Yuwie page views and its earning potential

Looking at my Yuwie page views, I realize that I am making progress there. There has been 124 views of my profile this month. And I have racked up 1708 page views so far.

But what I am really impressed by is the 155 friends. That is an one hundred and fifty people I can give a shout out to about whatever the next project is that I decide to crow about.

Nevertheless, I will admit that there are people actually doing much better than me. There is one guy (Vic) who earned $2.97 in July, $96.13 in August, and $166.90 in September. Of course, he has 13,646 members in his referral tree, but it just goes to show that if someone is good at getting referrals (or able to get just a couple of people in their tree that are) that Yuwie does have a lot of money making potential.

(Thanks for my friend CatAnne for sharing his blog entry with me; actual screenshots are nice.)

My Yuwie Referral Link

Yuwie has lowered payout to $25

Yuwie has lowered the payout amount from fifty to twenty-five dollars.

I am not sure of the reason, but I can take a wild guess--the fifty dollar payout was driving people away. It basically looked impossible to earn that much if you were an average user like myself.

And let's be honest--it is a really good move for them to take. It is good for them; it is good for us; it is good for our referrals.

It is especially good for those of us who are using the site for advertising our other work (in my case, writing). The lower payout means that more ordinary users will be on the site, and that is where our bread and butter comes from. People are more likely to join with the lower payout amount; it looks more achievable.

It also makes it more likely that they are there to use the site as a social network. That means our blog entries will get read more, and that is where most of us slip in our plugs for our latest writing.

So good for Yuwie for lowering the amount a person needs to earn before getting their check. And good for us who are actually using the site as a networking platform.

My Yuwie Referral Link

Yuwie has doubled in membership this month

Looking at the membership figures for Yuwie today, I noted that Yuwie had added 65,218 members this month bringing the site up to 105,151 members. Not bad for a month.

Sure there has been some growing problems; I don't think that the owners of the site expected it to grow this fast--otherwise they would have had a bigger server to start off with. There are moments when the site moves sluggishly, but I figure that they will catch up eventually.

The jury is still out whether it will be a good social networking site, on par with MySpace and Facebook. I think it might get there. I am still not holding my breath on making any direct money from the site, but I do know one writer who has made some indirect money (sold copies of her lulu book) though there.

I plan on posting a shout-out there when my next lulu project is ready.

Another social networking site to watch

One of the other social networking sites that I am keeping an eye on is FriendsWin. It is currently in prelaunch. The company behind it are going to be giving out a slice of the pie to those people who help advertise it, getting people to sign up. This should promise explosive growth.

Much like Yuwie should be promising in the long run for getting word out about our work, FriendsWin is promising for being able to get the word out about one's latest material.

It promises to be better than Facebook, and MySpace in the fact that you have to be eighteen or older to sign up for it. Which occasionally is important to me as a writer--sometimes I write some racy stuff.

So I am encouraging people to join both sites, even if they are not good at gathering referrals; they should both prove to be useful as the foundation stones in our campaigns to advertise our writing.

To join FriendsWin, click here.

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.