At the beginning of the year I began investing ways to make a little money using the college degree that sits gathering dust on the floor of my closet. I added ads to my blog and then signed up to be a writer for Yahoo. They have a contributor program for various sites that they sponsor and they offer payment based on several different criteria.  There is an assignment desk that I can opted to go into to collect certain assignments that are supposedly tailored to my background based on a survey I filled out when hired. I can also submit my own articles that may or may not be published.  I also have to take some online courses through Yahoo to better understand the process and to gain a reputation in the publishing world.

In the beginning I couldn't think of anything to write about.  I would check into the assignment desk, but nothing worked or seemed fitted to me.  For example, today's assignment is about the first snow.  I've been here over 20 years and it has only snowed once so the chances of that being an assignment up my alley is pretty nil.  I kept checking back with no luck and just kept blogging.  A few weeks ago, however, I got fired up over some football shenanigans and wrote an article for my blog.  I thought it such a well written article that I reworked it and sent it into Yahoo.  Lo and behold they published it.  I was official!  Unfortunately, because I had already published the same article myself on my blog it is payment per clicks and the article itself was only timely at that moment.  I don't expect to receive much.

But that got me thinking.  On my blog I can see which part of the country or world is reading me.  I can see how they got to my blog say by searching for a certain subject.  I get hits from all over the world, countries I have to look up on a map sometimes, for my article on putting up my Troy Polamalu fathead.  I figured why not rework that article and send it in.  If I get hits on Goggle why not Yahoo?  The article was excepted and was published.  Again, payment per clicks.  It won't be something that will happen overnight, but who knows.  The point is that I'm writing, that I'm using that degree I got, and that a little bit of money is trickling in.  Yeah for me!  Now I just need some more topics.

If interested in seeing my name in lights, here are the links:

Football article

Fathead article