Alright, I'm working primarily with Helium, though I'm posting articles on Bukisa, too. As someone mentioned, long-term profits should lead you to your own website. Now there is a lot to learn when it comes to promotion, but that's when having an individual site pays off.
Now in my opinion, you can consider starting with article writing websites or using them occasionally. Some offer direct payments, which can be nice. Really, one's financial situation is a factor. I'm online as a summer job, which means I need some guaranteed cash. Although I can probably succeed, I'm very risk averse and my self-esteem isn't spectacular (though my efforts online are increasing it over time).
I made 2 bucks my first month, which involved mostly writing and ignoring the money aspects. My second month, I worked on passive revenue and ended up with 12. Given that I did use twitter and wrote more, it wasn't 100% passive. Newly written articles tend to provide some extra revenue from ads due to in-site views. Last month, I hit $31, though my goal was $64. I made direct revenue from other sources, and I spent most of my time reading about potential ways to make money, to be honest.
Some people might have a strategic of improving every week. I'm at "every month," but I want to keep decreasing that. Every day isn't practical for most people as they do other things or have off days.
The reality is that I have over 150+ articles above 400 words, and I made 31 dollars last month, which probably required about an hour of work. It's not bad, but it'll take a considerable amount of time at current rates to get above minimum wage. I'm talking three years of passive income. Of course, my continuous marketing strategies should boost this some.
I want to ensure I know more about what I'm doing before I start paying my own money. It's probably a bad choice, but I'm not a risk taker at the moment. I want to establish article writing revenue then blogger, hopefully. Then off on my own, is the plan. We'll see.
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I've veered off topic to get things of my chest. If you want to earn money online with AC, I would be curious if you're keeping the rights. I don't write for AC because I'm Canadian and they put some restrictions on foreign writers. However, if you keep the rights to post elsewhere, that allows you to post on Bukisa, Helium, and probably other sites (though I don't know which). A blog, of course. I've also heard (not for certain) that if you post your articles on Triond 1st, you can post them elsewhere.
So basically, my strategy for that would be find a topic on Helium. Depending on the topic and your rank, you can get a few bucks. Post an article about the topic on Triond, post to Helium, post to Bukisa, then post to Associated Content, then to a blog, then to wherever else you wish.
Now I'm not sure how useful the revenue will be, to be honest. But if you have 100+ articles, I suspect you might make a couple bucks from sites you don't promote (or do). I turned of nofollow on my blogs, and I end all my articles with "also available at" then post my Bukisa and Helium articles.
Now given that we're dealing with stylish black hats, you have the option of promoting all your sites by utilizing proxies, etc. I am new to those methods, so you'd have to do some research yourself. If you can promote an the same article on 4+ different sites without much extra work, that's a good option.
There are probably people making 1000 in residuals, but the first word that comes to mind is "sucker." I see people who work for Demand Studios full time, for instance. I like it for occasional instant income. But if you're selling articles for other people to market "solely because those articles make more than they pay you, on average" I would think they would clue into something there.
Associated Content has notoriety, as do most blog and writing sites. Promoting them will be more difficult as some people will see "AC" and avoid it, to be completely honest. They know see a lot of spamming people and get frustrated. You get some views within AC, but I'm not sure if they even things out. I don't know about other benefits.
I could see myself making 1000 in residuals from a site like AC, but that's because I'm a bit too cowardly at times, quite frankly. If you aren't familiar with establishing your own site, it's not difficult to learn the basics. I still have no opposition to using AC or other sites, though.
You don't want more advice on social media, I presume because you can find that information on your own. If you don't like it, then you're missing out on a useful opportunity for article writing. I'd also look into various programs for increasing twitter followers. I used to massively add people and followback, then remove people. I still follow people myself (the only automatic program wanted me to send the new follower announcements to my email, which I disliked). But a simple program (tweetattack) makes up for my laziness and adds the max amount. I do that, wait a day, then remove non-followers and repeat, generally. Some people are more aggressive.
I actually market my twitter account. People think you're going to buy things. I'll be honest, I am following bots and spammers, but some of them are people. I occasionally click their links, but I've never bought anything they offered or clicked their ads. If I'm making them money somehow, my only expense is a bit of time. It's my view that societies D students are the one's clicking "get new dress for cheap" and other such ads. And given the bad business models of many spammers, they are perfect pawns for increasing my revenue.
Writing articles is good. Learning SEO, which I still am doing. I use first person a lot, which I'm not going to change I suspect. It's too valuable from a literary perspective, but it's better to avoid it - especially if you want to sell articles.
Also, if you keep writes you can sell non-exclusive access on constant content as well as other sites, I suspect - even your own. You could sell the same article to 1000 people if they all wanted to buy it.
