From Five Cents to Fifty Dollars in Two Years

There is no question that the advent of the PC computer and Internet along with their related technologies have had a tremendous impact on the economy and economic opportunities. In the area of content creation alone, the opportunities are enormous. Just as the invention of the metal movable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century coupled with the spread of literacy created vast new markets for writers and publishers so, too has the PC computer technology and Internet created vast new markets for content providers.

A few years ago, after coming to the realization that cable and satellite TV each capable of delivering thousands of channels and the creation of so many web sites that practically every logical or meaningful combination of English words that could be used in titles had been registered as a .com, I concluded that the demand for original content would be almost limitless. On the supplier side you had millions of outlets needing content while on the demand side you had a world wide audience seeking and willing to pay for original content. Finally, advances in technology were driving down the cost of producing content to the point that, at the low end, anyone could enter the field with little or no investment while, as one moved up the scale in terms of content complexity and quality, costs were also declining which meant that more and more companies could afford to enter the business.

Wanting to develop a side business but, having suffered painful losses in previous small business ventures, I decided that any business I developed would have to be one that would not cost anything other than my time and talent – any financial investment would have to come later in the form of reinvestment of revenues the venture generated.

Writing for the web appeared to be the only available option and I began surfing the web looking for opportunities. I soon discovered a site called AllReaders.com and a sister site called AllWatchers.com. AllReaders was a book review site that paid twenty-five cents to the first person to submit an acceptable review of a book and five cents to others who submitted additional reviews of the same book. AllWatchers did the same for movies. When submitting a review the author released ALL rights to the work to the owners of the sites in exchange for the quarter or nickel payment. A further condition was that the reviewer had to accumulate $20 worth of payments (both book and movie reviews were credited to the author's account so that the author only had to accumulate a total of $20 and not $20 for each site).

I submitted my first review, only to learn that I had not done a good job of checking for previous submissions and received a nickel for my efforts. After that I learned to do a better job of research before writing a review and soon I was being credited twenty-five cents for each review. While the money was insignificant, I did have the thrill of seeing my work in print and was learning how to make money on the Internet.

The AllReaders and AllWatchers sites were generating revenue for their owners with Google AdSense and I began learning about AdSense and how to use it. I soon started a blog to use mainly as a tool for the economics classes that I taught but also began writing and publishing short articles on economic topics. I signed up for Adsense and soon learned how to put Google ads on my blog. I then started a second blog so that I could write on other topics while keeping the first blog for economics. Over the course of the next two years I managed to generate almost $2 in Google ad revenue as a result of the occasional reader who also clicked one of the ads.

My book and movie reviews continued to be my main source of Internet revenue. Despite my Internet earnings being pathetically small, I could see that my predictions about the rising demand for content were on track. For one thing, I could see the rapid rise of Google Adsense. However, the big indicator was the fact that payments for reviews for AllReaders and AllWatchers kept growing. While the payment for additional reviews of books or movies already reviewed by others remained at a nickel, the fee for first time reviews rose first to fifty cents, then a dollar, then two dollars and finally five dollars all over the course of about 18 months. In the end my total earnings for the book and movie reviews during the two years I wrote for them were a little over $50 of which I actually received a about $30 due to the fact that the site abruptly stopped soliciting and paying for reviews. At the time they ceased paying the minimum payout amount had risen to $50 and, since I had not accumulated $50 since the first payment I received, the account was simply cleared.

However, by the fall of 2006 I was moving on to bigger and better things. I continued writing occasionally for my two blogs and joined a site called FusePress where I soon became their top producer and saw my Google AdSense earnings begin to increase rapidly (like BlogEvolve, FusePress splits Google ad revenue 50/50). Shortly after establishing myself with FusePress, I discovered HubPages http://www.hubpages.com/_3qol7oqmopm1a a start-up site that also split Google ad revenue 50/50 as well as offering eBay and Amazon.com as additional ad revenue sources. After a month and a half of writing for HubPages my Google ad revenue, when combined with the sums accumulated from FusePress and the couple of dollars from my other two blogs topped Google's $100 minimum payout amount and I received my first check from Google in mid-December. It took ad revenues from December and January to pass the $100 base amount again and I received a check for $125 in February at which time I set a goal of $100 per month in revenue.

Thanks to a solid article base, I have been generating over $100 per month since January and am ready to increase my monthly earning goal. In addition to my ad revenues (I have also received smaller payments from Amazon) I have recently branched beyond the web and have started accepting book review assignments from two start-up textbook publishers. In April of 2007 I agreed to try my hand at a textbook review. Being conservative as well as very busy with my regular job, part-time teaching and writing for the web, I limited my acceptance to the review of a single chapter for $50 – I could have taken as many chapters as I wanted at $50 apiece but really didn't have the time. Right after finishing that assignment I received an offer from another company to join their on call review team and was paid $75 to take part in a 30 minute on line focus group on economics teaching and textbooks. For the moment I don't feel ready to take on the writing of a textbook even though both publishers have offered that to me.

As I said at the beginning, this industry has almost unlimited opportunity. While I am under no illusions that I can quit my regular job and support myself by writing, I feel that I can continue to build my writing business to the point where I will be able to take early retirement when I qualify in the relatively near future and between my pension and writing bring in a decent income. After all, in the course of two years worth of part-time writing I have gone from receiving five cents for a review of an entire book to $50 for a review of a single chapter.