Getting paid?

[Celeste Stewart]

Me too

[HayleyWriter]

Me three! I reached my goal of making over $500 this month! CC is just the best.

[Debbi]

Congratulations, Hayley!

[HayleyWriter]

Thanks Debbi, I'm definitely doing the happy dance this month!

About one hour after my "woohoo, I just got paid!" happy dance, I always look at my account in CC and think..."Oh oh, no money - gotta get writing to make some sales!" At this time of the month everyone has a $0 balance, so it's a great time to set goals. What do you want to earn this month? How many articles will need to sell to make your goal? How many articles will you need to write, knowing that some will take a couple of months or so to sell? I usually set myself a goal for the month, taking into account what else is happening in my life and how much writing I will have time to complete. With Christmas parties in December, I don't think I'll have quite as much time for writing this month... but I definitely want to get off that $0 balance and get paid, so I better stop procrastinating on the forum and get to it!

Hayley

[nichewriter]

That's great, Hayley! Congratulations! Aside from the November challenge, my goal was to make 60 sales for November. I reached my goal of 45 sales in October so I thought I'd up the goal the following month. I didn't meet my November goal, though -- I was 17 articles short of 60 sales, *but* I've got nothing to complain! For December, my goal is to submit at least 50 articles (loads of articles in various stages of editing and proofreading are languishing in my CC folder) and not worry about the sales since the articles are going to sell sooner or later -- just gotta get them up there.

[Celeste Stewart]

Ha! I see that $0 and get nervous, too.

[HayleyWriter]

Selling 43 - 45 articles every month is pretty fantastic - well done Sherry! What a good goal you have set for yourself too. That works out at one or two articles a day or 12 articles a week, which is certainly attainable. I definitely find that submitting articles regularly is the way to be successful here. It's like that old Kevin Costner movie, The Field - "If you build it, they will come!". In Constant Content terms: 'If you write it, customers will buy, (even if it is eventually)."

Celeste, I'm glad I'm not the only one! I always find the old $0 balance is motivation to get writing again.

Now... back to the writing!

Hayley

P.S. I like the mental picture of languishing articles. I had a quick vision of hundreds of pieces of paper lying around a gaol cell (languishing in the proofreading prison!) Time to parole your articles from the proofreading prison to find a way out into the world wide web.

[Lysis]

whoa...50 articles at CC. I know I'm a sweat shop for DS, but 50 CC articles is impressive! My goal this month is to do 1-2 articles for CC a day. Not sure I'll hit the 50 goal, but I'm almost at 100 total CC articles, so I want to get to the big 1 OH OH by January.

[Debbi]

I am also aiming for 100 by the end of the month. I have about 20 to go so I should be able to do it.

All of you who are selling so much a month, what are you writing about? When I look at the Recently Sold list (which I do obssessively) it just doesn't seem like very many people could be selling that many (or is the list incomplete?)

[nichewriter]

Debbie,

My current bestsellers are my home business articles (Home Business Management 101; The Savvy Business Owner; Becoming a Business Owner; etc.). I have sold I think 80+ of them since I started writing on the topic back in June or July. I have a buyer who regularly buys my home business articles (my quickest sale was like 20 minutes after the articles got approved). I always try to do 5 to 10 home business related articles a week and submit them. Right now, I have about a couple dozen home biz article drafts. I have also sold a lot of older articles (a teeth whitening article I uploaded 15 months ago sold last week; and some on credit cards and finance, health, and weddings that I wrote more than 6 months ago sold too) so it definitely helps to have lots of available articles for sale.

The Recently Sold list on CC only shows the latest 25 sales. Several times, my articles that sold don't show on the list at all (or when I happen to check) because of the latest sales.

~Sherry

PS: Hayley, I'm trying to liberate a couple of my languishing articles and submit to CC tomorrow

[Celeste Stewart]

Yeah, the Recently Sold list doesn't always list ALL articles sold. If an order is stuck in "waiting," I believe its time stamp prevents it from being listed "as recent" once the order actually goes through. Plus, if a whole slew of articles go at once, you can't tell what you may have missed.

When considering high submissions (such as 50 + submissions per month) and subsequent sales, it may seem overwhelming. I know when I look at my total word counts submitted each month I go "wow." That's after the fact. If I were to approach a month saying that I'm going to submit 100K+ words this month or whatever the goal may be, I probably wouldn't know where to begin - and I might not! That's why I'm a firm believer in math. I count how many business days the month has and then divide my monthly goal into daily chunks. I actually use a dollar figure rather than an article or word count but you can use whatever works for you. That way, I know that if I have 20 business days in the month and I want to write $XXXX, XX articles, or xxxx words per month, I simply divide that larger number by the number of business days and know how much I need to produce each day to meet my target. For me, it's so much easier to manage and less overwhelming. Plus, a minor setback is minor because I know the next day is a new day and I can go from there. Usually, by the end of the month, I've exceeded my goal

[Lysis]

I experienced the "waiting" thing yesterday. I think it's some weird, strange happy feeling to see your article on that list. My article sold and the waiting flag flipped, but it wasn't on the recently sold list. I was kinda bummed. How stupid is that? LOL