$10.87, but I wrote a lot of new articles.

Articles: 395
Earnings: $10.87
Top Khrista Article: How to Measure Customer Satisfaction

Some things you may not know.

Sexy Blog out!

First $20 day. Not kidding.

$23.08. No joke.

I'm not going to speculate or pontificate on what caused the jolt. I'm not jinxing it. I will tell you the facts, and tell you what I'm doing to try to duplicate the feat.

1. I first checked the eHow forums to make sure that my spike wasn't everybody's spike. It wasn't, because eHow peeps will definitely let you know.

2. I checked the individual articles for big winners. None, really. A lot of articles got a few clicks each. I've had spikes before, but they were usually due to one article I just wrote.

3. This spike happened in conjunction with my keyword experimentation. I just wrote a bunch of articles (this is in my non-khrista "dark" account, don't bother looking for them) all about the same subject. I used Google Keyword Tool to find high value keywords about one subject, and I wrote 10 or so articles 2 days ago about every aspect of it.

4. It was the 3 month anniversary of my "dark" account. I don't think this had much to do with it though, because all of my articles are not 3 months old. And the ones that are didn't move. The action definitely happened on the newer articles that I did the keyword research on.

5. I make sure not to promote my "dark" account for just this reason. I know that the spike is not due to any promotion on my part. It has to be the keywords.

What I did with the keywords: I put EXACTLY what the keyword was in the article as much as I could without sounding retarded. And I do mean every time. The pictures, the captions, the tips, the steps. My keyword density is DENSE. And I made sure to switch up the verb in front so that the spider would find just the keyword I wanted, not a longer phrase. I've often wondered about that, because sometimes you'll look up a keyword, and it'll be like $10, but if you add a word in front of it, it's another keyword that's worth like $0.05. I made sure the spider wouldn't confuse what I wanted as the keyword.

Garner what you will from my observations. I will continue to research and monitor this trend. Hopefully this spike turns into a trend.

Articles: 372
Earnings (10/24/09) $23.08 (no joke)
Top Khrista Article of the Day: Get Rich Without Trying Not the best written piece, but the philosophy works. How do I know? I'm livin it, baby!

Sexy Blog out.

FIRST $10 DAY!

$12.34. $12.34!!!

LOL because everyone who isn't an eHow writer is looking all crosseyed at the screen wondering why I'm jumping up and down about twelve bucks.

It's complicated. It's like a relationship I have to explain later. It's one of those "you gotta be there" stories. We'll talk, though.

I did implement my long tail strategy, which I will divulge, as soon as I make sure my new articles were the ones that caused this jump.

Freakin eHow...I can't get on my Article page right now.

Articles: 368
Earnings: $12.34!! $12.34!!!
Top Khrista Article: How to Find a Good Tax Attorney Whether or not it earns anything, this shit is just well written.

Sexy Blog out.

The Sexy eHow Blog with Answers

Hello, eHow writers and readers!

This is khrista, dedicated eHow writer and blogger in general, with yet another eHow passive income blog. Why, you say? Why another eHow blog?

Because the Sexy eHow Blog will have the answers.

I've seen many a blog that doesn't really answer the basic questions eHow writers have:

1. What are the ins and outs of keyword research?
2. Do the big eHow earners promote, and if so, where?
3. Is it more lucrative for me to promote or to write, write, write?
4. Does being active in eHow forums matter to my bottom line?

All other questions, I have found, are offshoots of these four. So these are the four I will attempt to answer, with your help. My accounts can serve as really good control group guinea pigs, from which I can report changes and the financial response to those changes. Here's the long and short of why:

I. I'm a decent writer. I know I've got some crap posted, but when I put my mind to it, I'm not a BAD writer. Here's an example. (Financial Article) So you can rule out me not making money because my grammar's bad or my how tos are impossible to follow. Very important variable to control.

II. My accounts are big. As of this writing, I have 2 accounts with 353 articles written on various topics (real estate, dating, teen stuff). This controls the variable of writing about unpopular things.

III. I don't currently promote, nor am I especially active in the eHow forums. I don't respond to mass article emails, or personal messages, unless they're really PMs addressed to me. I don't do this to be mean, but rather to start from a position of seeing what part of income is attributable to keyword stuff and what part is attributable to promotion.

IV. I have no special training in SEO or keyword research. This is important because I'm probably like most of you, checking the blogs of the top earners and seeing them making $20/day on 67 articles. Currently, I make about $6/day on over 300. Big difference. Because I'm starting from a position where all my earnings are on autopilot and not attributable to my skill, it'll be easy to tell how better keyword techniques improve my bottom line, and I'll be able to note exactly which techniques worked.

The one uncontrollable variable is that I've only been writing on eHow for 4 months, which I hear is not time enough to let articles fully "mature." I'll try to separate this phenomenon from the active changes I make.

So let's start with today's (10/21/2009) earnings, the control point in this experiment.

10/21/2009.
353 articles.
Made $8.94 today.
That translates to $268.20 a month, assuming a 30 day month.
Top Khrista Article: How to Choose Individual Health Insurance Plans

My first improvement will be to research long tail keywords and niche markets. This will answer a piece of question 1. We'll see how I do. Sexy Blog out.