What Happens to Your Online Writing Earnings as Years Pass?

Now that I have a bit more time on my hands, I felt that this would be a good time to rediscover my passion for writing. I like to write on subjects that I feel my experiences in those areas can help a lot of people.

Back in 2008 I had an urgent need to make extra money so I joined Triond as online article publishing seemed like a viable option. I also joined Hubpages and even got accepted on Newsvine on the strength of an article on Mitt Romney that I wrote during the Republican primaries. I do not remember ever visiting those sites again after the first few times because I soon realised, to my dismay, that online article writing was not viable if the goal was to make money as soon as yesterday. But it is good for residual income – like a pension of sorts. This was after I had published two approved articles that only generated 3c revenue for me in two days. I promptly forgot about online publishing as an income generating venture the very moment that my financial situation started to improve.

Fast-forward to 2010 when I was pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail from Triond in which they notified me that I had earned US$50 from articles I had published on their network. To this day, I do not know how that particular communication got posted directly to my inbox because two days latter, when I was spring-cleaning my numerous e-mail addresses, I discovered that Yahoo had directed virtually all other previous communication from Triond to my spam folder.  As a sidenote, it is a good idea to check your spam folder every now and then for good e-mail messages that may have been mistakenly deposited there. Sometimes computer programs from the likes of Google and Yahoo wrongly filter legitimate e-mails.

When I first joined Triond I did not have a paypal account so I chose the Western Union option, whereby you can only cash-out accumulated earnings of a minimum US$50. As you can see from my experience, if you choose this option, you are going to have to wait a long time to get a return on your work. Still, it felt good that I had somehow accumulated residual income from work that I had done a few years back so I immediately logged into Triond, for the first in years, to request payment. After a few glitches I finally received my payment about a week later. Then promptly forgot about Triond again until yesterday.

When I came across the regular monthly e-mail from Triond inbox this time I remembered that two years had passed since the last $50 payment! Eagerly anticipating windfall money for a movie and dinner date, I proceeded to open the email. Unfortunately, I have only accumulated an extra $11 since then. Well, I suppose this is the natural flow of things that old information becomes less valuable as new information becomes available.

I know that a lot of people have published a portfolio of articles over the years to boost their earning potential.  However, if your experience with online publishing is similar to mine, you have also found out that much of the older content has diminishing returns as time goes on. The question that I hope to answer in the coming days is: How best can you refresh your old content so that it stays relevant in the changing vicissitudes of time? Did I just use a big word? Well, I like the phrase and I do not get enough opportunities to use it as much as I would like to.

So much has changed since 2008. For one, back then social networks had not yet become the worldwide rage.  It will take me a few days to get reacquainted with this place but I am also excited about the possibility of making new friends. The only thing that bothers me though is that the general quality of content seems to have deteriorated.