I have a streak of competitiveness that runs through me. So when I signed up for the Examiner and found out that they won’t pay me until I hit twenty-five dollars and only then on the twentieth of each month through PayPal. Well…
I had to get money in that first full month!
They have rules.
- You have to write about your subject. Mine is plants in Hampshire.
- You have to have a picture- sizes are different in article than in slide show
- You have to connect your articles to each other
- You have to mention local businesses
- You have to write between 200 to 500 words
- You should use quotes
I growled at my monitor, “Alright examiner I am up to the challenge!” I have to fix some of the earlier articles to follow the rules, while I am writing new ones.
What I found is that writing about a specific ‘subject’ is a lot harder than it sounds.
Sometimes my odd sense of humor comes out.
Like this one:
“Why go to Spain on vacation when you could visit Hampshire instead”
My number are slow, or at least the money amount. Here is today’s tally.
Today I made $0.49 and I had 51 hits…
The average for the, Home and Living section was 16..
Hmmm!
Is my math right on this, I would need over 2,500 hits a month to get that twenty-five dollars…
Anticipating all that cash from the examiner… I started a laptop jar in the back of my closet. As of today I have a whole dollar-eighty! And a fake mouse…added by the cats. Woohoo!
Ahh! I love a challenge!
Here is a poem I posted in my last article.
party in the mushroom rings
by Gerardine Baugh
the garden faeries laughed
and planted seeds of fun
they whispered, it was they, who
mixed up the garden, and
planted the green beans far from their trellis
eggplant was placed next to the pumpkins
tomatoes rolled into the neighbor’s yard
they sang and danced inside the ring of mushrooms
table set,
feasting on strawberries and corn
potatoes and cucumbers
glasses rose
a toast to the gardener
drink of dandelion wine
the fey cheered and sang songs
of times past, and those to come
some sat under mushroom umbrellas
wide and white, others
sat atop, and
scrutinized with words of nettles
peals of laughter danced across the lawn
this, the dark end of the new moon