The Freedom Net

Publishing was the first form of mass communication, but required a lot of time to “spread the word”.
Radio, while it didn’t replace books, provided a way to communicate with a wider audience instantly over the airwaves.
Television became one of the fastest growing mediums next, followed by the Internet.

However, the Internet has developed a few trends in and of itself.
At first, everything online was free, and people were happy just to find something interesting.
Then, people started to look for specific things, and other people started to sell them.
E-books came on the scene, and instant downloads beat waiting on something in the mail.
Web 2.0 arrived, and everyone wanted to know what everyone else was doing online … and social networking Internet-style was born. This phenomenon, of course, has happened in real life. But, as with anything else, the Internet seems to have a way of taking it to the next level … reaching a potential audience larger than any other.

Take YouTube for example.It’s the #4 visited website in all of cyberspace. What’s it about? Videos … that’s it. User submitted, user rated. It’s all about you, and what you are watching.

Now, as with any other Internet trend (banners, ebooks, mp3s, etc.) people have decided that maybe it would be nice to get paid for their videos. Not surprisingly, a number of sites have sprung up that are willing to do just that.

Revver.com shares a 50/50 split with their video producers, minimum $20 payout. Seems okay, but they don’t get as much traffic as the next program … so it “pays” to promote your video. Oh yeah, it also “pays” to promote other people’s videos too … 20% revenue share to people who simply share the video on their blog or site. Revenue is based on view and click-throughs, depending on the ad type. So, there’s no real “average” or way to be certain what you will get. Top producer stats aren’t revealed, but the top video took in around $50,000 (it was the infamous mentos in a coke bottle video) … and the site paid out $1 million in total revenue sharing in the last 12 months. They did say around 25,000 users had earned $1000 or so.

Metacafe.com on the other hand, has a much more interesting service. You only get paid for views on their site, but they get over 1 million hits a day. It’s set up much like YouTube, with users rating videos. You qualify for payout once you hit 20,000 views. It’s not based on click-throughs, just views of the video. The payout is $5 for every 1,000 page views, so once you hit 20,000, you’ve earned $100. At 40,000 you’ve earned $200. You don’t get paid for sharing, but the potential is there to earn big bucks because of the traffic. Top producer has earned over $60,000 in the last year with around 80 videos. Read that again … that’s impressive, isn’t it? And no, their not sex videos either. This guy is actually a tech geek. He has quite a few “how to” videos in the collection. One of the others in the top ten had a video earn him $6,000 in the last month. I saw it … unbelievably simple.

Anyway, I’m sharing this because I really believe that video is the next BIG thing online. I mean, I know it’s big now … but I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet. Nada, zero, zilch. I have started noticing that Pay Per Post offers a substantial payment for videos. The blog doesn’t have to have a high PR, just be willing to post the video to YouTube and on the blog. Payment for videos on PayPerPost ranges from $35 to as high as $100. It’s unbelievable what they will pay for a 1 minute video clip. Stay tuned, because the next year or so is going to be something else …

Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net is celebrating the blog’s 3rd birthday with us this week. In order to commemorate the event, ProBlogger is holding a week-long extravaganza of contests and giving away over $50,000 in cash and prizes.

The birthday bash itself is an interesting study in marketing. Each prize is donated by a company or individual. Some companies I’ve never heard of. I assume they are trying to get their name out there. Some companies appear to be trying to promote their site to gain new participants. Other sponsors are simply individual bloggers who I can only assume are looking for a backlink from Problogger.net (with a Google PR6) and a potential boost in readership. It’s actually quite intriguing.

So if you want to check out blog marketing in action, head over to Problogger.net for their Birthday Bash - you never know, you just might win something!

Well, it’s been exactly 12 days since I fixed the problem with my robots.txt file.  After impatiently checking each and every day, today I have discovered that Google is once again indexing the main directory of my blog:  http://the-freedom-net.com/blog.

So why is this so important?  Because PayPerPost will not include a blog into the marketplace until it is being indexed by the search engines.  Now, I still don’t have any page rank yet, but that’s okay … I’ll get my foot back in the door first, and start my campaign soon to dominate the web … er, I mean, get some back links and boost my page rank .

So, the adventure continues.  Once again, I’ve re-submitted my blog, The Freedom Net, to Pay Per Post, and once again, I’ve been rejected.

“So, what’s wrong this time?”, you ask.  Well, let me tell you all about it.

It seems that while Google is indexing some pages of this blog, it is not indexing the home page of the blog.  The Freedom Net has been up here for months, and still it’s not indexing the home page.  I don’t understand how that could happen, especially since it is indexing some of the posts … but I am going to attempt to correct the issue.

You may notice several links embedded within this blog post to the home page on the blog.  Don’t bother clicking on them, because you’re already there.  They are there specifically to entice the spiders from Google land to come and gobble up my friggin’ blog home page.

I’ll report back in a few days if the experiment has worked.  Wish me luck.

Well, if you’ve been following my exploits, you know that I’ve picked up some gigs online doing freelance writing.  Now this isn’t the traditional sort of freelance writing where you submit a query letter to a number of publishers and, if you’re lucky, someone picks your idea to pay you to write an article.

This is more of the web-driven economics in action.  Content is king here on the Internet, and people are looking for massive amounts of content to go on their websites.  As a coder friend of mine put it “everyone hates documentation”.  Well, all but the freelance writer, that is.

Now I have done some research in the past and discovered that traditional print writers get paid as low as 1/4 of a cent per word, up to several dollars per word in a good market.  Online, it’s the same way.  If you sell your soul to the wrong people, you can make peanuts.  If you take your time and search around, you can build partnerships with folks willing to pay for excellent, SEO optimized, content.

I’ve landed some jobs paying less than 1 cent per word, and I’ve had some opportunities to earn 5 cents or more per word.  There are markets out there that pay more, but I have not broken into them yet (at least I’m told they are out there … LOL). 

Freelance writing can be a profitable venture, if you take the time to do your research and find the places that pay decent money.  Two of my favorite sites are Associated Content and Pay Per Post.  Associated Content pays from $3 to $20 for articles they approve for distribution and publication on their site.  Pay Per Post pays anywhere from $5 to $20 for a blog post advertising a particular item, or just creating some  buzz about the product.  They do have quite a few higher paying opportunites over there at PPP as well, but you have to get your Google PR and Alexa rank for your blog doing quite well to take advantage of that market segment.

Overall, freelancing is something that I would encourage anyone looking to earn a living online to look into.  It’s easy, it can be fun, and it is done on your schedule.  That, perhaps, is the best part.