If you have spent any time looking for ways to make more money as a freelance writer, you probably have stumbled across quite a few different self-publishing websites. Such websites (including Yahoo Voices, eHow, and others) generally allow you to write articles on topics of your choice, and many will pay you either an up-front fee for that article or will offer a pay-per-hit rate based on how many people view your articles. Some websites will offer a combination of both up-front and pay-per-hit, which is a great benefit.
There are some people who have posted articles on these sites who claim to have reached a level of income that is equivalent to a full-time job by simply writing a few articles per day. That may or may not be true, and of course there is some debate and personal opinion involved in determining what a full-time rate actually is. However, the fact is that it likely would take the average freelance writer years of publishing several articles per day to reach even $2,000 per month from such a site. However, rather than view such sites as the end-all, be-all for your freelance writing career, you can view them as a great way to supplement your income. Here are some things to consider for such sites:
Assignments. Many websites will have assignments that you either have the option of working on or that you would be required to work on. For instance, eHow requires you to choose from an extensive list of topics that fall into your areas of expertise while Yahoo Voices allows you to write about anything under the sun. Yahoo however, also offers other options such as becoming a special contributor in certain areas, in which case you would be required to submit so many pieces per month on a certain topic. While some people enjoy the freedom to write about whatever they want, others find the structure of assigned topics to be easier to work with. Keep in mind that fulfilling assignments will often get you a higher up-front payment than writing on your own topics.
SEO. With many of these websites paying at least a portion of your compensation based on the number of hits your articles receive, you will want to learn the basics of SEO (search engine optimization) and implement these techniques into your articles. Writing SEO-rich articles will help to get your articles more highly ranked on search engines, which means that your articles will likely get more views. And this means that you will get paid more for your efforts over the long run.
Payment. One of the benefits of the pay-per-hit sites is that you can get paid even when you don’t publish articles for a month or two. All of the articles you have posted will continue to be available for viewing on the internet, and as long as people continue to view them, you will get paid. Many writers will try to build up this source of income. While it certainly is not steady income (as views fluctuate), if you have many articles published you will find that having a little bit of recurring income that you no longer have to work for is nice. It is similar to getting a royalty check in the mail for a book you published years ago.
If you have not considered writing for such websites, you may want to consider starting. The money will be rather low at first. However, after you have built up a significant amount of articles that people are viewing every day and are submitting at least a few articles regularly each month, these websites can yield you several hundred dollars a month in income pretty easily.
Interested in getting started with one of these sites? HubPages is one of the leading ‘self publishing’ sites. Sign up with them, and start writing. And if you have any questions, send me an email, and I’ll guide you as best as I can. Sign Up For HubPages
