I was right.

Soon after I joined Triond I wrote my first masterpiece entitled "Treatise on Love."  I figured it would be an instant hit.  Unfortunately it didn't catch on right away, but I wasn't worried.  I just figured I would write something equally fascinating to get my career started.  A few days later I wrote an essay concerning the futures of single parents.  It received 4 views in the first day.  

THIS IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED!

I'm about a week in to my new career and I have made about two cents, American.  At my old job I earned about 350 dollars weekly.  As you might guess this is putting considerable economic stress on my family, which consists of me, my dog Shasta, and my three goldfish, who are particularly disappointed at my recent failures.

Though I intend to continue my work on Triond I now know that I must find an alternate means to keep my family afloat.  I figure I should be a pretty high-profile find for any employer; I graduated Cum Laude from my high school and was a member of our FBLA for the last three months of my senior year.  

The Western Union mode of payment is one of the reasons that makes Triond different from most Paid to Write/Blog sites. This is also one of the reasons why the Triond publisher’s population is escalating really fast. This payment system completes what Paypal and the check lacks. Through this, all the countries in the world can join Triond. Even aliens from Jupiter can join as long as they have agents there. In fact, I myself had chosen it as my payment method.

Paypal

Paypal is unarguably the number one online payment processor today. But Paypal is not for everyone. First, Paypal is not available in all countries. If ever it’s available, publishers cannot or will probably not choose it because you need to verify your account to get your money. To verify your account you need to link your credit or debit card. Some people are not comfortable with this. Second, should Paypal be available in their country, for some reasons, opening a credit or debit card account may not be easy for them or they simply don’t like to use plastic money. Payment via Paypal is preferable since the minimum is only $0.50 and sending the payment is free.

Check

The check mode of payment is preferred by others for any of the reasons mentioned above. The difference is, check is delivered by mail and you cannot get your money unless you exchange it at the bank. Your earnings will also lose $3.00 for the check processing fee. Other countries may not also choose this because the check might get lost in the mail. Check minimum payout is $50.00

Western Union

Western Union is one of the best things that ever happened to online paid writing. Western Union is available in most countries and territories. When the money has been sent, Triond will send an email containing the tracking number or the Money Transfer Control Number (MTCN). To receive your money you have to go to the nearest Western Union agent in your area. Processing fee also applies. Amount varies by country. With Western Union, you don’t need credit or debit cards and there’s no need to worry about checks getting lost in the mail. The Triond minimum payment is also $50.00

Though the $50 minimum is quite a big amount to reach, it made me work harder promoting and writing more articles so I can reach it sooner. When that amount reaches my hands, it would then be worth all the wait. By the way, I received my very first payment this month. And the first thing I bought was…pizza!

In the pranks section there are around 40 articles. Now to go through those many articles I find to be very tiring. So, I decided to make my own list of best prank article.

I decided to select them on the basis of the number of comments and like a particular article gets. I preferred to choose my own marking system. 

In this, I decided to award 2 points for like and 3 points for a comment. I gave comments more points as it really needs an effort to make someone write a comment for your article. I may like an article I usually do not comment unless and until it really revolutionizes my thinking.

So, the top rankers in my list are given below along with the author name who wrote this topic and points they score:

To enjoy these articles you can click on the link. I have only selected only those whose score is more than 100.

1.      15 Hilarious Ways to Order Pizza

Its author is 123iPodder.

The score is 261.

2.      The Ultimate Prank Guide

       Its author is Oo silver.

       The score is 256.

3.      Top 10 April Fools' Jokes of All Time

      Its author is Keritzel.

      The score is 230.

4.      How to Make Fools of Others

      Its author is ur guide.

      The score is 160.

Top Rankers in Comment section

In this only those articles I have selected which have managed to get a score of more than 30.

1.      The Ultimate Prank Guide

       Its author is Oo silver.

 The score is 72.

2.      15 Hilarious Ways to Order Pizza

Its author is 123iPodder.

The score is 57.

3.      How to Make Fools of Others

      Its author is ur guide.

      The score is 48.

4.      Little Tricks to Amuse Your Friends and the Kids

      Its author is nobert soloria bermosa

      The score is 36

5.      Top 21 Ways to Annoy a McDonald's Cashier

      Its author is Wes

The score is 30.

Top Rankers in Liked section

In this only those articles I have selected which have managed to get a score of more than 50.

1.      Top 10 April Fools' Jokes of All Time

      Its author is Keritzel

      The score is 224.

2.      15 Hilarious Ways to Order Pizza

Its author is 123iPodder.

The score is 204.

3.      The Ultimate Prank Guide

      Its author is Oo silver.

      The score is 184.

4.      How to Make Fools of Others

Its author is ur guide

The score is 112.

5.     Six Sure Tricks to Get Rid of Guests

     Its author is Rana Sinha

     The score is 80.

6.    Ultimate Pranks

Its author is S. Buland Shah

The score is 68.

For more funny and interesting articles you can refer following articles:

 

1)      The Best Prank Articles in Triond: A collection of best prank articles ever found on net.

 

2)      The 10 Most Stupid Reasons Why not to go to Sleep: Some of the most stupid reasons ever available on net.

3)      How to Make Fools of Others: Best way to fool others.

4)      How to Make Your Problems Easy?: A very funny way to prove this with the help of science

5)      Five Simple Games Which Can Increase Mobile Sales Tremendously: Five simple, funny games which every mobile company must consider if they want to boost their sales.

6)      How to Prove That Snakes Contain DNA: A very weird logic to prove this fact within five seconds.

7)      Funny Biotechnology Quiz: Are you bored of traditional quizzes? Then this quiz is for you with a new style of imparting and testing knowledge about biotechnology.

Well, in order to make money on Triond you need to have a Triond account, if you don't make one at www.triond.com. But to receive money you either need to receive a check or have Paypal. After you have done this you will need to write an article, take a photo or video, or record audio. I suggest you write an article as they are the most view piece of work. For your first article write on a topic that you know a lot about as it will be easier.

Submitting Your Work

Once you have completed your worked log in to Triond and click on the submit tab. Browse your folders on your computer and select your file that you want to publish. Then write a title for you work. Make sure you title is short but draws attention from potential viewers. Now write a brief description of your work. After you have done this select a category that your work fits under. The tags section is for you to write words that relate to you work. Once your wok has been submitted it will take roughly 24hours for it to get published.

The Money Making Part

Congratulations! Now that you work is published you can start to make money. Just to reward yourself click on your item. Now go down to the bottom on the page and click “I Liked It” and give yourself a nice comment. Send the URL to people you know and wait for the views to go up. Try to advertise your work as much as possible. Remember the more views and likes you have the more money you will make.

Tips

• Try to follow the writing guidelines as much as possible
• Look at other peoples work and leave comments with your URL to your work
• Read more guides (The more you know the more money you will make.).
• Research topics
• Try to include pictures that are relevant to your article
• And last but not least: Quality not Quantity

Short Articles

I have a limited time to spend in the internet. There is a lot of information in competition for my attention. Sometimes I do not need so deep information about one specific topic. The most of the articles in Trion are short in this way I can read many articles in less time. I can read more than five articles in an hour. These articles have very good information using few words.

Easy Reading

The writers use a language easy to understand. I could understand easy technical topics. It is easy to make a commentary about articles.

Good Titles

Titles attract my attention and invite me to read the articles. There are interesting topics for all kinds of people. In addition, there are good writers.

Links

The most of the articles have links on the information they deal with and can immediately seek more information. If in the article are some "strange words," they link to a dictionary and you can look the meaning and other information about the word. Related articles are too useful too.

Presentation

Articles have a good font sized letters that facilitate reading and good illustrations

Thanks to good writers who enjoy sharing their knowledge. Good job, guys!

Surf Other Blogs and Comment on Them

Try going to Google Blog Search and look for blogs that have a simlar topic to the webpage or blog you're promoting. Then leave useful comments on those pages. Don't just make spammy comments. Share useful thoughts and participate actively in any discussion. When you frequently do this, you wll accomplish three basic things:

1. The owners of the blog you comment on have a greater chance to visit your website (this is their way of returning the favor to you). Most blogs allow you to leave a link to your webpage each time you post a comment. People see your link, so they click it and end up on your website/blog.
2. Your website link will be popular. When your website link is posted on hundreds of other different blogs (just by simply posting comments), Google will decide that your link is important and popular. Therefore, your website address will push higher on search engines.
3. You will gain more recognition in the blogosphere. This is important for long term traffic.

Study Google Trends

By going to www.google.com/trends, you will find popular search keywords that real people are actively searching online. For example, a recent Google trend showed that Michael Phelps ranked number 2 on Google as the most searched keyword in August. Based on that trend, you may want to provide content that appeals to readers of the same topic. By knowing what's truly popular online, you will be in a position to provide content that many people will love to read. The result? More traffic and more clickthroughs for you.

Ride The Web 2.0 Wave

There are many sites that offer you opportunities to share your useful links and content to other people. The sites that come to mind are Digg, NewsVine, Facebook, Myspace, Reddit and many others. The key is to build a network of friends and a solid reputation on each of these sites. Then when your network of contacts has been established, sharing yor stuff is gonna be a whole lot easier.

Take time to master the culture of each site mentioned above. Others are strict and doesn't allow you to blatantly promote your links. In other Web 2.0 sites, meanwhile, you are expected to read and promote other people's works so others can do the same for you as well. Master the rules and regulations of each Web 2.0 site mentioned above and make sure you abide by them.

Is building traffic hard work? Is this a rocket science? My answer to both questions is yes! Now let me ask you a question: Who ever told you that it's all gonna be easy?

There's no free lunch, so to speak!

The good news is, as you gradually move up and build a huge contact base and reputation online, things will start to get easier and easier. The traffic will become more constant. It's all worth it in the end, if you have the patience and perseverance to do what it takes to succeed on the internet.

The first step is then to help other people find your blog.

Promoting your blog is rather easy, if you do it systematically. Here are fifteen easy steps to help you get more traffic to your blog.

1. Get an account at  Blogcatalog Post your blog entry there and surf around, make friends, visit their blogs and leave supportive intelligent comments.
2. Get a RSS feed from feedburner so that you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. RSS means Rich Site Summary. It lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication as headlines and summaries.
3. Join Bloglog service and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, and associates.
4. Join MyYahoo.com Choose “Add Content” and add your blog RSS feed.
5. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your subject area. Rather than writing comments like "cool" or "great post." leave intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.
6. Use  Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish content on your blog. But don’t do this every five minutes.
7. Submit your blog to blog directories. A comprehensive list of blog directories is here
8. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.
9. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website or ask other bloggers to exchange links.
10. Get your personal page at http://wiGoogle and add your blog details there.
11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures, and flyers. Tell everyone you know about your blog.
12. Write articles on the same topics as your blog and send them to different free article sites like Ezine Articles Include a link to your blog in the author info box.
13. Use sites like Faves.com or Delicious to favourite your blog entries, find interesting favourites from others and make friends.
14. Join StumbleUpon and start stumbling your blog entries and those of others.
15. Post your blog entries to your Facebook  contacts. If you contribute to writing communities like  Triond.com make friends there and mention your blog.

One more thing! Content is king. Do write interesting things in a sensible way. A Niagara of complaints about your boss or your spouse may not make occasional readers come back for more.

By doing all these steps the traffic for my blog at Original Wavelength increased 1000%.

Enjoy your blog!

While online sites like Associated Content and Triond provide links to StumbleUpon, I never really understood what it was all about until very recently. A fellow Triond writer asked if I was on StumbleUpon, and I decided to check it out. There is a great section in the Triond help area about how to use StumbleUpon to promote your articles, so I signed up at the site and created an account.

There is a learning curve at StumbleUpon, and it took me a while to figure it all out. I have to confess that I'm still pretty new there and still trying to understand the etiquette of StumbleUpon. I often feel like I'm just stumbling my way around StumbleUpon (literally and figuratively.)

Some Lessons Learned on StumbleUpon

I did learn a few things from my experiences so far that could be useful to online writers who are new to StumbleUpon. First of all, even though sites like Triond provide links you can use to stumble your articles, it is really essential to download the StumbleUpon toolbar.

StumbleUpon is a huge pool of users who share their favorite websites with other users in the system. When you sign up for a StumbleUpon account, there is an option to download the StumbleUpon toolbar. This toolbar will embed in your browser, usually right under the Menu bar or Google toolbar. After downloading the StumbleUpon toolbar to your browser, you are ready for the full StumbleUpon experience.

On your StumbleUpon toolbar, you'll see a thumbs up or thumbs down button. When visiting a website, simply hit the thumbs up (the button will go green) or thumbs down (the button will turn red). Then you have the option to tag and review the site also. If you want to remove a rating, just visit the site and hit the thumbs up button again, it will turn blue and the site will be removed from your StumbleUpon favorites. This whole process is what is referred to as "stumbling."

Your site must be stumbled to see benefits like increased traffic, but it's frowned upon to just stumble your own work or too many of your own stories to get them in the system. That can be a dilemma for beginning stumblers. I've learned there is a great Triond community at StumbleUpon willing to provide help and advice for new stumblers. I've had a few fellow Triond writers show me kindness by adding me as a friend and stumbling my work, even though I didn't have many sites stumbled as I was getting started on StumbleUpon.

In my opinion, if you are new to StumbleUpon and not sure how to get started, let other online writers like the ones at Triond know you are now on StumbleUpon. Then start reading some of the other writers you enjoy and stumble and review some of their articles. Go to these writers StumbleUpon pages and hit "show me a friend's page." Then if you like it, stumble that page. You'll find that soon, other StumbleUpon members will find you and stumble and review your own work also.

I find that this is the best way to build a presence on StumbleUpon. I like to stumble within the Triond community, because I feel that it is a very safe and enjoyable way to stumble. It's very similar to building a network of friends on the Triond site itself. If you are new to StumbleUpon, you'll find many Triond writers on StumbleUpon willing to help you understand how to stumble and get started on the site.

Tips for Staying Safe While Using StumbleUpon

Recently, I've found out the hard way that you have to be very careful sometimes about sites that lure you to share stumbles with strangers. It's easy sometimes to want that extra traffic so badly that common sense goes out the window and you toy with the idea of engaging in this kind of stumbling. We all want an increase in visits to our Triond or Associated Content pages and there are some sites out there that promise to build massive StumbleUpon traffic, for free or for a fee.

When I saw a site that wanted me to give up my StumbleUpon password in exchange for the promise of massive stumbling and lots of traffic, I immediately recoiled. I wouldn't consider it at all. First of all, think of the loss of security in giving up your StumbleUpon password, and the real possibility of being banned on StumbleUpon, as the site frowns on this behavior.

Another security issue is stumbling strange sites you know nothing about. The other day I visited a free site that offered a stumble, if I stumbled a site in return. Intrigued, I agreed to look at the site in question, and if I truly liked it, I'd stumble it (I felt that was fair.) I kept refreshing the page to get a new site to look at, because so many of the sites I kept seeing were either spam or looked questionable (not like a real website.)

Eventually, I clicked on an interesting looking URL, and a window popped up. Immediately, I knew I had made a mistake, and possibly harmed my computer by clicking on this site. The window I clicked on went transparent and there was nothing there, so I closed it. Right after that, my computer acted very strangely. My browser toolbars were no longer in my control. The browser kept hiding my Menu bar, and I couldn't right click to bring it back. Soon, my Google toolbar disappeared. Then as I opened a new tab on my browser, the toolbars would appear and disappear in a ghostlike manner.

Soon I realized that my whole computer was in serious jeopardy. I closed Internet Explorer and tried to reopen it, but it wouldn't load. I went to My Documents, and I had hundreds of documents, but I couldn't see any of them, just a blank space. It was the same story with My Pictures folder, so I decided to run a McAfee virus scan.

I ran the virus scan a few times, but each time, the scan would stop at about the same place, and the scan would go no further. I also discovered in McAfee that my internet security needed attention, and I didn't have my firewall protection enabled.

So I put up my firewall, and decided to clear my cookies, my Internet Explorer browser history, and my browser cache, and then power down my laptop PC (running Windows Vista) and start up again. I felt horrified because I hadn't backed up my files in a while, so the thought of losing all my writing was unthinkable.

Fortunately, even though my computer had a major freak out and possibly picked up a bug clicking on that unknown site, I don't feel there was major damage. I was able to open my browser, surf the internet and access my personal computer files again. For a few moments my computer was really messed up, and since I rely on my laptop so much, that was pretty scary. I believe that someone put an unsafe site into a swapping site for stumbles, just to cause harm and possibly get some kicks from temporarily messing up another person's computer.

So I'm avoiding these kinds of sites that offer a random stumble for a stumble. I noticed that one day I had an increase of a few hundred page views at Triond, and I wondered where the traffic was coming from. I found out that a fellow Triond writer had liked my story and stumbled it, and I hadn't realized it. To me, that's really the true spirit of StumbleUpon, and the whole purpose of stumbling, to share sites you like with other users who will give them thumbs up in return, building traffic in an intelligent way.

A Few Thoughts for Safe Stumblers

A few final tips for safe stumbling: keep your firewall up and your virus protection up to date if you are going to be out there stumbling strange sites you don't know anything about. If you are going out there and stumbling unknown sites to build traffic, back up your important files in case you click on a harmful site.

For the safest StumbleUpon experience, stumble sites from your trusted friends, or stumble sites you're familiar with. Use sites that will promise free stumbles at your own risk. Know that StumbleUpon frowns on that kind of activity, and you could get your StumbleUpon page banned. Also, these sites have the potential to direct you to a page that may harm your computer.

Don't just stumble your own pages at StumbleUpon. If you do, you'll find it harder to make friends and gain credibility at the site. The more friends you have, and the more high quality, diverse stumbles you make, the better your chances of increasing traffic to your pages. I've learned that some people at StumbleUpon won't add anyone as a friend who hasn't stumbled enough pages, or has stumbled too many of their own pages.

The more thumbs up you have on your pages, and the more friends you have, the better your chances of seeing some major traffic to your pages. So it's important to understand how StumbleUpon works as a social website.

There's definitely a culture and etiquette to StumbleUpon, and I'm still figuring it all out. I'm grateful that my computer is intact, and from now on, I'll be a lot smarter about stumbling. By familiarizing yourself with StumbleUpon, and following a few simple guidelines, you can have a safe and enjoyable StumbleUpon experience and make the site work for you.

Let's say that we had an alliance. You, me and Triond makes three. What next? If that guy who wrote about USB drives can get that much action, what's stopping our moment in the limelight? Image Jeff Probst in your mind ( his lame short shorts, overly tanned face, nerdiness and all) describing the upcoming challenge...

"Alright Survivors on my go, you're going to run over this lava volcano, retrieve the flags from the pit of doom and race back to view as many of your friends' pages as possible."

Ok, so I embelished a little bit. But you get the idea, right? I've got my crappy virtual  survivor bandana ready, so grab yours. It's on.