When I started this journey I was working retail, hated my job, well let's be fair, I liked the job (management part) but hated the politics of the place I was working at, the disloyalty of my superiors, the lack of appreciation, and the waste of my time and efforts doing something I didn't truly enjoy. I remember standing there watching over the cashiers, they would blink a light if they needed my assistance and for about 4 hours of my shift I would stand there and wait for the lights, and assist customers, carried a clipboard to schedule breaks, assign cashiers to check-stands and so on and so forth.

I dreaded the job at times, but not because of the work. The management was a real pain and I felt like I wasn't really in control of my life. I made chump change for wages and any raises I could get were insulting (i.e. 50 cents an hour after a year of loyal service IF you went above and beyond the call of duty... please...(sarcastically said)).

I loved to write and felt that if I could get a gig working as a writer I'd be in seventh heaven. I had no idea what this would entail really. At the time I thought the only way to get paid to write was to get a college degree and go work for a newspaper or write a book. I stumbled upon Hubpages and started writing for fun, but ambitious to learn to make money with my writing. I was intoxicated with aspirations of making a killing on AdSense (those aspirations faded after 6 months when the most money I made was 10.00 a month if that).

Hubpages did lead me to learn that there definitely were thousands of other ways to make money with these skills, and none of them required any special training other than learning to write better, have good grammar, write concisely and professionally, and writing engagingly. I possessed half of those when I started on hubpages but over time, and many fights in the forum with pig headed wannabe's with egos bigger than my house, (yet adequately skilled in writing a professional article that was all of the above), I learned to write. Unlike many in the forum of what I considered "elders" at the time, I wanted to take my skills out into the real world and make money with them. Although these grammar gurus could write, none of them were making any money ironically... but they did wield me into a writer myself so I guess I wanted to be the example of what they could become... yes I grew an ego myself over time... I quickly shed it off after it didn't serve me however.

After about 8 months of working on hubs, learning like I was obsessed to become a SamurWriter (writing ninja?) I started to pray every night that something would happen, someone would come out of the woodwork and offer me a job, work of some kind... universe I'd plea, throw me a bone huh?

Then it happened.

A friend of mine who was perpetually on the same path as I was but whom hadn't grown tired of looking on the web for the magical course that would turn her skills into dollars, was always sending me links to sites that promised to be the next best "home based business" that would carry my dreams into reality. Many of the links she sent were the same old thing I'd seen before - even the wording was the same... it was like they all used the same course to write their copy, or possibly they just rewrote each others copy, and the fundamental ideas were about the same too.

Was there really work out there that consisted of a real company needing real copy (articles etc..) that would just pay us straight up for our work? Why all the dog and pony shows? The failed web based business concepts, and the expensive overly informative, confusing rhetoric that always had a missing piece... It still seemed like trading time for money was where the earning power was at, and I didn't mind it so much at this juncture, but please hold the fat, give me the skim milk version of writing for money.

One day however, she sent me a link, a real link to a real site that was EXACTLY what I was looking for. You write copy, they pay you once a month for your consolidated work- no BS, no fat, just pure skill for profit.

I ignored it. Why? Because it was written in the same market-speak as every other site. What was ironic was that their site describing the position was dead on.. wow, imagine a company that delivers what they advertise.. It's so rare that I just didn't fall for it.

She on the other hand, still in her infancy of patience and ambition, regardless of my continuous, that's just another scam talks with her in messenger chats we had every other day, signed up, rather called them. By noon three days later she was hired and knowing that I just wouldn't believe her word for it, she sent me the link again, this time with 4 new emails that were "forwarded" from her "welcome package".

Reading this I started to think about this. I mean could it be that she actually found something this time? Would this be the real thing? I admit my curiosity was heightened at this point, after all what’s the worst that could happen here, I find another disappointment? Or what if it was real and I could actually make money?

In the explanation of the terms of the job, the "writer" would write 100 words surrounding a keyword, i.e. if the keyword was dog biscuits; you had to write 100 words about dog biscuits. Hmm, at the time 1.00 for 100 words certainly did make the dollar signs sparkle in my eyes. Still hesitant, thinking yea, sure, something’s up, but I guess this one seems a bit different. Not fully understanding this yet, I indulged her (and myself) and called the number. I got a hold of a guy who apparently hadn't realized his number was on the site, and he forwarded me to another guy. The first guy was the boss, the big cheese, the creator of this world that would soon become my life ambitions training ground. And my “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” – Teacher.

I had a 30 minute conversation with the guy, I had to drop my friends name to "get in", but in that 30 minutes he changed my entire concept of online work at home business. It seemed that this was a no BS approach to making money. It was entry level work. At the time 1.00 for 100 words sounded pretty darn good, and it is, if you have no credentials or know how to making money online with your writing. I'd still go so far as to say that this is decent pay for the work involved.

It was simple, as I stated above. Write/make up 100 words around a keyword. To truly break out how easy this was here’s an example of a real job (of course this was generated on the spot here, as all work we do is no longer ours it's the customers so this is fresh, but a real example of what a "blurb" or back then was called a "blog" looks like.

We would log into a website, this is essentially our "Virtual Work Space". Once in we were presented with a queue of work. These were already paid for jobs that customers needed. The blogs/blurbs were used by the customers to build link backs for their sites. I won't go into how they use them here, but suffice it to say, it was easy work.

Keyword: "Dog Biscuits"

Blurb: This could be made up (story first person format) or analytical fact, the beauty is no research necessary and you could write it like a blog (first person).

"I love my dog. Every day when I wake up he is there to greet me. When someone is about to knock on the front door, he's there barking to let us know. He is a good dog, he doesn't chew on the furniture or destroy things in the house. I like to show my love by giving him his favorite treat, dog biscuits. He loves these biscuits, especially the ones with the bacon embedded in it, shaped like a bone. I've even found some that were harder, more like beef jerky so the dog could enjoy them longer. Today's dog treats are designed to be as healthy as they are delicious to the dog."

That’s actually 115, it's hard to complete the blog and stay at 100 words, but you get used to writing this small after a few. The idea is to get the keyword embedded into the story, and for it to be compelling, and quality writing. The keyword has to be centered as much as possible because it will become a hyperlink when submitted back to the site. This will be placed on a high PR site and provides a linkback to the customer’s site (in this case a site selling or discussing "dog biscuits".

I usually write analytically, so I'd talk about healthy dog biscuits, or about how dogs enjoy them, or how you can use them in training the dog etc... The beauty is that there are hundreds of keywords we write about, the only drawback is we can't see the keyword before accepting the job. We're supposed to just write the oldest jobs first, but are allowed to pick based on the titles. The titles are not there for us, more for the customer, but they do give a clue into the keyword involved. Sometimes we'll get a keyword that is outside our knowledge base, so some research is involved, but generally we just need to know what it means and something about the topic so we can write a blurb. It doesn't take much to do this, it's incredibly easy.

When I started at this work at home job, I was working at two other jobs. Just before I found this I had recently parted ways from my management job and started working at Lowe's as a cashier, and Mel's Diner as a waiter. This online gig came just before those two jobs, and just after leaving the management job.

I hadn't worked in about 4 months so my bills piled up... my landlord and roommate at the time was losing patience and was far from the internet age. She's 62 and barely knows how to check mail, and uses the computer for little else.

Trying to sell her on the "I'm making money online" thing wasn't an easy sell, especially since HubPages was "supposed" to be my big break when finding work was next to impossible. When it rains it pours because finding the online gig, and getting the other two jobs all fell in my lap at the same time. I would cashier by day, wait tables by graveyard, and some how snuck in 6 hours of writing blogs.

It didn't take more than a month to realize that I was making more writing blogs than both the other jobs combined and once that first check for $2175.00 came in dwarfing the other two jobs paychecks, my roommate not only got a nice chunk of the money I owed in back rent/bills, but she was confident that I could generate more money if I JUST worked online. I did quit both other jobs because it started to eat into my energy, time, and creative mind to work 3 jobs and never have a moment to myself.

I did well actually, my first few checks were by my standards and from my bills standpoint, perfect. I was in utopia. I could wake up when I wanted, sleep in, there were no rules but complete the work I accept. I was punching out thousands of blurbs a month... I had about 25 years of research data stuck in my head needing an outlet so I poured it onto the keyboard and converted it into money.

I did so well in fact that the bosses were noticing. They started to commend my work ethic and I discovered I had beat out everyone else writing for them. I broke the record in a single month, my second month there.

Over about 5 months time They started to consider me for higher positions in the company. They needed a second wheel in the management slot and they figured I fit the bill based on my work ethic and background. The pay at first was good considering what I had to do, just answer some tickets, which came natural, I'd done this before, it too was web based, I was essentially tech support for writers. I got a small salary and over time my responsibilities started to expand, as well as my pay. I felt ambitious as hell, and it seemed the more I did "off the clock" the more I raised up in the company.

I took the initiative to write an FAQ, but it was more like a users manual for the site, for one of the other companies I started supporting for, this one was based on customer questions, complaints, and queries. Next thing I knew I was asked to support yet another company my boss started, and today I watch over two customer bases, and over 100 writers. I enjoy this work and after several raises I now make enough salary to pay my rent. I still have to generate money in writing to cover bills, and well part of my rent is bills. Over time my roommate and I set a specific rate for rent/bills/housekeepers/gardeners/pool guy/ and so on.... you could say I'm living nicely and my rent is still under 1400 a month... which by the way includes 300.00 a month in food, laundry detergent, toiletries etc... I get a lot for my money in the end.

Bills are piling up though, dental bill (no insurance), medical bills (stomach flu twice), and just some walking around money. Between my salary taking the heat off my writing so much to cover the bills and rent, I was able to relax. You have to write a lot of blurbs to make 2k a month+ and after a while it's not so simple work. I ran out of back logged information in my head and now have to actually do my homework to write, but for the most part the subjects are redundant, same customers plus some new ones, and same keywords essentially but creating new material once you've written 400 blurbs on registry cleaners is a bit tough now. The service upgraded to articles and miniposts (articles are 400 words, miniposts 200 words) which pays 2.00 and 4.00 respectively. I started to enjoy articles, it's easier than writing 400 words in 4 separate blurbs, and it's one continuous piece. But then some things happened over the next year that brought a harsh reality check.

After about 7 months or so of working for this company, a company I might add is wonderful at showing appreciation for a job well done and that is willing to pay you for good work (I received several bonuses in the early days for breaking writing records and have received 4 raises this year!) I slowly started to realize that my life was tapering down to deterioration.

On the career front things were spectacular, but on the personal front I was neglecting myself. I discovered all the things I truly missed about that rat race job I used to hate so much. Discipline for one, routine for another, and social life at work. I found myself slowly hermitizing myself away from the outside world. I lived in paradise and yet was trapped here. I caught up on all my bills in the short run, but there were some bills looming over me that I'd procrastinated, mostly because I was perpetually broke, on that I was finally taking care of. One is dental work. I had about 12,000 dollars worth of work that needed to be done (it's not horrendous but I've gotten a few cavities from eating all that sugar)... I had about 3 grand+ in tickets, and due to 4 points on my driving record my license was suspended.

This pretty much grounded me; no car and I refuse to take public transportation, and over a year became a lazy writer... lazy in respect to leaving the house, being social, or even exercising. Work-Wise I was still kicking but. Although I discovered over time that as my health deteriorated (not eating right, no exercise, no social life) so did my ambition. I had no idea how important social activity was to my health until I went 18 months without it.

Depression sets in when all this happens, in fact in the middle of it I wrote a hub called: How Home Based Work Became My Coffin, that goes through all of this in detail (hopefully to help others not reach the level of hell I found myself in, and in writing that I extracted the actual answers that helped me escape my prison (slowly).

Today I have a Gym membership, and kill myself on the treadmill, epileptic machines, and a variety of upper body machines. I don't go every day but I sure try to... I'm only a few months into project Recuperate from deterioration *smiles*.

I learned the hard way that just because you can sleep till noon and stay up all night working doesn't mean you should. I also learned that no exercise and a social life fosters depression, loneliness, and general loss of ambition and work ethic.

I'm reaching the right track again, but my ability to write like I used to is severely slowed down... I write well, substantially better than I did a year ago, but writing articles/blurbs is like going uphill with the parking break on... I learned that fish oil and ginkgo help a great deal with the recovery process, and getting the funk out of the house and being social also help with the creativity process.

I'm tapering back up to where I was, but this is not going to be easy. If you are aspiring to write for money or hitting any work at home gig, believe me it's awesome, its liberating, but don't make my mistakes, maintain a strict routine including waking up every day at a specific time to work. Don't work when you feel like it either, work at a certain time, eat right and make sure you get out for social activities and exercise somehow, it truly makes a difference! I used to walk miles just for fun, today I can barely cross the street without running out of energy... its bad, the treadmill kills me at 4 mph and 3 minutes! But again I'm recovering a bit each day.

One thing I truly love about my job is that it doesn't feel like a job. My boss is teaching me the ways of making money on the internet a little bit each day. He's already a millionaire so I'm not just taking advice from some yahoo who sold a course or a friend with a "great idea". This is the real deal, the guru who started back in 1995 when search engine optimization wasn't even a word yet. He was one of the first few people to figure out that technology and he's a wealth of information. I've learned more this year (although I haven't put much of it into motion yet because I've been so busy trying to stay afloat that time is a problem, but I'm slowly learning time management (from him too) and things are becoming planted seeds.

One of the hardest things to give up, and my boss had been advising me to do this for almost a year of the 18 months I'd worked for him, was HubPages writing. I thoroughly became addicted to writing hubs, but it was digging into my wallet to write hubs since I wasn't making more than a dollar a day writing hubs, and could write in the same time it took me to produce a hub, about 60 blurbs or 25 articles. It was hard but I weaned myself off of HubPages to pursue money making concepts.

Ironically the next step in my journey has come and HubPages is a factor in this. This introduces the next half of this hub. I write this hub by the way for nostalgia and some me time, and I thought I'd share my journey with my fans. Somehow I amassed almost 500 fans and gain about 4 new fans a day. I feel a certain obligation to write at least a hub once in a while so here it is. I've written over 125 hubs thus far so many of my new fans have plenty of reading/catching up to do, and my hubs are as varied as my personal tastes :)

In the last year of learning from my boss I've acquired some valuable insights into making money online but one that I really enjoy is writing for money. I've been wanting to share my HubPages insights with the world of hubbers for a long time now and have learned a great deal while I was here. Much of what I learned I put into hubs over the last year or so. I've received so many comments applauding the insights that I decided to make an eBook to offer old and new hubbers a consolidation of my insights both here on HubPages and in the guru world outside of HubPages (but still online).

This eBook is going to be the HubPages crown jewel I hope. I've seen many so called how to make money on HubPages books come out but 100% of them are bunk, useless trash, full of nothing you cannot find on the help section of HubPages. They are all also just designed to build a marketing list, where by those who propagate the book/advertise it make 10-20.00 doing so, but the end reader, the happy hubbers hoping to learn something valuable is jacked in the process.

It was in my frustration of purchasing 2 of these books (and finding them to be garbage and a waste of my money), mainly to see if there was anything I didn't know or come to realize on hubpages, that I decided to write this book. It's not out there and obviousely a lot of people want it, so I'm going to write it, and it will be complete, but also go beyond just hubpages.

I wanted to build a book that would give you a comprehensive view of HubPages and writing for money in general. I find HubPages a phenomenal training ground for writers of all types, and for boosting your ability to make money out there where the real money is. I came up with the eBook idea a year ago, about 6 months into HubPages writing, and I drafted an outline but I came across a guy who was so ridiculously upset that I was going to sell this book that he started a little email/comments/forum war with me. I wanted the book sell to both help hubbers and to get out of debt myself. I believe a writer is entitled to make money from his writing, especially if the product is needed and well written. It was about the time me and Jimmy went to war, an endless ridiculous ranting that did nobody any good, that I started working for the company that liberated my pen and started bringing in an income that surpassed my offline workforce rat race type jobs.

I had put the HubPages eBook aside and decided to in my spare time "store" my book on my account. I wrote the pages but didn't publish them; I planned later when I caught my breath to pick it up again. I learned a wealth of information on how to make money on HubPages, but as luck would have it I learned 100x more thanks to my contacts over the last 6 months. With that, I also acquired some contacts that were willing to once written, partner up with me to market said book.

So there it is. My HubPages career of a sort has come full circle and I now deem myself a seasoned hubber ready to give other hubbers an edge and powerful education in writing high earning hubs, as well as using all skills learned to break out of the training wheels of HubPages and to go out and make the real money, the incredible money... The book is 80% written and I think it's going to be a phenomenal book. If you haven't already read my hubs on how to make money on HubPages then take a look, those are just a fraction of what my book will have in it, the things I teach in this book are beyond HubPages, but HubPages is a core component in the training. I hope to show people how to generate a 2,000.00 a month income on HubPages alone, then to dazzle people by showing them that with the same effort and resources, they could make 100x that off HubPages!

You could say the student has become the teacher. But make no mistake, I teach humbly, I know I don't have all the answers, and I still have much to learn... I'm perpetually growing like all of you, I dedicate most of my wisdom in writing this book to my teachers, guru's and fell hubbers actually. A great deal of my early training was acquired by many of the pig headed forum "elders" who, god rest their writing souls, can write very well but have much to learn in the humanity department. They know who I'm talking about. None the less, I have a sneaking suspicion that outside the forum, in real life in France, Germany, England, Australia, or where ever else they are... I bet their really cool blokes. They gave me tough love, as did the HubPages staff when they banned me from the forum (again). I learned a lot, and now I want to give back. And Jimmy, so frakkin what if I want to earn money from my book, and not post it on HubPages free to make AdSense revenue, truth is it's better as a book, it consolidates in an organized structure a comprehensive amount of information you CAN'T find on HubPages, it delves into psychology of hubbing/writing, monetization, SEO and more...

It will be my very first eBook for sale, and it's going to be fantastic. I'm thinking of releasing a free version however, but that's in the air. I would like to offer up the basics of building a great hub (and not just what you can find in the help section lol), as a marketing concept but also as a way to say thank you to the hubbers who helped me. I wish you all luck, Those of you on my fans list I thank you for your support, and look forward to releasing my book.. I hope all of you find your niche for making money online as well... I'm not yet a millionaire but I'm not very far from reaching this goal I set 2 years ago!

If your wondering, this hub was not designed to plug my eBook, I just thought I’d bring it up at the end here to see if anyone had any thoughts or questions they’d like me to address in it. In fact I need a good name (it can’t include “HubPages” in the title for legal reasons) for it. It incorporates powerful training to become a make money online writer, but uses HubPages as the boot camp and even an income source (paid training?). If anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them (and if I use it I’ll send you a free copy of the book!).

Always dream. Never let anyone or anything stop you from accomplishing these dreams. It was only 2 years ago that I decided I wanted to make money from writing in some way, and today I’m fully engulfed in my dreams success. It is getting better and better and there were many times I wanted to give up… I persevered and continue to persevere. I hope my hubs, which are my lessons on paper, help people reach for the stars and persevere when things get tough… you will find much of my hurdles in my hubs. I actually write hubs to extract my own wisdom to help myself. It’s easy to give others advice but it’s harder to follow it yourself! Writing hubs to me is sometimes a way to give advice (easy) and to follow it by simply reading my own words written in hubtrance (something covered in my book and one page in the book is directly rewritten from my site here: Writing Subconsciously NOT Consciously.

Enjoy the rest of your day, and if you got this far, thank you for visiting my hub. I didn’t have a lot of time but wanted to write this hub as today’s list of things I’m grateful for. Attitude of Gratitude is the secret to success! (source: The Secret DVD)

Cheers!

Jerrico Kensington Usher - Writer, Author, Creator