Recently, I applied for a freelance position at Examiner.com to be their West Palm Beach Marketing Examiner. They emailed me back in two days to welcome me aboard. In this position, I am one of their independent contractor journalists. I get to write about anything in the marketing industry.
I started just about the last day in September writing for them. Shortly after, I left for my trip to New York, so I had a slow start. When I came back from my trip, I started to write at least an article a day. The way you make money is by page views.
How to make money writing for Examiner.com
I mean, obviously you will make more money on your own blog because you are not sharing the ad money. However, Examiner offers more exposure. Here is how in one month, I have made their number one Marketing & PR Examiner along with third place for West Palm Beach and Business & Finance.
- Trending topics. They provide you the trending topics they are looking for. It normally consists of upcoming holidays or popular news topics.
- Newsworthy. If you can find a topic to write about that was released within the last 72 hours, they will submit your article to Google News.
It is simple, it really is. First, I started pushing a bunch of articles that would be keyword targeted for the search engines. Even though this is not a bad idea, I am going to keep this to my personal blog. The amount of money that I was making from pushing many articles, versus one article with the above criteria have been bringing me the exact same income.
To be their top Examiner, write something that is trending. For an example, they were looking for articles on Movember. This is where men do not shave for a month in honor of an initiative for men health issues. I wrote an article called Movember in Palm Beach. This not only targets the local area, it also was within the 72-hour guideline with a trending topic.
This hits all the areas they are looking for. Then, tweet it out to a few local people with a large following, and there you go.
Using Examiner Status
I am such a fan of using Twitter to drive traffic. If you can catch the right person with a nice engagement level along with many followers, you are golden. For an example, Donald Trump was out there babbling about his “Big Offer” to President Obama.
Even though this man is anything but respectful to the world, he is great to write about for traffic. I did an article questioning whether he has a PR person. I did a Google Search and came up with one girl who posed the same question on Twitter.
I quoted her in the article then tweeted her that I used her tweet. I made this girl so happy and honored. With that one quote and tweet to her:
Then wait a few days and retweet them to bring back the attention to the article. That is easy and effortless traffic.
Well, this is my honest interpretation when writing for Examiner.com. If you can write, then I highly encourage taking the opportunity to join. Oh, and if you say I recommended you, I get $50. So come and join the bandwagon and apply today! Apply to Examiner.com