My New Project - Data Warehousing Jobs HQ

When eHow closed it's doors to me a few months ago, I walked away from writing online....  however, now I'm back.  I'm working on a new project called Data Warehousing Jobs HQ (http://datawarehousingjobshq.com/).  Jumping into this project has renewed my interest in online writing and entrepreneurship.  I would be thrilled if you stopped by to check it out.  Here's a sample...

Welcome to Data Warehousing Jobs Headquarters!  We have everything you need to start and advance your career in business intelligence.

Our focus is to help you…

• Find the perfect job
• Earn a great salary
• Increase your value
• Get promoted

Whether you are a business intelligence professional or looking for a career in this industry, we will help you take the next step!

Data Warehousing Jobs HQ (http://datawarehousingjobshq.com/)

Here's the latest post: Your Perfect Data Warehousing Job (http://datawarehousingjobshq.com/?p=30)

Halfway there... I'm over the hump!!!

Today I wrote my 51st article, which means I've crossed over the halfway point to 100 articles.  There is still a long way to go and a lot of work to be done.  However, I'm now confident that I can achieve this goal.  For anyone looking to achieve a goal, I can say that it's a great moment when you hit the halfway mark and realize that you have made significant progress.  Tonight I will toast to this milestone...cheers!!!

Here are my current numbers...
51 Articles Submitted to eHow
43 Articles Published (8 pending)
1,141 Views
$4.38 in Monthly Income for March
$6.74 in Total Income since starting on Feb 1st

Breaking news...  all 51 articles have been published.  I am thrilled!!!

Publishing Problems are Back!!! ...but I'm ok.

Yes, the publishing problems are back.  I have 8 articles that are "Unavailable" and 6 of them were submitted on 3/17/10.  There are many postings about this issue in the ehow forums.  Many writers have decided to hold-off writing anymore articles until this issue is resolved.  However, I'm going back to my previous approach of writing my articles in Google Docs.  Once the problem clears up, I'll submit these articles.

As of today, I'm 50 days into my challenge (half-way through) and I've written 44 articles.  I should be caught-up by this time next week to the article a day pace.

44 articles down and 56 to go.  I'm almost over the half-way hump.

Authority...and Google Docs to the Rescue

Authority...
I broke through 2,000 eHow points and got promoted from Enthusiast to Authority.  I'm not sure what this means in terms of earnings, but as far as articles it means that I wrote 18 articles that each contained a picture.  I'm pretty sure that the more pictures you include in your articles the more points you can accumulate.

Google Docs...
G-Docs have saved my butt over & over again.  I used to write my articles directly into the eHow publishing tool, but if anything went wrong the entire article would be lost.  After a long night of fighting with the publishing tool I decided to start by writing each of my articles in G-Docs and then copy them over into the eHow publishing tool.  Using this approach has saved my articles multiple times.  Lately, I'm finding myself holding my breadth each time I submit an article.  Over the past week, I've written about 15 articles and I've only been able to publish 9 of them.  The other 6 would have been lost if I did not first write them in G-docs.  I highly recommend using a similar approach.

As of today, I'm running 12 articles behind my planned pace of one article a day.  I'm 40 days into my challenge and I've only written 28 articles.  However, I'm not concerned.  I have a plan that should allow me to catch-up over the next week.  Wish me luck...Thanks!

P.S. Beware of the eHow Mechanic Message when submitting an article.  We've been seeing this message a lot lately.  Lots of noise in the eHow forums about this issue.

The Publishing Freeze is Over... but is it really!?!?!

I was on twitter tonight and I saw a bunch of tweets about newly published articles.  At first I was upset because I thought I had been excluded...  but when I checked my account 2 of 3 articles had been published.  Within 10 minutes the third article also published.  Then I started thinking is the publishing issue completely gone???  I need to test how long will it take for a newly submitted article to be published.  So I submitted one of the many articles that I saved in Google docs during the past week.  So far it's been about 40 minutes and it hasn't published yet.  I'll still be happy if this article is published some time tomorrow.  As long as I do not have to wait another week.  I'll put up a follow-up post when this article gets published. Tick...tock...tick....tock


Limbo articles, now published:
How to Estimate the Cost of Soapstone Countertops
How to Pull Data From Oracle into Excel
How to Estimate the Cost of a Doctor's Office Visit


UPDATE - My test article published in approx 2 hours.  This is awesome and I'm going to bed happy tonight.  I'll submit my 5 remaining articles tomorrow.


Here's the test submission...
How to Estimate the Cost of Granite Tile Countertops

Obstacles, Obstacles, Obstacles...

I went into this challenge knowing that there would be many obstacles on the path to achieving my goal.  Here are the 3 biggest challenges I'm currently facing:


1. eHow is not publishing my articles...
I submitted articles on 2/6, 2/8, & 2/10 and none of them have been published by eHow.  My first 5 articles were on hold for approx 12-18 hours before they were published.  This even seemed strange to me because when I first started writing for eHow last year this process took less than 10 minutes.  
SOLUTION: Keep writing articles, but save them in google Docs and wait for the 3 articles on hold to publish before I submit anymore.


2. Writing and my family...
I woke up early on Valentines Day to write an article before everyone woke-up.  Well my alarm also woke-up my 4 & 6 year old princesses.  They have been begging to get out of bed, but I'm trying to squeeze in a few more minutes to complete this morning's article.  In addition, I think my wife is feeling a little neglected because every night after the kids go to bed I'm in front on the computer writing my next article.
SOLUTION: Keep waking up early (and quietly) to write so that I can spend time with the family later on in the day.


3. I'm running a little behind... 
My writing pace is running a little behind what it needs to be to complete 100 articles in 100 days.  I've skipped writing on days where either I was exhausted or I had higher priority issues to address.  As of today, I'm running behind by 2 articles.
SOLUTION: When time permits, write more than one article a day.  Once I've caught up, then I should bank some articles so that if I skip days in the future I will not run behind.


Even though I'm facing many obstacles I need to stay committed to solving them so that in the end I will achieve my goal.  Conceptually this is easy...  let's see if I can do it.  I appreciate your support!

2 Articles Earning...

As of today, I have 2 articles earning money:

1.How to Estimate the Cost of a Concrete Countertop has earned $0.33

2.How to Estimate the Cost of a Flat Screen TV has earned $0.12

I'm falling a little behind on my article writing pace.  I want to be averaging about 1 article a day, but I had to skip a couple because my wife was sick and I needed to take care of her, the kids, and the dogs.  Busy, busy, busy.  I will catch-up over the next few days.  I'd like to start writing 2 articles a night during the week and then take the weekends off.  Sounds like a plan....good night.