†† Paula Neal Mooney ††

Apply here, if you dare…

Ah yes, those were the days…

How much money are writers making with Examiner.com now?

Well, that’s the question various writers and followers will ask me in my Yahoo! Contributors Network email inbox, or via my gmail or wherever they can find me.

And I tell them the truth: It ain’t as easy as it used to be, but it is still possible to make money writing for Examiner.com, if you’re willing to work for it and have realistic expectations.

Plus, if you get creative, there are ways to expand your Examiner.com income.

Let me explain.

When I first started writing for Examiner, I began with one column, the Cleveland Pop Culture column.

That was all well and good but kind of limiting when I wanted to write about stuff outside of Cleveland.

So I asked my channel manager at the time, and I was able to get a Christian TV and Christian Music channel column as well.

The Christian TV tends to make the most, with Cleveland Pop Culture coming in second — at least in terms of these estimated amounts that will actually round out higher for the month of December 2011, to be paid around January 20, 2012:

01/20/12 EXAMINER dec 2011 EARNINGS – CHRISTIAN MUSIC $10.26
01/20/12 EXAMINER dec 2011 EARNINGS – CHRISTIAN TV $331.48
01/20/12 EXAMINER dec 2011 EARNINGS – CLEVELAND POP CULTURE $265.67
01/20/12 EXAMINER dec 2011 EARNINGS – INTERNET DEALS $50.95

But what these figures don’t show are monies I make in addition to the Examiner.com pageviews.

How writers can make more money via Examiner.com by writing about products, deals, trips, etc.

For example, when I kept trying to sneak in articles about products I’d find online, Examiner just encouraged me to add another column on that topic, so thank God I got the national Internet Deals column.

And even though it shows around 50 bucks made for the month in terms of pageviews, the real money is in the affiliate links contained therein.

For example, if you check out that Internet Deals column, you’ll see that I wrote a lot about Groupon deals in November and December, and that turned out to be pretty lucrative, adding more income to my overall online income.

You see, places like Groupon are advertisers that are a part of the CJ.com network, and if you go there and apply and they accept you — read more on “How to Get Approved for Some Commission Junction Advertisers When You Keep Getting Denied for Affiliate Program Advertisers...” — they will give you a cut of the pay of people who buy deals through the special links they give you.

The advertiser rates of payment vary, but for example, if I bring Groupon a new user on a deal that they buy for $200, I’ll get 10% — or $20 for that sale.

Many of them are less than that, but everything adds up. And there are a bunch of other percentage scale factors that increase your earnings with the amount of products sold.

To tell you the truth, I’m still figuring out the payment timing of CJ.com — I know they pay me pretty quickly once I make the $50 minimum payout threshold from the previous month. And they deposit it directly into my checking account as I have set up, around the 18th of every month that I make money.

Best Buy is another advertiser that you’ll find in the CJ.com network, so if you write about products and sales and customers buy via your affiliate link like mine I just linked to, you’ll make a certain amount of pay.

And then there’s the eBay Partner Network, whose affiliate links I use in articles like the popular Nike Air Jordan XI shoes on eBay going for $400 and stuff.

They pay not only for clicks, but also for users who get the winning bids — they give you some kind of percentage of income for that as well.

It’s not always much — for example, I see I’ve made like $10 or more for this month of December 2011 through that venue, but like I say, it all adds up.

And I see one month I made $188 or so through the eBay Partner Network in 2010. So play around and see what happens.

I kind of like the eBay to Go widget like I hopefully have displayed to the left, but honestly, just a nice text link written about in the context of your article is probably your best bet.

And then there’s always the good old Amazon Associates program, if you’re blessed enough to reside in a state where they haven’t kicked you out — nor if you haven’t figured out a legal way to stay in the program by setting up a business based in another state — but check with the experts on that legal stuff.

Once you’re in that program, Amazon will give you affiliate links like the ones I included in my article about the Lead me with strong hands… song that I love by Sanctus Real.

So it’s not just all about Internet deals and products, but you can naturally link to songs or whatever that you love anyway and pass them on to your readers.

And even though each Mp3 download I sell through my Amazon links may only make 10 cents or whatever, it really adds up when you’re talking about those amounts of sales kicking me and you into a higher threshold of sales on Amazon’s percentage scale along with all the other products we sell, like the hot Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi that everybody and their mother bought their kids this Christmas — thank You, baby Jesus!

How it all adds up, and what I love most about writing for Examiner.com

If I were a more organized person, I’d be able to tell how much exactly are product sales I made through my own website affiliate links and through affiliate links in my Examiner articles and other places online — love increasing that online real estate! — but alas, who wants to track all those freaking channels?

Anyhoo, let’s say December 2011 closes out with more than $658 made via my Examiner.com articles based on their payment to me from my cut of the advertising, that’s one portion.

And then for the dear people like you who read these honest pieces and then click on the affiliate links like these to try and write for Examiner, I get I believe 50 bucks each for those who actually get accepted, not 5 bucks each anymore for everyone who applies. Examiner used to have an affiliate program through CJ.com, but that’s now defunct. They give us our own affiliate links through Examiner.

So say four people apply and get accepted through my links, that’s an extra $200 added onto the $658 or more made above, so that’s $858 potentially earned through Examiner. But I won’t know my referral monies until January 20, 2012, so I’m not including that yet.

I’m estimating Examiner brought me well over $1,000 from December 2011 writing because I’m adding the $658 plus the over $344 from CJ.com they’ve already paid me (I guess that’s from Nov/Dec sales — I still have over $300 on the way from them) plus whatever part of that $400 from Amazon Associates sales is related to sales via my affiliate links on Examiner.

Hopefully that all makes sense, even if you’re a newbie online with this sales stuff.

Which brings me to the thing that I love most about Examiner and why I still write for them over two years later, even after the wrath of the Google Panda update sent others scurrying away and complaining on forum boards when they could be writing instead:

I love the Google News exposure Examiner.com provides…

You can barely beat the feeling and rush you can get when you’ve written a great article that you feel passionately about — or even a ho-hum one that still has God’s favor on it — and it receives Google News approval and lands smack dab on the front page of Google in the news results based on a popular search term that people are typing in at the time.

(And it’s not just the amount of people who find you — it’s who finds you. Like when Bishop T.D. Jakes’ people contacted me. The Lord of love alone knows where that is leading…)

It won’t always happen, but if something is going on with Tim Tebow, for example, like his SNL skit, and people typing in “Tim Tebow” are able to see your news article planted prominently from Examiner, that’s a good thing.

You can’t expect to get rich — you’ve gotta work, but I still like combining all the ways of earning money online even as I try new ones to supplement the ones that don’t necessarily pay as much as they used to as easily as they used to.

These methods aren’t for everybody, and part of me kind of likes that because I feel like it gives an edge to those of us willing to work hard enough and let the “Father of the heavenly lights” provide us with new and varied ideas and ways of making online — plus the less competition we have when the complainers drop out.

Stay tuned for a coming post about how I surprisingly made money with The Company Corporation that I didn’t expect through an old Blogger/Blogspot blog…

Oh yeah, and I guess I’d better calculate my entire 2011 online income — as well as all my expenses — seeing as though 2012 is mere hours away from arriving.

The taxman cometh — and thank Jehovah Jireh for always providing more than enough even when I don’t save responsibly!

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