Passive Income

Being bored at work is perhaps one of the most miserable experiences possible. Sometimes it can feel like you have been staring at that computer screen for hours only to find that the hands on the clock have only moved 30 minutes.

While some people resort to playing Solitaire or Freecell, I tend to try and challenge myself to get more done in less time. I have always been sort of a self starter, but lately it has become more and more challenging not to simply start reading any of the hundreds of blogs that I follow. Sound familiar?

To stay focused and avoid being bored at work, try these things and see if you can become more productive.

1. Analyze Why You Are Bored – Do you have a job that you absolutely hate? Are you stuck behind a desk when you would rather be out in the sunshine? If you could pick any job to have, would it be the job you  currently have? If not, check out Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love.

2. Challenge Yourself – Often we tend to get comfortable in our day to day routine. If nothing bad happens, we may think that all is well.  Simply coasting by in life can get boring. Instead of waiting for your boss to challenge you, challenge yourself. Set a new goal for yourself. Explore additional responsibilities that you could assume.

3. Create Lifetime Goals – Many people make a list of weekly goals. I consider this to be more of a task list than a goal list. What is it that you really want to achieve in life? Grab a sheet of paper and jot down what is it that you want to accomplish in your life. Do not limit yourself to what you can complete this year. Imagine what you can accomplish over the next 30 years.

4. Pick Up a Hobby – You would think that after working on a computer all day long, the last type of hobby I would chose would be something on a computer. This is, however, exactly what I like to do with my free time. Whether it is writing articles for Infobarrel, creating lenses on Squidoo or constructing new One Week Marketing campaigns, I love creating passive income online. Is there something you want to learn how to do? Perhaps you want to try training for a marathon. Whatever it is, pick something and have fun!

5. Educate Yourself - If you are truly bored, and there is no end in site, read a book about something you may want to be when you grow up.  Take some night courses or take a few private lessons. About 6 years ago, I was a low-level manager at national grocery store. I loved it but was so bored that I thought I would fall asleep standing up.

I decided to do something about it. I went back to school and picked up an accounting degree. After a tough 4 year run with Ernst&Young, I got my CPA license and now manage a small company in my city. My newest passion is learning as much as I can about opening my own practice. Who knows? Perhaps in a few months I will open the doors to my own small company.

What do you do to stay motivated at work?

Popularity: 21% [?]

When writing articles for other sites, you must pay special attention to the TOS. This is a lesson I learned the hard way.

This morning, I received an email from Today.com, basically stating that my account has been disabled due to lack of activity. I was wondering how long that would take since I stopped posting on that site once they changed their Terms of Service (specifically – how they pay writers). Immediately, I responded with an email stating that since my account was banned, I would like my posts to be deleted from their website – a reasonable request in my opinion. It is after all my content (or so I thought)!

Here is the email response I received from their support team:

“The content is purchased under a work for hire agreement and rights to
the content belong to Today.com. You’ve been compensated for content
through the month of February in the amount of $_____ paid on March
10th and are scheduled to be compensated for the remaining content you
provided till _______ in the amount of $________ which will be paid
during the next pay cycle on June 10th”.

Of course, I then responded to them explained that since I had numerous posts disallowed for payment, they should either PAY me for those posts, or delete them. I am interested to see their response to my latest email. I do not expect much. The thing that bothers me is that that little blog received more comments than all of my blogs combined. Literally, I would receive 3 or 4 comments for each post I made.

I just cannot understand why Today.com would run their writers away as they are currently doing. It simply does not make sense to me.

This is just my personal experience with them. Does anyone else have a different story? I would love to hear about it!

Popularity: 24% [?]

I cannot speak for anyone else, but it seems like my page views AND my income are decreasing over on eHow, yet they are reporting record amounts of income. I truly hope it is not turning into another one of those sites that use their members to get popular then start to slight them at every possible chance (i.e. Today dot com).

I cannot stomach the thought of putting in hours and hours of upfront effort, only to receive little or nothing for my hard work. As such, I am planning a small experiment, pitting the reigning champion, eHow against the up-and-coming challenger, InfoBarrel. This will be a one-month, no-holds-bar fight for the Championship Belt.

The rules are as follows:

• For every article written on eHow, an equal, but slightly different article, must be written for InfoBarrel. The key is to provide quality content, with well-researched keywords, on both sites.
• Promotion of articles must be exactly the same.What this means is that if I Digg an article on InfoBarrel, the same must be done for the article on eHow. As my friend Norm, over at TheCheapBastid, recommends, each article should receive at least three Xomblurbs and a couple social bookmarks to get the Google juice flowing. Norm has indicated that he will probably be posting about his promotion techniques soon. Let’s hope so. That dude really knows his stuff.
• Experiment will continue for one month. After such time, I will allow a two-month maturation process to let the articles find their sweet spots. At the end of the three months (August 1, 2009), we will declare a winner. I actually started doing this on May 1st.
• Add one affiliate link for every article published. Use tracking links if available so that I can determine where a sale comes from. To read more about affiliate marketing, check out One Week Marketing. You can also find a great post about creating passive income through affiliate marketing at PassiveFamilyIncome.

The goals for this experiment are as follows:

• Produce at least 15 articles for InfoBarrel and eHow.
• Jump into a few new niches. Typically, my articles center around one or two topics of which I am more comfortable.
• Get motivated to write more content on a more frequent basis. There are so many writers on eHow that make $500+ each month, and to be honest with you, their articles are terrible. I guess it truly is a ‘numbers’ game.
• Have fun and create more passive income.

So, what do you think? Who will win this Royal Rumble? Why don’t you join InfoBarrel and eHow and start your own experiment?

Popularity: 32% [?]