NRao Blogs: Writing Knols

There is scope for earning money by writing blogs

(Knols in the original post)

Yes, Knol is generating Adsense Revenues (24.6.2009).

On 100 quality knols, you can make $50 a month.

(You have to get 10 pageviews per knol per day)

On 100 average knols you may make $5 a month

(one page view per knol per day)
Plan to write 100 knols over an year.

Making Money

In the field of Security Analysis, the subject I teach, making money is an important phrase. When anybody explains a new analytical idea, immediately people ask, are you making money? Making money is the name of the game in stock market trading.

Making money also became the term of choice in the internet world or web world. A lot of hype about the internet and web revolved around millions and billions made by entrepreneurs by setting up websites.

Blogging added to the hype as there were number of bloggers who made good amounts of money by setting up blogs. Many of them are referred to as professional bloggers now. Professional bloggers are managing small size media properties or small size book publishing businesses. There are many bloggers who are blogging as the blogs are now tiny income earning hobby or an extracurricular or extra-professional activity for them. Internet made it possible for many people to strike their own and display their writing skills, photography skills, animation skills, video making skills, singing skills etc. Free hosting sites further made this activity more easy and less capital demanding.

Google knol is a site that allow people to display many of their skills on a global scale. It provides a single window to display writing skills, photography skills, animation skills, video making skills, singing skills and presentation skills. A knol can contain an essay or an article on any topic about which people are looking for information, photographs, audio or videos from youtube, presentation slides, and pdf files. Thus on any topic, a person can provide information through various multimedia alternatives. He can expect some money from this activity as knols contain google adsense advertisement at the option of the author and adsense income acrues to the account of the author. There is an opportunity to making money.

Have You Registered With Adsense?

Registering with adsense is easy. At the top your knol, there is a preference button. If you press on it you go to a dashboard wherein there is a button for adsense. Click on it and you get options related to adsense. If you do not have adsense account there is provision for taking you to adsense account. Go to the adsense account give your gmail id and open the adsense account or complete the registration with adsense. Then give the same gmail id in knol preferences related to adsense. Adsense advertisement start appearing in your knols shortly.

Who is Making Money?

While the opportunity is there for making money, is anybody making money on knol?

Before answering the question regarding knol, which is relatively a new publishing platform, the performance of writers on other publishing platforms can examined.

Aidenoftower in her hubpage gives an account her income from online writing and mentions $721 as income in a month. http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Do-I-Make-At-Least-1000-a-Month.

I made $1000 per month after two years of blogging, wrote Scott H. Young. He says it requires two to five years of effort to learn any professional skill. http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/11/13/making-money-from-blogging/
The author of a squidoo lens http://www.squidoo.com/unique-permanent-tattoo-designs in one of his squidoos tracks his progress. http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-progress. In this page he wrote that he is getting around 8000 views per week and he made $1400 so far.
See an interesting knol by EireItaliaFam eHow Earnings and Residual Writing Income. The knol gives monthly account of earnings of the writer on eHow.com.

Problogger from their survey gives the information that from a sample of 4145 bloggers, 383 people are making $20,000 per month.

The problogger survey clearly gives a strong hope that article writing has scope to generate reasonable amount of money. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/02/how-much-money-do-bloggers-make-blogging/. There are 18 million bloggers in USA alone on blogspot platform. How many of them are making reasonable amount of money?

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A Good and Reasonable Answer from Hubpages Blog

OK, already, can’t you give me any dollar amount for an average hubber?
Well, assuming that you focus on providing valuable content to your reader, then here is the number that I’ve heard. If you do, say, 10 reasonable quality hubs each month for 10 months, then by month 11, you should be making roughly $50/month. Many authors make more than this and the web traffic is the limit for professional writers. Still, for the hard worker with average talent, $50/month should be achievable.
http://blog.hubpages.com/2008/12/
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The facts from Knol: Kevin Spaulding is the author having highest number of page views. The number is 420,291 page views on 24.6.2009. Assuming adsense earnings at the rate of $100 per 75,000 page views, this translates to around $500 in the first year. Is it dismal?. At the first instance it may look so, but there are many case histories like this. A film distribution company got into an arrangement with Youtube and hosted films on the site. In the initial month, the income was only in single digits. But two years down the line, there are now very happy. It is a sizeable business now. So content is the king. If you have the ability to develop content, there is scope to make money on knol. I feel significant number of knol authors will certainly make money like the bloggers above.

In the Month of September, the page views to my knol portfolio crossed page views of my blog portfolio and adsense revenues so far in the month are ahead of blog portofolio revenues. I got a revenue that is around the indicated figure by hubpages. Yes, knol is generating adsense revenue.

Tips for Making Money

Take small steps. Think of $200 per month first. http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2009/06/22/the-art-of-nonconformity/.

I like the tip. Personally am I making $50 a month in the first year on knol? No, because my page views are now around 15,000 per month. What should be my next year expectation. Around 45,000 page views per month by the end of the next year. 15,000 page views from new knols that I am going to write and additional 15,000 from the portfolio effect. It could be also a different expectation. I have five or six knols that have more than 5000 page views. Can I write 100 knols of that popularity. That may give 100*5000. 500,000 page views. Per month extra 42,000 page views. Combined it may give me 55 to 60 thousand page views. So my expectation at this point of time can be between 45,000 page views per month to 60,000 page views per month. A small step that may give me the foundation and additional experience in online writing. Anything extra above this range can be a bonus.

Update on 16.4.2012

I reached a peak of 114,000 page views per month on Knol. At the end of the first, the number was 15,000 page views per month (may not be in Google Analytics). But in October 2011, the number was 114,000 per month in Google Analytics data.

But there are authors who got page views 100,000 per a single knol. They can plan for bigger page view numbers by writing some more knols and updating the existing knols.

101 Tips and Tricks for Earning More as a Writer at eHow.com

http://knol.google.com/k/david-sarokin/ehow-101/l9cm7v116zcn/14#

One important point Sarokin made in his knol is that at least 100 articles are to be written by an author to think of some reasonable earning.

Classification of Knols

Above 5000 page views per year: Super knol

4000 to 5000 pv per year: Excellent knol

3000 to 4000 pv per year: Very good knols

2000 to 3000 pv per year: good knol

1000 to 2000 pv per year: Above average knol

500 to 1000 pv per year: Average knol

250 to 500 pv per year: Satisfactory

Below 250: Below expectation knol.

Analyze the performance of your knol and understand the reasons for its acceptance by visitors and search engines. Continuously try to upgrade your knols into higher category of knols. Make judgments on your knol portfolio. What are you capable of? What is the category into which majority of your knols fall? Why? How much time do you take to create one knol? Can you bring the time down? Would you like to increase the time you spend on a knol and improve its category? Do you feel by spending more time you can increase its popularity? The decision to improve an existing knol versus starting a new knol depends on expected performance. When you believe improving an existing knol will give better perfomance, you will improve existing knols. But keep in mind, you have to respond to a comment asking you to improve your knol. Then there is no choice issue. If you do not respond to a comment, your knol's performance can deteriorate. Choice is there for your voluntary decision to improve an existing knol or write a new one in the time that you can devote to writing.