The time is here: the 1,000 articles in 100 days challenge has come to an end. How did we all fair? What were the results? Let’s take a look and see how everyone did.
What was the 1K Article project?
The 1K article project was quite the challenge; the plan was to write 1,000 articles in 100 days through the website Helium. In all, it was quite rough because once you got behind on the project it became difficult to keep up with it all.
Just think: 10 articles. Every day. For 100 days.
The goal, overall, was to test the limits of creativity, productivity and to earn a bit of money – to show that it is possible to make money online.
Helium pays through ad share, up-front payments and has a marketplace (which wasn’t really used) and contests (which scored quite a few people some extra money).
What was the purpose of the 1K Article project?
Let’s take a look at what went on and what I wanted to convey in the long run:
- Motivation & Productivity – One of the goals of the 1K project was to get people motivated to get things done. Instead of sitting on our asses and debating on what to do next in order to make money online – we jumped right into it – no theory – nothing holding back – just real work on a daily basis.
- Creativity & Repurposing – With a thousand articles on Helium, we were theoretically going to earn some pretty decent money. Obviously the higher amount of articles you created the higher you’d earn but it was equally important to have quality as well (since Helium has a rating system). What I wanted to convey was that you could be creative with your writing schedule and take away from the experience much more than just passive income and motivation – we get to repurpose the articles into other online projects.
- Passive Income & Up-Fronts – Helium, overall, doesn’t pay as well as some sites but the goal was to at least start a passive income stream and build off of it in the future (more on this below). You have to start somewhere and instead of debating everything – we went out there and did it, we’re now pulling in passive income. Likewise, we all earned up-front income as well which really gets you going with the whole make money online thing.
I’m not sure if everyone “got it” but deep down it’s certainly set up a process which will continue to grow in everyone in the future projects.
How did we all do?
Now’s the part that you may have been waiting for: how did we all fair overall? Just remember, these results are from just 100 days of writing – some days there weren’t any activity while some had a lot of work put into them.
The results:
- Me – In all, I wrote 467 articles in the 100 days which has earned me a total of just over $970. Right now, Helium is pulling in about $60 on passive income each month without promoting the content, not being optimized and so on.
- Gene – Gene crushed it! Talk about taking something and really running with it. Gene finished with 389 articles within the time which is really amazing! I hope he takes this and moves forward with it – I heard he wants to start up a blog soon – going to be a great launching point
.
- Thu – Thu has been super busy with a ton of things; she’s a real inspiration to myself. Thu managed to crank out 72 articles in the 100 days but what’s important is that it’s really got her going with her own blog – it was a great way to kick up that motivation.
- James – James jumped on board with the 1K Project but the balance between blogging and working on other things was a bit high. James finished with 12 articles. Good try!
- Kevin – Kevin ended with 8 articles but you can see from his blog that he’s really working on a lot of projects in the meantime. Good try, too!
- Everyone else – Well, they didn’t sign up :/ – awww well, thanks for considering it though – hope you guys still got something out of it hehe.
My thoughts on the matter: I wish I had more people get involved but overall it was really fun to have this project going – it really came down to just getting work done and I think we’ll take a lot of the motivation into our next projects.
Where do we go from here?
As mentioned, I had hoped that the overall goal of the 1K project was to get everyone in the mindset that they can make money online with hard work – just like any project they put their effort to. I hope that everyone involved will take this project as a platform and continue with it in their next one.
Here’s a few things that can spring up from here on out:
- Repurposing content – Helium doesn’t hold exclusive rights to our articles so we will be able to publish them elsewhere. I have a post coming up that will blow everyone’s socks off on how to take every single article and start doubling, tripling, quadrupling their earnings from the work they’ve already done.
- Social, Branding Proof – For those of us that want to continue with our writing, we now have a very strong portfolio which we can link to potential clients. Each article came with our names so we’re literally all over the web – that’s branding baby! We can use this on our own business website to help gain clients.
- A life-time of earnings – As long as Helium sticks around, we will continue to make money through the site. Sure, a single month may not seem like much but let’s go with the example of $60 on my end – this becomes an extra $720 each year! Hell, that’s a plane ticket to wherever we’d like to travel.
- Optimizing the content – Because we were so busy writing, we didn’t have much time to stop and optimize the content. Although I’ll be talking about this in another post, what I hope everyone will do is to go back through an optimize their content through interlinking, leap frogging (to increase ranking) and to bookmark each article so it ranks better in search engines; this means more money.
In all, everyone gets to walk away with a strong presence under them. We’ll be making a passive income, have a great portfolio piece, branded image and much, much more.
I think the project was totally worth it and I hope we all continue to write for the site, use these articles as a platform and really make some bad-ass passive income. It’s one step at a time and this was the first for many; now’s the time to start running with it.
What do you think about the 1K Article project? Was it worth it? How would you have changed it? Where do we go from here? Please have your say in the comment section below.
Great recap of what went well on the contest Murray. Here’s my conclusion of the 1k project:
You provided a great idea, we all rolled with it, but that wasn’t the only action that made it profitable. We actually made money!
I have a lot of respect for the fellow challengers and really look forward to following more of Gene’s work. As I’m such a big fan of him now. He’s really kicked my rear and knocked the wind out of me. LOL.
And I made over $100 dollars and that’s without really trying. Really. Blogging already gave me the skills but flexing my muscles to do research and even talk about other things besides blogging was where the excitement began.
Contests. Up front payments, social marketing. All of these can tie in as you’ve mentioned towards better earnings. But we were so focus on writing, the marketing side didn’t really shine. So that is something we can work on. Perhaps in round two and in a more organized way and I don’t mind collaborating again for another challenge.
But the one thing I got out of this effort is proof that it works. Anyone can do it. Just try. BTW, where’s your helium link so readers who are reading this post will sign up?
With the strategies you’ll be giving us soon with leveraging the rights to the articles we write, that’s going to shoot through the roof. Especially since you’ve already revealed that you made almost 1k last month.
And I have to say that I definitely loved hopping on the bandwagon because not only did I learn that I had skills, LOL. I also got more busier. The active work got me an apprenticeship with someone I admired. I have a group which I’m really looking forward to learn and run a business with.
The sky is the limit when you get involve with a group you admire. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
Now, round 2 is going to hit the sky, home run for sure!
You are so awesome for bringing on the idea. Looking forward to hearing more.
Talk soon,
Thu
Thu Nguyen´s last [type] ..Guest Post- Nunzio Bruno – Learn How to Teach What You’re Already Doing
That’s what I like to hear Thu
Round 2 is going to be epic and I think this first step was much needed in many of us to just get off our ass and start doing it. We already had the skills, we just had to focus them on another area. Now, we’ll take our other blogging skills and make it even bigger!
You ready to kick ass?
Murray
Thanks for having this wonderful contest. It really was a lot of fun. At one point I was taking a shot at overtaking you, but that was at exactly the same time you kicked it into overdrive knocking out 20. Articles a day!
The other good thing is we should both reach 500 articles for this month which should mean an extra 50$ in residuals (assuming a measly 100 qualifying articles in a month)
I have a pretty good idea on the general outline of your repurposing plan to come. I am getting started in it a little like I mentioned in that note. I really look forward to your “big picture” view.
I think I grasp the outline but I long to see the whole thing in a HDTV Color Picture.
Again thanks for a great contest and way to go on kicking ass in it. 500 would have been a more reasonable “crazy high” number and you just about got there.
Thank you so much for joining in the project Gene – I know I could have been a bit better at keeping everyone motivated but that’s just one thing to learn as I go as well – you’ve done an amazing job and the amount that you’ve wrote really inspired me as well – not gonna lie, I basically thought “holy crap, I can’t lose my own project – overdrive writing moooode!” haha
I think this was a really big first step that you can take into your new blog when it launches – I think everyone is really looking forward to it
I’ll be sure to let everyone know the “big picture” as it goes and perhaps we can talk a bit more on what you brought up as well.
Hi Murray
I did see a lot of your articles that you tweeted. Wow getting paid to write articles. How do other people get involved? I love writing but I don’t think I would be able to do the amount you did in a month! Well done and the fact you earned money while you were doing it is a plus too. Thanks for sharing and look forward to what else you have in the pipe-line.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia@lavenderuses´s last [type] ..Lavenders- Small Niche Big Ideas
I apologize if the tweets did seem a little spammy -_-
If you’d like to get involved, just check out Helium and sign up – take a look around and see if there’s anything that you’d like to write about or you could submit your own articles. If you’d like to sign up under me I’d get a small referral but it’s so tiny (as I found out) that it’s no biggie.
Be sure to check out Thu’s posts about Helium as she has done an excellent job to get everyone up to speed on how you can earn money and more
The great thing is that you can write about whatever pleases you and even repurpose content. You could take you lavender posts. Give them a little rewrite to sound less “bloggy” write a title (if there isn’t one) and put them up. If you write a “new” title it is a dollar per. Not instant riches…but hey…its something
It seems you get a lot MORE money when you write A LOT, but even that little bit will be something!
That’s the plan Steve – going to be releasing a really nice set of content pieces in the coming weeks that’s going into all this. I think Gene and the others will really benefit from it so it’ll be a great way to really kick it into over drive
That’s awesome what you achieved, now that you have the extra cash, there’s everything more that you can spend it on, and whether you continue writing articles for helium or not, you don’t have to worry – there will be that income stream.
Peter J´s last [type] ..Always be prepared for the worst
Agreed Peter – I’m actually going to take the money and reinvest it back into the blog/business and expand into a few other things – I’ll probably keep writing for Helium but not at the same rate – just use it to bring in some side income as I begin working on larger projects.
So great result, Murlu. I don’t know how you can handle the quality of the articles because it seems that you can Gene wrote at least three articles per day to get to around 300 articles in the end, and you still managed to run the blog here. What is an encouraging result. I don’t know what Hellium is; tried to go to hellium.com but it’s just some scrap domain. Is it a new article site?
Mike´s last [type] ..Is Keyword Winner Truly Worth The 47 Price Tag
Just one ‘L’ Mike – Helium.com. It’s been around for a little while and it’s still growing so articles will increasingly get ranked better as time goes on. I’m also experimenting with a few other websites as we speak
I wish it was just 3 a day but it eventually got the crunch time where I was literally writing 20 or so a night just to keep up – really shows that when you have a long term project it’s really about consistency because no matter your best intentions – you’ll really feel the burn by trying to cram it all in at the last minute.
That is a lot of writing. What was your favorite topic to write about?
Hunter´s last [type] ..MyLikes Don’t Spam Your Twitter Followers
Mostly business and internet related – this allows me to keep focused and the demand for these articles are pretty high overall so the passive earnings are great. I’d like to get more into the other “big niches” such as health, pets, etc – but what I may end up doing is outsourcing those (which is a project within itself)
Sounds like you all had a grand old time!
I think I might have dog like reflexes… You mentioned outsourcing work and my spider senses kicked in.
….Lassie came running into the room. Bark bark! “Someone mentioned outsourcing. Where girl…show me…..”
LOL… It isn’t funny unless you publicly LOL at your own jokes.
Anyhow, sounds like it was a blast.
Good job and some awesome results.
Since Gene is going to be home in late Nov thru Xmas I will be in his corner….
“Go git’ em’” eye of the tiger… eye of the tiger
Steve@Lifestyle Design´s last [type] ..Turn that Frown Upside Down- How to Be Happy with Yourself
This will be one of my first real forays into outsourcing – did a bit at my job but this is going to be a bit bigger – would love to hear your recommendations sometime – maybe we could talk about it some more.
Now that I’m in this sort of “outsource” mindset, all sort of things come up. Link building, writing, creating niche blogs, etc etc. If I could be the brains of the operation and then have my own team to work on it than I think I could really knock out stuff that would otherwise take forever haha.
Has it already been 100 days. Holy Crap! Good work you guys. I definitely am interested in a round two if you guys start one up. In fact I may jump the gun and start posting articles before this. Take Care!
Dustin Baier´s last [type] ..Laying The Groundwork For iPhone Apps
Be sure to look out what Thu has in store – not gonna spoil it
I think it’s certainly worth looking into again because it was really fun and kept the motivation up.
If I knew my results were going to get published publicly, I would have put in a better effort.
I’m sure I would have attained 300+ articles if this came up a few years ago. Fatherhood puts a bit of a damper on productivity, at least with a newborn. I think I may put more of an effort into it and bang out some articles now and then.
For the record, my articles pulled in an impressive $2!
James M´s last [type] ..Friday- Some Bones to Pick
Family > Projects. Always.
Nice James, was still really fun to have you on board – hope you picked up a few things out of it. I know the 1k article milestone was pretty much ridiculous (which is why I chose it haha) but otherwise I think it really helped to get the ball going on a lot of things – hope it did with you too
Wow! Now that is what I call a contest Murray! One thousand articles in just 100 days is hell of a challenge. Even though you made “just” half of what you were aiming at, it is still an impressive result. Even an article per day would have been a huge challenge for me. On the other hand you have earned a decent amount in dollars as well. A lot of work has been put for those money nevertheless.
Daniel Sharkov´s last [type] ..3 Tips to Squeezing the Most Out of Your Articles
What’s great is that the best part is still yet to come – we keep ownership of the articles so we can really do whatever we want with them which is going to give a lot of leverage with niche sites and more
This is an amazing feat to write as many articles as you did in such a short amount of time. It’s great that you were able to do it in such a way as to create some passive income while you were at it. I’ll have to look into helium as a potential source of income.
Richard´s last [type] ..Shakespeare Didn’t do SEO
Ya figure that even if you just wrote an article a day and had up-front payments (say $2.50 for 5 stars) you’d pull in an extra $75 a month before the passive income, so figure maybe $100 a month? Ya know, that may not be a much but that could be gas for the month or maybe a few nights out eating
– if you save up a few months and just use it a bit like a savings than you could easily make a few extra car payments a year 
Awesome job, Murray. I can’t give you crap for falling short of the 1k because I’m falling waaay behind in my article writing challenge for InfoBarrel. The upfront payments look pretty sweet and help balance out the lower residuals. I’m thinking once you republish these articles elsewhere, you’ll be getting a very nice passive income stream from this set of articles.
By the way, I like the new site design. It’s almost…motivating somehow. Did you use that theme tester plugin while you transitioned to this theme?
- Eric
Eric | My 4-Hour Workweek´s last [type] ..Friday Bits & Pieces- Google Attacks- How to Talk to VAs- and Content Isn’t King
Thanks Eric – it’s funny because I was going to look around for a theme tester then I said, ah well, and just pushed it live – motivation
– figured, if I spent a ton of time testing it I’ll never get it done. Definitely agree that it gives a really nice boost in motivation now that it feels a lot more professional – couldn’t have come at a better time.
As for the articles, I need to get more into IB myself but yeah, having the up-fronts really keep you going with Helium and then being able to repurpose them is the icing on the cake. I think, in the future, I’m going to balance out the overall writing so instead of just 10 or so a day at Helium it would be 2 at IB, 2 at Helium, 2 at AC, 2 at Bukisa and more.
Let’s talk sometime as well – I think we’re both getting to that point where BIG things are about to happen – would love to help out with whatever you have in mind.
Never hear of Helium.com….hey at least I could admit it.
Now I’m wasting all my time there.
ha ha, thanks!
rob mccance´s last [type] ..Neighborhood Choices
Nice job, Murray!
I am very excited to see what you recommend for repurposing in the coming weeks. I suspect 467 articles will lead to many, many reports and e-books. Retaining the rights gives you the freedom to mine that resource for years to come.
Tammi Kibler´s last [type] ..Writing Jobs Online
That’s what I’d like to do in the end Tammi – really make the articles work double and even triple time for the energy already put into them; from here, it’s just doing a bit extra that won’t be nearly as difficult as writing them originally.
Well damn… I missed out on this challenge. I guess thats my fault for not keeping up with your blog. Ha! Well I do hope you do something like this again pretty soon. I like challenges.
It was really fun Phil and a shame that you missed out but there may be another one in the near future – not nearly as big but still “challenges” – that’s one thing that I’ve been kicking around lately – do more weekly challenges to get people motivated then report in and we can all assess how we did.
Wow what a great project! But Helium eh? Why did you pick that site where other users can vote your stuff up and down? That many articles would make a big impact on your own blog or a few niche sites. I’m surprised at how little you have earned from all those articles so far. With some backlinking and time the passive income should grow though.
JadeDragon@innovativepassiveincome´s last [type] ..What Kinds of Articles Will Not Earn Money Online
Hey Jade – In retrospect, Helium wasn’t that greatest choice by far but I was just tired of mulling around, never getting anything done with the writing – it was much more than making earnings on it; it was more to just get myself (and others) into a productive mood – since the writing has been completed, I’ve been super focused on doing everything else instead of coming home and just plopping in front of the computer to play games or watch vids.
From here though, I will be expanding beyond Helium and would love to hear what other sites you’d recommend. Any in particular that blow Helium out of the water? Doing a bit of niche siteage with the previous articles – mostly an experiment – but should be talking about it in the near future.
Why didn’t you try Bukisa? Why Helium? They are known to be one with a very low payment rate
Radu´s last [type] ..TOP 7 FREE FTP CLIENTS!
Hey Radu,
It was just one of those – okay, no more mulling around – type moments. Yeah, Bukisa and others would have been better but I think if I didn’t make the choice right then and there it would have never been started. It was a learning experience overall and a test to see how productive we could be under so much stress – I’ve already seen great results because I’m way more organized and driven
– to the point too that I’m gong to be writing on the others sites more often as well.
Sounds like a fun yet challenging contest. I am kind of inspired to give it a go, though I don’t think I can crank out articles that fast since English isn’t my mother tongue and I have to spend a lot of time fixing grammatical and spelling mistakes.
I have used helium for link building just like any other article directory kind of thing. Made a little money along the way as well.
My question is, when you rate other articles, does it effect your article ratings? I never really understood the deal with rating other articles?
satrap @Ways to make money online´s last [type] ..53 Ways to Make Money Online
Hey Satrap,
The rating system is mostly for internal purposes and helps you build your star rating (which lets you earn more money with each article). English shouldn’t be much of a problem and it may be worthwhile to invest in an editor or perhaps a strong program that can handle most of the editing for you (Word seems to work pretty well or you could use Open Office).
It’s a lot about getting into a productive mode – once you start a process it becomes easier and easier as you add up the articles; plus, it’s always nice when you have money coming in from them