Fiscal Fitness-Make Money Writing
July 15, 2008 Posted by ScottPhelpsI work with hundreds of writers every day. Each has their own dream and those aspirations include being published.
Standard print publications are a hard nut to crack. Traditional publishing works only if you have an agent and a name, but most writers still want some kind of payday.
There’s always freelancing websites. Almost anyone can land a job there if they don’t mind working below the poverty level.
One writer friend told me of an early instance in working with a freelance site where he submitted a bid and sample that allowed him to write 25 unique articles at one dollar per article. That was before the site took their cut. He had enough money to take his wife out to eat once, but it took more than thirty hours for this gentleman to earn his night on the town.
Part of the problem is that many writers are competing with writers from other countries where a dollar has more buying power than in the U.S. The end result is either take the gig and hope for government cheese in a commodity line or look for something that contributes a little better to family fiscal fitness by training using gear from the Sports store.
Two sites that pay a little better are www.constant-content.com (Editor’s Note: URL fixed) and www.associatedcontent.com.
Let me explain a few differences between the two. Constant Content (herein referred to as CC) allows you to write and sell your content to others using a fee schedule that you develop. You can sell your articles with full rights and essentially exchange the ownership of your article for enhanced cash or you can sell your article at a lesser price and keep the article to sell again. CC also allows you to sell photos, video and illustrations. Each article is checked and approved before it winds up in the online sales bin. Some authors receive a hundred dollars and more from their articles while others receive a few dollars for each article.
Associated Content (herein referred to as AC) accepts articles for review and then they offer you a price to become the owner of your article. They typically leave your byline intact, but they usually don’t pay a lot for your article (expect an average of $10 per article).
AC may not be a bad alternative if you are looking to sell articles you have already written and don’t know what to do with them. CC is a great alternative if you want to bank some of your writing and have the potential for ongoing income.
Almost anyone can put an article together based on what they know. Find an area of expertise and then spend some time writing.
What I’ve discovered is you don’t have to be the world’s best writer to earn money from writing. Have a friend look your articles to see if there are any glaring errors. If not, send it on and see what happens.
Don’t count this as your only online strategy for moneymaking, but it can be a great way to supplement other online cash ideas you may be using.
If you’re really serious about freelancing online you can put a personal website together and market the idea as much as possible, but use online article sales to get started.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Scott L. Phelps is a leading online entrepreneur and owns a successful internet company. You can read more of Scott’s articles and learn to Make Money Online and How to Make Money at MakeMoneyFacts.com.
I realize that freelancing writers have to face hard competition in price. I believe that your two recommended sites will help to get proper price.
I find that the waiting times on A.C. are much longer than comparable sites. Also, if you want to entirely give up your rights to an article for a mere few dollars and earn a low amount from pageviews, then sure, go ahead to A.C. if you really need that $20 now…
Helium is only useful for it’s marketplace, where you can find publishers that want to pay you an average of $35, but yesterday I also saw $80 for an article that’d be fairly easy to write. The problem is, pageviews provide you practically no income (same as A.C.), and I think the minimum payout is $25. Triond doesn’t pay you upfront, but rather they pay you exactly 50% of the revenue from the pageviews your content gets. The min. payout is only 50 cents and they will pay international users, also.
I think that buying content from freelancers sucks… often time the so called competition from india or wherever can’t get the job done. Often times their “preview piece” isn’t what the end product is going to be, so if you are going to do it you better get comfortable with the same writer over time.
You may want to check your constantcontent link.
It is actually constant-content.com
Thanks,
You can definitely think outside the box and make money. I’ve marketed myself online to pick up tutoring clients. It doesn’t all have to be ad sales and affiliate revenue.
BTW, Tyler, I’d love to see a post on your female programmer situation a few weeks back (saw that on DP!) haha.
Yeah, your link is a bit wrong, the right one is http://www.constant-content.com/ .
I’m not sure if that’s your focus here, but it’d be good if you include the programm focus. There are lots of people from other countries, so it would be nice to know if they pay international users (like myself).
(and yes, I know you’ve mentioned “other countries”…)
I never knew there are sites where you can write to be get paid.
Cool info. I will buy from them.
I found your post informative , helpful and easy to digest.
You have got my best recommendation on this. Keep this coming!
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Say no more
I used to use all of those low-pay sites when I was just starting out. Damn was I stoked to actually get “published” and earn a whopping 1-2cents per word! Especially since it was 1-2cents more than I had ever made before that 🙂
But after a while, it gets quite frustrating. Churning out pulp for-robot-eyes-only can leave an artist feeling discontent. It was great practice to get into the habit of producing 3000-5000 words per day!
Just skip up the ladder a bit. The real money is in SEO copywriting. Stuff I’m doing on this blog nets me 10x what those payperword sites ever got me!