The Dreaded Summer Drought

The summer drought has hit workwise. There has been very little work in title selection for the past three weeks and I can't even find good titles to write. I'm so glad that I got a check from Google this month and I also got my payment for my eHow articles. They both help but I think I'm still going to be short paying bills in August. I might have to borrow money from my dad as much as that hurts.

My two niche websites are going well and I just started a new niche website two days ago. It hasn't been indexed yet so I'm waiting a week or two before I start throwing backlinks at it. My career oriented niche site is doing great this month and has made over $100 in Adsense. It is currently ranked 15th for its main keyword. I made a backlinking plan that I will start next week. I own Article Marketing Robot but I don't really like how it submits the articles to the directories. My plan is to use AMR to spin 4 different articles 500 times each. I'm not sure if it can spin an article that many times and still have them be unique but I'll see. I might have to spin more than 4 articles. I'm then going to sort the article directories by PR and add an article to 100 websites per day starting with the directory with the highest PR and working down the list. There are 9,000 directories listed in AMR so I shouldn't run out of directories. When I'm done submitting everything, I should have around 2,000 backlinks. That should get my niche site in the top 10 for it's keyword. The number 1 site has 1,050 backlinks. It has a high PR and is optimized for the keyword so I'm not sure if I can beat it but I'm going to try.

Last week, I had a great idea. I would start 25 career oriented niche sites and get them ranking well by the end of the year. If each site made $100 a month like my current site, I would be making enough money to live on. However, I don't really think this idea would work. For the niche site I started two days ago, I bought the domain name three months ago and it took this long to get the articles written and the site designed. I don't think I could do that for 25 different sites at the same time. The cost would be a lot too. If I paid $10 for each domain name, that would be $250. I could use my student loan money to pay for it but I'm not sure if splitting up my time across 25 different sites plus 3 current sites is a good idea. I have a couple months to think about it as I don't get my loans until September but right now I'm thinking I'll only going with two or three sites at one time.

Speaking of student loans, I decided to accept my student loans instead of paying for tuition out of pocket. I know this sounds irresponsible but I'm going to be paying on my student loans forever anyways so I figured why not. I need money for the cruise, I need a new laptop and I would like some extra money to buy domain names. Once my niche sites start making a lot of money, I should be able to pay back my student loans quickly.

Personal News

Getting to stuff that has nothing to do with money or my business, my sister-in-law delivered a beautiful baby boy on July 7. The C-section was scheduled for July 6 but my brother thought 7-7 would be a better birthday for him so they rescheduled. It was crazy at the hospital with everyone there taking pictures. C was diagnosed with heartburn which, surprisingly, is the leading cause of SIDS. C is taking medicine to prevent it and he has to wear a heart monitor while he's sleeping. Everyone that was going to be taking care of him including me and my parents had to take an infant CPR class. Ever since C was born, everyone has been fighting. First, my mom wanted to give the baby formula until SIL's milk came in but her mom made a huge deal about it. She seems to think that formula is poison and would not let anyone give him any. Poor thing was so hungry so my mom would sneak him formula when she wasn't around. SIL didn't care. In fact, SIL is a pretty lazy mom. I'm not trying to be mean but she'll breast feed him for five minutes and thinks he's full. She will also let him cry for a good ten to fifteen minutes while she checks her email or eats breakfast. Often times, she won't even wake up at night to feed him and tells my brother to give him a pacifier to calm him down. My mom is pretty mad at her but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't want to tell them how to raise their kid. After they got home from the hospital, SIL's mother decided to move in with them and my brother hates it. She hates my mom so on the weekends, my mom will spend the night so MIL will leave. It's been working so far. My brother got into a huge fight with his MIL last week because she didn't think C should visit his great-grandpa. My brother actually put his foot down and said that he's going whether she likes it or not. She stormed out and left her date book on the cupboard. My mom came over and found it and MIL had written some pretty nasty things about us on her calendar. Apparently, she writes everything down in her calendar. Stuff like, "Today I watched Toy Story with M" or "Today J's Mom blocked me on Facebook". I really think she's psycho and it makes me happy to be single without having to deal with someone else's crazy family.

Lately, I've been thinking about having a baby. It won't be for a couple of years but I have been thinking about it. I've always wanted to be a mother and I think I would be good at it. I have a couple of concerns though. First, I can't stand pee or  poop. The thought of it makes me gag. I haven't changed C's diaper and I hope I'll never have to. I don't even look at my own poop and I'll go as far as closing my eyes while flushing the toilet. I think I could get on board with the whole diaper thing but I have heard horror stories about toddlers taking off their diapers and pooping on the couch and stuff. Yuck! Maybe I could hire a nanny or something to go on cleanup duty. The second concern I have is that I have trouble getting myself to places how am I suppose to get a kid places. For example, I need a hair cut but have put it off for the past two months. What if the kid needs a doctor appointment or needs a hair cut or wants to join a club. Driving him/her around everywhere, making appointments and following up with people sounds like a lot of work. Even so, I think it would still be worth it. At the moment, my plan is to work on my business for the next year. I should be making enough money to buy a house by the time I'm 29. I'll spend three years looking for a husband and then when I'm 32 I'll have a baby - husband or not. Sperm donors are cheaper than I thought - especially if you do the insemination at home and find the donor yourself. It's along ways away and things could change in the next five years. Who knows, maybe I'll find the man of my dreams and get married.

Enough with all the baby talk. I know this post is getting long but I don't update very often and I need to get some things off my mind. One of my biggest stresses and worries right now is that my mom is starting her own business - and she wants me to do it with her. It's a henna tattoo business and she wants me to help her setup her booth at fairs and to take the money. She also wants me to set up a website which I don't have much time for. I really want to help her out as she hates her current job and is desperate to get out. I don't mind making a website for her but I don't want to sit around at some fair every weekend for hours on end. I'm hoping that she'll figure out a way to take the money and give the tattoos without needing me there. She's also hoping to do parties which I won't need to be there. Maybe she'll get so much work doing parties that she won't want to go to the county fairs. I really don't want to do this with her but I don't know how to tell her.

I guess I should end this post. It's pretty late so I need to get to bed. I stay up way too late worrying about stuff these days.

July Update

I promised an update every month so here is July's update. I did better than expected in July. Since it was my first full month as a freelance writer, I wasn't expecting much. Here's the full breakdown:

Demand Studios - $105.00
Textbroker - $7.00
eHow - $5.83
Associated Content - $0.00
Total: $117.83

Demand Studios

I've only been working for Demand Studios for two weeks. The first week, I wrote one article and waited for it to be approved before continuing on. It was approved without any problems so the second week I wrote eight more articles. One article came back for a total rewrite so I deleted it and reposted it on AC. I'm hoping for big things with Demand Studios in August. I plan on writing 2-3 articles per day and I want to start writing some revenue articles. I got an email tonight stating that I'm one of the top writers so they've approved me to write Golflink articles which is an extra $5 per articles. I don't think of myself as a good writer but I've got a four on both grammar and research on my scorecard so I must not be doing too bad.

Textbroker

I was approved for Textbroker in early July and wrote one article the first week and one article the second week. The instructions for writing the articles were so vague that I kept second guessing myself. One of the two articles came back as a rewrite. The client asked that I mention 10 more keywords at least two times throughout the article. I just stuck them in where ever and the article got approved even though it didn't read right. I hate submitting an article that is bad but that's what the client wanted. I'm going to try to get $20 per pay period just so I can remain active. It shouldn't be too hard. That's 3 articles per week.

eHow

I did awesome for my first full month at eHow. All but two articles earned money which is great. I was only expecting a dollar or two my first month and ended up with $5.83. I'm going to double that in August. My goal is to add 20 articles and earn at least $10. I'm also going to try to market some of my current articles by adding them to my other social sites.

Associated Content

I have one article on AC (see Demand Studios above) and it hasn't earned a penny. I didn't feel like trying to get upfront pay so I just published it right away. I would like to add 5 articles to AC in August so maybe I can start earning something from them.

August Goals

Demand Studios - 2-3 articles per day, $30-60 per day, $900 for the month

Demand Studios Rev Share - 10 articles, earn at least $0.01

Textbroker - $20 per pay period or $40 for the month

eHow - 20 articles, $10 for the month

Associated Content - 5 articles, earn at least $0.01

Bukisa - 10 articles, earn at least $0.01

FireHow - 10 articles, earn at least $0.01