$48

Since today was payday from Associated Content I logged in over there to check my pageviews. I have 145,462 as of now. That's pretty good considering I only have 99 articles published and the last one was 10 months ago. I really should start submitting some pieces. Really, I have a ton started and saved in Word I just never get motivated enough to actually edit them and submit. Think of how much higher my pageviews could possibly be if I were adding articles, even every once in a while!

Looking at the stats for my top viewed article: Is the Red 40 Food Dye Additive Having a Negative Impact on Your Child? I did the math and realized I have made a total of $48 just on that one simple, short piece. AND I am confident it will continue to get hits, as I get more comments each month and it's always my biggest bonus pay. $8 was my upfront payment when I wrote it Jan. 2007 and while it's taken over a year and a half to earn the other $40 on it, I have done zero promotion (besides mentioning it here a few times). To me it was more than worth taking the time to write out a few thoughts and come up with a good key word title. It doesn't even have to be a well written article, sad but true. With the way internet advertising works, the bottom line is always going to be how many hits you get. Even looking at my lowest paid piece: $5 upfront and an average of .20 per month, it still ends up being worth the time and effort.

I was just telling Aaron the other night that it would be even easier to come up with good key words and titles since Google now has that drop down when you search something telling you how many websites those words are found on. Pretty neato and depending on how I search red 40 and kids, my AC article often shows up on the first page of google. So here it is, yet another blog post to myself to say, "Katie, submit something to AC!! The sooner the better and the longer it will pay off!" maybe, just maybe I'll listen to myself this time.