THE DETAILS – WHY I CONDUCTED THE STUDY

As an overworked freelancer, my goal was to create more passive income.

A little history: I’ve been in publishing since 1987, and have been a freelancer since 1993.  I kind of took freelancing as it came those first few years, never relying on it as my primary source of income.

Inkwell Editorial was formed in 1996 as an editorial outsource firm. The smartest thing I did as a manager was add staffing/recruiting to Inkwell’s list of services. That really got the company over the hump, as placement fees ranged from a low of 3K on up to around 12K.

NOTE: In general staffing fees are much higher, but in editorial, salaries are low, so recruiting fees are below what you’d make in another arena, eg, tech.

A handful of placements a year and a few temps on assignment, coupled with my freelance income provided me a very nice living.

Then came 9/11. The arena in which I staffed (editorial) crashed. Ad agencies and publishers cut back their output because no one was spending on ad campaigns, so no need to hire copy editors, creative directors, graphic designers, etc.

However, during the time we offered on-site temps, I built up a pretty good roster of clients and now get most of my work via referral.

Present Day: Having been a freelancer since 1993, I’ve reached the point where I want to “touch” projects less. So, my goal going into next year is to create more passive income. My hope is that within a couple of years, I can get by on just my product sales alone. Having reached 40, I want to work less and play more.

Now, on to the details!

NOTE: This e-book consists of a series of blog posts, a Q&A session and conclusions drawn from the experiment overall. I hope you find it useful.

WHAT DID THE STUDY CONSIST OF?

My goal was to submit one article a day for 30 days (excluding weekends) to 25 top-rated directories.

How did I choose which directories to submit to? I used their PR and Alexa rankings. What are PR and Alexa rankings.

What is a PR Ranking? What is an Alexa Rank?

PR Rank: First, PR stands for page rank. Impact-Direct.com defines page rank as:

A method developed and patented by Stanford University and Larry Page [cofounder of Google] to rank search engine results. Page Rank gives a unique ranking to every page on the internet. The ranking number is based on the number of quality inbound links pointing at a page and is represented on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the optimal rank.

In the article, “What Is Page Rank?” by Kimberly Bodane, she describes why page rank is important, as well as what you can do to improve yours.

You’ll also find a detailed article on problogger.net (“Google Page Rank Explained”) with helpful feedback from other readers. This is the link: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/07/16/google-page-rank-explained/

Alexa Rank: An article published by e3Server.com on thehostingnews.com, What is Alexa Ranking, describes Alexa rankings as “a very powerful tool of viewing and comparing web site traffic for one site to the rest of the web.”

Read full article here: http://www.thehostingnews.com/art-what-is-alexa-ranking.html

The lower the ranking, the better. Sites that rank 100,000 or lower are considered extremely popular.

To learn more, type “alexa ranking” in the search engine of your choice and do some reading. You’ll be able to get a full understanding by reading a few articles of detailed information.

To find out your site's PR, go here: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

To find out your site's Alexa's ranking: Go here: http://www.Alexa.com.

Case Study Notes: I missed 3 days submitting. I also added and deleted approximately 4 directories from the list as I went along. Why? Because they either went offline (in one case), were not uploading articles in a timely manner, and/or were not suitable for the type of article I had written that day.

Overall, though, I consistently submitted and was able to glean some good findings, which will be discussed later.

May be reprinted with inclusion of the following:
About the Author: Yuwanda Black is the publisher of InkwellEditorial.com  THE business portal for and about the creative and editorial industries.
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