Playing the Waiting Game

So the Squidoo thing is slow. Painfully slow. Some days it's really hard to stay motivated to work for no pay. Especially, when you've got kids to support. So why the hell do I keep doing it? Because I've been through this before. I've played the revenue share waiting game before, and I know that it will eventually pay off.

Here's a little back-story on me. I first got into writing in 2009. I was selling Avon at the time and it wasn't working out well. So in an effort to gain more Avon customers and bring people to my online Avon store, I wrote a couple of articles about Avon skincare and cosmetics on a site called eHow.

eHow used to allow pretty much anyone to submit articles, and if they were successful, you'd earn a cut of the ad revenue. They called it the “Writer's Compensation Program.” I wasn't looking to be a writer, I just wanted to get the word out about my Avon store. A few months went by and I wasn't getting any additional Avon business, so I went back to eHow to check the stats on my articles to see if anyone was even reading them. To my surprise, I had earned like $20 on those two articles. As I sat at my desk, a cartoonish light bulb formed above my head and I said to myself “this is what I should be doing.”

I wrote a total of 150 articles for eHow and made anywhere from $400-600 a month. I had a ton of readers, nice first-page Google results and my articles had steadily increasing earning each month. My income was growing and I was headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, just as I was getting started, the WCP was discontinued. Bummer right?

I was pregnant with Eva when this happened, so I thought it was probably for the best because I wasn't going to have time to work from home once she's born anyway.

Fast forward to today and here I am starting all over again, this time with Squidoo. And let me tell you, those first couple of months are grueling! Honestly, if it wasn't for my experience with eHow in the past, I'd probably want to give up right now.

But I don't. I carry on holding tightly to the faith that in the end, this will pay off. It's like driving in a thick fog. I can't see the road in front of me, but I've traveled this road before and I know if I keep pushing the gas and holding the wheel straight, I'll eventually get there.

I've got to go write some more lenses. I'm having trouble coming up with topics, though. On the plus side, some Giant Squids liked my latest lens about lip plumpers. So maybe I should write something else beauty related? I don't know. I'm watching America's Next Top Model with my mom right now and I'm feeling no inspiration at all. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better and pull off a good one. ;)