Tuesday, February 16, 2010

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

Sunday, February 14, 2010

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!

Monday, February 8, 2010

2 Articles Earning...

As of today, I have 2 articles earning money:

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.

Friday, February 5, 2010

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.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

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!