It's been a while since my last post...

How many blog entries do you think start out this way: It's been a while since my last post...!

Actually I did search on the exact phrase "a while since my last post" and Google tells me it's been used 7,690,000 times!

Life throws you a curve every now and then, and between my day job getting explosively busy, my home life getting explosively crazy (you don't want to know), a lot of unexpected socializing and the onset of summer, well...I just haven't posted for a while. In fact, I haven't done much on the internet at all.

But you know what? There's a lesson here. While I was busy doing nothing, at least nothing on the web, I was still making money. That's the beauty of rev share. You get paid, even when you're not working.

For me, it was an important reminder. I had been putting in a fair amount of effort at Demand Studios (if you haven't checked them out, you should) and writing a surprising number of flat-fee articles while ignoring the revenue sharing opportunities that DS offers to writers.

That took me by surprise, me being such a big rev share fan and all, but I decided to go with the flow. I was enjoying writing my little flat-fee Tips, so much so, that I've done about 800 or 900 of them so far...it's tough keeping count.

Flat fee does have some advantages to it, among them:

• Nearly instant gratification. DS pays its writers twice a week. It's so nice to get that little PayPal email announcing my latest deposit.
• Flexibility. There are DS writers earning $300 a day. Sure, they're strapping themselves to their computers and writing 16 hours a day. But still...they're proof that it can be done.
• Near certainty. Write, and get paid. Oh, an article might get rejected here and there, but for the most part, you know your efforts are going to pay off.

What's the down side? Two things, really. One is that you get paid, but you don't get paid much.  The top fee for most DS articles is $15, and they can easily take an hour or more to finish up.  You do the math.

The other thing is what my busy life reminded me: stop writing flat fees, and you stop getting paid. If you take a week off, you get no income for that week. If you're hospitalized for a month...no income for a month. Decide to retire and stop writing...no income for the rest of your life!

Rev share is very different. Oh sure, it has its own set of pros and cons. For most folks, the uncertainty is a big minus. You can pour your heart into an article, and it may never earn a cent! But overall, rev share has worked well for me. Over the long term, a single revenue share article, on average, earns about five times as much as a flat fee article  And even when I stop writing, my rev shares keep on keeping on.

So...it's time for me to get back into action at Demand Studios, and time to crank up the ol' rev share machinery.

Wish me luck.