Author Information
Recent Comments
-
1hopefulman replied to a column
-
ladym33 replied to a column
-
1hopefulman replied to a column
-
ladym33 replied to a column
-
Sharon L. West replied to a column
Some years ago, I dreamed about earning a passive income writing article online.
Here's how I imagined my dream will unfold:
I will write one article a day (or as much as I can) for a year. I would have around 365 articles in my portfolio by then. Those 365 articles then will make me money over the coming years. I can stop writing because the 365 articles in my belt will bring me passive income.
That didn't happen. And I don't think it will happen soon.
The flaw in my dream is the realization that the internet is a fast-changing platform. What is important now might not be as important tommorrow. What information that may be valid this month may not be as valid next month because of breathtaking discoveries.
The articles I wrote this year might not be read next year. Goodbye, passive income.
Adding to this flaw is the fact that search engines, the main tool people find your articles, is also changing. Though they still like the old factual information in some areas, they are more and more leaning towards fresh information. Search engines are also now considering social signals as votes of authority and credibility.
Either the articles I wrote years ago are now outdated, outperformed, or outsmarted. Either no one wants to read them anymore, or no one can find them anymore.
So again, the question, Can You Make Passive Income from Writing Articles Online? My answer is still yes. But it will not be simple. And will not be as lucrative.
I am looking forward to a semi-passive income from writing online. Once you have your online portfolio of articles, you shouldn't stop there. You should spend part of your time updating, rewriting, adding, and curating what you have written.
Promote This Column on Other Sites:
Comments
It is good advice to keep adding new content, as often as possible, but in my experience some old articles can go on earning.
It's true that many of my articles no longer get many views (on another revenue sharing site), but my best earning articles get viewed every day and continue to earn passive income.
My top ten articles, all of which make money daily, every week and month throughout the year, are articles that have been linked back from busy websites, and most of them were written more than a year ago.
This is interesting. I still believe that there can be passive income from writing articles online and your comment gives me hope.
You say the success of your articles may be attributable to link backs from busy websites. May I ask, how do you get link backs from these busy websites?
It may also depend on the topics and what websites link to your articles.
Actually I did not ask for any of those backlinks. Some big sites search for similar content to link to and if they like your article, and it is relevant to their users, they place a link to it.
I have found links to my article on several blogs, but the best links have been placed on authority sites. I even one on a dictionary site as an example to illustrate the meaning of a word.
Wow! Very nice!
I guess this boils down to writing very high quality articles that authority sites would like to link to.
You must really be a high quality writer and I admire you on that.
So me and other writers should aim for quality to be able to earn passive income from articles.
That is why you should write evergreen articles that are relevant indefinitely.
The fact is, however evergreen your article is, someone can make a very similar article on the same evergreen topic, and if that someone has the means and skills to bring his article up in the search engine results, your evergreen article will be left behind.
As I have said, it is complicated.
That is why you need to learn effective SEO and then promote your articles to all the social networking websites. Get links back to your articles and Google would think that your articles have some value.
But then again, SEO is tricky. Google changes their ranking computations every now and then.