I am settling now into a new house in Bali and just trying to avoid the stress of starting a new business in a foreign country. I love living here, but sometimes no matter how great your surroundings are, you still have to deal with the usual problems that you face living anywhere in the world.

Anway I am now trying to get back into the swing of internet marketing and updating all of my websites. I want to get back into doing some article writing, blogging and want to write a new ebook.

My lists are going strong, but I don’t have much to sell to people and hoping to change that.

One thing I have been thinking about more recently is trying to utilize free blogging sites more. Before if I came up with a new idea for a niche website, I went out and bought a new domain. Often that is all I ended up doing with the website. My new idea is to set up a new blog on a site like blogger and just write some posts there.

I really wonder if people care that much about whether there is useful information on a blogger blog or whether it is hosted on their own domain. I suspect most people visiting the site don’t care too much at all, as long as it provides the information they are looking for.

I am not saying I am getting rid of any sites, just if I come up with new ideas for niche websites. This blog started its life on blogger and the service has come a long way since then. Adsense can be added with a click of a button and there are thousands of gadgets you can add to your site to give it more functionality.

If you are new to internet marketing or someone who is experienced and looking for a different strategy, I think you could do worse than creating a niche blog on blogger and get links to it using Hubpages and Infobarrel.

Infobarrel goal – 50 articles – completed:50
Hubpages goal – 20 articles – completed: 1
Ezinearticles – 5 articles – completed: 1 (and it is still in review!)

As you can see, not a great result. I was concentrating mostly on Infobarrel this month. I started off really strong, doing more than one article in a day. I got a bit slack and then I thought I had written 50 articles, but it was actually only 40 and I have been trying to get to 50 over the past few days.

So how much money did I make from publishing 50 articles on Infobarrel? I made a total of $5 for September! It’s not going to make me rich obviously, but I did experience one of my best overall months with Adsense, so I have a feeling that it has helped lift my earnings. Also, I am writing on Infobarrel to get links to my own websites, so that has a positive effect also.

We sold a property through a website I recently set up, which is also going to make more money than Adsense. We are now planning on opening a shop to try and sell more properties and possibly do other business services.

I should try and get another 50 articles for October, but I think I will aim for 30 articles, which is just one a day and try to focus on my own websites and blogs.

Hubpages is going slower. I don’t know why, but I like Infobarrel more in some ways. One advantage I think you have with Infobarrel is that it isn’t so saturated with keywords like Hubpages. Google typically only returns one result for a URL for a keyword search. Since Infobarrel doesn’t have as many articles, you are going to have more chance at getting more competitive keywords to rank with Infobarrel than Hubpages. I haven’t done a lot of testing, but this theory seems to make sense to me.

Also, the fact that Infobarrel manually approves the first 10 articles, it is bound to stop people who can’t write so well and people who only want to promote their websites like Hubpages. Infobarrel also encourages people to write longer articles. If your article is longer than 450 words, it appears on the list of recently created articles. I am sure that if you write an interesting headline, it encourages people to click through to your article. Of course you really want your traffic to come from Google, but I had at least one article “tweeted” from a member at Infobarrel, which was nice to see.

Sometimes the more time I spend writing and researching an article, the less views it gets. If I am on a roll, I can write 450 words in 10-15 minutes. If I am struggling what to write, I can spend a whole morning on something. I have quite a few unfinished articles which need more work. I think it is better to stop working on something if it is taking too long and come back to it later.

I am changing my tack a little on finding topics to write about. I suppose I can’t help but judge the success of an article based on the number of views it has. I know I am also doing this to get links to my sites, but I think it is human nature to want to see lots of views and some feedback in the comments.

Anything to do with making money online, home based business and internet marketing seems to do well. Travel type articles don’t seem worth the time unless you are just doing it just for backlinks. I think this economic downturn has definitely seen an increase in people wanting to make money online and work from home. More people seem to be working in casual or contract jobs and they are turning to the internet to help make up the difference in their income.

This is great for established internet marketers. I am sure many people have actually made a lot of money from profiting from these trends. Of course I haven’t done any research on this, but it’s just the feeling I get from reading forums and blogs.

Some people have asked how much my hubs and articles are making me and honestly it is hardly anything. I set up a channel in Adsense and the figures would be very depressing to anyone who tried to calculate an hourly rate on how I am spending my time. But, I have seen an increase in my daily Adsense earnings since I started doing this, which is what encouraged me to set my September goal.

Sorry, if anyone is looking for any magic tips or secrets. One thing I do find that works for me is getting up early and knocking out a couple of articles before you do anything like start checking emails/forums/stats etc. By the evening, I can’t bothered writing much, but I do feel a bit more creative and get ideas from randomly surfing the internet and watching television. Even if I don’t write any complete articles at night, I make notes on ideas I have and how I might be able to make money with them.

I have been using the links (maximum of two) to link to my own sites, my hubs on Hubpages or other Infobarrel articles. I have really been following any particular formula. I have seen some people writing an article on Infobarrel and then linking it to a similar article on Hubpages. I think it is better to continually mix it up with different things and find out what is best.

Another point is that I see too many people using keyword tools, getting ranked for those keywords and then being disappointed when they don’t get the search traffic (and income) that they expected. The keyword tools are really only a guide. Hubpages is a great place to experiment. I have been surprised how some articles have done really well, while others have been pretty lack luster.

I remember hearing some time ago a tip from a stock investor – keep buying more stock that is going up in value and sell off anything that is going down. I think the same advice can be applied to the internet. Write articles on hubpages, doing some keyword research. Throw a lot out there and then see which ones stick.

If you find something doing well, write some related articles on Infobarrel. If it keeps bringing in money, promote it more by getting links – writing an ezine article, start a blogger blog or even buy a domain for the niche. Next find some affiliate programs that are relevant to that topic. Rinse and repeat and of course experiment with different topics. Try to think outside the box a little and not follow everyone else’s ideas for articles and niches.