Page View Reciprocation

The way that many beginning (and quite a few experienced) writers earn money on the web with their writing is "by the page view." Basically, the more people who read your articles, the more you get paid. For instance, both Helium and Associated Content pay based on the number of page views that you have. With AC, you currently get paid $1.50 per thousand page views; with Helium, it is a little more complicated--it is actually revenue sharing, so various topics earn differently, but the principle is the same: More readers means more earned income.

Now due to this, page view writers are interested in ways to increase their page views. Some email everyone in their address book every time that they publish a new article (a bad notion, soon your emails start to get blocked). Other like myself, maintain a blog and put up links to our articles up on the web. There is also a vast money-making machine that promises more page views provided that you are willing to cough up the fees.

Don't fall for the systems that promise additional page views for a fee. Most of them are charging more than you will actually gain from your additional page views. And worse, many of them actually consist of bots; if your page views are detected as coming from bots, rather than real human beings, you will not get paid for them. In fact, using a bot hit service will get your writing account deleted and cost all the earnings that you might have earned in the future from that writing.

Not only can't you use bots, but you can not view your own material and get paid for it either. All page view sites have ways (cookies) to make sure that the author is not gaming the system with their own computer. But if you are willing to spend time trying to fool the system by reading your own material, there is actually something that you can do.

You can join a Page View Reciprocation Group. A PVRG is a group of writers who exchange page views with one another. I can not budge my own page view count by reading my own material, but I can increase someone else's numbers. And they can do the same for me. So if you are willing to spend the time, you can increase your page views---or rather someone else's, who in turn boosts your own numbers.

Plus because it is real human beings doing the reading, you can gain rating points and the occasional glowing comment besides an increased page view count. Best of all, user agreements tend to allow this behavior---because it is real human beings, advertising occasionally works on them.

PVRGs are also a nice way to network with other writers: talk about writing opportunities, complain about various publishers, and get feedback on your work.

There is a major drawback: you have to spend time reading other people's articles. A lot of people think that they can join such a group and not do the reading. Trust me, if a writer does not reciprocate, the other writers will figure it out. So don't join, or start such a group, if you have no intention of actually reading other people's work.