Since I stopped working full-time over at Mahalo, I’ve been writing a movie column for Examiner. Big thanks to AmazingAngie for the lead. The New Haven Movie Examiner gig felt overwhelming at first. I didn’t realize you could create your own ‘topic’ so I chose what was available & the most interesting to me.
Over at Mahalo.com, I began doing movie & news pages, in the “greenhouse” in 2007 (yep, at the beginning). I wanted more of a challenge so I hopped over to help out in the news vertical. By 2008 I was working full time as a remote ‘guide’ working 8 hours a day helping to lead the news/buzz team. Mahalo’s structure has since changed, and it is now open to the public- to create pages and earn revenue on ‘claimed pages’. I plan to write more on this at another time… Long story short- my crew pretty much got the boot (hourly workers) and now we have the opportunity to earn rev share like the rest. Anyway…..
People keep asking, “How’s Examiner going.” So here is the breakdown:
I wrote “The Real Story Behind the Fourth Kind” (courtesy of @Laurie_M who knows I love a good alien conspiracy) back in September. It was similar to another very successful story that earned me a nice piece of change on Associated Content. Every day, I churned out a few more stories and earned probably about $30 a day for a few stories that took me maybe an hour to write/research. When I stumbled across another ‘buzzy’ movie I wrote another article, and went back and inlinked my ‘favorite’ two stories together. (This is where ‘niche’ became very important. In this case ‘real-life’ inspired’ horror movies would be a niche-within a niche). Within about a week, I started noticing an increase in traffic. Other contributors to traffic were -social bookmarking like Digg & Stumble, social networking like Twitter, using SEO keywords to your advantage and having a great group of other writers helping you to promote your work. (Women Who Write Online)
In the past 7 days, I’ve eared over $585 from Examiner alone. I linked my Examiner pages back to pages I manage on Mahalo.com and across the board, earnings have increased. (Mahalo is a little wonky with updating earnings, they are about a day behind.)
This screenshot was taken at about 8:00pm. last night. It shows one day of earnings-this went up overnight.
As of this morning, I have $585. (Today is Nov 8th.) If you ask me, it’s not bad for about an hour of work a day, plus networking time (blogging, etc but there are tons of tools to help that go faster.)
So there you have it. If you decide to sign up, Go to: http://www.examiner.com/refer and please click “Find Your Examiner” at the bottom of the application page and search for Examiner #22738 or J.C. Radley
Please check out the following writers because 1. They are awesome and 2. their help and support throughout the years have been truly a blessing.
Angie: AmazingAngie at Toledo Walleye Examiner, Toledo Celebrity Headlines Examiner
All the Women Who Write Online on Twitter at #wwwo
Jennifer Hudock at JenniferHudock.com (The Goblin Market)
Cindy Graham Columbus Celebrity Headlines Examiner
Thanks also to all the people that Tweet, Digg, Stumble, Facebook share etc for me 
If you’re an Examiner, please let me know how it is working for you. Thanks!
You’re giving people false hope here, J.C. Not all topics do as well as celebrity and movie topics. Yes, you have a hot topic and have done your homework, but that doesn’t mean that every topic on Examiner will do so well. I have many more articles than you on my South Florida Gardening column, and I have only made about $60 total. I’m hoping for better with Urban Agriculture if I can find time to write for it, but I will never make $585 in 7 days, unless I happen to have about 600 articles. LOL
Hi Deborah, Thanks for your comment but I really don’t intend to give anyone false hope. You’re right, in general, a ‘South Florida Gardening’ topic may not bring as much traffic especially if you gear your articles towards ‘South Florida.’I took a peek at through your articles and I noticed that you write very specifically towards your area. Although with Examiner, you want to target your audience with specific articles, perhaps if you think broader (and keyword broader) you can reach a greater audience.
For example:
http://www.examiner.com/x-8286-South-Florida-Gardening-Examiner~y2009m9d12-Florida-Gardening-101-How-to-plant-shrubs-in-South-Florida
If I were searching for information on how to plant shrubs- the “Location, Location, Location” doesn’t help with SEO. Perhaps if you changed something like that to “Best Placement for Planting Shrubs” or “Where to Plant Shrubs” and instead of making it bold, use h3 tags to make it a heading, that would give it a boost, and people searching for that, (whether in South Florida or Maine!) would stumble across your article.
I also googled “How to plant shrubs” and the recommended “related searches were” -planting shrubs burlap, planting bare root shrubs, planting evergreen shrubs, how to transplant shrubs…etc By working those terms you could also reach more searchers.
So, you don’t need to write 600 articles-just make sure the article you write will reach people searching
Thanks, J.C., and I surely don’t think you are INTENTIONALLY trying to mislead anyone. It’s just that someone who doesn’t understand how hot topics work might think every topic will do as well as entertainment topics, so I wanted to let them know it won’t be that way.
As for my stuff, gardening in South Florida isn’t like anywhere else in the U.S., and it IS my examiner title, so I have to target that area. I think it would be deceptive to use general titles and make people think they are going to read something they can use in Idaho when they aren’t. We don’t get paid for “bounces”, which is when someone clicks in and then right back out of the page. In fact, if you get too many bounces, Google will punish you for deceptive keywording. I think there is something like a 30 second rule for Google to even count it as a hit, and that’s what Examiner goes by. (I’ve studied Google extensively)
I’m really trying to establish myself as a South Florida gardening writer, and knew I wouldn’t make as much as others who can be more general, but that’s where I live and that’s what I report on, so I had to accept that. I could have made more, but I got lazy to be honest. I will be writing some articles on specific plants in the future that can cross zones, as well as other topics that can be more general, but mostly, how we do things in S. FL is not something you can generalize for the rest of the country.
However, in my Urban Agriculture column, I can be much more general, and plan to.
So glad you found me on Facebook!
You have an awesome and informative column girl! It’s not deceptive as long as you are providing original & unique content, that is on topic and it isn’t manipulative to use what you know to your advantage
If you just want to write for the sheer joy of writing, there are some really pretty journals you could get (hehehe) I’m glad I found you on Facebook too 
I have enjoyed your article points. My research has shown your views to be true, however I have also heard the opposite from different sites like this one. Do you have any ideas for finding more quality ideas on gardening or related topics? I would most appreciate it!