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$1,246 in 24 hours.

All I can say is "Thank you Les Jacobs for introducing me to Reddit." Actually, let me rephrase that, "Thank you Les Jacobs for beating me over and over and over the head into trying Reddit." If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be writing this article and I wouldn't have had the spectacular marketing success that I had on Reddit, with this credit card article. I should also thank my sister for emailing me about Helium in the first place, way back.

Les actually first piqued my interest in Reddit by submitting this same article (the one that later went viral) for me around November 15, 2008. It made about $12.00 that day from all the clicks and I was hooked. You have to understand, we writers on Helium don't make very much. When I first started, I'd write an article, submit it, then I'd jump up the next morning and run to the computer as if it were Christmas, and check the "Earnings & Payments" page, only to see "$00.0." That went on for a while. I think the first time there was any money was when it showed about 3 cents. That actually thrilled me.

After a couple of weeks of little to no money though, I quit writing for a long time. I'd come back and write one or two more, and then I'd quit again. It was like blogging, really. Fast forward to November, 2008. It had been close to two years at that point and I actually had earned a total of about $125 dollars for 66 articles. Helium "pays out" every time you make $25.00 so I was already over that exhilaration. Les called me and said "Quick, check your earnings page, tell me what you see for your credit card article (I thought, "here we go again with the 'Reddit' business"). I checked and lo and behold I had made around $4.00 in just a couple hours for that one article he had submitted. Wow! Seriously. As the day progressed, it reached $8.00, then $10.00 and finally a little over $12.00. Les was also floored. After spending two years struggling, sweating and scraping to make a total of $125.00, $12.00 in one fell swoop was magic.

One by one I started going through my articles and submitting them to Reddit (abiding by Reddit's rules, naturally). Some would make 4 cents, some 20 cents, some 40 cents and some over a buck (in 24 hours). I was giddy with glee. A couple weeks later, on Sunday December 14, 2008, we were back from a wonderful Sunday service, and I was getting ready to watch a movie with my lovely wife, when on a whim I decided to resubmit the credit card article for just a second time. I thought,

"What the heck, I'm sure there have to be people out there who still haven't seen it."

It was around 6:00 p.m., and I came up with the following "teaser" (that's the line you submit to Reddit for people to click on, and then read your article): "This 0 percent credit card offer tried to trick people, but this guy turned it around on them and beat the system...one for the little guy!" I figured it was a good way to sum up the story.

After clicking "Submit," I curled up on the couch with my wife and started watching the movie. Twenty five minutes later I got up, clicked refresh and...wow! Eleven bucks already? Something must be wrong, I thought. I clicked refresh a couple more times, and not only was it correct, but each time I clicked, the counter jumped 30 or 40 more cents (we're talking seconds here - I love that Helium set it up so that we can see our earnings real-time like that).

I said, "Honey, HONEY, the counter, it's jumping...it's rising FAST!" She was happy for me because she knows how much time and effort I've put into this. I went back to watching the movie with her, but for the next couple hours I would click "refresh" every ten or fifteen minutes and each time it was up anywhere from $8.00 or $9.00 to over $20.00. By the time we went to bed it was over $600.00!

The next morning it was a little over $900.00, and by the end of the day it stopped at around $1,246.00.

I thank God for this blessing and again, Les Jacobs has been a great mentor, both as a writer and a motivator. He was kind enough to interview me on this experience. His article on how to promote content on Reddit, and his article about maximizing search engine results for your articles have been extremely helpful.

As to why the article went viral, your guess is as good as mine, but I've had a month to mull it over and I believe it has to do with "hitting a nerve," on a global level. We are in a global economic crisis, after all, so anything having to do with any kind of financial success is interesting. My article details a journey of real-life success that spanned three years, so that too is a lot of true and tried ground work. Les Jacobs made the point that having kept it to one page probably helped too. I consider myself to be a person of average intelligence, so if I can do it, you can definitely do it too.

I've had reasonable success with a couple other stories on Reddit too:

1). My article about keeping your toothbrush clean has made over $30.00 to date

2). My story about a trip to France, that didn't go very well, has made over $25.00

3). My story about an incident my family had with a police officer has made over $15.00

4). My story about the dangers of para phenalinediamine in hair color has made over $15.00

5). And my story about gaining satisfaction at work has made over $10.00

These stories seem to really resonate; in fact, any true stories having to do with health, abuse of the law, things going wrong abroad, and interesting successful finance scenarios seem to really interest people.

An interesting note - a little irony: today, before submitting this article, I went to check the mail and I just got a letter from the credit card company - the one I wrote the article about. They're going to be changing things in March, 2009. From what I can understand they may be taking away my 0%. If so, I guess I'll take this windfall and pay it off.

Good luck to all my fellow Heliumites! It's great to a part of the Helium family with you. May you all enjoy the same success I have!

P.S. - Please keep these in mind when submitting content on media-sharing sites:
1. Please don't submit more often than once or twice a day, and never the same article within a one week period. For my part, I submitted the credit card article only twice before getting lucky, and that second submission was made a full month after the first.
2. Also read and comment on other people's submissions.
3. Try to avoid submitting to just the Reddit category as much as possible. Submit to the appropriate category.
4. Submit non-Helium articles too. I often go to Yahoo or other favorite sites of mine, grab an article I like from there and post that. As you know there are countless other sites you can get articles from too.

Learn more about this author, Peter Johns.
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