Xomba Dream Job Contest Entries

Xomba Dream Job Entries

Well today was the final day for Xomba freelance writers to publish a Xombyte for the "Dream Job" contest. This was a really fun contest and I had a lot of fun with it because such a broad topic allowed me to go many different directions. This particular Xomba writing contest allowed as many entries as you wanted, so I took advantage and offered four.

My four articles covered a broad range, and I have no idea if a quirky sense of humor or a clever stretching of the theme is going to get any bonus points of any kind, but that's how I write, that's how I enjoy writing and if it gets me placed anywhere in this contest I'll be ecstatic. I find that the contests you have fun participating in, are almost the ones you want to win the most.

So one article was a straight and arrow thought piece on being an NFL GM (that's General Manager for the non sports fans). One was about a job I do find endlessly fascinating: horror movie extra, one I tried to go the hilarious route, and that was about being Michael Bay's overworked explosives expert, and the last took the "dream job" literally. I dream of being a zombie killer (because I have weird dreams), so I wrote about being a zombie killer.

If I can't get any interest with that variety, then I don't know what I could do, lol! Anyway, here are links for anyone interested:

I Want to Be an NFL GM
I Want to Be a Horror Movie Extra
A Day as Michael Bay's Explosives Expert
Life as a Zombie Killer

Hope ya'll enjoy, and thanks for reading!

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.

Xomba's Getting Traffic

Featured Travel Article #2

I'm really digging the new design of the Xomba website, and I noticed a major jump in traffic and AdSense earnings the first couple days my first travel article was on the front page. Although you lose the picture once you're no longer one of the two most recent featured articles, the title still remains as long as yours is one of the most recent six featured articles. The very day that I saw my previous travel writing for Xomba was off the first page, I began my second Xomba featured travel article.

My second featured travel article: Relishing the Sound of Silence in Isolated Alaska, didn't have quite as catchy a title as the first article (I mean really, how do you top frozen outhouses?) but it still did very well, and Xomba will show you the total number of views the article received. Even better for me, I watched my AdSense account and sure enough, having a featured article on page one has been worth several dollars a day more, and has funneled traffic to my other sites, as well.

So once again, if you're looking to write for Xomba, I strongly recommend you look at filling a featured author spot. They're getting enough traffic to make being a featured author very much worth your time.

Summer Writing Contest: Last Call!

Xomba Writing Contest: Last Call

For those of you who are writing or Xomba, or who have just found this today, the 2009 Xomba Summer Writing Contest ends on July 6th. There are great cash prizes of $350 for first place, $200 for second place, and $150 for third place, so it's a great time to jump in and start writing for Xomba. Just remember that each entry needs to have a picture, and the words "Xomba Summer Contest" in the tags. I've entered two entries, and I'm thinking about entering one more before deadline. I'm very happy with the second one especially, and think there's a chance it could do pretty well.

If you haven't even joined Xomba yet, you can JOIN HERE and start writing for a 50/50 split of all AdSense earned on your articles. A contenst is always a nice little way to potentially get some good publishing credentials as well as make a little extra cash, so why not give it a shot?

That's all for the moment, although it sounds like beta testing for the new Xomba website will begin soon, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what the new site will look like and the increased funtionality that's been whispered about. That's it for now. Good writing!

Second Xomba Summer Contest Entry

More Xomba Contest Writing

Well June is coming to a close, and thank goodness. It's been a really rough month as far as personal matters and medical matters go, and it's nice to have some degree of normalcy returning. I've fallen quite a bit behind on my overall summer goals, but I'm not going to get discouraged as I still feel like anything's possible and as hard as the present seems to be, I just feel like the future is going to be bright.

I have used Xomba to make several Xomblurbs of new HubPages, new blog posts, new eHow articles, and I've been fairly pleased with the overall effectiveness of this. It seems like virtually everything I review gets indexed, and while the direct traffic and AdSense clicks have been very small, they have existed, meaning an impact is being made.

In addition to this, I just finished my second article that I submitted to Xomba for their excellent Summer Writing Contest on how to beat the summertime blues and overall I'm very happy with this article and because of how unusual it is, I'm hoping the judge or judges have a very strange or off beat sense of humor. If they do, I really like my chances of placing with this article.

So what was this article's solution to beating the summertime blues? Having the worst summer of your life. Seriously. That is my article's solution. If you're intrigued, have a look and leave a comment.

Have the Worst Summer Ever

Hope you enjoy it! And if you haven't joined Xomba yet, CLICK HERE and get started with some contest entries today. Who knows? A few hours of writing might make you a couple hundred dollars.

Freelance Writing Xomba Contests

The Summer Xomba Writing Contest

This is a quick post about one of the nice little perks of writing for Xomba that freelance writers on that site should definitely consider. While splitting AdSense earnings from published articles can be a long process to get the type of consistent results you want, an extra several hundred dollars all at once is nothing to sneeze at. It's definitely a nice bump!

Every so often Xomba holds writing contests, and this is one of those times. The summer writing competition information for Xomba's summer writing contest can be found here at this post:

http://www.xomba.com/contests#summer

This year the prizes are:

1st: $350
2nd: $200
3rd: $150

You can't argue with any of those prizes for a single article, and this can also help be used as motivation to prod you to posting more Xombytes, which will help you increase your summer AdSense earnings, as well.

That's the brief update for now. Everyone writing for Xomba has until July 6th, and all the submissions for the actual contest must have a photo submission with the article. If you're writing for Xomba, I strongly encourage you to participate in this contest, and if you haven't started writing for Xomba, then consider starting today by SIGNING UP HERE!

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!

Welcome to Freelance Writing Xomba Adventures

Freelance Writing @ Xomba

Welcome to my blog, entitled "Freelance Writing Xomba Adventures." I will post continually on this blog to keep readers up to date on my various writings with Xomba, my thoughts on writing for Xomba, and any other advice I have. Xomba pays its writers by splitting all Adsense clicks 50/50 with the author, which makes this a site where it may be possible to build the type of passive income that allows for true independence as a freelance writer.

If you're interested in checking out Xomba for yourself, following along, or competing with me, then SIGN UP HERE and begin your Xomba writing adventures, as well! Thanks for reading.

The Writing Man Drifter.