Ed Earns

I have 4 friends who resigned from work in order to pursue careers in blogging and freelance. These people all worked in a prestigious contact center and they were all my colleagues. I even started blogging before them and I influenced a couple to start sharing their thoughts online and earn some income at the same time.

The funny part about this is that I was the one who told them that I’d raise the white flag first. Now, I’m the one left in this business process outsourcing industry; still doing the same things that I’ve been doing for almost 3 years now. I actually feel toxic knowing that the job has been monotonous already. My friend told me that I’m at a plateau and I’m not moving anywhere. I know I should take action but the job that I have is the most flexible one considering that I’ve been doing freelance jobs at odesk, onlinejobs.ph and blogging jobs at sponsored review sites and other payperpost sites.

These jobs don’t really generate a stable income and the benefits are less when it comes to insurance and security; however the possibility of owning one’s time and being able to stay in a different place is limitless. Doing freelance work and blogging makes you less location-bound since you only have to have the internet and a good laptop computer in order to do your daily tasks.

My goal now since I haven’t really gotten full-time with my freelance work is to pursue my education and get that diploma. For now, I can just be envious on how free my other colleagues are who already resigned in order to work on a freelance scheme. I’ll definitely join them but it’s not about to happen anytime soon.

I’m looking for other jobs again. Jobs that don’t require me to go full time as I have a lot of things outside my work that I have to cater to. I need to use the money that I’ll be earning for planned trips around and abroad. I’m time-bound and I need to act fast before all my resources get depleted.

I’m still glad that even if I don’t have a lot of freelance tasks, I still have the one area in blogging where I’m earning a decent amount of money; and that is through SocialSpark. Somehow, PayPerPost.com has gone down the drain — or maybe I’m just not qualified for sponsored opportunities yet. But now, I’m trying to try onlinejobs.ph instead of oDesk as it’s more inline with my country.

I shouldn’t be counting my money as if I have it in my hands. But I can’t help it since the past few days weeks, I’ve been counting the money that I’ll be receiving from the different opportunities that I’ve earned. SocialSpark, Google Adsense, ODesk, Payperpost; so far, these are the only money-making avenues that I’m active in.

I should not count because if I do, I’m going to expect that it will arrive; which will give me the excuse to splurge the money that I have now since I will be reasoning out that I’m going to get something. I know it’s just self-control and discipline but then temptation is truly great.

I will lose the essence of living a simple life if I focus too much on it.

I’m still waiting for my money to reach a certain amount but it’s almost time for another cashout and I’m glad that somehow I’m able to come up with another payout. I wasn’t expecting that I’d be getting it sooner than I thought. Right now, here are the major sites that send me some extra money.

• SocialSpark.com – This is where I’ve been getting bulk of the cash these days. It started some time in June.
• PayPerPost.com – Not really that much as my PageRank (which is their main basis for giving out opportunities) is not high.
• ODesk.com – I get a couple of article rewriting tasks from 2 employers on a weekly basis. Although, the rate that I receive is far from the amount that I achieve in blogging since my input is also big, I’m glad to have something to look forward to at the end of the week.
• Others – I have Blogsvertise.com and some link building opportunities wherein Advertisers contacted me to place their site links on my homepage for a fee every month.

I think that’s about it for now. It’s not that much, the bulk really comes from SocialSpark. Probably by November, I’ll be creating another Excel sheet that will provide information on where I got the cash and earn online.

Hopefully, my savings will help me out.

PayPerPost and SocialSpark, both are under the same umbrella (IZEA) but both have different ranking categories.

PayPerPost is the first blogger-advertiser marketplace that provided me some good opportunities to earn extra income. It’s one of the more known marketplace that everybody (well, every blogger who wants to earn money while blogging) knows. But it largely depends on the PageRank for its requirements for bloggers to be able to bid for tasks or opportunities. The problem with me is that I rarely have any website that has at least have a PR of 1. Want to know more about PageRank? Visit my blog entry about it.

SocialSpark is also part of IZEA wherein it is more of a networking site that also has blog opportunities for you to write tasks for advertisers. However, you can also add friends to your network, leave comments and build your profile (hence, social). The tasks here are wider and has a bigger scope considering that you can take opportunities that require you to post links of advertisers, sponsor reviews etc. The great thing about this is that it relies on RealRank as its basis which defies Google’s standards.

Now what’s the difference between RealRank and PageRank? I don’t know yet. hehe. All I know is that RealRank is more on the traffic while PageRank is more on Google’s way of looking the value of your site. I’ll probably research more about it so I can blog it next time. I’ll probably include the Alexa Rank with the entry next time.

Anyway, of PayPerPost and SocialSpark, I’ve been getting more tasks the past month of the latter since the PR of my sites really dropped to zero, that’s why I seldom have opporunities in the former. Nevertheless I’m happy that I’m getting some tasks to keep paying the bills.

I was able to withdraw about a hundred bucks from SocialSpark some time last month. I used the money up for my Manila trip considering that I didn’t bring enough cash. The hundred dollars was actually around 5 months worth of waiting for opportunities in this marketplace. I’m just glad to be able to get some available tasks especially that I’m not really that lucky with PayPerPost or other forms of blogger-advertise networking sites.

What I like about Social Spark is that despite having to wait around 30 days for the payent to arrive, you still have the option to cash out your money. Meaning, it will still be under your account until you wish to cash them out before you can put it to your paypal address. That means more transactions and then you can save more because you have to really take a bit of your time to get your money. Sometimes when it’s a bit of a hassle for you, you just want to put the money in one corner until it all piles up until it becomes big. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the hundred dollars if it weren’t for this feature. Don’t get me wrong, once you cash out your money in Social Spark, it will automatically go in your paypal account; and no, there are NO CHARGES for cashing out. I just like the fact that I have an excuse not to get the money right away. hehe.

I withdrew 247 dollars from my Paypal account.

I needed the money again, I’ll be leaving for a trip to Davao by Thursday and I don’t have any cash left. I was planning to make it reach about 500 bucks first but since I needed some dough badly, I guess I’ll have to save again.

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Anyway, no worries for me as I’m starting to earn in oDesk and I’m doing some sideline work already. Plus some cashouts from Google Adsense as well as those other opportunities such as in SocialSpark and PayPerPost, I know I’ll be able to replenish the account again.

School will be over and I’m planning to study some short term course so that the school can provide me some much-needed adobe and dreamweaver lessons. I hope everything turns out right. I’ll be getting that sought-after 8-hour sleep but I just need to finish the end of the month first.

I bought one! But I’ll be discussing it probably tomorrow or the next day. I don’t have much time right now with all the things going on at work and the requirements I have to finish in school. I’m already too sleepy because of what I was able to buy awhile ago. I’ve been awake for more than 24 hours now but I have to wake up early tomorrow for a class field trip.

Anyway, it seems that I’ve been getting a number of tasks (though with small amount) from Payperpost. But I don’t want to write some of them as the requirements were a bit taxing even for me. I don’t want to write about botox procedures and then embed a video of the procedure on my sites. I guess I’ve become a bit choosy with the opportunities that I take. Besides, it’s going to be in my blog that is being published so I better just lie low with some of them that aren’t that appealing even when I feel desperate.

Because of this, I haven’t earned as much right now.

I just realized that it’s already been a year since I started blogging back again to earn money and now that I found this out, I have to give a recap on the past year on how much in total I’ve earned through the different programs I’ve signed my website and then some other sites out.

These are my earnings during the year using soloflighted.com

These are my earnings in dollars for my site and then some.

In totality for the year, here’re my earnings.

I’m actually in a total shock that I’ve earned that much in a span of a year. But I’m equally in shock in locating where this amount has gone off. hehe. Of course, there are bills and other expenses. But I’m happy cause I didn’t expect this much to come to me.

I have 4 blogs to maintain, two have their own domain and two are free blogger accounts. I don’t earn as much in those blogger accounts but the domains are really vital.

For now, I’m planning to get another domain. hehe.

PayPerPost or usually termed as PPP. This is one of the paid post sites that were recommended to me by my colleague. You can sign up for this site for more information by simply clicking on the banner. Of course, if you’d be clicking on the banner, it will lead you to a page where you can sign up. It’s a referral program that they offer to bloggers to expand their network. And with referrals come bonuses. I’d get a certain amount if you sign up for an account. Anyway, if you plan to apply for one, then it’s already your choice if you click on my banner or just go to the their site directly so I wouldn’t have any credit.

Anyway, what’s nice is it’s interface because you’d readily understand what to do and where to go in order to find tasks or opportunities; at least for me anyway. The opportunities are properly sorted out with regard to tasks and your qualifications. If you plan to apply for sites,

PayPerPost is one of the top sites that are in every blogger’s list. You have to be alert too, cause available tasks would suddenly become full in a matter of seconds if you don’t act quick and reserve for them.

Note: If you don’t know what paid post sites are, you can refer to my entry about it: Paid Posts