Pursuing the happy buck--focusing on the best approach

Today, I was reading a lot of complaints about Yuwie. And a few people hyping it. (This was occuring on MyLot.) All this got me to thinking.

The ones who are in favor of Yuwie are those who are good at getting referrals (they know that they are good at it), while those who are not good at "networking" are looking at the payout and saying that it is a rip-off.

Now, I can see both points of view. After all, I am of two minds about everything. It comes with the blood--bad upbringing and all--mom was the type of person that the only way to accomplish anything without her messing things up was to make it look like you were up to something completely different.

I also have some economics classes and ten years of restaurant management under my belt, besides having been trained to take over dad's business when he retired (things went bad, hence my working for myself). So it is easy for me to see both sides.

I can see, based on my own numbers that I will need about a million payviews to hit the fifty dollar payout on Yuwie. So a little over 208 years at my current pace.

On the other hand, the site doesn't have as many members as MySpace--though based on my stats there and on nettribe, I doubt that I would ever succeed just on page count.

There is also the fact that if one can get enourgh active referrals that a lot of the earnings would come from another source.

Unfortunately, I am not very good at getting referrals or being a salesman. For me, Yuwie will probably never earn me a payout.

But there is that whole social networking thing--just like MySpace--as a writer a good networking site is worth something to me. So I will probably stick around Yuwie and do the occasional blog about stuff, including the rare link to one of my current bits of writing.

Which brings me to my point--yes, I had a point in mind--people should stick to what they are good at when focusing on the happy buck ("the happy buck" was something an afro-haired painter used to describe the paintings that people would actually buy). For those who are good at getting referrals, they should stick at that. Those of us who have other skills, like myself, should stick to those things that we do best.

And we really should let say "live and let live." Each to their own. No forcing one another to adapt to the other's approach fo making money.

So in my case, I should stick to the paid to write sites--Helium mainly for me (my luck with Associated Content is not the best) and other types of freelance writing. Now, there will be some that say that I will always struggle for money if I take that route.

That idea is ignoring one of the truths about being a writer. Half a writer's income should be coming from royalities--ask the professionals and they will tell you that your upfront for the year should match the amount of royalities (residuals) that you made. Half of my time is spent on making money upfront, the other half is spent building up my stock of royality based material. It is just another form of doubling your money, through not from interest or referrals.

In fact, those of us who are good at producing good content need those who are going to build up membership in sites such as Yuwie and Helium. On my own, I will never generate a million hits without an audience. But with some people driving people to the site, I might. Ok, it is a real long shot, but hey it could happen.

So my basic opinion is that each of us should focus on our strengths when it comes to trying to make a buck. That is my opinion, and I am sticking to it.





My Helium Page.