Xomba Writing Updates, and Two Contests

Writing Man Drifter: I'm Back!

Hey everyone, thanks for the patient wait as it has been a while since I've posted here. This past month has included a moving, a severe bout with carpal tunnel, and a lot of rush jobs that left me with little time to do anything else. So don't worry: Xomba writing adventures isn't a dead blog - although until my wrists heal the posts might be a little bit more spaced out.

This post is going to have to be short and sweet because as my ability to type for periods of time has been cut down drastically due to the carpal tunnel, so most of my limited time must be spent with the blogs, articles, and writing jobs that allow me to pay my bills - and there are some doozy medical ones coming up.

First of all, my most recent featured travel article is up and can be checked out here:

Visit Canton Football Hall of Fame

For any NFL fan or even football fan in general, if you haven't been there, it's worth the visit. I'm glad the NFL makes it mandatory now for all rookies to visit Canton.

The other news for right how is that there is still time to participate in TWO Xomba writing contests that are open right now. This gives freelance writers writing for Xomba a lot of chances to make some decent money, especially since both contests give prize money for up to four places, as well as allowing for UNLIMITED entries. So think up several great ideas and start shooting them forward!

Xomba writing contest #1: The dream job contest. Write about your idea of a dream job, which will then be judged by the Xomba staff as well as a guest job. Images are optional, and you only need to write 150 words. That's it. 150 words for a chance to win hundreds of dollars. This contest is open until November 9th, and you can find the official page for this contest here:

http://www.xomba.com/dream_job_writing_contest

The prizes are $500 for 1st place, $250 for 2nd, $150 for 3rd, and $100 for 4th. Plus every winner gets a Xomba t-shirt. How's that for snazzy?

Xomba writing contest #2: This is the book cover contest. Imagine you are an author and you get to write your own bio. With a minimum of 150 words write your interesting biography, and make it good because in this contest you only get one shot! Include a photo - because after all, this is your bio. This contest ends on November 20th, and the official rules can be found here:

http://www.xomba.com/book_cover_contest

The prizes for this contest are $200 for first place, $100 for second, and $50 for third place. 4th place gets a custom Xomba t-shirt.

So all you Xomba writers out there, get cracking to get those contest articles up, and get those normal articles out to up your AdSense income. The life of an online freelance writer is never easy, but every article you write gets you that much closer to your final goal.

I'm Back and the New Xomba is Here!

Xomba Adventures Blog Update

I know I've been gone for a while, and for that I apologize - while I don't intend for my writing blogs to be daily things, I do very much want to post a minimum of once a week, and generally more than that. In the beginning of July I had a huge family emergency, one that appears to be something that is going to be ongoing for quite some time. Obviously family comes first in times of trouble, and my energy and time had to be spent there and not on my online projects. August is going to be my recovery month as I strive for some degree of normality again.

A few things have happened on Xomba. I did not place in the summer contest, but seeing the winning entries made me realize what the judges were looking for, and gives me a much better chance of writing a quality article more appropriate to what they're looking for when the next contest comes up.

The other major event at Xomba: the new site is up and running. While there are still some bugs being worked out, the new site looks great and apparently the income being generated is more than with the old design, which is good news for everyone involved. I'm a featured writer for Xomba now, as one of their two featured travel writers. This is exciting for me as I love travel writing, and travel writing can be a very hard racket to break into, so having solid credentials as a travel writer aside from my own freelance attempts is absolutely nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, I've already written my first travel article for Xomba as a featured writer:

Visiting Canton Ohio and the Pro Football Hall of Fame

The next one will probably be about frozen outhouses in Fairbanks, Alaska, so stay tuned :)

There was one more comment I DEFINITELY wanted to make about Xomba before ending this post: Xomba is definitely starting to show some authority. It's no Ezinearticles (then again, no one is) but I've seen some of my Xomba articles start getting some very good 2nd and 3rd page Google rankings without any additional SEO at all. This is pretty darn good, and means that with a little bit of link building and article marketing, you could make some pretty decent AdSense money getting Xomba articles onto the front pages of the search engine rankings.

I'm not sure how strong Xomba was considered when I just got started - but they're a LOT stronger now, so this is a very good thing for the future prospects of this site for both the owners and for the writers.

If you haven't started writing for Xomba, I think they definitely have a place in an online freelance writer's portfolio. Go ahead and SIGN UP HERE, look around, and get started on your writing future today.

First Submission to Xomba Summer Contest

Entering the Summer Writing Contest

I wrote a Xombyte the other day, my first in order to enter the Xomba Summer Time contest. The theme is pretty simple: write an article of at least 300 words, with a photograph, on what to do to banish the "Summer Time Blues." The rules for this contest are pretty easy to find on the Xomba website, and the best part is that you are allowed to place as many entries as you want. This is a great opportunity to write articles and have a serious shot and some pretty decent prize money.

My first article was about traveling to meet old friends, and the adventures that can come with it. It's not bad, but not great. I know I can do better and will be working to put forward some better submissions, and I encourage anyone reading to do the same.

Thanks for reading!

Brief Xomba Update Before Summer

How to Use Xomba?

As summer is coming up I find a ton on my plate, and wonder in the midst of everything how should I use Xomba as part of my writing income to get to the level of passive income I want? I believe in using multiple income streams, and because of that I have a ton of projects for this summer as I'm pushing myself really hard to get from freelancer who's getting by during recession to having enough residual income (or passive income, if you prefer that term) to not only live comfortably, but to have the security, stability, and freedom of life style that I've always desired, and which is heavily talked about by others like Tim Ferriss in his book: The 4 Hour Work Week (highly reccomended if you've never read it).

So how does Xomba fit into this picture? While Xomba counts as an income stream, the income comes from the use of AdSense or Affiliate Sales, and in the time I've been there, I've seen more success with building blogs for AdSense, and HubPages has been better for both AdSense and affiliate sales, while eHow has been better for affiliate sales and truly counts as another income stream since your share of advertising revenue comes from a split with eHow: not your own AdSense account.

Does this mean Xomba is not worth the time? Absolutely not. But I wonder what the best way for me to use Xomba is. The largest monthly income I've seen reported was $698 after one intense year of writing: not bad at all and nothing to sneeze at. Many people report several hundred dollars a month. There are several things I have noticed while writing for Xomba, some are concerns, some are just observations. Among these:

• While Xomba is somewhat of an authority site, it doesn't have the same level of authority as Squidoo, HubPages, or eHow (or Associated Content, for that matter)
• Links from Xomba articles appear to be "no follow," meaning they don't help with ranking high in Google, but they might still count for Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines.
• Xomba articles are very easy and quick to write, and even if they are no-follow, they can get links, blogs, and sites indexed into Google - which is still useful
• Xomba does have a very good online community
• Personally I've had more success writing for other sites

That last point isn't blasting Xomba - different writers and different writing styles will do better with some sites than others. This is true of everyone. In my particular case, time spent on eHow and HubPages, as well as my own blogs monetized with AdSense, has shown more returns for the time than my writings on Xomba.

That said, I enjoy writing on Xomba because I can go on topics that interest me, but for which I have no campaign set up for, or I can do a Xomblurb that will help index each blog post on my other blogs with Google - which is huge in supporting my main AdSense income streams.

But I'm looking to move my residual income streams to the next level this summer, and aside from a huge workload that includes goals of:

1. 22 new AdSense niche sites
2. 10 new AdSense/Affiliate micro niche blog sites
3. 151 new hubs on HubPages
4. 310 new eHow articles
5. 10 Click Bank campaigns via Squidoo (think 50-70 lenses)
6. 60 new articles on Constant-Content
7. Write my first 3 e-books & set up sales via Click Bank
   
8. Getting my main writing blog to 100 visitors a day
9. Hours upon hours upon hours of article marketing and link building to gather links for all of these new pages and sites, as well as those already established

These goals are in addition to getting all my weekly freelance writing done, finding extra work on the side to help off set the costs of moving, and oh yeah, moving all the way across the country. There is that.

So since time is DEFINITELY going to be an issue, what is the best way for me to use Xomba as part of my goals of getting to where I want to be by the end of August?

This is a fairly open question, but right now what I'm looking at is the Xomblurbs. Every new blog post, every new eHow article, every new Hub, every new website can get its own Xomblurb - helping rankings in Yahoo! and the other search engines, while also giving me a chance at some more AdSense income. I think this, more than anything else, will be where Xomba can really help me with my goals this summer.

Once the new Xomba site is up, I will also be one of the featured travel writers, which will help me keep my sanity and write some good travel articles (Xombytes). An occasional good Xombyte article on top of all this that can still be used for links and a truly good affiliate product (or maybe a few to help promote my e-books) and I think this is the best strategy for me using Xomba this summer.

More freelance writing with Xomba updates to come.

Introduction to Writing for Xomba.com

Writing for Adsense Clicks: Introduction to Xomba

If you've been looking around online for places to make money as an online freelance writer, then you have probably run into Xomba.com a few times. The first time I saw this website, I have to admit that the design of the website turned me off, and I couldn't decide whether or not this was a website that I wanted to work for. It didn't look overly fancy, and there were a LOT of ads on the pages of the articles. But the feedback I heard was good, so I decided to give it a shot. This is a decision I haven't regretted.

Part of what I've learned from reading quality blogs online and from experimenting with Adsense on my own blogs is that the big block method Xomba uses is used because it works. Having a large box at the bottom also works for good articles, the types that pull the reader all the way to the bottom, and then offer themselves as a possible place to go next.

If you're writing for Xomba, you're writing for Adsense clicks. Xomba splits all Adsense clicks 50/50 with the authors. This means if you write an article, and someone clicks on an ad that makes the site $2, you will get $1 and Xomba will keep $1. This can be a pretty good system for writers who don't want to take the time to learn SEO (though you should, anyway, as this is critical for any aspect of making money online), and freelance writing for Xomba allows pure writers to concentrate on writing. This can also be better than Hubpages, since the impressions split can work against you, although Hubpages do have better internal SEO, and are better for creating websites for display.

At Xomba you write articles and there is no up front payment, but you get half of the Adsense clicks your articles produce while the web pages are automatically optimized for maximum efficiency. Freelance writing for Adsense is difficult (if not impossible) if you don't know SEO, part of which writing for Xomba takes care of. Here and Hubpages are also great places to learn about how Adsense works as you learn. This is especially useful if you are a beginner, and the ability to edit articles and hubs will also allow you to build backlinks in the future - and this is critical if you're eventually going to make a lot of money online.

To get the most out of writing online, you need to learn SEO, but if you've already decided stubbornly not to, at least do this much to get the most out of freelance writing for Xomba: whenever you decide to write an article, Google the term to see if there are advertisers. If you're going to write an article on area rugs, then Google "area rugs" (without quotes) to see if Google has any advertisers. The more Google Ads you see, the better a topic that is.

If there are no ads, consider a different topic. You will make the most money out of articles that are based around terms or keywords that have a lot of advertisers competing on Google. Just doing this simple step, only freelance writing Xomba articles around keywords with Google advertisers, will put you way ahead of the game. This is how you get the most out of writing for Xomba, and even if you refuse to go beyond that, the basic idea of SEO is finding the keyword terms you can rank for that make money.

Writing Xomba articles that you know have ads that match the content is the best way to get making money online with Xomba.

Otherwise the basics of Xomba are simple, but note the difference between "Xombytes" & "Xomblurbs." Beyond that, enjoy writing for Xomba, and have fun when the Adsense clicks start rolling in!