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.

Milestone... First Article is Earning Money

Today I hit another milestone...  my first article, "How to Estimate the Cost of a Flat Screen TV" earned $0.05.  Awesome right!!!  This might seem like a small victory, but it's HUGE to me.  It's a small...very very small pat on the back...that's having a big impact on my motivation to keep going.

Challenge Begins...

Wrote my first article last night and it was published today at 1:17 pm.  Here it is...  How to Estimate the Cost of a Flat Screen TV. 1 article down and 99 to go!  In addition, I wrote my second article tonight.  Let's hope it gets published tomorrow.  I've read a couple posts where it was noted that is takes about 24-48 hours for articles to get published.  More to come, good night!

Ok, Here's the Challenge...

Write a 100 eHow articles in 100 days and generate $100 in monthly income.

Here are the details:

• Start Date: February 1, 2010
• Completion Date: May 12, 2010
• eHow ID: How100 (ehow does not let you register an ID that contains "eHow" in it)

Why am I doing this?

It's all about personal commitment to an entrepreneurial goal. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I've never taken the leap because I've been waiting for the perfect million dollar idea. I've realized that I'm probably not going to have a great million dollar idea until I get more experience as an entrepreneur working on smaller projects. To begin my journey, I've decided to start with a $100 idea. I think I can accomplish this challenge, but it will require me to develop skills, gain new knowledge, and stay dedicated for 100 days. If I'm successful, then I will have taken my first step as an entrepreneur.

What's the plan for writing revenue generating articles?

Here's the 3 part plan...

1. Use the information in Maria's ebook, "How to Earn Passive Income at eHOW.com" as the foundation. This ebook is an excellent source of information on how-to writie eHow profitable articles. Maria has been a very successful eHow contributer and she makes more than $1,000 a month from her articles. Her ebook has screenshots that shows a couple of her articles that have generated more than $1,000. (You can purchase Maria's ebook directly for $25: Click here to view more details.)

2. Draw on my eHow experience from the past year. This is not my first attempt at writing articles for ehow. Under another ID, I wrote about 40 articles over the past year. During this time, I learned a lot from my mistakes. One learning experience involved getting contacted by eHow that my behavior was considered inappropriate spamming... other experiences involved learning what types of articles eHow is likely to delete during their infamous sweeps (More than 10 of my articles have been deleted over the past year). One of the best things I developed was a technique to find an unlimited number of article ideas. I plan to share this information on this blog.

3. Experiment with new Techniques. Here's the fun part... I'm planning to test a bunch of new ideas that I have for writing revenue generating articles. I will share these ideas on this blog and let you know if they were successful. I'm hoping that readers of this blog can benefit from these experiments and generate more money from their articles.

What's in it for me?

1. The TREMENDOUS satisfaction I will have from taking my first step forward as an Entrepreneur.

2. New skills and knowledge that I will gain through attempting this challenge.

3. Momentum towards my next entrepreneurial goal...TBD.

4. $100 of passive income in my pocket going forward (Certainly not the top benefit...but it's still a benefit)

Stay tuned... my next post will review the prep I'm doing for the 2/1/2010 start date.