My New Year’s resolution for 2010 was to set a new goal for each month in order to make improvements in my life on a consistent basis.
The first half of 2010 is over which is a bit sobering, and today the report on my June goal is due.
My June, 2010 goal was stated:
During June I plan to spend most of my time writing for Examiner. I have virtually no idea what AC and Yahoo have in mind for AC contributors come this fall; therefore, I’m not going to keep writing for AC at the same level that I have been until I know how everything is going to shake out.
So how did I do?
I followed through on emphasizing writing for Examiner rather than for AC. In May (my first month on Examiner) I posted 24 articles, and I have posted 64 articles for June, with a total of 88.
Accordingly, I cut back on posting for AC to one per day and sometimes none. My page views dropped as I expected; my red “hot 500 button” that I have had for two months will disappear (no problem).
The Yahoo-AC merger dropped off my radar screen while I concentrated on Examiner.
I was on the AC site so little that I didn’t keep up with my previous level of commenting. The Examiner site is not user friendly for connecting with other contributors. You have to go to search, find the person and their topic, and then comment. Because this is time consuming less of it is done.
As for my experience with writing for Examiner, I have truly enjoyed writing for that site! I like AC, but Examiner has the feel of a newspaper with more concise articles and focused topics.
Some things that I appreciate: having an enjoyable and broad topic (food) that through research to make the topic local has helped me to learn more about my city; a quick -to-publish format with no subheadings, overviews or key words; an easy-to-edit feature which allows for quick corrections of errors; the ability to index articles on a home site, and concise articles (they want 150 to 400 words).
A negative: They do not provide individual article stats but only give total page view counts for the day, week, month or year to date. Without individual article stats it is very difficult to pinpoint what type of article has the most viewer interest. I could add StatCounter on my own but haven’t done so as yet.
Examiner will be upgrading soon to a new platform. Perhaps individual article stats will be provided after the update.
Examiner changed the way they calculate earnings in early June, including how they factor in the amount of time that the pages are viewed. This resulted in a pay cut for contributors from about one cent a page view to about 3/4 of a cent. Those who are professional writers and live on their incomes were rightly concerned, and of course this will affect my overall future earnings.
Change seems inevitable wherever you contribute articles. Individuals must make their own plans as to how they can best maximize their time and earnings.
It was daunting to start with zero page views when I joined in May! People visiting the site do not see page view numbers as they do on AC.
My best daily count so far has been only 360 page views, with a total of just under 5,000 page views for the less than two months that I have been writing for them. But with time my numbers will increase and also my income; patience is an important ingredient in any endeavor!
I am enjoying my current writing mix between AC and Examiner and will continue with that for now. Check out my Examiner site here if you would like to see how I have indexed my articles in a way that I feel is helpful for readers.
My goal for July, 2010
My goal for July will be a bit radical for me — I plan to conscientiously skip setting any type of goal for one month! That means no planned goal whatsoever for personal, business, financial, health or any reason! I’m naturally a goal-oriented person but I think that this will set up a specific time for recharging my mental batteries.
This is a novel approach for me. My background in business administration necessitated “planning the work and working the plan.”
Now I have a mental image of Doris Day singing “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be; the future’s not ours to see, que sera, sera, what will be, will be.” Stay tuned!
For more articles by this writer, click here.
