Made the top 500 on Yahoo Voices in April 2013

Yes, I took a screen shot of this because I was excited.  

And this is how I imagine that other people will feel about it.

So, I made the Top 500 in April 2013 on the Yahoo Contributor Network--for having a really big audience on Yahoo Voices (formerly Associated Content). What does this really mean? Probably nothing at all. Or that the audiences are really small. Or perhaps that my small payment for pageviews were in the top 500--in which case, it is just proof that even the best writers are starving artists--or not, depending on the clout level (levels nine and ten get paid more than clout level eight). Still I thought that I would say something because I do not remember the last time that I advertised my work on Yahoo Voices.

Pricing ebooks

I have been thinking a lot lately about how ebooks are priced. Mainly because I just started to get back into the writing game after a brief absence.

(Not that it is a serious venture back into the field, more like a sticking my toe into a pool of slime and wondering why I did so. For those who are curious about how serious I am taking it, just slip over to Smashwords and take a gander at my little test project, Pizza Boxes on the Floor.)

Honestly, looking around the internet, it looks like the Wild West when it comes to determining ebook prices.

The traditional publishers are still secretly trying to charge the same amount for an ebook as they are for a physical copy. Actually, the other day, I saw a history book that actually cost more for the ebook copy than a physical copy. I am guessing that some publishers believe that people will be willing to pay for convenience.

In my case, I am not willing to pay for convenience. Or rather I am not willing to have to pay for a ebook and then have to pay again for a hard copy with actual page numbers that I can cite in a college paper.

On the other side of the scale, there are the pirates who believe that no one should make a penny from any ebook. I am sorry, my cats would like to eat; therefore, I need to get paid something. And yes, if I am going to be pirated, than one of the pirate is going to have to pay a copy first.

So the question will arise about why I choose a 99 cent price for a 8860 word ebook, especially one that a reader will some time can find almost the entirety of for free on the internet already.

Well,  I had three choices.

First option, the "reader names their own price"---there are two problems with this option. One, I know that a lot of readers would download the entire book and not read any more than the free preview that I am already offering; and two, there are outlets who would not carry the ebook if this option was choosen.

Second option, the "free ebook" option---I am sorry, my favorite charity is my cats, and they would like to eat. If I wanted to give stuff away, I would have choosen the first option; it would result in the same amount of income.

Third option, "pick a price that ends in 99 cents," better known as the iBookstore price force---iBookstore, if you are charging for a book, will automatically round the price to the nearest 99 cents. It is an iCommerce thing (I am sure that Apple is going to trademark that term soon enourgh).

So in the interests of greed, because we all know that occult writers only write books for the money, I went with the third option, and decided 99 cents was a good price for 8860 words.

Is 99 cents that much? Some people are going to say it is. But I do not think so. After all, that is how much a can of cat food is being sold for at Walgreens (and they label that a "great buy"). And my cats would like to occasionally eat.

Semester so far

This semester so far has been kicking me in the behind. Therefore, I have gotten very little writing done, outside of the three astrology columns that I have written for Campus Connections and the required essays for my classes.

(The first astrology column of the semester I finally got around uploading to Associated Content today if anyone is interested in reading it---about how the sun signs start the semester. I don't think that it will get many page views, but I am after the google-love and AC cloat.)

I think that the Faulkner class is kicking me the hardest. The other day, I was so tired that I looked at the schedule to see what novel I was supposed to be reading next---and somehow, I still ended up reading the wrong book. *groan* The bright spot? I wasn't the only student to do this. I guess that I am not the only person that is having their rear kicked this semester.

I do plan on getting back to writing sometime in the future; I am just not sure if it will happen before the semester is over.

Writing astrology columns

As many of my regular readers know, for the last couple of years I have been writing an astrology column for the student newspaper of the Community College of Denver (CCD): Campus Connection. And today, I am starting my fourth semester of being a professional astrological writer (using the olympic definition of professional---if you ever got paid [even once] for the work, then you are a professional).

When I first accepted a position on the newspaper staff, the astrology column was not even a glimmer in my eye. I was in a literature class with Sarah Stover; and when she got the job of editor-in-chief, she remembered that I mentioned that I occasionally did some freelance writing. I agreed to work for the newspaper, then discovered the very next week that I needed to do a last minute transfer to the University of Colorado at Denver if I did not want to lose a whole semester worth of credits (I was just short of a single class, a science class, for my Associate degree when I transferred). Sarah did not care that I was going to a different school; as long as I was taking classes at Auraria campus, I was still qualified to work for Campus Connection.

It was not until October that the thought of an astrology column arose. I was doing a piece on Wicca and witches---which is how Sarah realized that I knew a lot about the esoteric traditions---when the thought occurred to her that I might be capable of writing an astrology column. Every writer meeting after that, she would mention how she loved astrology columns (hint, hint). I basically ignored the hints because of a slight difficulty that the format of the student newspaper presented.

Campus Connection comes out every three weeks (five issues a semester). This means that doing a predictive column was close to impossible. The very first semester I was there, I discovered a two year-old issue on one of the stands---an issue long forgotten by everyone. This caused me to have to figure otu a way to write an astrology column that was as fresh (useful) on the last day that the issue was on the stands as it was the first day.

It took me three months to figure out the solution. In fact, I figured out the solution the very last week of winter break. I cobbled it up and sent it in. The first column was about How Your Sun Sign Might Affect Your Study Habits. It got published, and the rest as they say is history.

The original format of the astrology column included an introduction which discussed some aspect of astrology and introduced the theme of the month. Based on the feedback from readers I talked to, the introduction section was abandoned when the next editor-in-chief started (it was part of the changes needed to keep the column in the paper---his opinion of the column was not exactly favorable---ironically, all the changes were ones that I wanted because of my feedback research). There was also some artistic changes done last year (including the removal of the background artwork).

But despite the changes in format, the way I write the column has been stayed the same. A month before writing any particular column, I have an idea. A couple of days before the column is due, I abandon the original theme and start working on a completely different theme. The revised idea for the column tends to be something I dreamed up while in the shower. Coming up with the idea is probably the hardest part of the process (in terms of how long it takes me to come up with a viable idea).

Then I start with the easiest signs for that idea and work my way towards the harder ones. The easiest signs to write about are those that I have a real life model for (often I am joking about how a certain Virgo and Gemini react). Then I progress to the harder ones...for the ones that I am unsure about I open up one of the many astrology books that I own (most often Rex Bills' The Rulership Book). Due to the nature of the column, I end up writing bits of it whenever I have a few mintutes to spare (lightrail, standing around waiting on my wife, etc.).

And a few months after the issue is off the stands, I reprint the columns on the internet. The astrology column does not do well on the internet for various reasons, but I do like to have them available online for my non-college friends to read. (The last four columns I wrote have yet to be posted to the internet which says what type of summer I had this year.) So here is to another year of writing astrology columns. May you enjoy and learn as much about astrology as I do while writing them.

Yahoo is acquiring Associated Content

How do I feel about Yahoo acquiring Associated Content? Honestly, I am not sure yet. I guess a lot will depend on how many changes are made to the present system, and what the changes are.

I presume that distributed exclusive content is going to be eligible to be used by Yahoo branded sites. Of course, that won't make much difference to me considering that I do not do much of that type of writing. On the other hand, who knows what I will be writing this fall or next year.

I guess I am ok with it as long as my performance payments continue coming in, and I don't suffer a drop in my page views or income. And if my income goes up, well, why would I complain?

So this might be a good time to consider signing up for an account with Associated Content and learning the ropes of the system before Yahoo starts to leverage the articles on AC.

Why is no one reading my stuff?

There is nothing like going to check one of your writing accounts that you get paid by the page view and seeing that you have no page views from the day before. I think that Associated Content is trying to give me a heart attack. Checking the forum, I realize that it must be a bug in the system (I am not the only one with zero page views for yesterday---there is at least a dozen of us); nevertheless, Oy Vey!

Update (3/5/2010): Today when I checked my zero pageviews had been revised upwards. It made me feel much better.

Testing the waters without a compelling question

There are times that as a writer you stumble across something, and find yourself wondering if you should not be doing it also. In my case, I recently discovered that there is a lot of articles about Jane Eyre over on Associated Content.

And honestly, I found myself wondering if anyone makes a dime off of them.

I had wrote an essay on Jane Eyre earlier this semester. It was one of those compelling question essays that I loathe. I got a C on it.

Thank the goddess for rewrites in this particular class.

It should be noted that I have no intention of writing this particular essay. It has already been agreed (by both me and the professor) that I am choosing another question for my rewrite, perhaps even a different novel.

So given the fact that I am not going to rewrite this essay, I decided to use it as a test article over on Associated Content. I figure that "What does the color red symbolize in Jane Eyre?" will give me an idea of whether or not anyone is making a dime on articles of that irk.

If they are, and I make a dime, then good for me. If not, it is not like I lost anything. All I did was remove the citations, and rewrite a couple of sentences. I think that is called "recycling."

Twittering the AC articles

There are just some days that you have to take care of the little business matters that you have been neglecting and today was one of them.

One of the little things I have been neglecting is linking my Associated Content articles to my twitter page. Of course, it turned out to be as painful as I thought it would be. For one thing, I needed to change my twitter password (it was shared by another site---I know---Bad Morgan!). Then I promptly could not type in the exact password again; it was strong, but not memoriable. So it goes.

Now at the moment, I do not have that many followers on twitter. A whole seven---and I am not really sure that they are real followers. But in twitter's defense, I have not worked at making sure people know I have a twitter account.

Then is also the whole issue that I do not update twitter regularly. Logging in today, I realized that it had not been updated for three months. A large part of that problem is that I do not have a cell phone, so I actually have to be near a computer to update my status.

So why am I setting this up now? Simply because I can foresee needing it in the future. For instance, in June when my wife is out of town, I plan on doing a lot of writing. I do not want to waste a minute of that two or three week period---those of you who have heard me complain about how she interrupts my writing will understand that comment. Having this set up ahead of time will help on that front.

Anyways, that was my big accomplishment of the day (if you ignore the fact that I changed my profile picture back to a real picture from the "last meal before execution" meme).

Follow Morgan Eckstein on Twitter.

My clout level at AC went up

Today, I checked my stats at Associated Content, and saw that my clout level went up from six to seven since yesterday. I did not realize that I was so close to the edge. Sometimes surprises are pleasant.

And seven is the magical level where my PPM payment starts to earn a bonus. It is not a big bonus, but I will take that shiny nickel anyways.

I have noticed that my daily pageviews on average have gone up. Plus I got a little spike in views the couple of days that David Griffin was complaining about my review of his book, The Ritual Magic Manual.

(For those who are unaware, he thinks that I gave him a bad book review because of political reasons [I belong to an evil occult conspiracy, he says {more or less}]; I just do not believe that his book should be selling for a thousand dollars on the used book market...though I have yet to see evidence that it is actually being sold at that price [we all know that there is a difference between the asking price and the price something actually goes for]. Though it is pretty much a non-issue now, I have recently saw a complete pdf of his book; I doubt that the value of his book will remain so high now.)

*Gee, that is an awkward looking group of sentences, isn't it?*

But I think that the spike in pageviews were minor (it really wasn't that large...hmmm, I guess people really do not care what he thinks). More important I think for getting me up an additional clout level is that I have been putting up more articles on Associated Content, and not just occult articles.

My latest was an article I wrote for Campus Connections back in August about Amendment 50 and what effect it might have on community college funding.

So here to me making progress as a writer. That nickel PPM may not sound like much, but it beats the moths that are currently inhabiting my bank account.

Follow-up to Yesterday's post

Helium fixed the title sometime after I posted yesterday. It is still not in the channel that I think it should be, but I can see their thinking about it.

And as those of you who have read the previuos posting, Associated Content has bugged me; rather their readers have.

Thank god for video games to help calm me down. Now it is off to do a couple more book reviews.

Frustrations

I am a little frustrated today.

Had a survey freeze up on me (ten minutes into it).

I have two articles on Bukisa sitting in editorial.

The wife keeps asking me if I am coming out to help her work on the flower bed. I think she is trying to guilt me into it. This is why I am going to get a cubicle job after I graduate college. She does not understand that self-employment means putting your business in front of everything else.

And Helium not only put a title I suggested into the wrong channel (literature---international writer?!) for a book review on Magic Squares and the Tree of Life (new age maybe, literature not even close), but the title also has a spelling mistake in it. I know that they are going to blame the mistake on me, despite the fact that I copied it from my Word document and it appears correct on two other writing sites.

The only people/site who have not bugged me today is Associated Content. Give them time.

Second time this month

So today is the second time this month that my rating percentage had dropped suddenly on Helium and I have lost my rating star.

To be more accurate, I did some rating and regained my star, then had it climb to two stars before it dropped to one and then none.

And this just makes me more likely to focus on Associated Content, abandoning Helium to its own graces.

It did not take a cracked crystal ball to be able to predict that a pattern like this was going to happen on Helium. Tying the earnings into the rating star system means that to get paid, you have to have a rating star. And the month-end bonus, which is not a lot to me (just three dollars) is a lot to some, ensures a frenzy of ratings at the end of every month as those people who are close to the edge rate rapidly to trying to get it.

What this means to a regular writer is that if you have work up on Helium is that you have to check in everyday to check your rating star and periodically have to rate (instead of writing) to maintain your earnings there. All this has done (ignoring the fact that those who are earning are earning more pennies than before) is to make the other writing sites, such as Associated Content look better than before.

I guess my biggest problem is that rates that were worth a rating star earlier this week, then two stars, are worth nothing today. It is like playing the stock market in terms of frustration.

Before you ask: no, I did not drop in the number of rates that I have done. Quite literally, rates that I did that were good quality earlier this month are now considered bad quality rates.

Helium has always played it close to the vest when it comes to defining what is a quality rate. But I think that it is safe to say that a quality rate must somehow tie into what the average rate looks like. Either the average quality has gone up or the system is awash in poor ratings.

Those who know my opinionated personality will be able to guess what I think.

So given the fact that I keep losing rating stars, I have to decide whether I should stick around on Helium or focus my time and energy elsewhere.

I figure that I have to spend ten mintues a day rating articles to be safe. And that is everyday.

(For those of you who are curious, my wife [the elementary art school teacher] is on vacation this week and next week; she is also tying up the only computer with internet access to do reasearch on her family tree; my computer time is limited until school starts again. But then again, I am a college student, Helium should not even be able to make me think about the following.)

So we are looking at fifteen hours of rating over a ninety day period. This is fifteen hours of writing that I do not get to do.

For someone with a thousand articles on Helium, this might not be a bad deal. Or maybe it is a bad deal. Lets assume that the average article on Helium is worth fifty cents a year. Lets assume everyone needs to do the same amount of rating (ten minutes a day); converting this to an hourly wage: 2.78 an hour.

(In my case, I figure with the number of articles I have and my income that rating pays about a dollar an hour. It is just too bad that writing an article actually takes time and my potential income from writing is actually higher than that, even if I am just writing for the college newspaper.)

And this is why I and many other writers on Helium were against the idea of tying the daily revenue share (the pennies) into the maintaining a rating star in the first place. It redefined the term "active member" to mean something much different than what it originally was.

Today, the active member has to be working on the site at least ten minutes a day. Just to earn a few pennies.

I understand why Helium did it; but as a small time writer without a lot of articles on Helium, it is probably not in my best interest to remain active on Helium.

To say that I am frustrated would be an understatement.

Annoyed and frustrated, but still did some work

Well, as the readers of my last entry know, I was annoyed with Helium yesterday.

I still ended up doing some writing, a book review of The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You! which I decided to put up on Associated Content. I originally wanted to put it up on Helium first, but I was also having trouble getting them to accept the title there. So it ended up on AC first.

Did about a half hour of rating yesterday on Helium, regained my rating star; we will see how long I hang onto it.

Plan on continuing to work on my Tarot article series today.

Just lost my Helium Rating Star

Today, I was reminded why I was against the very idea of Helium tying the daily earnings into the rating star system.

Yes, today I lost my rating star.

Since November, my rating percentage has been dropping. And overnight I lost two percentage points which wiped out my rating star. And yes, I am going to be told that I should have stayed home last night and rated a bunch of articles, rather than going out and doing my job as a lodge officer.

Yes, I am upset.

The drawback of tying the earnings to the rating stars has never been pointed out by the Helium staff. I know enourgh math to guess at the horrible truth; over half the writers will not get paid on any given day.

At the moment, I am at 72% on rating and with 134 ratings done; in order to regain my star, I figure that I have to do over a hundred ratings. And lets presume that my rating percentage is going to continue to drop. At a certain point in time, it is better that I abandon Helium than continue to fight the battle.

Essentially, I have a choice now. I can either focus on my writing or my rating. I started off in Novermber with a 82%; in the space of a month and a half, I lost ten percentage points.

Either other people got really good at rating, or my fears are true and the system does consider the majority to be the norm and bases what it considers to be a quality rate on the masses.

For those who don't know, I am the same person that loathed peer review days in my college writing classes. My sentences were considered too long; no one was present from my regular audience; and my classe mates were writing stuff that could have been ripped from any television sit-com.

Bottom line, Helium may have just lost me as a writer.

This college break I am booked nine ways to Sunday for time, between the lodge (mainly rewriting the entire website) and house repairs. I am supposed to be focusing on my writing, not spending all my time rating which do not increase my potential earnings.

I think that Associated Content just became my primary focus when it comes to online writing. And Constant Content all of a sudden looks a lot better.

I understand why Helium has to force their members to rate, but I think it is going to cost them a lot of good writers in the end, especially if the system is going by the majority to determine how good a person's rating skill is.

I would rather...

Yesterday, I was reading a post on Mylot, which led to a member's profile, which in turn led to an article on Associated Content about how to make residual income off the internet. And it caused me to realize that I have a disease that prevents me from making the big happy buck.

It is the disease that prevents me from using my social network to sell cell phones, long distance service, dietary supplements, jewelery, and Amway. It is the disease that makes me have friends, and not potential clients and customers.

It is the disease that makes me refuse to do things that all the internet and pyramid gurus say is the proper way to conduct business.

The disease is "rather-ism" coupled with a streak of honesty. And it is fatal to my money making potential.

I would rather have my Associated Content in-article links go to my other AC articles, the articles of my friends, and the occasional brilliant piece that one finds there, than to have the links go to my referral programs.

I would rather spend my time writing useful, and hopefully witty, articles than spend my time writing advertisements and self-promotional pieces. I would rather work for the college newspaper than write websites promoting e-books on marketing.

I would rather spend my time on MyLot gossiping and having fun, and leave the bait and switch tactics to others. I join sites to have fun, not to drive people into pyramid schemes.

I would rather have a simple profile, with only a couple of links leading off-site, than have a profile that makes Times Square and Grand Central Station look quiet and lazy. I understand the purpose of banner ads; I just don't want to wear one.

And I would rather have you laugh at this posting than be upset that I tricked you into a commercial.

Call me naive, unambitionous, lazy, unrealistic; but I would rather keep my honesty and my current reputation than become an internet millionaire.

Earning slowdown on Helium

One of the disappointments of being an online writer is that occasionally earning are not as good as projected. At the moment, one of the sites that is disappointing me is Helium. Earnings are down for everyone, outside of those who do well in the marketplace and contests, about 90% based on comments on the community forum, which are matching my own earning drop.

(Ok, maybe, it is not everyone, but there is enourgh to be concerned about.)

Helium has been doing their best to soothe concerns about the drop. They point out that Helium is "revenue-sharing" which means that if advertising income is down, writers earnings also will be down when viewed as a whole.

One of the ways that they are trying to help out the writers is to award a bonus to those writers who maintain both a writing and a rating star. Unfortunately, this leaves three quarters of the writers still in the cold; a writing star is earned by having your articles on average rank in the upper quarter of their titles; considering that not everyone can be in the upper quarter, someone will be a loser with that bonus program.

So is this going to cause me to abandon Helium? Probably not. My view of Helium is a long view, and I am treating it as a long term investment. And the articles that are in my speciality, Wicca, pagan and Golden Dawn, are still pulling in money, though at a slower pace than I would like. Those articles, which I would write anyway, are still viable for me to write.

It is only those articles with a short and limited economic life that are no longer worth writing for Helium; fortunately, I have an outlet for them: Associated Content.

To illustrate how low earnings have dropped on Helium, the articles that I have on both Helium and AC are earning more from page views on AC than they are from revenue share on Helium.
So I will probably be focused on writing for Associated Content for general articles, with Helium only getting articles in my speciality until the ecomony improves. It is the only way that I can justify my opportuntiy costs at the moment.

Three thousand reads on Associated Content

Yesterday, I crossed the line of having three thousand reads on Associated Content. As always, I am interested in what articles are getting read and what are not. Especially considering that I have only been submitting stuff there for a year, which sounds bad until you realize that I only submitted my eleventh AC article today (actually twelve, but my most recent gambling article is still awaiting review).

My first article there, A Brief History of Golden Dawn, has been read 250 times. As I have mentioned before between Helium and AC, it has been one of my best earning articles.

My second article, submitted five months later, about a speech Hillary Clinton gave at the Auraria Campus has been read 850 times. I figure that article is near the end of its economic life; it is only a matter of time before she drops out of the Presidential race.

The real surprise is that one article, on how the FICO 08 affects your credit score, accounts for over nine hundred of my page views there and is earning more on AC than it is on Helium. It is not surprising that people are reading it; what is surprising is that I am earning more from it on AC than Helium.

(Of course, my Helium earnings are currently in a slump. That is one of the dangers of "revenue sharing." When ad revenue is down for the website, so are the writers earnings.)

Normally, I make about the same from articles that I am double-dipping with, but not in this case. It is something that I need to explore further this summer as I start to expand my article base on both sites.

One of the things I have to do is replace my two political articles that are near the end of their economic life. The Hillary article I already mentioned; the other about the 2008 State of the Union address seems to have already hit the end of its lifecycle. Or at least, it hasnt been read by anyone this month.

But I got plenty of time to do this considering that the most important thing I have to do this summer is transfer to a different college; the rest of my summer is going to be spent on the yard and house repairs in between writing material for the internet and the lodge.

Helium Reward-athon

One of the things that is happening over on Helium is the Reward-athon. Quite simply, writers are being rewarded an extra dollar for each new article they put up between now and April 14th. Note that it is not that simple; one must have at least one writing star and three rating stars at midnight (April 15th) to actually earn the reward.

Given the amount of churn that Helium articles are occasionally subjected to, there is no promise that myself, or anyone else will be in the running for the bonus when April 14th rolls around.

So how to approach the writing there for the Reward-athon? Simple, write as you normally write. That way even if you do not end up having enourgh stars at the end of the period, you have not lost that much.

For instance, I am mainly focused on articles that I was going to write anyways, such as my review of all the Enochian Chess books in my possession, those articles I can recycle at Associated Content, and articles that I suspect are going to the better money makers.

An example is my article on Improving one's FICO 08 Credit Score. It falls under a category that I think has a lot of readers, and is something that I think will do well on both sites (AC and Helium).

The reason for me just sticking with this type of tactic is that one) I learned my lesson during contests there (my contest entries have never made money) and two) even if I fail to have enough stars at the end of the promotion period, in theory I should stall make some money off the articles.

Bottom line, the bonus payment would be nice to get, but I am not going to count on it. After all, I am trying to run a business, and past experience has taught me some hard lessons.

How much is exclusive (all rights) worth?

For those who missed it, there was a big flap today over on Associated Content. They made an announcement on the writer forum that they were no longer going to consider non-exclusive content for upfront payment. There was a lot of protesting, and by the time that you read this AC has changed their minds and decided to put this policy change off for awhile longer.

But it is coming; you can see the storm building over there. As time has gone on, AC has been rejecting more and more articles for upfront payment. You can still put them up for performance bonus (page view payment), but it has been getting harder to get them to cough up anything up front. Even when you are offering them exclusive rights (also known in the business as All Rights), it is getting harder to pry any upfront from them. And forget about getting a fair amount for anything (ten dollars is a really low all rights payment); even if you can crank out something in an hour, there is no way that their upfront offers will cover your time and energy.

Face it, economics has caught up to AC. They are hoping that decent writers will make enough from the performance bonus to stick around. And as it is they have a ton of writers flooding the stacks with stuff anyways. There are always new writers (unpublished and eager for that first byline) waiting to line up and write for them. It is only us established writers (those of us with more than one outlet for our work) who are going to bolt at the very idea that AC is trying to turn us into work for hire slaves.

Personally, I have already quit trying to get upfront payment for non-exclusive content from them. Outside of my first piece published there, I figure that anything I have used or plan on using elsewhere is off-limits when it comes to upfront payment. I use AC as a secondary income source for my work, not my primary one.

The only articles I consider giving them exclusive rights to are actually News (which are hard to sell on most websites unless you have a relationship already built) and those which felt into AC and that I can't think of any other place that I would ever use them. The problem with News, quite simply, is that it has a really short shelf life. The instant that it passes that point, and becomes no longer of interest, it will expire like month old fruit cake, forever on the web, but with earnings no longer coming from it. For instance, the last piece I offered to AC as an exclusive (Hillary Clinton speaks at Auraria Campus) was one that I figured could last until either the Democractic Convention this summer, or be dead in a couple of weeks. After all, it was political, things change there fast; and once a politician is out of the running, no one cares anymore.

On the other hand, I figure that an article about improving one's credit score will have some shelf life. And I can figure out more than one place to use it, so why offer it for upfront payment consideration; after all, I have to live with myself and I do have some ethics to my name. Besides for an non-exclusive, they are probably going to offer nothing; I can hit publish now and start generating page views from it.

AC and its content producers (writers) are both struggling with opportunity costs. AC realizes that they can focus on exclusive for upfront payment consideration and not lose much while the writers are realizing that the upfront payment on an exclusive is not worth the time that they spent writing the piece. It will be awhile, but we can expect to see more changes there as the supply and demand curves keep moving towards equilibrium.

My best earning articles on Helium

One of the things I am doing for my Microeconomics term paper is to look at my own freelance writing; why not use my own business as a company to look at.

My very best earner, if you include income I earned from Associated Content for it also, is What is Golden Dawn (retitled A Brief History of Golden Dawn for AC). It did very well for me before they did away with the Occult Channel. Now, it only earns a few cents a month; I think it is because no one would look for it in its new channel, New Age Groups. Golden Dawn is not exactly New Age.

My second best earner, which at its current pace will surpass the Golden Dawn article is How to Flip a House. It has slowed down a little lately, due I presume to the mortage market.

My third best earner is The Importance of Teamwork in the Company. I am proud of it, for it has managed to stay in the top fourth of the articles under that title.

My fourth and sixth best earners are both in the Wicca and Witchcraft channel--in fact the articles are related to one another: How to start your own Wiccan Book of Shadows and An introduction to the Wiccan Book of Shadows.

My fifth best earner is a TV review of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. I think the reason for its high earnings is the fact that the title made the Helium homepage a couple of times this year, including once when mine was the highest rated article under that title.

My seventh is a Golden Dawn article listed under the Wicca and Witchcraft channel, The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram--I am not happy with that placement, but there is nothing I can do about it.

All of these articles, except for the last one have earned me at least a dollar this year. The Pentagram ritual article is currently at 91 cents, so it may break a dollar this year.

If I could write more articles that make a dollar or more a year on Helium (the real estate article is only six months old, and has earned me $2.24 so far this year), I would be very happy.