Any interest in a new Suite101 thread here?

[beanma]

I'm sad the old suite 101 thread was closed. I slacked off over the holidays for various reasons and am trying to get back in the swing of things at Suite. Miss having a thread here at MDC for chatting about it 'cause the Suite forums just ain't the same.

I saw the other thread here for writer moms, but I'm more specifically interested in chatting about Suite. Saw the facebook and other site, too, but there doesn't seem to be a lot happening there right now. Anyone want to chat here about Suite writing?

[MyTwoAs]

Me! I never got approved for the FB group and I definitely miss the thread.

[Mamja]

The FB group isn't too active, and there wasn't anything about S101.

I recently got to 50 articles so I get my bonus

I still feel like I'm missing something because I am not making much money. Unfortunately we're not allowed to talk about how much, but I thought by now it would be a lot more. I know part of my problem is the subjects of the articles I write. However, they are in my area of "expertise".

[Twocoolboys]

I'm in! I miss the thread, too!

[MyTwoAs]

So I've still been struggling with topic ideas so I've come up with a new plan, talk abou autism research studies. I have access to all of these medical journals, I might as well put it to use. I picked up more work from the mother nature network plus a new client which is taking up most of my writing time. However I have to remember that the passive income is nice and worth one article per week.

[Twocoolboys]

Mamja - I've never made that much money, either. However, I think I've finally started to have an increase in earnings. I used to be the parenting methods feature writer. I wrote over 70 parenting articles and, lets just say, they are NOT revenue earners - lol!

I was really bummed about it, so I printed my list of articles and counted each type. I have several holiday articles in addition to the parenting ones and the rest (less than 20) were on various topics. I dropped the feature writer position. I was burnt out on the topic anyway, but I was also really sick of writing for little reward (though I did sell a few of those parenting articles to print magazines).

I've been reading some great advice about increasing revenue in the Suite forums and I've changed the way I approach writing for them. What I am doing is taking my non-parenting articles that I get the most page views on, look them up in the Google Adwords Keyword tool and find the highest CPC keywords that generate a moderate amount of monthly search volume. If its a high cpc, but only has a few thousand or a few hundred searches, then I skip it. Likewise, if the search volume is decent, but the cpc is less than $2 or $3, then I skip it as well.

The advice I read said to take the key words that people are using to find your most popular articles, find similar key words and write another article on the same or similar topic. For instance, I get a lot of hits on a cold sore article. People were searching on cold sores in pregnancy, so I checked the keywords for that and wrote another cold sore article. I only had to do minimal research on the new article, since I'd already done it. Once I posted the new article, it went into my top 10 almost right away, so now I've got two cold sore articles doing well. I'll probably write a few more. Different people will find the articles in different ways, so it casts a wider net.

I'm going to do the next several articles this way, until I have 50 non-parenting, non-holiday articles. They keep saying in the forums that 50 is the magic number. I have 151 all together now, but I put a lot of effort into holiday articles for a bit, too. December has always been my best month - lol. Last week, I finally had my first over $6 day! Yay! I think that, for me, 200 is going to be the magic number - lol. I finally feel like I "get" it when it comes to finding the right keywords.

Where I went wrong before was focusing on the topics that I liked reading and writing about. When I knew that wasn't working to generate revenue, I tried looking up high CPC keywords and writing articles with those. However, I hated that. It seemed so forced, involved a lot of research because they were topics I wasn't interested in and was just generally uncomfortable for me. I was writing less because it was such a chore. I think building off the articles I already have that are doing well puts both ways of writing together and makes a lot of sense to me.

I think I had a handle on keywording and I really like some of the parenting articles I wrote, but they simply didn't translate to earnings for me. I've gone back and looked at some of the CPCs for them and they are mostly five cents! No wonder my earnings have sucked!

[beanma]

Yay! Glad y'all found the thread. Please pass it along to anyone else who would be interested. I tried to PM folks who had posted in the last couple of months on the old thread, but didn't reach everybody.

Chat more later, but gotta make supper now...

[beanma]

So, I've really neglected Suite lately. The holidays came...uh...and we're trying to redo our kitchen...and...uh... dh really urged me to sign on as webmaster for some friends of ours in a money-making band (no day jobs). I used to do web design, but have been out of it for years, so there's a learning curve for me. Anyway, excuses, excuses...

I wanted to pick y'all's collective brain. I'm a newbie with only 10 articles up and because of my sad state of neglect with respect to Suite matters, I'm going to need to get 10 more articles up really, really, really soon. Aackk! I don't have one specific area of expertise, but I will write across many broader topics, though I wouldn't want to delve into anything super technical. I've had some Home & Style articles (the Where The Wild Things Are articles that were my money-makers) and a Halloween recipe, too. I've done some children's music reviews, a couple of animal articles, and some flu prevention articles. I've had a few flags, but not too many except in music (which is the thing I'm most qualified to write about ).

Anyway what I wanted to ask y'all is which editors/sections do you find easiest? I feel kind of sheepish asking that, but I'm just wanting to crank these out with the least amount of flack and greatest amount of speed. I thought the Home & Style articles were pretty easy as far as the editor was concerned and the animal and flu articles didn't get any flags, but did require a bit more research. I have to confess that I don't really find the music editor to be the easiest to work with. He's not particularly responsive and doesn't even have any guidelines as stickies in his forum. Not saying he's a bad editor, but just that he's not the easiest. I'll probably do a music article or two, but am wondering where else to concentrate my efforts.

Thoughts?

[widemouthedfrog]

My editor is lovely, but she's in gardening.

And I think that we're now allowed to talk about what we make, aren't we?
As of a few months ago?

I tend to make a dollar per article per month, so it's worthwhile to keep on writing four articles a month for my feature writer section, even if I take on other work.

And yes, I try to write on things with a CPC that is over $3, but Lisa has a much more thorough system than I do.

[beanma]

Gardening, hmmm...I could do a gardening article or two, but a lot of those folks get pretty technical. I would have to do some meatier research. I do love gardening, though.

I was checking out the Suite forums the other day after laying off for a couple of months and I thought I saw someone mention something about "when the new CEO comes in..." Is Colin leaving?

Not an expert at all so take my thoughts with a grain of salt or three, but I think for money-making articles a high CPC can't hurt, but it also has to be a topic that lends itself to ad click-throughs. I would think, for example, than many history articles wouldn't have very good click-through rates, but maybe a history-oriented travel article would be better because then at least there's something for the reader to be interested in buying or learning more about.

I'm really not one to give much advice, though, as I'm still very green. I did well with my Where The Wild Things Are Halloween costume articles. It was a good idea (the movie was causing a lot of buzz, there aren't any liscensed WTWTA costumes, and Halloween was coming up), and there was an easy lead to something to buy or somewhere else to go to get more info, so click-throughs were easier to come by. In fact, looking at my stats, the WTWTA articles still top my list for page views ahead of the flu-fighter articles, even. Whodathunkit?

One of my flu articles is on elderberry extract and it's on the first page of search results for "elderberry extract" so that's great, right? But it's midway down the first page. The WTWTA articles are both number one. I wonder if that's the difference? My WTWTA costume articles have 2600 and 1600 PV for January(!) and the elderberry article has a measly 223 pvs.

There's definitely a science to all this. Gotta get cracking. I think I'll have some time this weekend (fingerscrossed). Thoughts about easy-to-work-with editors/sections appreciated!

[lisarussell]

Hooray Mary, Thank you for starting this

Yes, we are allowed to discuss our earnings now. It was decided after Lena's $5,000 month (July or August 2009) I can't find the memo in the news archive, though. Does anyone have it saved?

I just can't "get into" facebook group discussions, I'm so glad to have this thread. I find myself avoiding MDC without this point of entrance, so I'm glad to be able to bookmark this I also think we should put a link to the old S101 archived thread, because there's such good information in there.

I've had an article go absolutely nuts with incoming links from other websites. The article is "Legitimate homeschool Socialization Concerns" I didn't expect the article to be a big earner, I just kinda wrote it off the top of my head. It's actually half of a formulated thought. The 2nd half will be "objections to the parental rights amendment" I haven't noticed a big increase in earnings, daily average for Feb (only 3 days showing) is just a few cents lower than normal, so I don't think the extra attention is impacting my earnings.

[MyTwoAs]

I hadn't read that we're allowed to talk about earnings now, that is nice. It is good to see what other people are making, at least from an inspirational perspective.

I'm dealing with some wonky health issues right now so I'm thinking of turning my research into a few articles. Might as well pull double-duty, right?

[wallabi]

oooh! yay, can I join? I had just finished signing up with suite and reading through the old thread (so much helpful advice!) when the forum closed.

I`m pretty new to suite - 10 articles mostly about food, started in mid-January.

If any of you would be willing to share your Suite links/names with me in a PM, I`d love to see what you are writing.

Nice to meet ya!
sara

[beanma]

Hi wallabi, I'll PM you. I'm a newbie, too, though I joined in August. I took a big break over the holidays and I've gotten another freelance job and we're redoing our kitchen (at a breathtakingly slow pace), so I'm only one article ahead of you. Trying to get through dd1's birthday tomorrow and party Saturday and MIL's visit and valentine's at school and te 100th day at school and maybe I can write a little bit in there somewhere!

You should check out some of the old-timers at Suite like Lisa Russell (maybe you can guess the name she uses at Suite!) and some of the others here.

Welcome!

[wallabi]

thanks beanma - I am checking out your writing now! I am especially intrigued by the famed Where the Wild Things Are articles. Hope your birthday party went well, and (if your mil is anything like mine) you have survived the visit.

as to the easy to work with editors - Cindy the food editor has so far been easy (speaking from what little experience I have - only one of my articles so far has been outside of food - I have two to finish editing for careers but am a little nervous!).

I have put up several recipes and am now working on little link-them-together-with-another-focus pieces, so will have an article about home made gluten free Japanese food that will link to the recipes and hopefully garner some higher paying ads than the recipes themselves. I have unexpectedly free day today, so hopefully will get something together. How will it turn out? Hard to predict, hard to know, but it should be fun. And, since gluten free is higher CPC than, say, potatoes, may be, if not actually lucrative, an improvement.

What are the rest of you up to?

sara

[Violet2]

Hi. I'm back. I was accepted at Suite last year, but got a difficult editor and couldn't get the first article going (couldn't figure out how to manage the editor conflict and got frustrated).

So I want to make this work. I've got about 4 articles going right now that I need to choose one as my first article.

V

[spunk]

I had someone recommend that I write for Suite101 on their technical section with how-to articles on various technical stuff that people may want to do on their Web sites, but I always felt that I could just publish all that on my own domain and make money off Google Adsense and maybe some other monetization methods myself. And seeing how people here put so much heart into their work and create like 50+ pieces - that is like a whole Web site! Making $6/day is decent, but that can be done on Adsense or affiliate links too, depending on the area of focus ... I guess I am not seeing the advantage of publishing on this network as opposed to just self-publishing? Unless the objective is to sell articles to print magazines? Am I just not getting it?

[widemouthedfrog]

Spunk, Suite was my first paid online writing gig, so I'm fond of it. It also has good Google juice so Suite sites tend to head to the front of the pack. I plan to package up many of my articles into e-books this year and create a couple of niche sites that have free information and also sell the e-book. Totally possible to have the articles on Suite and instantly repackage them into e-books, as long as the content isn't doubled online (and it's not, since you'd download the e-book).

At the moment I earn ~$150/month in residuals from Suite, which makes me happy. It's around the $1/article/month average often stated there. And with a feature writer position, I can contribute 4 articles/month and I will continue to make that. Then I can repackage the articles into niche sites.

So if you are already making money with Adsense, niche sites, and e-books, maybe it doesn't make sense. It was a place where I built some online writing skills, though, so I happen to have a bank of articles there to draw upon now.

[LynnolaS]

Hi,

I'm new to this particular forum too. Just started at ehow. Can anyone explain what the differences are at Suite compared to ehow? Thanks so much, and happy writing,

Lynn

[Violet2]

Originally Posted by spunk

I had someone recommend that I write for Suite101 on their technical section with how-to articles on various technical stuff that people may want to do on their Web sites, but I always felt that I could just publish all that on my own domain and make money off Google Adsense and maybe some other monetization methods myself. And seeing how people here put so much heart into their work and create like 50+ pieces - that is like a whole Web site! Making $6/day is decent, but that can be done on Adsense or affiliate links too, depending on the area of focus ... I guess I am not seeing the advantage of publishing on this network as opposed to just self-publishing? Unless the objective is to sell articles to print magazines? Am I just not getting it?

Spunk: The difference is the page rank--instant traffic, instant ad clicks. Also if you don't want to run a website but still want to write, content sites are a good option.

I have websites. They are no where near as profitable as content sites with page rank. I have no page rank.
V