Almost two years ago, in February 2010, we ran a story on JCMayer777 and all the success he was having with InfoBarrel.  InfoBarrel has changed since then, we’ve launched InfoBarrel 2.0 and we’ve survived through a number of Google Algorithm changes.  What matters is that we’ve come out on top and we’re happy with what we’ve accomplished.

Not only has InfoBarrel grown since February 2010, but so has JCMayer777 and his success with InfoBarrel.  Back in early 2010, Jason was striving to hit $1000 per month.  Two years later and he has made that look like child’s play.  In this interview not only will Jason tell you how far he has come since we last spoke, he will also share some of his valuable knowledge which I can only hope will help take other InfoBarrel writers to the next level.

It has been a little bit since our last interview, how have things been since?

Everything has been going pretty well.  I have my health, as do my kids.  Probably cannot ask for much more than that.  I do have a few planned changes that I’m checking out right now.

I’m looking at buying a new house this winter or early spring.  Right now, that’s one of my main focuses.  I’m pretty picky about what I want, so it’s tough to say how long it will take to find the right one.  I have a general location where I want to be within my hometown, so it’s just a matter of the right one popping up on the market.

I still work a fulltime job as a jail guard, primarily because of health insurance, but I actually make more online now than I do offline, even when I work overtime.  Plus, I’ve kind of become accustomed to the level of income I’m making now between both sources, so I’ll probably hold off on quitting my “regular” job even when the income goes up enough to support my lifestyle and pay for health insurance.  I only write on the side now and although I love it, I don’t know if I’d want to commit to doing it fulltime.

We know you’ve been having a lot of success here on IB, what is the most you’ve made?

My best month so far was right around $2,800, which happened in November, 2011.  The vast majority of my earnings come from AdSense, but Chitika and Amazon earnings are starting to pick up.

As odd as it may sound, I actually left a lot of money on the table.  It wasn’t until the beginning of that month that I actually got around to creating some Amazon links for affiliate income.  Granted, many of my articles aren’t really conducive to Amazon, but there’s no doubt that I could have made more.  I have to suspect I could have made over $3,000 on InfoBarrel if I had taken the time.

Even just now, as I’m thinking about it, I just cannot believe it.  Just a few years back I would have loved to make $2,800 per month and now I’m making that on InfoBarrel in my spare time.  There was a time, early on in my InfoBarrel career, that I wrote a lot and spent tons of time on it, but now, it’s blossoming on its own, without me doing much to help.  I guess that’s what passive income is really about.

When you break that total down, it works out to about $6 per article, per month.  In a year, that’s $72 and after 4 years it’s $288 from each article.  The old cliché applies – it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Have you changed any of your strategies since the last interview? If so, what are you doing differently?

I haven’t made giant changes, but I have made some.  I’ve stated in the past, both on my earning reports and on the InfoBarrel forums, that I feel a writer needs to focus on SEO.  Not the SEO of today, but what’s coming down the road.  If you can stay one step ahead of the game, I don’t think you have to work nearly as hard to get the results you desire.

One of the main changes I’ve made is the way I optimize my articles on the page.  In the past, on-page SEO was mostly about density and repetition in the proper quantity.  I wrote the bulk of my articles with this philosophy.  I actually used a smaller density percentage than recommended by most gurus and used synonyms and LSI words liberally throughout the article.  I’ve altered that a little.  I think this helped me survive and flourish after the Panda updates that killed the earnings of so many authors.

These days, I don’t worry about the density nearly as much as I do about synonyms and LSI.  It seems to be paying off, so I cannot complain too much.  My earnings reports of the last few months have had some tips in them that state what I’ve been doing to earn money on InfoBarrel.

How do you decide what to write?

I love keywords.  I really feel choosing the right keyword for an article is one of the easiest ways to succeed with online writing.  While there are probably fewer untapped niches today than there were three years ago when I started making money online, there are still plenty, if you can find them.  I’m not going to give away all my secrets, but I’ll give you a little background insight into how I select the right keywords.

When I started out about 3 years back, I wanted to find a way to determine what keywords were the best to use.  I used a free keyword tool at that time and started to record and track scores for them, whenever I found one that appealed to me.  It became pretty apparent to me that I could take a somewhat scientific approach to the selection.

I designed a sliding scale ratio over time.  I would record the score from each set of keywords onto paper and then check Google search results for the same keywords.  I kept the keywords separated by length and gave preference to longer strings of keywords.  In other words, I had a list of keywords that were 3 words long, 4 words long, 5 words long, etc.  I would take the keyword tool score and the Google search results and turn them into a ratio.  If the Google search results were 300,000 and the keyword tool score was 300 for that string of keywords, I’d divide them out and it would be 1,000 to 1.    I’d write on the lower ratios and skip the higher ones, after applying some additional filters.  Eventually, I came up with ratio guidelines that had the best potential.

Now, I mentioned that I gave preference to longer strings of keywords.  I would add about 50% to the acceptable ratio for the addition of each keyword in the string.  So, if a 3 keyword string needed a ratio of 1,000 to 1 to have proper potential, a 4 word string could be 1,500 to 1, and a 5 word string could be 2,250 to 1, etc.  I played around with other keyword tools and found that as long as I compared ratios always using the same keyword tool and only those from Google results, I could quickly come up with what would be acceptable ratios.  The ratios of course changed, since different keyword tools gave different scores to keywords, but the point was that the lower the ratio, the better potential.  The key is to always use the same tool and always use the same search engine results.  After that, it’s easy to develop the ratios.

I also mentioned that I had a few filters.  I’d check Google results and see if the first page had any plain-jane blogs listed or other revenue sharing sites.  If there were eHow, HubPages, or other revenue sharing sites there, I tried to beat them.  I’d also use the allintitle: command on Google.  If there were a ton of results that showed up, but very few on the front page, I’d generally skip it.  Sometimes I’d get a little full of myself and decide I could beat out everyone, but……

While I use paid keywords tools now, I know for a fact this method still works.  I’m putting all this out there in hopes that some people will give it a try and see some results.  I’d like to also suggest that people explore keyword tools that don’t generate their results from Google’s keyword tool, which everyone else uses.  I think you’ll be surprised by the results.  My best earning article made well over $350 just in November, but it shows a zero for search results in their keyword tool.  This is far from the only one that earns well for that shows nothing or almost nothing on their tool.

A couple other little tips I’d give to people about keywords:  You are only measuring potential.  A keyword can look like the greatest thing ever, but still never produce.  The 80/20 rule still applies.  You also have to use strong SEO to ensure you rank well.  Take the time to study up on SEO.

You talk a lot about LSI on the forums, do you have any pointers you’d like to share?

As you know, I wrote and ebook course with x3xsolxdierx3x (Howie) called InfoBarrel Success.  One of the courses deals specifically with Latent Semantic Indexing and Analysis (LSI, LSA).  In my opinion, this is the future of the online writing world.  Before too long, things like keyword density will mean absolutely nothing.

I wrote about this as a tip to authors one my InfoBarrel earning reports.  It’s actually much more involved than what I wrote, but it gives out the basics.  I’ll just copy and paste that here, since it’s pretty straightforward and I really don’t want to write it all over again.

How to LSI’ify

LSI isn’t really an internet term.  It’s been around for decades and predates the internet.  It all boils down to mathematics called singular value decomposition (SVD).  In written text, you are more likely to see certain words that correlate with each other. This is especially important since some words are spelled the same, but have different meanings.  Is an apple a fruit or a brand of computer?  If you use LSI words in your articles, the search engines will know the difference (and the ads will match more appropriately).

If you were to give all the information you knew about a topic you were knowledgeable in, there would be certain things you would be likely to type out for the reader.  In this example, we are going to assume you are writing an article about some type of charity.

LSI words are words that are somewhat related to the main topic.  They are not synonyms.  Think about “charity” carefully.  If you were well-versed on charity and were to sit down and tell someone everything you know about them, what types of words would likely be uttered?  Let’s make a list for illustration purposes.

•         Charitable organization

•         Nonprofit organization

•         Tax deductible

•         Contribution

•         Donate

•         Donation

•         Foundation

•         Fund

•         Fundraising

•         Relief

•         Worthy cause

•         Assistance

•         Financial help

•         Less fortunate

This is quite literally what just entered my mind as I typed.  All of these words are related to the basic theme of “charity.”

LSI’ified (yes, I’m just making that word up) articles will generally have most of these words in them, because they all relate to the basic theme of charity.  If you include several of these in your articles and make it pretty natural for the reader, there’s a good chance you’ll rank much better.

Now, you are not likely just to title an article “charity” and you should think about what you’re writing.  Some other possible words, depending on what type of charity article you were writing would include: hunger, starving, Africa, third world, etc.  Take the title and the basic theme of the article and come up with your lists accordingly.

Personally, I would suggest you type out a quick list, just as I did above for the first several articles you write like this.  It will help you find ways to include them in your articles.  Once you do it a few times, you should be able to think of most of them on the fly.

What other tips do you have for other writers on the site?

The most important step in writing online for money is studying.  I have to suspect it’s the most commonly skipped step.  Study search engine optimization, latent semantic indexing, and keyword selection.  It might make you feel like you’re not being productive, but from experience, I can assure you, it’s the most productive time you will spend during your entire InfoBarrel writing endeavors.  I’ve gotten to the point, through studying and analyzing, where applying SEO/LSI to my articles are second nature and take no more time, yet yield much better results.  I have a choice now; I can write 5 articles without regard to SEO and LSI, or I can write 1 and get the same results.  That’s productivity.

There are awesome threads on the InfoBarrel forum.  The consolidated one tip thread, the free keyword tools thread, and a bunch of others are all great to read.  Read through them and you’re bound to learn a great deal.  Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help on the forums.  The InfoBarrel community is somewhat smaller than other sites, but it’s the most friendly, helpful forum I’ve ever seen.  Ask questions and you’ll find a lot of us willing and able to help.

I’d also suggest people work to accomplish their goals on InfoBarrel. If the idea is to make money, go for it.  If the money isn’t a primary concern and you just want to share your knowledge, this is a great place to do it.  If you are looking for nothing more than a place to write a little and meet some new efriends, you’ll find them here.  Whatever the goals are, it’s up to you to make them.

I’m getting awfully long-winded here, so I’ll finish up by suggesting writers emulate some of the others on the site.

For money:  Some other active members of InfoBarrel that I know are doing well are Travis_Aitch, thehigherstandard, and Chezfat.  I’m sure I’m leaving out some, but these are the first to come to mind.

For Productivity:  Sookie and Ernie are the first two that come to mind.  I don’t know how those two find the time to write so much.  Although I haven’t heard much from either lately, I have to suspect they are both taking a well-deserved break.

Quality Writing:  The first two that come to mind are Classicalgeek and a newer member, Vicdillinger.  Classicalgeek’s work is always error-free and full of accurate, relevant information.  Vicdillinger’s articles are among the most entertaining and unique you’ll ever read.  Both of them are absolutely outstanding.

For Giving Back:  X3xsolxdierx3X is the most generous and committed of all the writers here, in my opinion.  He’s incredibly active on the forum boards and is more than willing to help out anyone.  He’s currently in Afghanistan, but finds a little time to hit the boards.  Another few are mommymommymommy (I don’t know how she finds the time), Deborah-Diane, DPeach, and JadeDragon, who gives out great advice on the threads. A newcomer that always seems willing to help is Skeffling.

What is your long term goal for IB and how long do you think it will take to achieve?

It’s winter, I live in Wisconsin and I hate the cold, so I pretty much hunker down and turn into a hermit for about 5 months.  This is when I’ll work to achieve my long term goals.

Goal #1 is simply to crack the $3,000 barrier for a single month.  I don’t know if it’s going to happen in December or not and things slow down a little the following months, so I’m not sure exactly how long it will take.  If I can stay committed to writing during the cold winter months, I’ll have a shot to make it.  As you can see through my profile, I pretty much took the summer months off.  This truly is a spare time thing for me, despite the fulltime income, and I intend to keep it that way during the summer.  There’s only so much time to spend out on the four wheelers with the kids, so IB has to take a backseat.  Then again, that’s the beauty of this type of site; it can take a backseat and I can continue to earn.

Goal #2 is to eventually hit $5,000 per month on InfoBarrel.  Three years ago, I would have thought it an unrealistic dream.  Of course, now I know it’s perfectly attainable.  Since it’s a spare time deal for me, I think it’s about two years away.

Those are my financial goals.  Beyond that, I’d simply like to make some new friends and enjoy myself.

Today we are launching what we think will be a very helpful new article element. Our first new article element since we launched InfoBarrel 2.0 is the Google Maps element. This element will allow you to embed Google Maps within your content providing even more value for your readers.

According to Google, 1 in 5 searches is now localized, so providing Google Maps will help make it easier to show readers where popular destinations are in cities and towns around the world. Hopefully this new element drives people to share information about places they’ve travelled, places in their own city or places they would like to travel to.

Here is a video showing you exactly how to use the new feature:

If you would like to see the element in action, take a look at the following article:

http://www.infobarrel.com/Coquitlam_Trails_-_Hiking_and_Leisure_Spots_in_Coquitlam

The Holiday season is quickly approaching and what better way to get everybody inspired than another InfoBarrel Success Story?

Our success stories give you a glimpse into the personalities behind the most successful people on InfoBarrel. We publish these success stories to give you an idea of what you are capable of if you put your mind to it.  In this particular case, we have one of our long term members who has been around since April of 2009.  She is not only a great support on the forum, but she creates tons of great content and has had a pretty successful ‘career’ as an online writer.

If you participate in the forums, chances are you know her by DKRunner, but she formally goes as Kelli.

Hey DKRunner, Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself ?

My real name is Kelli. I am a twenty something who is determined not to spend her entire life in a cubicle slaving away for someone else. I am entrepreneurial, adventurous, and I can’t sit still for more than 60 seconds. I have bachelor’s degrees in both psychology and sociology and a few years of experience in education and career counseling with both youth and adults. I have a husband who I adore, a very loving family, and one exceptionally fat cat. I have dreams of living on a large piece of land with a view where I will have a garden and a fruit tree collection that is plentiful enough to feed me all year around.

How did you choose your user name?

I put very little thought into choosing the username DKRunner (about 3 years ago, originally on another writing site), because I had no idea that I would be “stuck” with it for so long! The D is for my husband’s first name, mine starts with a K, and I really love running. The name is as simple as that but it ended up really growing on me.

How did you get started as an online writer?

In early 2009, we stumbled on a site that paid a passive income structure for submissions on any subject. I wrote two articles and checked on it the next day to find that I had made a dime. Others might laugh at such a feat, but I saw the potential and I kept writing, usually for an hour or two each day. In my first two months, I elatedly shared my small successes with friends and family who kind of laughed and gave me the “ok, but don’t quit your day job” sort of look. Roughly six months later I had built up a library of revenue share articles and was making enough money each month to pay my mortgage and then some. There were months where my passive online income was actually earning more than my full time job as a counselor.

The funny thing is, I never spent any of that money- except once, for an all inclusive ten day trip to Cozumel. I didn’t trust the company that I was writing for, or their promises of never ending the revenue share system, and so I saved nearly every penny that I earned from them. In the end, I was happy that I didn’t depend on that income coming in every month!

How did you come across InfoBarrel?

I found InfoBarrel shortly after delving into the online passive income world. I liked the site but was seeing so much success at the place I originally started at that I didn’t spend a lot of time writing here at first. Over time, it became clear to me that this was a much friendlier and more ethical place to write. When I had questions regarding the site or my account, I could get prompt answers directly back from admin – that would have never, ever happened at the other site.

InfoBarrel also had a community of people who were not abrasive or hostile, as I had seen with some other writing sites. They were welcoming, helpful, and put a great deal of time and genuine effort into answering questions for both new members and veterans. Due to work on other projects, I haven’t written much on InfoBarrel recently. Even so, when I had questions regarding that unrelated online project a few months back, I came to this forum and got a wealth of support and good advice from IB members. There are a lot of great people here.

What do you attribute to your success on IB?

I would contribute my success partially to being diligent and consistent with creating content, partially to the support of my husband because he believes in me and supports me whole heartedly in anything that I feel excited or passionate about, and partially to my being just plain stubborn – I want a “real” job to be an option and not a necessity.

I know you run a web site, how is that going for you? Did anything you learn here carry over to your other online endeavours?

FitnessBlender.com is doing very well. We are really excited because we just added a new feature for our users; full length home workout videos. They are anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour in length and range from Pilates to boot camps, and everything in between.

I feel very fortunate to have stumbled into my online earning endeavors because if I hadn’t, I would have never found a venue through which I could take something that I feel so strongly about; working out, staying healthy, clean eating, etc, and share it with the world in a manner that creates income for me and my family.

My husband and I have good intentions with Fitness Blender (it’s cost & gimmick free, the way that health ought to be) and we want it to thrive so that we can spend more time together. Life is short and I don’t want to spend 40 or more hours a week at a job that I hate, away from the people I love the most. Online writing sites are what made me aware that there are less conventional and more rewarding options out there for earning a living.

What is your favourite article you’ve written and your favourite you’ve read on InfoBarrel?

An article of mine that I like is about how to write CNA resumes.  In one of my last jobs I was counseling recent nursing graduates (CNAs, LPNs and RNs) on how to find jobs after they were done with school. Often times people finish college courses and are still unsure of how to get a job in their field. Having experience in job coaching and resume building, I was excited to be able to share that information on the web so that others could possibly benefit from it and land their first jobs.

I like AJ Walton’s “How to Come up with Unlimited Article Ideas” . I like his simple and effective approach to beating writer’s block, and it’s the same principle that worked best for me when I was really cranking out a large quantity of articles everyday.

What do you do in your free time?

I am always picking up new hobbies and interests to keep myself engaged. I spend a lot of time gardening, hiking, painting, cooking, working out, reading, writing, watching movies, playing guitar (trying anyways), and traveling. Aside from all the hobbies, I value the days where I get avoid doing anything constructive whatsoever and be completely lazy.

What advice do you have for existing IB members and new and upcoming members?

I believe that consistency is key. Anything worth doing takes time and effort and online writing is no different. I also believe that making small goals is paramount to tackling the big ones; everything can be subdivided into attainable goals that are less intimidating and more approachable, which makes it more likely that you actually pursue them.

Something that I wish I had known from the beginning is regarding keywords. When I started I had no idea about how keywording worked. When I learned about how they functioned and could be beneficial I went through a stage where I unintentionally went completely overboard, which I think is evident in some of my older articles. There is a careful balance that you have to strive for that is keyword-aware, but not so keyword dense or obvious that the reader feels like you are trying to sell them on something as they read your writing.

I also recommend writing about things that you either know well, or feel passionate about as then the articles just spill out of you and it doesn’t feel as much like work.

Thank you for thinking of me for this acknowledgement, I really appreciate it and I’m flattered.

We know you don’t post every article you create to your social profiles, but when you want to, we want to make it easier for you.  So in order to do so, we’ve created a new tool available to InfoBarrel members called Social Connections.

With Social Connections you can sync your social accounts with InfoBarrel (currently only Facebook is available) and when you submit your article to be published, you will be given the option to post a link to your freshly published article on a number of social sites.  While Facebook is the only available option currently, we should have Twitter and Google Plus added soon!

For those of you who share your articles with friends and families on Facebook and Twitter, this will help you save a little time.

Looking for a little motivation to get your butt in gear and start sharing all the amazing information you have stored inside your head?  Read the following interview with one of our long term InfoBarrel writers.  The following writer is not only an amazing person, but she radiates the qualities writers should strive for.  She is an amazing success story, because she proves that if you just do a little each day you will amount to big things over the long run.  Sookie proves that consistency is king (or possibly queen in this case) and to achieve success you just need to follow in her foot steps.

Hey Sookie, Tell us a little bit about yourself?

Well, my real name is Diane, and I live in the rural countryside north of Toronto, Ontario. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for 32 years now and we have 2 great kids, a son 29 and a daughter 27 that we are very proud of. We also have 2 large dogs, and 2 cats that keep me busy.

I love arts and crafts, and I also love to write. As the kids were growing up, I ran a small daycare, and then later, I would sell crafts and paintings so that I could stay home with them, first at craft shows, then later on Ebay. That is how I got started on the internet to make money.

How did you choose the name Sookie? Did it have anything to do with Sookie Stackhouse from HBO’s True Blood?

No, actually my husband picked the name Sookie for our Dog from a Peter Gabriel Song “Games without Frontiers” We have two dogs, called Sookie and Sasha. (Sookie is the dog seated on the floor, Sasha on the couch in the picture) Both names are in the song. But I just love the name Sookie.  I know you see a picture of my cat in my avatar, that is Muffin, she sits with me every time I write articles!

How did you get started with InfoBarrel?

For a good couple of years I did well selling my arts and crafts on Ebay. It really was my introduction to the internet. It was also very frustrating at the time as all we could get was Dial up internet!

I had also sold some of my paintings at craft shows, but it was a lot of work. I realized, that if I created smaller items that could be mailed easily, I would do well. I also found a source for older craft patterns that I sold too.

But after awhile the fees started to eat away at my profits, and I found myself reading ebooks on article writing and realized that I could make money talking about crafts instead of trying to sell them. I was hooked!

The idea of passive income worked for me!

I realized just how much I enjoyed writing and ventured onto other subjects. I also figured out how to create a website, and although it seems a bit jumbled! (my very first website!) it makes me money every month as well as IB.

I decided to do more writing and direct traffic to my new website. I then stumbled across Infobarrel while writing on Xomba. I absolutely love Infobarrel and decided to write and put all my efforts into this site.

What do you feel has been the major factor contributing to your success on IB?

I feel my success here on Infobarrel is due to the fact that I try very hard to do something each day. I treat it as a real business, and try to write at least an article a day if not more. If I am not writing then I will spend the time on keyword research or researching new subjects.

I really do believe you have to carve out some time to work on the business of article writing, even if it is just 30 minutes. Once you get into the habit, your article library will grow before you know it.

You also have to firmly believe in it, as I didn’t see money right away, but I kept on writing. That is why it is also important to check in at the forums and connect with others. I learned so much in the beginning from the FAQs and the forums.

What is your favourite article you’ve written? What is your favourite article written by another member?

My favourite article I have written has to Side Dishes for Lobster it has had over 11,000 views and still is going strong.

My favourite article written by another member has to be jcmayer777′s Sears Online Employement Application article.

When I was first starting out and saw the traffic he got to that article I was really excited. It felt like a “ahaaaa moment” and it got me inspired to learn keyword research and branch out to other subjects.

In the beginning I was writing away and not really paying as close attention to keyword research as I should have been, but that is the best part about this process, is you keep writing and learn from others and you get better at it.

What was your best month on IB?

December 2010 I made over $600.00 in adsense. Once I got over the $500.00 dollar mark it got me excited enough to keep heading to my goal of $1000.00 per month. I have also done well with Amazon on IB as I make $100 dollars per month with them, and I make other affiliate sales as well.

I remember when I first made payout for adsense ($100.00) how excited I was, and it was not that long ago. Now I am always over the 500 dollar mark each month. Plus with Amazon and other affiliate income I am usually in the $800.00 range, which is really exciting for me!.

I don’t do any backlinking. It is just one of the parts of this business that I don’t like and find tedious. Maybe I would be making more money if I did, but I think it depends on the article. Many of my earlier articles were not high paying subjects, but it all adds up. I tried to spend time on backlinking, only to have the backlinking sites fail or disappear! So, I decided to experiment. In later articles I found that if I use longer tailed keywords with less searches,

I do well without backlinking, some articles I see money right away. This works for me.

What advice do you have for InfoBarrel writers just starting out?

Schedule in some time each day for your writing business. Even if it is just some keyword research or idea research. Once you get into the habit of working on your IB business every day, the articles will grow.

If you only did one article a day that would grow to 365 articles a year, and if you write about subjects you are passionate about, it should come easy to you and you can end up with more articles. I don’t believe in working for hour after hour trying to write. I think you get exhausted and the quality is not there, work on it a bit each day.

Have a notepad with you or write in your iphone when a subject comes to mind, then you can research it later. This way you have some subject ideas. One great way to come up with subjects is to ask your friends and family what was the last thing they “googled” on the internet. Maybe it is something worth writing an article about.

Just keep at it, the money will come.

You have to believe the money will come and not give up. Some people see money right away, others, like me took a few months to see it. It will happen!

What do you like to do in your free time?

I love to get together with family. My husband and I are both one of four kids, so there are plenty of relatives to see. I especially like it when our kids and their partners visit and we have meals together and catch up.

I still love to paint, and am in the process of updating my website ‘Make Crafts for Cash‘ to be a bit more user friendly, and of course I love writing for IB!

Hey Guys,

Some of you may have noticed a little red flag next to your My Content link in the header and on your My Content page next to an article title.  This is a little notice to let you know that there is a flag on your article that needs to be addressed.

As a side note, I’d like to encourage everyone to make use of the flagging feature (found at the bottom of every article) to help you fellow IBers make their content the best it can be.

All Spam/Inappropriate/Duplicate flags go to us only.
Flags for Grammar/Spelling/Formatting got to both the author and us.

Thanks,
Kevin

Hey Guys,

In our quest to deliver higher quality content, we decided to introduce references and bibliography to the article writing process.  Adding a source to your article is done in a very similar way to adding media.  The sources box appears on the right of the editing screen of a text element as shown below.

To add a new source just click the Add Source button and a window will pop up that you can put your source information in.  Currently your can reference material from 5 types of sources:

• Books
• Encyclopedias & Dictionaries
• Magazines & Newspapers
• Websites
• Reports

When filling out your source material make sure to include as much information as you can.  There are certain required fields for each reference type.  For example, books require the title, publication city, publication company and publication year.  Once you have put all the info in, save it and it will pop into your sources list.

Now that you have a source, you can reference it in your article.  To do this, put your cursor at the place you want your reference and click the insert button.  This will add a numerical link in your article surrounded by two square brackets (as you can see in the above image).  Don’t worry that the number in the brackets is high, it will be adjusted when you save the article. If you want to delete the reference link out of the article, simply delete it out, making sure to delete the brackets as well as the numbers.

If you want to edit your source you can click the edit button to pop up the same window you used when creating it in the first place.

The last button, delete, deletes the source from your sources list.  If you have removed a source from your list, make sure to remove any references to it in your article.

Make sure to give it a try and let us know what you think.  If you have any questions, comments or ideas for making the process simpler let us know.  I’ve created a forum post for everyone to talk about this.

Good luck and happy writing!

It has been awhile since we’ve done an InfoBarrel success story.  Lots of adjustments have been taking place here over the last few months that have kind of taken precedence.  Moving forward we will continue to showcase members who heavily contribute to InfoBarrel and have experienced some success.

This month, I’d like to congratulate Ernie, one of our long time members for being the InfoBarrel Success Story or July 2011!

Ernie, tell us a little bit about yourself

I am 34 years old and live in Idaho. My real name is Daniel, but I go by the nickname of Ernie. I graduated from Highland High school in Pocatello and currently live in Twin falls, Idaho. I love riding bicycles. I have been writing full time for about a year now.

How did you get started on InfoBarrel, and how did you hear about it?

I have always been interested in writing. I had begun to write for a website that paid for pageviews. I was having a lot of success with this site but I did not fully trust them. The revenue paid to the writers kept dropping and I looked for additional places to write for. I attempted to write for another writing site that was extremely popular at the time, but I continued to get errors when I wanted to publish an article. Their publishing tool was horrendous as it kept failing. I only put 4 articles up with them and gave up. It was good I gave up this popular site as they ended up changing their terms and ending the royalty program.

I kept writing for the original website I was writing for but I wanted to find a company that was fair and not out to rip off the writers. I checked back on the website where I had only published 4 articles after a couple of months and was surprised to find I had earned over $30.00 even though I had done nothing with the website for a long while. I was instantly hooked on building up my passive income through writing.

I dabbled with a handful of other websites and experienced some minor earnings but none of these websites felt right to me. I discovered InfoBarrel from reading a forum. I believe it was the EHow forum, but am not sure. I came to InfoBarrel and was initially not impressed with the look of the website. This was before InfoBarrel 2.0 was introduced.

I did more research on content sharing websites and I kept coming back to InfoBarrel. I spent some time on InfoBarrel and realized it was exactly what I was looking for.

What is your writing strategy, how do you decide what to write about?

I don’t like to backlink and I rarely use keyword research, even though it would drastically add to my earnings. I like to write about a wide variety of topics. If a certain niche earns consistently then I will write more articles within that niche. I have a lot of articles dealing with Las Vegas. I like to write about Las Vegas because that topic has proven to be a valuable topic to earn money with.

Not all of my Las Vegas articles earn money consistently each month, but the ones that do earn are “Cherry” and earn a few dollars each month.

My overall goal with InfoBarrel is to get 4,000 articles published. I like to write and hate to backlink so I will focus most of my attention on simply writing articles.

My monthly earnings per article average is much lower than the average here on IB. A lot of this has to do with the lack of backlinking and keyword research on my part. I know if I was to focus more on backlinking I would earn more, but I instead choose to simply write more articles.

I write a lot of articles for clients each month and I must write to their specifications. InfoBarrel is my release where I can write freely and not have to follow a client’s direction. The more I earn with InfoBarrel then the less I have to write for up-front payment for clients. Q- What do you like to do in your free time?

I love to ride bikes, go camping, swimming at in lakes, photography, playing cards, reading and of course writing. Q- Of all the articles on InfoBarrel, what article are you most proud of?

Top 25 Most Visited Tourist Destinations in America

What advice can you give new writers just starting out on InfoBarrel?

Stick with your writing. At times it can seem like your efforts are not paying off, but they will. Keep writing and adding new articles to InfoBarrel on a regular basis. If you want to learn about keyword research and how to maximize your earnings per article then take a look at an InfoBarrel member such as JCMayer777. He maximizes his earnings per article by using great keyword usage as well as backlinking.

In the beginning I would simply recommend to begin writing and adding articles on a regular basis. Once you have a larger portfolio of articles you can see which article topics tend to earn the most for you and then focus on writing more articles within those topics.

Don’t get bogged down trying to follow the exact methods that any established authors use on here. Each writer will develop their own system and methods of doing things that work for them. You can however learn a great deal from many of the members here. The InfoBarrel forums are a great place to ask questions and learn new tips and techniques. I am constantly learning new things in the InfoBarrel forums.

As a new writer it is imperative that you connect your Adsense and Analytics account together. You can use Adsense channels, but you are limited to only 200 channels which will quickly run out once you get serious about writing for InfoBarrel.

Connect your Adsense and Analytics account. Create a custom channel for InfoBarrel in Analytics. Create a channel for InfoBarrel.com/media. Add your Amazon and Chitika information to InfoBarrel. Once you have done this simply write a lot of articles and see what works well for you.

I emphasize the steps above as I use Analytics as a primary motivator to continue writing for InfoBarrel. I look at the overall pageviews on my InfoBarrel articles and try to improve them. I can see when old articles are suddenly trending and find out why they are suddenly popular. I also use Analytics to find what search terms people use to find my articles, and then I write more articles around those terms.

You can never be sure as to what articles will consistently earn money. I have written well researched articles using keyword research and backlinked the article and earned a few cents while on the other hand I have written a short article using no keyword research and threw it together in less than 20 minutes and it earns consistently each month.

When you publish an article on InfoBarrel then interlink it with related articles that you already have written on InfoBarrel. Internal linking of your InfoBarrel articles can increase your pageviews.

I also suggest you use images with as many articles as you can. An image helps to break up the monotony of static text and also gives you gives you the potential for additional revenue.

What was your best month on InfoBarrel?

It was December 2010. I earned $142.64 with InfoBarrel. For 9 of the last 10 months I have earned over $100.00 each month with InfoBarrel.

If I was to quit writing for InfoBarrel I would still earn around $100 each month. I have built up over $1,200 a year in passive income using InfoBarrel. I will continue to receive my InfoBarrel earnings check from Google and Chitika each month regardless of if I continue to write or not. I could quit writing for InfoBarrel today and over the next 5 years continue to earn around $6,000. The power of passive income is truly awesome! Q- What are your plans/goals with InfoBarrel in the future?

My long term goal with InfoBarrel is to eventually get 4,000 articles published. I really enjoy the flexibility in being able to choose to write what I want to write about.

Hey everyone,

As you may or may have noticed we’ve been testing a variation on the ad layout that has the top leaderboard ad being removed and doubling up on the cube ads at the bottom of the article.  We’ve had better CTR with this ad layout than the other so we’ve decided to switch it up so everyone can benefit from it.

Please leave any feedback you have on this forum post.

Enjoy everyone!

Hey guys,

Yesterday, Google announced that it is going to start utilizing the authorship markup to identify author bio pages.  (read more about it here)  What this does is identifies who the author is for every article written on the site and shows Google (and other engines that utilize this) where it can find that author’s bio page.  This should help author’s who write quality content build up their own reputation in the search engines, which should increase the rankings for more of that author’s content.

Another thing you can do with authorship is identify other sites or bio pages that are about you.  By including the tag rel=”me” in any links to pages about you, you are identifying those pages as about you.  For example, if you have a personal blog and you link to it from your about me here on InfoBarrel with the rel=”me” attribute set, Google will now understand that this site or page is also about you and use it to build your Authorship profile.

We’ve implemented this on all your article pages already so that they now identify to your bio page.  If you have any blogs or profiles on other sites, we suggest you add the rel=”me” attribute to any links that you have that cross link your bios.