There are a few issues that I have with eHow. First and foremost is that Demand Media, which owns eHow, does not reveal how it calculates payouts to writers, so you’re completely at their mercy. The second is that eHow is pretty strict about the formatting of its articles. All articles need to have a step-by-step format, which restricts the author whose how-tos are more free-formed. But other than those complaints, eHow has presented a simple and solid way to make some extra money online. In fact, it’s probably the quickest and easiest way to do so if you have next to no technical knowledge.

I started writing for eHow a little over 2 months ago, excited about the prospect of making some extra cash and intrigued by other eHow success stories I had read about. Soon after I started writing, I came up with a plan – targets for the number of articles I would write and how much I wanted to earn per month.

So, how am I doing?

Awful!

After starting like a bat out of hell, I’ve written almost no articles over the past month. (I went on vacation for a week, which stopped my momentum, and then had some other projects to work on.) I was targeting a total of 30 articles by the end of May and $10 in earnings for the month. But I only totaled 18 articles and $6.94. And I’ve only written 1 article in the first half of June! You can see my eHow progress below:

It’s not all bad. A few dollars in generated earnings for work already completed and in place is a nice thing. But I want to be making more.

So, what now? Clearly, I am off of my planned pace. Part of the reason has been a decrease in my motivation after the first month of registering with the site. I think a lot of this has to do with the regimen I had set up for myself. Before, I was writing 1 article almost every day. Publishing once a day was not too time-consuming in practice (the articles take me 30-60 minutes to write). But thinking about writing every day was taxing. Now, I plan to set aside a few hours once a week to write 5 articles at a time. My new plan should relieve some of that small stress by allowing me to go into “eHow mode” once a week instead of every day. And with the new plan comes my new earnings targets:

These are significantly lower than my previous estimates. I’ll keep you updated…

For those that don’t know, niche blogging for income involves creating a blog on some topic, placing advertising on it, and earning money every time a visitor clicks one of the ads. There’s a lot to consider when developing a good niche blog. Choosing the right topic is very important, since the advertising will be related to the blog’s content, and I’d prefer a field in which advertisers pay a lot for clicks. Also, the niche has to be balanced between popular and unpopular – too popular and my content will be lost in a sea of other websites, too unpopular and I won’t have an audience. The trick is to choose a niche that’s juuuuust right.

The blog also needs to attract a decent amount of traffic, since more visitors means more potential ad-clickers. Then there’s the issue of content – the more the better, so long as it’s high-quality. The more information for people to potentially browse, the more traffic might visit the blog.

There’s a whole host of information about niche blogging out there on the web, some of it excellent, some of it, well, sleezy-feeling. What got the fire started for me was an excellent set of forum posts on the topic. From there, it was a matter of googling for details and reading the blogs of other bloggers who niche blog!

My Niche Blog

So what about my blog?

At this stage, it’s in its infancy.

1. I have a domain name.
2. I have a Wordpress blogging template installed.
3. I have begun the process of accumulating content. I have planned to create about 60 articles before any are actually published. In this way, I’ll be able to post a steady stream of content should I become sidetracked by anything. I hope that regular content will go a long way toward retaining visitors in the beginning. I’ve used Elance to hire freelance writers for 20 of the articles, I have 20 more from article depository websites, and I will write 20 myself.

My Plan

I plan on starting to post content before the end of the month. I’ll post 1-2 articles per day for 1-2 months. I’ll promote the blog in a few ways too – social networking, making posts on related forums and blogs, contacting professionals and other bloggers who work in the niche field, etc. But my hope is that only leads to a fraction my traffic. If I have chosen a balanced niche, my blog should be near the top of many Google search rankings on the topic.

At first, I won’t place advertising on the blog. Once I establish a fair amount of traffic to the blog, around 100 unique visitors per day, I’ll put up ads via Google Adsense or another advertising source. By the way, I’m not going to reveal the name of the blog or its niche just yet, since I want to see if this experiment can work without traffic from Wrinkly Dollar.

I’ve set a short-term earnings goal of $5 per day by the end of July. $5 a day is $150 per month or $1,800 per year. Not much, but it will be a good start. If I can get there, I’ll have the motivation to grow those earnings even more. I’ll keep you updated…

Your article’s earning potential can be based on a combination of several elements, including the amount of times it’s been viewed and its category. The more useful your articles are to the reader, the more money you could make

More likely than not, writers are simply being given a cut of the advertising revenue that their articles generate. You post articles, eHow’s computers generate relevant ads to place alongside your article, advertisers pay eHow for each viewer that clicks the ads, and you get a cut. The exact amount of the cut, or the formula that determines how much you’ll earn is not revealed by eHow.

Now, I could be doing the same thing on Wrinkly Dollar, but there are two reasons I’ve decided to diversify a little:

• eHow is a very popular and well-trafficked website, with 15 million visitors per month. It generates more traffic than Wrinkly Dollar (for now!) and, as a result, more ad revenue. I realize I might be getting the short end of the stick as my cut of revenue, but that is still more than I could generate on my own (for now!).
• eHow allows me to write on any variety of topics I like. People visit Wrinkly Dollar to read about personal finance.

I’ve read several success stories to keep myself motivated about writers on eHow making $1,000 per month or more. (I believe these stories by the way. The eHow community seems to be quite a genuine set of folk.) Each of these high-earning writers has a few to several hundred articles written.

Currently, I have a mere 8 articles written in 2 weeks of time. Here’s a look at how my total earnings for April have progressed since I signed up on April 11:

By no means a king’s ransom! But I’m just getting started. Keep in mind that 4 of my 8 articles have earned nothing at all thusfar – it takes some time to generate traffic. All of my earnings have come from articles written over 1 week ago. That is the wonderful thing that I hope to take advantage of – the content can earn you money long after it is written.

So what is my plan for generating more than a few bucks of income? That’s easy – keep writing high-quality articles. For the foreseeable future, I plan to write 20 articles per month – 1 article every day or two. The articles typically take me anywhere from 20 minutes to one hour to write, depending on the complexity of the topic. After reading about the earnings of some other authors, I’ve developed this target schedule for number of articles and earnings at the end of each month:

I think the targets for the first few months should be very achievable. As far as those last few months, time and experience will tell. I’ll be updating you regularly with my eHow efforts and earnings.

Oh, and check out my eHow profile too!

There are several companies out there that will pay you for survey taking and for product evaluation. (Getting a free product that you would otherwise buy is like being paid all in itself). These companies allow you to register with them via their website. They’ll take your home address so that when it comes time to be paid or when they have a product to evaluate, they can mail you a check or the goods. Many also offer payment via PayPal.

Before taking a look at some of survey websites, let’s get one thing out of the way. You’re not going to become rich taking surveys or evaluating products. Most of these companies offer pay comparable to minimum wage when considering the time needed to take the survey. That said, getting even a little money for time spent on the Internet that might have otherwise been wasted can feel pretty nice.

Each company you sign up for will contact you via email when a survey is available for you to take. They will also contact you when they have a survey in mind for you, but if they need additional information to see if you qualify for it. The best survey sites are the ones that do not waste your time or mislead you. The worst are the ones that do, perhaps by inundating you with nonpaying surveys or by misstating the time it takes for a survey. I recommend signing up with several companies, and weeding out the ones that suit you best. Here are three sites that I am familiar with to get you started, in order of preference:

1. Pinecone Research (Rating: Highly Recommended)
   Pinecone is an excellent consumer survey company. They’ll pay you $3 for each survey you qualify for. I’ve been paid a few times by Pinecone, as you can see below. They send a check out promptly every time I complete a survey. (Pinecone just implemented a PayPal option too.) Survey offers appear in my inbox about once every week or two. Historically, Pinecone has been closed to new members, only opening up to applications via existing member referrals. But enterprising individuals can find signup links out there on the Internet, like this one.     

   

2. American Consumer Opinion (Rating: Recommended)
   American Consumer Opinion is another good survey company to consider, although after being registered with them for about two months, I have yet to qualify for a paid survey. But they do not waste my time with unappealing surveys. They send out offers to me for preliminary surveys about every two or three weeks, and the offers they do send typically pay better than Pinecone’s. I received an offer recently for an $8 survey lasting 30 minutes, but after filling out a few preliminary questions, I failed to qualify for it. A reputable company by all indications. 
3. SurveySpot (Rating: A notch below)
   Survey Spot is a website that I have heard good things about, but that has left me disappointed. The company floods my inbox with five surveys a day, most of them nonpaying. Instead of cash, they offer an entry into a cash prize drawing, but I won’t fall for that trick. Whenever I have received a paying survey, which occurs every tenth survey or so, one of two things has happened: I don’t qualify for the survey or they reach their participant limit before I can get a chance to click the link, and I usually click within a day or two. Pinecone, for instance, won’t play these games – they’ll give you an ample, set amount of time to complete your survey. While my experience hasn’t been the best with SurveySpot, I won’t condemn them outright just yet. Your mileage may vary. It certainly can’t hurt to sign up and try them yourself for a few days.

Enjoy making a few bucks out there! Let me know your opinion of the companies I’ve mentioned and some others you’ve tried too.