Writers can make a nice living writing online. Freelance writers can not only earn direct income and upfront payments for their work, they can also earn residual income. Both direct payments and residual income have their benefits.
Writing for the web isn’t like writing for print. Print markets pay more and those that have previously written for print might be intimidated or offended by the differences in pay for web writing. Writing for the web can actually bring in more income than print writing, over a period of time, for the same article, where the print article would be a one time payment.
If you are looking for a one time payment for your writing on the web, there is always a market for writers to write and sell their work. There are many clients who will outright purchase your work, some that will simply pay for using your article, some who will give you a byline, and some that won’t give a byline. A good place to check for daily freelance writing jobs is Deb Ng’s Freelance Writing Gigs at http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com.
Often however, a client will want full rights to the article or articles. In the past, this was known as selling away your copyright. Today, it’s better known as ghostwriting. The problem with this type of writing is that once you sell it, it’s no longer yours. You can’t claim it, use it as a sample, make any further profit from it, etc. It belongs legally to the one you sold it to, even if you wrote it for a mere $5 fee. Some see no problem with this. Some see it as selling yourself very short.
Many writers enjoy the benefits of writing for residual income, rather than an upfront payment or direct payment. This type of writing generally has a very low payment per pay period, but you are paid for the same material over and over again, adding up to a nice income over time. Being paid a revenue share and by page views actually can afford you a better income than being paid outright for an article. For example, if you sold a piece you wrote as a ghostwriter for $10 for a one time payment, you wouldn’t make any more income from that article. The person you sold it to however might because you sold the copyright. You could have put the article on a content site and be paid page views and revenue shares, making the earning unlimited.
To assume one might immediately start making a lot of money from content sites would be a mistake. It does take time for earning to accumulate from page views and revenue shares, but the overall residual earnings will most likely deeply surpass one time payments and selling away your copyright. Using StumbleUpon, Twitter, and other social networking and bookmarking services will help to get traffic and views to your articles online.
One way to get the ultimate financial benefit from each article is to make slight changes for each article before posting it to another site, making it unique. Also consider rewriting some articles with a different slant. For example, an article about helping your overweight dog lose weight and be healthy can be rewritten to be about an overweight cat or hamster, etc. An article about young women starting over after a breakup can be rewritten for young men starting over. You get the point. Almost any article can have various slants, making the article draw more income without much added work.
Some sites that pay writers with revenue sharing and page views are: AssociatedContent.com, Bukisa.com, eHow.com (join their writer’s compensation program), AddsYou.com, Triond.com, Helium.com (their pay structure has changed recently making it more difficult to earn), and Suite101.com.
Other writing jobsites and content writing sites to check out are: Mahalo.com, Textbroker.com, BrightHub.com, DemandStudios.com, LoveToKnow.com, MediaBistro.com, JournalismJobs.com, and Life123.com. For those looking for blogging jobs, try checking out Problogger’s job board at http://jobs.problogger.net/.
Another good idea for earning income by writing online is to look for people who want someone to do guest blogging for their blog. Some people cannot afford to hire a full time blogger so they will ask for someone to do guest blog posts and pay the blogger for their blog posts.
Earning residual income from your writing is wonderful because you generally do the work once (except for rewriting for new slants), and yet the income just keeps coming in. This type of writing won’t make you rich overnight, but it adds up over time. While it’s still great to write and get paid immediately and upfront for freelance work, the benefits of residual income are worth waiting for.
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