Affiliate Marketing with Xomba

Just a quick update. I made my first Amazon affiliate sale with Xomba today. It's a product I had some luck with at eHow, back when affiliate links were allowed in the resource section. I created a separate Xomba tracking code in Amazon Affiliates so I could be sure where the sales were coming from and was pleased to see it had come from Xomba.

There are basically two ways to use affiliate links at Xomba:

1. Create bookmarks using the affiliate link. You can link directly to your product. In addition to putting the affiliate link in the bookmark space that Xomba give you, I would create another one in the body of your bookmark description.
2. Write articles that include affiliate links. Xomba articles only have to be 150 words long so this is easy to do.

You can sign up for Xomba for free. Where are you finding success with your affiliate marketing?

Xomba Earnings Update

I'm exactly two months into my experience at Xomba so I thought I would give a quick update. I've added 241 bookmarks at Xoma (mostly to my eHow articles and some other online content). I've also written 34 articles, although some are fairly short with Xomba's 150 word minimum. In two months' time I've earned $23.68. I certainly hope that keeps up as I am 100% okay with a $10+ per month residual income stream, mostly for posting links to my other online articles.

I'm not aggressively adding content to Xomba, but I've become so familiar with the interface there that I do go there to post bookmarks (backlinks) and occasionally write a quick article that I think will be a good fit for the site. I'm still the Business and Entrepreneurs Feature Writer and if you're considering adding content on Xomba, I encourage you to apply for one of the several Feature Writer positions they have available there. It can only help your exposure on the site.

If you're interested in joining Xomba, I would be honored if you'd consider signing up using my referral link. Please send me a friend request once you're there!

Make Money Fast with Redgage

I've earned $8.75 in two days on Redgage. While I've been a member of Redgage for a while, I recently re-visited the site to buiild some backlinks to my eHow articles and other online content and was pleasantly surprised by my earnings.

How to Make Money with Redgage

Redgage is a site where you can write original content, create links to your other online content (like eHow articles) and upload photos and video. You earn a small amount for views on your Redgage content (pennies really) but Redgage also pays out bonuses for content that they feature.

I've earned $16.25 on Redgage and $13.80 of that has been feature bonuses. I don't think my experience is unusual. The bonuses (and daily contests) are the way to make money on Redgage and that is why it's possible to make money quickly there.

Redgage and Photos

My most recent feature bonus of $3.80 came from a picture I uploaded. It's a picture I took at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial and it accompanies this blog posting. I'm kind of excited about the potential to earn feature bonuses for photos at Redgage because I've been interested in Michael-John Wolfe's information on making residual income with stock photography. I even tried uploading a few photos to a stock photography site and had them rejected because of low resolution, non-commercial subject matter, etc. Because of that experience I had tabled the idea of pursuing stock photography as a source of residual income. But with Redgage I can upload some of (what I consider to be) my more interesting photos and earn some residual income from them. That's encouraging to me!

Redgage for Backlinks

One of the best reasons to use Redgage is for backlinks to your other online content. Creating a backlink at Redgage is similar to creating one on Xomba or She Told Me. You copy the link, give it a title, write a short description, and then add a few tags. It takes very little time to do and the links at Redgage are 'do-follow' so they're especially valuable. Redgage is a great addition to the collection of sites where you can actually make money with your backlinks.

Signing up for Redgage

If you'd like to give Redgage a try, you can find it at Redgage.com. If you'd like to sign up as one of my referrals (I'll earn extra "raffle tickets" for the daily $25 contest) you can sign up using this link: Sign up for Redgage. Either way, be sure to send me a friend request once you're there. My user name is TheFamilyCEO.

Three Ways to Make More Money with Your Existing eHow Articles

So the dust is starting to settle and the information is being sorted out around eHow's change to using the Demand Studios platform for all it's content. eHow writers are learning whether or not they have been pre-approved for Demand Studios or whether they need to apply at DS to be able to continue writing how-to articles for eHow. They're also making the decision about whether they want to continue writing for eHow at all.

Regardless of where you are in your decision-making process, the fact remains that you probably have a bunch of eHow articles that you've already written still live on the eHow site. And according the eHow, you will continue to earn from those articles with the same algorithm you already have.

So what can you do to beef up earnings on the articles that are already on the eHow site?

1. You can backlink to your existing eHow articles. There are a variety of ways to do that but two places where you can backlink to all of your eHow articles and earn money in the process are Xomba and She Told Me. I've already written about my Xomba experiment in backlinking to my eHow articles. Recently I joined She Told Me and I'm starting to experiment at that site as well.

2. Another thing you can do is to re-write your highest earning eHow articles for other sites. If you've written an article for eHow, chances are it's on a subject you either a) already knew a lot about or b) did the research necessary to write on it. In fact, you probably have groups of articles on eHow written around various subjects. You may find it surprising how easy it is to re-write articles on that topic for another site.

At first I was reluctant to do this because the 'how-to' format was something of a security blanket for me. Staring at a blank page was a little intimidating after writing 200+ eHow articles. If you find yourself in the same boat, remember that you can still write in how-to format for other sites. In addition you can create other 'security blanket formats' that might help you get the writing ball moving forward. This article is an example of that. '____ Ways to _______' can be a format where you fill in the blanks depending on the article you're writing.

You'll find publishing articles at sites like Xomba and Info Barrel a real pleasure and re-writing articles you've already written can be a real shortcut to getting content up fast. You can also write different articles on similar topics for revenue share at Demand Studios.

3. Finally you can improve the SEO of the eHow articles you already have up. If you look at your earliest eHow articles, you will probably discover that you've learned a thing or two about SEO since you started writing. Make some changes in the keywords, etc. and see if you earnings on those articles don't improve.

So this can all be summed up in three tips:

1. Drive traffic to your existing eHow articles.
2. Examine your successful eHow articles and write similar articles on the same topic at other sites.
3. Improve the SEO of your existing eHow articles.

An Additional Note About Putting More Time Into eHow

I know some are less than trusting about eHow's claims that our WCP articles will stay up and continue to earn. I feel about this the way I felt when I wrote about what I thought was the future of the WCP over a month ago: the WCP articles may not last forever but they're there for now and I might as well maximize my ability to earn money from them. Especially since they are already written and aged. I don't need a guarantee that they will be there forever because there is nothing in the online business world (or offline business world for that matter) that will be unchanging. My strategy is to:

• Make my best guess about what is worth putting my time into. 
• Give it my all. 
• Adapt and move forward when someone moves my cheese.

Changes at eHow: the WCP and Demand Studios

By now you are probably aware of the changes taking place at eHow as it relates to the Writers Compensation Program and Demand Studios. If not, you can get up to date by reading this blog entry. As I expressed in my thoughts on the future of the WCP program, I'm not surprised at these developments. And as I speculated in that post, they are grandfathering in the articles that already exist on eHow as part of the WCP. We will continue to receive revenue share payments on them as we always have; we just can't add any more except through Demand Studios.

Since I am already approved as a Demand Studios (DS) writer, I can continue to add eHow articles with a revenue share payment through DS. Other eHow writers will have to apply for the ability to do that. I don't know at this time if that is something I will do with any regularity.For me it will depend on the following:

1. What is the publishing experience like at DS, especially as it relates to copy editors and having articles approved?
2. Is the DS revenue share payment algorithm as lucrative as the WCP has been? (On the forums, Julie the Community Manager, assured me that the DS algorithm was based on the WCP one, but I'm not sure exactly what that means.)

As Oprah would say, here is what I know for sure:

• I won't be removing my current articles that are up at eHow, as others have suggested they are doing. In fact, I'll continue to drive traffic to them in an effort to keep their earnings rising.
• I'm especially glad that I undertook the Xomba experiment as it helped me with the point listed above and also gave me some experience writing extensively for a new platform. (Here's a quick update: my Xomba earnings now stand at $16+ plus, primarily from creating bookmarks to my eHow articles.)
• I will continue to explore other methods of building residual income, like the Mr. Rebates passive income stream I posted about earlier today.

What are your thoughts on what is going down at eHow? What are you plans for moving forward?

Another Great Source of Passive Income: Mr. Rebates Referrals

Last week I received a deposit of $110 in my Paypal account but it wasn't from eHow. It was from another great source of passive income for me: Mr. Rebates. In fact, so far this year I've been paid  almost $500 from Mr. Rebates. My deposits have looked like this:

• January: $240.14
• February: $83.85
• March: $62.47
• April: $110.41

Most people know Mr. Rebates as a site where you can earn cash back rebates on your online shopping. They're great for that; I use them for a lot of my online shopping. But the fact is that of the $497 I've earned with them this year, only $2.50 was a rebate for shopping I did. The rest were referral commissions. You see, when you refer someone to Mr. Rebates you get 20% of the rebate amounts that they earn. Forever. And it doesn't cost the person you referred anything. Their rebates are the same either way.

There are other sites where you can earn money for referring people: Cashbaq, Ebates, and Big Crumbs just to name a few. But I've had the most success by far with Mr. Rebates. If you're interested in creating a passive income stream with Mr. Rebates here are some things you need to know to get started:

1. Signing up with Mr. Rebates is free. In fact, it's better than free. You get a $5 signup bonus credited to your account.
2. Mr. Rebates has over 2000 stores and many are places where you probably already shop: Dell, Overstock, JCPenney, and Best Buy to name a few.
3. Mr. Rebates pays once a month You can request a payout via either check or Paypal once your account reaches $10 (including your signup bonus and any referral commissions). I used to request payouts sporadically but now that my referral commissions are more significant I request a payout monthly. 
4. Mr. Rebates is rated 'A' by the Better Business Bureau. I have had numerous payouts from them for both shopping rebates and referral commissions and have never had an issue.

You can refer people to Mr. Rebates via a number of both online and offline methods. That includes flyers, business cards, article writing, emails, etc.If you're interested in using Mr. Rebates to create a passive income stream for yourself, I would suggest signing up for free (affiliate link), exploring the website and making a purchase or two through Mr. Rebates to see how it works, and then choosing one or more referral methods to begin referring others.

If you have any questions about Mr. Rebates or creating passive income in this way, don't hesitate to let me know. I'll be happy to answer anything I can. For more information about this type of residual income stream, see Make Money with Cash Back Sites. Or if you're just interested in saving some money on your online shopping, visit my blog Shopping With Mr. Rebates.

eHow Earnings are Back on the Rise!

March turned out to be my best month ever on eHow. My earnings were $225.98, nearly 10% higher than my previous high. This brings my total earnings at eHow to over $3000! That's an exciting milestone for me.

I did very little writing in March so I think this has to do with eHow fixing the UK issues as well as some backlinking I've been doing to my eHow articles from Xomba. Residual income is wonderful!

Speaking of residual income, I plan to soon share some details about another great source of residual income for me. If you're interested in passive/residual income I hope you'll subscribe and stay tuned for more information.

How was your March at eHow or otherwise? Hope it was happy and prosperous!

Related info: Want to see your eHow earnings rise? Read my new, longer review of Writergig's eHow ebook.