Wasted Money on Article Writing

Ever felt like you have wasted money on article writing services? Ever got that sick feeling after you receive the articles that you have paid for and realised that some how they are just not up to mark?

 I have had quite a few experiences of hiring article writers to write articles for me, often paying them a range of US$2.50 to US$5.00 for a 500 word article.  When the article comes back, it is just not up to mark and by looking through the article, it is quite obvious that the person has both a poor command of the language as well as the topic that he or she is writing about.

So the file sits in my mailbox and as hard as I want to touch up the article and re-write portions of it (so that it is suitable for publication on any of my sites), I just can't bring myself to do it.  This is because the article is so badly written that I might as well start writing a fresh piece right from scratch!

I figured that I have wasted at least US$10 to US$15 dollars on lousy article writers.  At the same time, I have also had good articles written for me so I shall not go so far to conclude that all article writers are bad.  It is just so sad to know that there are these articles that I have paid money for and which I can't use at all.

Anyone has similar experiences to share?

Freelance Article Writers

From time to time, I have employed some freelance article writers to take the load off writing.  Sometimes, I have a general idea of what I want to write so I just drop the idea to a freelance article writer who will write the article for a small sum for me.  Of course, I will read through the article to see that it is what I have in mind and only publish it if it is of a certain standard.

Below is a sample of a 500 word article that I got a freelance article writer to write for me for a fee of US$2.50.  Is it money well spent?  You decide.


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1.  Saving for Retirement [List a few practical steps people can start saving for retirement]

Save to Secure Your Retirement Now!
Growing old gives you the idea that nothing is permanent so you always want to do your best now that you are still capable of doing many things and your strength is still at its peak. It is always better to invest and save early so that you will have your fruitful years more secure and happy. Before you retire, it is better to make a good saving. It is possible through doing few practical things. It doesn’t matter if you are a professional or just doing a blue collar job. If you have a daily income, you can save each day few cents or a portion of your income in a safe place or better open a bank account in your place to make it secure or free from theft. It may be too little but always remember that big things from small things. Later on your money will grow with interest in a bank so it is more practical to save it in a bank. You can also save more when you avoid buying the things that is not your needs and are not in your grocery list each time you shop for your home supplies. Minimize a little your luxurious lifestyle and try to discipline yourself not to be tempted with spending more money just for leisure. The money that you saved from it will be used to be added for your savings. No matter how little it is, you can always value it for it will be a great help in the near future. Another, do not overspend yourself and family for expensive and special foods yet these foods are not nutritious and full of carcinogenic ingredients. Be pro-vegetables and fruits as well as other organic healthy foods. These are cheaper and money savvy foods.

You will see how it gives you a great saving for your food budget. It also gives you more savings in buying just few medicines because you are healthy as well as your family because of your healthy eating habit and well-balanced life. This is maybe too simple yet often neglected by others. If you are drinking alcohol, just drink moderately, instead of excessive drinking then you will use the remaining money to be kept for future use. You will enjoy life without sacrificing the things you are doing. Of course it is hard o deprive yourself of everything, this time you will just do things in moderation and the money you are about to spend recklessly better deposit it in the bank instead of just keeping it in your pocket, for you might think of spending it each time you saw it there. Be practical to save your money whenever it is possible because you don’t know what kind of future awaits you after you retire in your service. Even if you have too little money left each time you get your salary, always make it a habit to secure something as a saving for your retirement. Retirement is a stage in your life that you will face many physiological changes in your body including your health and strength. You need Medicare, health support, food supplements, and multi-vitamins to sustain your body. It will be the beginning of declining memory and strength, which you used to have during your youthful days. Thus, it’s time to use the retirement resources that you invest before your old age and of course your savings are included when that time will come. Save each time you can! Start it now!

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Ways To Increase Adsense Earnings

Adsense contributes quite a sizeable source of  advertising income for most people who use them on their sites or blogs. Many people also try to target high paying keywords in order to increase the advertising income that they get since Adsense pays different amounts for different ads.  You might even have tried to employ one of those methods of finding high paying keywords and writing content about that hoping that somehow that will increase your adsense earnings.  But very often, it is not simple as that.

So what might be wrong?

Having pages or content with these supposed high paying keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.  If the number of clicks on your ads is a function of the number of page impressions.  The number of page impressions is dependent on the number of visitors that you get.  To get more clicks, you need to increase your page impressions.

Assuming that you get a fixed number of visitors every day to your site, is there a way to improve the page impression?  Yes, there is.    It is really about making your site more user friendly.  And that includes having some form of site navigation that will get readers to the page that you want them to go to.

Try to picture your site and even navigate your own site.  How will you use your site if you were a visitor?  Which links would you click on?  Having links around your site helps.  This helps to link the various pages together such that traffic flows from one site to another or from one post to another.  LinkWithin is something that I have used on various of my sites.  My page impressions literally doubled just by using it.  This has also helped to increase my adsense earnings.

Another method that I have used to great effect is ad placement and also the colours for the ads.  Basically, I try to put ads at the top and right hand side of the site.  This works best for me.  The colours are also "merged" with the rest of the site so that it is colour coordinated and does not stand out too much.

You can also read my previous article on "How to Boost Adsense Earnings" to see some of the other strategies.

The Future of Google Adsense - A Blogger's Perspective

Many people have speculated and proposed various ideas on what Google's Adsense programme will look like in the near future and how the existing system might change or improve over time.  Today, we will take a look at some of these ideas and what it means for the blogging community.


Protection Against Click Fraud for Both Advertisers and Adsense Publishers


Click fraud is a problem.  Google needs to protect its AdWords advertisers from this.  This will probably have to also take into account possible sabotage that sometimes occurs. So Google will probably have to play the game wisely and ensure that while it protects advertisers, it does not unnecessarily penalise people who have been on the adsense programme and who might also be a victim of click fraud.



Better Targeted Algorithms and Ads


It is not difficult to imagine that targeting ads based on computer algorithms will become even more powerful and precise than they are today.  Increasingly, I have noticed that most of the ads targeted at my site are generally relevant to the topic or post.  This is not surprising given Google's dominance in the search engine market and how search engine results have changed over the past few years too. So the change that is happening in Adsense is perhaps not surprising.  One can only expect more and more targeted ads.  This is good for both advertisers and content writers.  Advertisements will appear in more appropriate search results and it will also become increasingly difficult for webmasters to "manipulate" how they want advertisements to be shown.  

Google has also always been keen on improving its products and this has been seen before in AdSense. The search engine company has introduced site-targeted AdSense CPM, "smart pricing" and domain blocking. Increasingly, many newspapers are also going online and rolling out apps for tablets or iPad.  So it might not be too far-fetched for better use of Adsense on all these platforms. Who knows, it might even be possible for Adsense to appear on games or even TV.  Of course it might sound far-fetched now but with Google, we never know...

Differentiated Payments - Paying Premium for High PageRank Sites


Who knows?  Maybe a possible option will be to also make AdWords advertisers pay a higher premium for sites that have a higher pagerank (PR).  Of course, this will mean added cost to advertisers but I am certain a differentiated payment makes more sense.  It just does not seem right for a single click to cost the same on a PR 9 site and a PR0 site.


Conclusion - The Future of Google Adsense


All the above is just speculation and I am not surprised if something radical comes out from Google in the distant future.  What do you think?  What is the brightest future for Google's Adsense and what needs to be improved or fix?

200,000 PageViews Achieved for Blog

I achieved 200,000 pageviews for one of my blogs recently.  You can view it here at sgfinancialfreedom.blogspot.com . It has been an achievement just to cross that mark considering that I started out really just blogging for fun and to document my thoughts down as a web record.

$$$ from Ads
Over the years, I have managed to earn money from Adsense as well as selling adspace on my sites even though I must admit that I have not been very active in doing the latter.  Usually, I am approached by people who are advertisers.

No Time to Write Content
Content generation is really an issue.  A big issue.  Even for the blog that I mentioned above, I have not had much time to write.  The number of new posts for the year 2011 was dismal at less than 100 posts.  Other newer blogs have managed a far greater number of quality posts in 1 year compared to the few years that my site has been in existence.I also have to stop allowing guest posts of various content because I find that certain articles written by people hoping to put up a guest post on my site are just not suited for my readers.  So I have had to rely quite a fair bit on my own content which is difficult considering that I do not have much time to write each day.

Still, I must say that I have managed well.  And the adsense earnings are still coming in daily despite my apparent lack of action or activity.