene, it was in a non-blog, website format. It only had about 40 pages, but it seemed that the Google ads were being clicked on a regular basis. In the conversion process, although I did not remove any of the Google ads, I’ve found that they are clicked on less.

I don’t know if that is because of the additional affiliate ads placed in the right-hand column of the blog is distracting or, if people just prefer clicking on website ads rather than blog ads. Whatever the reason, it translates to a drop in income.

I’ve noted a similar observation on my other sites/blogs. I have a few other blogs and websites. The blogs and the website are pretty near the same age. However, I do find that I get better clicks on the website than I do the blogs. Originally, I thought the reason was that some content encouraged more clinks than other content and that my blogs did not entice the reader to click the ads. I chalked it up to the blog topic and continued blogging.

Now, after changing the format of No Job for Mom from website to blog without modifying the content I realized that it wasn’t the content, it was the format. Maybe that’s why so many beginning bloggers are frustrated because they don’t earn much money initially and soon give up.

I don’t know the reason for the phenomenon. I’m just sharing my findings. I’d be curious to know if anyone else has undergone similar experiences.

Demand Studios is a company that provides content, both in written and video format for several websites. Some of their clients include eHow, Expert Village, Live Strong and a host of others. They hire writers and filmmakers on an independent contractor bases to provide content for their clients.

What grabbed my attention is that according to Demand Studios, they pay via PayPal on a weekly basis (Fridays) and the current pay rate for the eHow project is $15 per approved submission. I couldn’t believe it! I was writing articles for the eHow project as a freelance writer through another organization (who shall remain nameless), for $10 per submission.

I immediately signed up to write for Demand Studios. The sign up process is easy. You must upload your resume and provide a few writing samples. The writing samples can be uploaded or a link to current content on the internet.

You provide them with the topics that you’re interested in and they review your application. The whole process took less than 24 hours. Upon being accepted, I logged in and claimed 10 titles to write on.

Once I get a better feel for the inner workings of Demand Studios, I’ll write a more detailed review of my findings. In the meanwhile, it looks like a promising on line money-making opportunity.