ROW80 Check In 2

Wow, is it Sunday already? When did that happen?

Right, so second Round of Words check in. How have I been going?

Well, I've been having great fun writing my 5 Day Writers Retreat. 

I've been going over my early blog posts about preparing for the challenge and just seeing how much more I now have to add to that now. It has also challenge me to look again at my lifestyle and see how I can make it more conducive to writing. 

I'm a little behind in actual words, as my goal is 5,000 words a day 5 days a week, so after a week I should have 25,000 words and I'm only up to 16.149. However, I'm happy with what I've done, and I've spent a lot of time working out the structure for the book and finding suitable quotes and inspirational stories from my favourite authors. 

I now have only a week left to finish the draft, so I might need to focus more on the writing and less on the formatting which can be done later. But my enthusiasm for the book is growing as I work on it, which is always a comforting sign. 

I've been good with my blog posts here, but am a bit behind with my fitness blog. Largely because I've been spending a lot of time trying to do research into how to recreate it. I'm moving it away from blogger and giving it its own domain and website, so find a good name which will attract traffic is difficult. (Also, American webhosting companies suck... just found out that the one I signed up to (and paid for) doesn't take .com.au domains! Totally could have told me that at the beginning. (Okay, they might have in the small print, but I didn't see it, so it doesn't count). 

Article-wise, submitted a total of 5 articles which kicked ass on my goal of 3. Adsense still does not want to acknowledge me (they say you should have at least 10 HubPages articles before applying to Adsense, and I now have 11 or 12, but I will keep adding more and more until Adsense has to accept me!). 

I'm not sure if I've explained about Hubpages yet. It's an article submission directory, where you set up your own account and write up 'hubs' (aka articles) on any topic that interests you. The reason I started looking at it was because it was recommended as one of the ways to increase your online platform's reach (and looking at my stats, quite a few of you reading this will have come from my Hubpages account, hello!). Also, it can increase your passive income because you can sign up to get Adsense payments for people that click on the ads on your article. This is, of course, if Adsense will acknowledge you. Otherwise, Hubpages gets all the revenue.

Two bloggers I follow a bit signed up to test the income potential, and in a month put up roughly 150 articles, then left it. They are still getting $200-$300 a month from adsense from these articles. Sounds pretty good, right? 

Well, I'll tell you more when I've tested it out further, and cover article directories in my series on building an online platform. However, if you already have an Adsense account and you want to practice your writing, then you should definitely consider it. I can't see any downside to it except you can't republish that content elsewhere on the web. And I can say that it will get more traffic to your site, if you keep posting regularly.

So, if you are interested in signing up, and want to give me a little kick back, check out the Hubpages sign up page. This is an affiliate link, so while you don't lose any of your revenue, HubPages gives me a cut of their percentage from the ads. Win for me, win for you!  

So, overall for my ROW80 goals: some wins, some draws, maybe a loss or two. 

And that's the check in for the first week done!

(I've just found this great feature for ROW80, sorry for not doing it before. Check out the other blogs which are also doing ROW80 by following the blog hop!)