At the end of my first week on Triond, I had made a total of 88 cents. Now at the end of week two, I have made $4.87. If I can keep increasing my numbers exponentially like that, I should be able to make pretty good money here. But I don’t think it’s going to happen that way for a variety of reasons, most of which I’ll discuss below. Mainly I think I’ve hit a wall of sorts, though it’s not impossible I won’t figure out a way to break through. Marketing will help, as will more writing and time and experience.

Daily Hits on Stories

Though my numbers continue to steadily improve with the more stories I write and the more online marketing I do, the big spikes in my daily story hits are from individual Web sites, blogs and such, that link to a given story of mine. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee those spikes. I can indeed try to write similar or related stories to the ones that received the spikes, and I’ve done this and it helps, but it’s still no guarantee of daily success.

Also, I was averaging about 8 stories a day, now I’m down to about 5. The reasons for this are multiple. I’ve been busier this past week. And I might have suffered a little bit from Triond burnout. I still have tons of story ideas, but not every night am I in the mood for writing. The trick here to making money here, I feel, is to treat Triond like a job. It’s not something you want to do. It’s something you have to do. I’ve had a little break the last few days, so it’s time to get back to writing more. I’ve noticed some folks on the Triond forums suggest or outright say that writing more stories will not improve the money you make on Triond, but I’ll disagree. Sure, there’s that Triond member who wrote only one or two articles and is making good money, but I believe those are aberrations; someone got lucky with the right content at the right time. I firmly believe the more articles you have on Triond, the more chances you have of receiving hits and then of making money. It’s a plan I’m going to try to stick to.

Besides writing more stories, there’s one other thing I’ve found quite important to getting hits. And that’s marketing.

Marketing

Yes, marketing on social bookmarking Web sites will get you more hits. I still feel like I’m learning in this process, but it’s already paid for itself this past week. I’ve had different experiences with different types of marketing sites, and I’ll outline those below.

StumbleUpon

By far, StumbleUpon gave me the most hits this week. The frustrating part is I still haven’t figured out all the bells and whistles for StumbleUpon, and the results I’ve seen have been odd. One day I’ll upload on StumbleUpon one of the URLs to one of my Triond stories and I’ll get 200 hits within just a few minutes, then maybe 400 to 500 hits all day. Other days, I’ll do the same thing and I’ll only get 5 or 10 hits all day long. It’s confusing. Is there a secret? If someone knows about it, please inform me.

Digg

To be truthful, Digg has helped very little in marketing my stories. In fact, so far it seems like a waste of my time and efforts. But I’ll keep giving it more time. Much like with StumbleUpon, I still haven’t figured out everything there is about Digg.

Reddit

Redit did pretty good for me this past week. It wasn’t my top hit getter, but it didn’t do too bad. I’ll definitely keep working with this one.

Twitter

Twitter has proved pretty darn helpful, too, giving me roughly about the same numbers as Reddit. Twitter has even lead the day for my number of hits on occasion. I’ll keep using it. One of the things I like about Twitter is that I don’t have to do much maintenance. I’ve already got a good number of friends there, and Triond allows for my stories to be uploaded automatically every morning. It’s easy.

Delicious

Delicious hasn’t done much for me. In fact, next to nothing. I’ll keep my eyes on it, but I don’t I’ll be putting much effort into this site in the future.

Streakr

Streakr is my least favorite of the sites for promotion. You have to download software, a special toolbar, to use Streakr, and I hate that. Like every other site I’ve ever seen where you have to download something, all the download does is slow down your computer to the point of making the download not worth using. And then sometimes the Streakr toolbar will lock up your computer or crash it. A total waste of time. And maybe I need an upgrade of some sort. Maybe not. But I figure if I have to get one upgrade or another every couple of months just to get a few extra hits on stories, it’s not worth my while. Especially if the upgrade is going to cost money.

Technorati

Technorati hasn’t done much yet, but I’m not giving up hope for it. I see potential there, and it’s given me a few hits.

Triond

I mention Triond here because I get a good number of hits from Triond users, though not as many as I get from StumbleUpon. Make some friends. Read others’ stories. Leave comments on those stories. That’ll get you some hits. And you get to meet new people online and you get to read some pretty good material. What more could you ask for?

E-mail

I’ve found e-mail gets me a few hits, though not a bunch. If I do a book review or write about a certain product, I try to e-mail the book’s author or someone related to the product. At the least they’ll usually give the story one look. And at best, they might post a link somewhere. Every little bit helps.

Blogs

I’m not only talking about my own blog, but that of other people, too. Posting some of my stuff on Triond to my blog has given me a few hits, but nothing great. However, I’ve found good success with other people’s blogs. If you write something that someone else finds interesting enough to but a link on their blog or Web site, this will help those hits to come rolling in. And the more popular their Web site, the more hits you’ll get. One piece I wrote actually got linked to from the Huffington Post this past week, and I had a huge spike in hits that day.

Is it Possible to Earn a Living on Triond?

This is the question everyone keeps asking, and my answer isn’t any different from that of last week. Yes, it’s possible. No, it’s not likely. I’ll keep trying as long as I can.

But this does bring up another concern. What should happen if Triond shuts down? It happens. After more than a decade of service, Yahoo is shutting down their Geocities Web sites. But what can you do if this happens at Triond? Not much, really. You can back up your stories so you still have them. But if for some reason Triond should go out of business or shut down, you really have no rights. And they don’t have to give notices. It’s all there in the agreement you should have looked over when becoming a member. I don’t hold this against Triond, not at all. They have far too many users to even think of being able to accommodate or compensate those users if the worst should happen. It’s not feasible. I only mention this because it’s something to keep in mind if you are nutty enough to try to make a living writing for Triond; I’m only doing so until I can land a regular job or my other freelance efforts take off (though, even if that should happen, I’d probably still write here some from time to time … every penny counts these days).

The Forums

My thoughts on the Triond forums haven’t changed much since last week. They seem to be mostly a waste of time, in my opinion. There’s far too much childishness, and sometimes downright nastiness, going on there. I still believe someone from Triond should be moderating these forums, but I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. Why should it? Why pay someone to put up with that nonsense?

Stories, Stories, Stories

I’ve written enough on Triond, and been here a couple of weeks now, that I’m beginning to see trends in the the number of hits I receive for different types of articles I write. I get really good numbers on topics I’m most familiar, mainly articles about fiction writing and article writing. Maybe that’s natural since it’s the background I come from. What I call my ”10 tips” articles do decently, especially at first, but the numbers seem to dwindle shortly thereafter. My pop culture articles about music get a fair number of hits, though my articles about games and gaming don’t. Go figure. 

Related link: My First Week on Triond: An Evaluation