So with a move looming on the ever-nearing horizon, the mrs. and I have been brainstorming ways to pull in a few extra dollars. Our boy is registered to start pre-school in August, at which time I'll probably explore the idea of a part-time job to help cover the disparity between the rent we'll be getting for our loft and the actual cost of the mortgage and HOA fees for said loft, but it would be nice to have a little extra scratch for "house stuff", since the house we'll be moving into (whichever one that ends up being) will have several more rooms than our loft, and those rooms will long to be furnished. I decided to turn to my old friend The Internet to see what he had to say about it.
I once made a decent wage doing freelance tech writing and editing for a company that worked for IBM, and I also wrote for several magazines, alt weeklies, and Websites. So the first thing I decided to explore was trying to scare up some writing gigs. Kelly pointed me to a site called oDesk.com, where you can bid for jobs in a variety of areas. I've submitted my info and applied to a few, but so far nothing much has come from that. I'll be hitting it again today, though.
Being the lazy clever guy that I am, I decided to explore some options that woud generate money without requiring a whole lot of effort on my part. The first step here was adding Google AdSense ads to my blog. See that ad over there? Go on, click it. I'll wait.
Did you click it? Thanks, you just sent a few cents my way. Since adding ads to this blog and my other blog, I've managed to collect $6.08. Pretty good for doing basically nothing.
Next up is a site I've been curious about for some time, but I've always found it a little overwhelming. It's called Associated Content, and it's sort of like Yahoo Answers or something like that. As a "content producer", you can basically write about anything you want and they'll pay you for it. Obviously they're not paying a ton, but then again I'm not exactly churning out my best writing for the site either. You submit your article (or whatever) and, depending on the rights/payment option you choose, they'll approve or reject it within a week or so and you get some money. Then, for every 1000 page views, you get $1.50. Go ahead and take a look at the Pulitzer-worthy stuff I've got up already by checking out my profile page. And by all means, click each story. That's right, I wrote an article about verifying forwarded e-mails. Impressed?
The upfront payment you get is anywhere from 2 to 20 bucks. So far the two I have gotten published that were eligible for upfront payment have netted me $4.81 and $4.98. Each one took me roughly 15 minutes to hammer out. I also copied an early post from this blog and plopped it in there, but since it's already been published here, it's only eligible for "performance payment" based on page views. I've got three more articles waiting to be approved (one that I wrote for Paste Magazine that ended up being cut, and two recipes. Seriously). I will also be writing one today about quitting smoking because it was one of the articles they had up for grabs and I figured it would take me roughly 7 minutes to churn out 300 words worth of recommending trying the patch or gum and then filling it out with a bunch of "one day at a time", "stay focused," and "don't give up" moral strength bs. After that, I'll basically take that smoking article and change all he relevant terms about smoking to be about weight loss, and voilà I'll have a brand new article to submit. That's how I'm rolling as a Content Producer for Associated Content.
Come to think of it, perhaps I should've used a pen name.
Running total: $15.87
So yeah, we're basically rich now.
Ok, it's not a ton of money, but I figure if I crank out an article or two a week for AC and get the occasional click-through on the ads here and on Bat to the Face (which has, I'm proud to say, been incredibly popular so far), I might just get enough to pay for a few months of World of Warcraft.
