Passive vs. Upfront Earning in Online Writing

I am still trying to balance and figure out whether I should concentrate on writing for passive income potential sites or upfront pay.

I know in my prior post I was explaining my frustration with Suite101.  I think the main problem is that I've not grown quick enough at writing articles yet.  When I spend a couple hours on an article and watch it make zero dollars, it frustrates me.  Sometimes I feel that my time is spent better elsewhere where the money is upfront and guaranteed.  This is why I wrote a glowing review of Demand Studios not too long ago.

Lately, I've been thinking more about the potential of passive income.  I'm hearing about folks who have made decent money on Suite101 and eHow just by writing 100+ articles and letting them sit there.  The idea of continuing to bring in money in the future without extra work has really been growing on me and getting more and more appealing.  I'm starting to understand why getting the quick $15 from Demand Studios isn't nearly as exciting as watching my revenue grow from my online work.

This is why I am putting Demand Studios on the backburner for awhile.  I feel like the articles I wrote for DS took a LOT of time because their editorial standards are high and the topics are more difficult.  I got paid my $15 each, but now they're just sitting out there making money for someone else and not me.  That frustrates me quite a bit. 

My new concentrations in their order of importance are:

1. Mahalo
2. Examiner
3. My gaming blog
   
4. Suite101
5. Digital Journal

Mahalo is still a huge win for me.  I'm bringing in dollars every day of passive income, plus I've earned well over $500 in up front pay in the last month.  I'm part of the How To Team and the QC Team, I love the community and I love the staff.   It's definitely sticking around unless things change in the future.

Examiner is something that I'm waiting on to really start getting into.  I am in the process of switching my topic from Social Media Examiner to San Diego Uptown Examiner.  I think it will be fun to report on local events and news, and something new for me.  I'm not necessarily driving for tons of extra cash with Examiner (I know that won't happen anyway), I'm mostly doing it for the fun and experience.

My gaming blog has a focus on feminism, LGBT issues, and how they interact in virtual worlds and online games.  It's been going for a long time but I only recently started introducing advertisements to it.  I'm hoping to continue blogging there and step up to more frequent postings.

Suite101 is something I was ready to abandon before, but now I'm going to give it a chance.  I wrote a couple more articles for Suite this weekend and I'm hoping to just write my minimum of 10 every three months and an extra one here and there.  It's a good place for 3rd person articles on informative subjects, which really isn't my specialty.  The community of writers there is EXCELLENT though.  They've been a great resource.

Digital Journal is something brand new that I'm just starting out with.  It's a citizen journalism site that allows you to write about whatever topic you want as long as it's news focused.  With a rating system to encourage views, the pay works by splitting revenue with all the writers according to contribution.  Since I don't expect to write there much, I doubt I will see much pay.  We'll see.

So that's my order of priority right now.  I'm sure it will switch again. :)