Earning Money Online - How's it going?

I joined Wizzley not long after it started up. I was looking to diversify my online writing from Squidoo to protect myself from some of the risks of earning money online. I had tried HubPages and although it worked, it wasn't as much fun as Squidoo. I also have my own web sites, again, they seem to work, but I do like multi-author platforms - I like to write on lots of different topics, not feel obliged to keep coming back to one topic. 

So I tried Wizzley. And I liked it! What I like about Wizzley is that it's quick and simple to put new pages (Wizzles I like to call them) together. This means I can be efficient in my work and focus on the content. I saw (a few) adsense clicks and Amazon sales via Wizzley quite early so I could see that the platform basically worked. 

When I was starting out in online marketing it was so helpful for me to see how others were doing so I thought I'd share my Wizzley earnings. Note that I'm completely new to writing for adsense and have no idea what I'm doing there! I have had some success with sales and seo elsewhere although I'm still learning. 

I really have no idea how well I'm doing. But it's well enough that I'll keep coming back and I'll include Wizzley in my business plan for 2012. 

I didn't set any Wizzley earnings goals for 2011 as the platform is so new. I'm just trying it out to see what works. I will set goals for 2012 as part of my business plan. 

I'm not working online to earn a little bit extra for the family. I'm here to earn my share of our family outgoings and eventually enough to save, invest and top up my pension. If I don't manage to do that then I'll have to head back to a traditional job (I'm currently on sabbatical from my professional career.)

Gosh, November was good! By the end of November I had 136 Wizzles. (If you're used to Squidoo that probably sounds like a lot, but Wizzley is very quick to work with.)

I've added a cumulative total column my earnings above. You'll see that I've now gone over $1000 earned on Wizzley. 

Wow! December was pretty amazing. I had around 140 Wizzles in December and did very little work during December. I took time out to get ready for Christmas with my kids' Christmas plays and parties and volunteering at preschool. Then there were a few days when the kids were sick, and we had visitors too. I was great to be able to take time out and keep earning. I did check up on things and spend time thinking about plans for 2012. 

I know I probably should be diversifying more (most of my income comes from Squidoo at the moment, with Wizzley now providing a smaller second stream), but this is fun and it suits me to have something easy and convenient at this point in my life. 

So how am I doing? Honestly I have no idea. I know from Squidoo that I do better than average over there. But Wizzley is full of very experienced internet writers who have been doing this for much longer than me. 

Clearly I'm not making a lot of money! (Update: although the Christmas season wasn't bad.) But at this point I'm more interested in the potential. Does it get interesting if I times the amount by 10? Well yes. This makes Wizzley a contender for one of my online income streams. 

I'm making more money from sales than I am from Adsense, but Adsense revenue has been increasing and makes a good chunk of my earnings. Because I make a lot of Amazon sales via Squidoo my percentage is at one of the higher tier levels so my Wizzley earnings benefit from that. 

I have some understanding of how selling works, for me anyway. I provide the information that people need. I'm a detail person. I love specifications and stats. My focus is on providing the facts that people need to connect them to the right products. I love taking a complex subject and explaining it. I don't have a selling mindset. I think in terms of sharing and explaining. Seems to work for me. 

But when it comes to writing to earn money via adsense, I have no idea. I do earn some adsense money but I think that's just statistical likelihood based on traffic. I don't have any sense that I know what I'm doing. Lots to learn there. 

I had noted that my Amazon conversion rate from Wizzley was considerably lower that from Squidoo. An order of lots of small items via Wizzley changed this. And in November my Wizzley conversion rate was much better than Squidoo. At this point I'd say Wizzley works well for sales. 

I also roughly track my earnings per thousand visitors. For September the Wizzley earnings per thousand visitors was roughly half the Squidoo earnings per thousand visitors. But Halloween was very good to me on Squidoo. The Wizzley rate isn't far below what my Squidoo rate was earlier in the year.  For October the Wizzley rate is actually slightly better that what I was seeing on Squidoo earlier in the year. 

I should probably track hours spent so I can work out return on effort over time. Because it's so quick to work with Wizzley I think this metric would be good. And it's the most important one for me. 

I'm definitely happy with my earnings on such a new platform. 

If you're reading this and just getting started with writing online then I do recommend Wizzley as a good place to start. I love Squidoo too, but I think Wizzley is simpler to get started with. Although you will need to sign up for an adsense id and an Amazon associate id (and Zazzle and AllPosters if you want to use them too) - don't worry you can start writing without these things, there are help pages and the forums here are very helpful.