Free Writing Center

The Joy of Work for a Company Online

If there was any clearer indication of a very large generational gap it is in terms of what entails proper "work." I’ve always been an avid Internet user, but a few years ago I turned to the Internet to earn part time income in order to pay off some of our debts. Technically, my first work for a company online was with Ebay - selling yard sale discoveries and, eventually, trading antiques. Even though I love writing, online freelance work never seemed very plausible or possible - and most of the sites that promoted any opportunities looked like major scams to me.

Doing Legitimate Work for a Company Online

Online freelance work never entered my mind until the second or third year while I was working as a powerseller on Ebay. I’d just spent three long hours packaging up items for a major shipment, and I was just sick of working on Ebay. The entire process of selling on Ebay consists of taking photos, listing items, packaging and shipping, and dealing with disgruntled customers. The work went around the clock and the mess from packaging was simple atrocious. So one night, I decided to do some Internet research to determine, once and for all, if it really is possible to earn decent income doing work for a company online.

Entering the Fray…And Finally Earning a Solid Income

Earlier in this blog, I wrote a bit about those first few websites I used to earn some income doing online freelance work. The most prominent on my list at the time was Scriptlance , but even there if you plan to work as a writer you have to be willing to churn out articles at a pretty low rate. I’m talking $5 for a 500 to 700 word article. Now that’s hard labor.

However, once I became recognized as worth my salt as a writer, and once I had articles published on the Internet that I could point to, new "buyers" who posted at Scriptlance were more willing to pay a bit more per article. One particular project fascinated me - one guy was looking to hire writers for his blog. Out of curiosity, I did a bit more online research on blogs that were hiring writers and discovered that there’s an entire community of websites and blogs where owners are more than willing to hire excellent writers to create a steady stream of valuable content. College graduates with an English degree must no longer fear a life of squallor and poverty. However, they need to be prepared for the overwhelming onslaught of work that’s available on the web. Yes…real work that pays real well.

It’s Not a Published Novel - But It’s a Job!

The dream of every writer is to publish a novel - but how do you plan to put food on the table or support your family. Is it still fashionable to be a starving writer? The contemporary writer is one who’s a contributor to multiple blogs and websites, building a reputation in the form of a viral meme more powerful than any publication house or agent could ever produce for you. For good writers - the Internet is yours, and if you write well you can be a king.

After about a year performing side jobs for Scriptlance buyers, I applied to become a contributing writer to one website and one blog . Performing as best as I could doing work for a company online, such as these, turned out to be the best opportunity I could have found. After a year or so I found myself promoted up to editor and management status - in effect proving to myself that it really is possible to find success with online freelance work.

The humor in all of it is that at first family and friends viewed the Internet work as all in fun - a side "hobby" that’s just part of my usual computer-obsession. I assured everyone that it was very much a part time job, to no avail. Then one day, one of them asked how much I earn each month through my online freelance work. When I told them, the laughing stopped. Few people understand how quickly and how far the Internet has advanced - and the tremendous opportunities that exist there. That is one reason why I created this blog - to spread the word that there’s an entire online industry that’s booming with opportunities for people who have creative talent.

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Writing on Helium.com Becomes Profitable…Sorta

For anyone who missed it, back in January I commented about Helium.com, remarking that, “Helium is not the place I would recommend going if you hope to earn the big bucks.” As you can see here, I’ve written a fair share of articles at Helium.com, but that was mostly at the beginning of my online writing career, when I didn’t really know any better and was just testing the waters.

Helium Decides to Step it Up a Notch

To my surprise, only a few weeks after I published that article, Helium.com decided to increase their revenue sharing approach. So, in all fairness, I must reassess my original take on Helium. Instead of earning a “paltry” income from investing your time on the site, you will now be earning a “very tiny” income - but only if you’re willing to invest a fair amount of time. Here’s how the new system currently works.

Helium is now willing to offer “up-front” payments for your articles, similar to Associated Content, but at a lower rate and dependent upon your “writing stars” and your “rating stars.” The current rates are as follows:

* 1 Writing Star – $0.50 per article published
* 2 Writing Star – $1.00 per article published
* 3 Writing Star – $1.50 per article published
* 4 Writing Star – $2.00 per article published
* 5 Writing Star – $2.50 per article published

The catch? You have to have “1 rating star.” If you don’t maintain at least a single rating star, you won’t earn those upfront payments. How hard is it to maintain a rating star? Read on.

Rating Articles on Helium is Like Watching Paint Dry

So, for a month or so, I tried to see what it would take to establish and maintain at least one rating star on Helium. At first the help page was very obscure about what, exactly, was required to establish a writing star. I once posted on the discussion boards at Helium.com that I’d rated quite a bit over a few days and hadn’t seen any change, and the next day a rating star magically appeared. Whether this was due to some sort of “processing time,” or just some admin deciding to manually “fix” some technical glitch, it’s impossible to know. A few weeks later, however, Helium.com finally added clarity to their help page.

According the Helium.com help pages, in order to have a single star, you must have a “consistently high rating quality” and have “completed from 10 to 99 rates in the last 30 days or the last 90 days.” A little more clarity is provided below this under a section about rating stars that states to earn rating stars a user must maintain a “75% score,” whatever that means, and complete at least 10 rates in 30 days.

So, for a month I visited Helium.com every day and rated from 4 to 5 articles. Mind you, this was during time when I had several writing projects due in under three weeks, and didn’t really have time to sit around comparing one horribly written article to another and judging between them. Not that all articles were poorly written, but unfortunately most were. In my quest to find additional revenue on the Internet, I was curious if the magical single rating star would finally net some decent profit. It didn’t.

I Gave Up After The First Month

After those first two weeks, I realized quickly that this entire setup will never work. Writers know that it takes time to craft good writing - but to spend countless hours on a website judging and rating published content simply takes up far too much additional time. While 10 rates in 30 days doesn’t sound like a lot, the truth is that the algorithm that Helium uses to calculate your rates isn’t that straightforward. They attribute a “score” to your rates using some mysterious calculation - somehow trying to guess the value of how you rated between two articles based on your timing and reading behaviors while on the rating page. Through some experimentation I found that the system is horribly flawed, and you can lose a rating star far too quickly.

In my humble opinion, when you have the skill, and spend the effort to craft an article that is well-written and enjoyed by readers, the site that is bestowed the honor of publishing that carefully written content should pay for it. Other sites often pay very little in the form of royalties, but at least they pay straight and fair for that content, without playing silly games such as this. In the end, the Helium.com rating algorithm is the very last hurdle that the creators of this intriguing site have to overcome before they’re able to progress anywhere near the level of traffic and popularity as a site like Associated Content and others.

The thing about Helium is that the feel and community of the site is enjoyable. I just wish I could afford to spend more time there. Maybe one day they’ll get it right. When they do, I’ll certainly be one of their biggest fans.

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How the Internet Changed Writing

Here I am, blogging from the comfort of a vehicle, traveling at 70 miles per hour on the interstate. A thought struck me as I watch other passengers texting, using mobile email, or with a laptop on their laps and tethered to their mobile phone - surfing Google just like they were sitting at home. We are living in reality conceived by the sci-fi authors of the past.

In fact, this new reality has changed how writers write. I recall reading ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King, where he describes his writing process of scribbling thoughts and ideas on a piece of paper whenever and wherever the moment struck. He would jot ideas on scraps of paper, napkins, or whatever else was available. Later, he would work on his masterpiece on an archaic typewriter, locked in the laundry room to escape the chaos of family life.

For better or worse, the Internet changed the landscape for new writers. Now, we prove ourselves in blogs rather than in small independent magazines. Today, the creative forces are digitized, published, distributed and syndicated in a few mouse clicks. In the writers’ modern world, when inspiration strikes, we pull out the Smartphone and instantly add those thoughts to our blogs.

Writers like King may lament these cultural and technological changes, but as the King’s mournful Gunslinger would say, the world has moved on.

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Top Internet Examples Writing Free Articles

When it comes to finding real free articles for your website or blog, it can be difficult to find content that consists of good writing. And it’s important to offer the readers of your website with recent articles, not old content from two or three years ago. Unfortunately, most free articles are usually poorly written, with atrocious grammer and absolutely no focus to the text other than stuffing it full of keywords that will hopefully draw traffic. If you are a webmaster or a blogger and you’re looking for high quality recent articles that an intelligent person would enjoy reading, then review the following resources and you’ll be adding the highest quality content to your website or blog in no time.

Adding Website Content Using Real Free Articles

Adding content to a website or blog every single day can quickly turn into a full time job. And when your blog is only producing income of a few dollars a month, the payout simply isn’t worth the effort. However, the only way to increase that revenue is by offering your readership with fresh, recent articles on the niche that you publish about. There are ways to increase the volume of content that you can offer your readership without using up your own valuable time. The four central methods of finding real free articles for your blog or website include the following.

* Pulling the best recent articles from article directories
* Asking expert bloggers for guest editorials in exchange for links
* Hiring low cost “bulk writers” to produce articles and rewrite the content
* Getting prime content for less

Pulling the Best Recent Articles From Article Directories

The best article directories are those that draw the most traffic. Most article directories are made up of volumes of real, free articles, but those articles are usually intended to draw traffic for a particular website or business. The good news is that many of those published articles are still very well written and interesting, regardless of the intent of the article publication. By searching through article directores for real free articles, you can actually find some excellent, well written articles. The authors of those articles allow website owners and bloggers like you to use that article, but only if you maintain the link at the bottom as credit for the work.

This helps the author, because they obtain a free link to their site, and it helps you because you get free content. The only negative to these article directories is the fact that most of the articles are absolutely atrocious. If there was ever any place online where all of the bad writers hang out - this is it. However, with that said, there really are excellent writers there as well, you just need to know where to look.

By far, the top article directory is currently Ezinearticles. In fact, it’s getting much harder to publish anything on Ezinearticles. The editors there will only provide a free account to authors who are eventually “approved” by proving themselves through publishing high quality articles. Otherwise, authors need to pay for an account to continue publishing articles after the initial free trial is over. This is actually serving to improve the quality of content on Ezinearticles. The following directories currently (as of January 2009) make up the top ten article directories online (in terms of Alexa traffic rankings)

1. Ezinearticles
2. ArticlesBase
3. Buzzle
4. ACS Publications
5. Searchwarp
6. Go Articles
7. Article Alley
8. Article Dashboard
9. Article Snatch
10. Idea Marketers

The best way to find the highest quality content is to search these directories by “expert author” status, or just search through the list of “top authors” that most of these sites provide. For example, on Ezinearticles, you can click on “Expert Authors” and get a list of authors sorted by the number of articles the author has published.

You’ll find that most of the authors who’ve published thousands of articles also tend to be better writers. Searching through these articles for content increases your chances of finding real, free articles that are also well written. ACS Publications is unique because it lists high-quality free science and free scientific articles.

Asking Expert Bloggers For Guest Editorials in Exchange for Links

The primary focus of most bloggers, just like one of your prime needs, is to draw traffic. Typically, expert bloggers write, and they write a lot. They usually not only write for themselves, but they often write professionally for other websites and blogs. Another marketing aspect of blogging is writing editorial content for other blogs and websites, where the only payment for the article is a link back to their own blog. In fact, if your website is ranked fairly high in Google, or it gets a lot of traffic, many bloggers would rather receive a link back instead of getting paid, that’s how much value incoming links have for webmasters and bloggers.

The way to do this is by writing a page (or a blog update) about your need for guest writing from other bloggers. Detail your guidelines (minimum words and type of content required) and let writers know that in return for the post, you’ll provide them with a free link back to their site. Provide them with an email or a form where they can contact you to send the article.

Hiring “Bulk Writers” to Produce Articles

Another site that I’ve mentioned before is my favorite freelance website, Scriptlance. Now, I can tell you from experience that Scriptlance is overloaded with people from third world countries who do not have English as their primary language. So if you aren’t careful, you can get inundated with offers from people with horrible writing skills who want to write articles for you. The way to avoid this is by posting a project and making it abundantly clear that you require writers with English as their first language, excellent writing skills and grammar, and no article-farming businesses (businesses with a team of poorly paid writers who sit in a room and pump out countless horrendously written articles).

Once you post your project, you’ll immediately have a list of writers begging to write for you, with offers from $80 per article all the way down to $1 an article. Whatever you do, never hire the lowest bidder or you will receive a Walmart-quality bunch of articles. Instead, opt for the bidder who bids in the middle of the road. The posting and bidding process at Scriptlance is very simple and straightforward, with the project description at the top and all bids underneath.

What a lot of bloggers do is hire low-cost writer to produce drafts of articles, and then the blogger polishes and publishes the final draft themselves.

Getting Prime Content for Less

Of course, the best source of content is going to be a writer or two that you find are capable of producing high-quality content for you. If you find him or her through Scriptlance, that’s great. Pay them what they are worth, and you’ll find that they will keep coming back to produce more content for you. Typically, good quality professionally-written articles are going to cost about $20 for 600 to 1000 words. If you want to cut back, you may find an author willing to write for $15 per article. If you start looking for authors to write professional articles under $10, you’re going to find that the quality suffers. Remember - most of the profit from your website or blog comes from building long-term and loyal traffic. When people see high quality content on your blog or website, you can be confident that they’re going to keep coming back for more. Content should always be your primary focus and where most of your financial investment goes, especially when you can’t afford the time to produce that content yourself.

If you are in need of quality content, and are looking to invest in your website or blog by paying a writer to develop that content for you, I do provide writing services in addition to my normal writing work. You can submit a request using this form (all email addresses remain confidential), and I should be able to help you come up with excellent content for your site that draws the most traffic.

Do you produce your own content or do you hire writers to do it for you? Share your own experiences in the comment section below.

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Top Free Writing Resources and Tools

One of the most valuable uses for the Internet is when you’re in need of free writing, such as free letters or tips about writing. People often don’t realize how often good writing can make an important difference in their life. Whether it’s dealing with a credit card company, writing an invitation or a formal resignation letter, or if you simply want some advice about writing better - good writing gets results.

Finding Free Writing Resources and Tools
In this article, you’ll find valuable links and resources to free letter templates, free tests and free questions, free tutorials to help you practice writing, and resources about writing that offer you with tips and techniques to improve your own writing abilities.

The saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” is very true. I’ve gotten out of some very serious scrapes and nerve-racking situations by writing a poignant and powerful letter. But not all people have the ability to craft the written word into useful prose, so when you need to have that kind of communication with a business or person, it’s important that you know where to turn. Below, I’ll provide you with some of the best online resources for both free and low-cost writing solutions. Bookmark this page and return to it when you find that you need to correspond with someone, or you just want to learn a bit more about improving your own writing skills. This article will cover the following resources:

1. Free Letters And Letter Templates
2. Free Tests and Free Questions
3. Free Practice Writing Tutorials
4. Tips and Techniques About Writing

Free Letters and Letter Templates

One of the most searches for free writing products online is for free letters. People are always finding themselves in a life situation where they need a free letter. They may be retiring, need to write a recommendation letter or a thank you letter, and people aren’t confident enough in their own writing abilities to write a powerful enough letter. The following are some of the best free letter websites that offer you with most of the more common letters.

Letter-Samples.com offers one of the most comprehensive lists of letter samples, including resignation letters, accepting job offers, and a long list of other well written letters.

Freebusinessforms.com provides an assortment of business resources, including free business letters, sales letters, collection letters and more.

TheBase has a list of decent letters in a blog format. Click the tags on the right to access the letter samples.

A1letters has one of the best collections that I’ve found of free letters in various categories, including banking letters, business letters, and a whole list of others.

Rocket Lawyer is best if you need free letters in the legal field. There are some very useful templates at this site for credit and collections, employee issues, proposals, and much more

LettersRep is the best site to purchase a custom letter at very low cost. The page above lists the letters that I currently have offered there, or you can contact me directly through this blog - I do offer customized letters tailored for your specific needs, just ask!

Free Tests and Free Questions

Educators and students are always looking for free tests online that can help them improve their score on various tests that require writing skills, such as the GRE, the ACT, or other educational tests. These tests offer free questions and provide you with the tools and information you need to not only pass these important educational tests, but also to pass them with flying colors. Online, you can find a number of excellent websites that provide such free tests.

WritingTester is a very cool free online test that lets you paste your article into a text field and it returns the “readability” of your writing, as well as the grade level that you write at. This free test isn’t for the faint of heart.

Admissions Consultants is a valuable resource for free information about taking various tests including the ACT, SAT, GRE, and a number of other tests at various educational levels.

Tools For Educators is a very useful website for teachers and professors who have very little time on their hands and need tools that can help them automatically generate free tests for their classes.

Free Practice Writing Tutorials

When it comes to writing an article or ad copy, many people find that they just don’t have the skills to do it. Writing an article takes patience, research, and knowledge of proper grammar and sentence structure, while writing ad copy additionally requires knowledge about how to sell people things through the power of the written word. There are a multitude of other forms of writing that require different skills, and the only way to obtain those skills is through learning how, and to practice writing by writing an array of your own materials.

The following free writing tutorials will offer you a tremendous opportunity to get some free practice with your writing skills.

Vocational Information Center features an impressive and comprehensive list of tutorials on a variety of important topics, but under the “Literacy Tutorials” in particular, you can find free practice with critical thinking, reading skills, resume formats, and much more.

AdCopywriting is a website that’s fairly simple, but it will offer you with a little bit of free practice writing adcopy for sales websites.

DiplomaGuide features this excellent article that outlines an entire list of online writing courses that various schools offer for absolutely free. These classes not only offer free practice with a variety of writing styles, but they will surely improve your writing skills overall.

Tips and Techniques About Writing

When it comes to tips and tricks about writing in general, the best writing advice that you’ll find is write here on Bettercontent. The following articles, which are offered right here on this blog, provide you with examples writing website content, information about writing for clients or websites, and a wide range of other topics growing daily.

Check out these tips and techniques about writing, and visit back often for our latest articles.

• Building Better Website Content - Learn examples writing website content that draws more Google Traffic.
• Best Technical Writing Fields of 2008 - Discover the secret of making money with these examples about writing opportunities in the technical writing field.
• Using Craigslist to Discover Writing Work - Learn how all about writing for employers who post writing gigs on Craigslist.
• Work at Home With Legitimate Online Writing Jobs - Ever hear about writing for websites that pay you royalties? Learn all about websites like Associated Content and Ehow.

Final Words

There is no greater tool to improve your writing skills than practice and dedication. But free writing tutorials and other resources can certainly give you an advantage and a boost to improve your writing abilities. With the online world booming as quickly as it is today, more writing opportunities are constantly becoming available for writers who know how to produce high quality Internet content. This is a niche field that’s growing tremendously, and by improving your writing skills, you’ll be poised to take the online writing industry by storm.

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Using Craigslist to Discover Writing Work

One of the best ways to start really ramping up your income from writing is to use Craigslist to find writing work.

How to Use Craigslist to Find Writing Work

While writing for many of the Royalty-Payment websites will allow you to flex your writing muscles online, and possibly earn you a small monthly income from the articles that you publish, the only way to earn a significant work from home income much more quickly is to land one or two writing gigs.

Ideally, what you’re looking for is a short term, small job where you’ll need to produce from five to ten articles for a webmaster, or some similar job. You could always search Constant Content or Scriptlance for posted jobs - but when you do so, you have to keep in mind that you’ll be competing with thousands of other writers who are searching over the same listings that you are. That doesn’t mean that you can successful land some great jobs at those sites, just just means that you’ll need to lower your price in order to stay competitive.

However, when it comes to Craigslist - you aren’t only searching on one website, you’re searching job listings for every state in the entire country. Lately, Craigslist has started taking on a life of its own, and some people are even turning to Craigslist instead of Ebay in order to buy and sell goods. The fact that Craigslist is becoming so popular so quickly means that Craigslist is a golden opportunity for you to find exciting writing work before anyone else does. Read on to learn how.

Search Through All U.S. States for Writing Jobs

The main page of Craigslist can appear a little bit intimidating.

Not only are there states and cities, there are also other countries. However, since you work from home, and all of the jobs that you’re looking for can be done remotely - the more locations there are, the better for you! Click a State, and the typical State page will offer a search feature like the one shown here.

As you can see on this screen, I’ve entered a search for the term “writer” under the “jobs” category. The results are not overwhelming, but the good news is that there are results!

Now, there are likely to be a number of listings that fall outside of your range of expertise. That’s perfectly fine. However, you’ll also find a number of excellent opportunities where you are very likely to be successful. For example, when I clicked on the “Looking for Freelance Writers…” link, I discovered a news website looking for “qualified writers to contribute to our growing publication.” The pay is a respectable $15 to $30 per article. Now, keep in mind that some of these jobs may be local, but a large number of them are posted by webmasters seeking content - and that’s your forte.

Does searching through each individual State in the entire U.S. feel overwhelming? Well it should! That’s why I’m happy to present the Free Craigslist Reader from Motion Technologies. Thanks to Motion Tech, you can use this free software to search the “Jobs” or “Gigs” categories for all locations. I have to say - this is an unbelievable advantage and a huge time saver.

Check out this single search for “Writer” on all locations:

The only drawback with the search feature of this Reader application is that there is not much indication that the application is actively searching. However, as long as the search bar reads “Cancel Search” and not “Search,” then it’s still scouring all of the listings for jobs. By the time it’s done, you’ll have a list of hundreds of potential writing jobs from all across the country (or the world, if you like!)

In an upcoming post, I’ll go over the best approach to take when contacting a potential client regarding a job posting, a sample contact letter, and how to present yourself in a way that will virtually guarantee that you’ll land the writing gig!

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Make Money Online With Freelance Writing

After a few weeks of earning money by writing for websites like Associated Content, Helium, and Ehow, you’ll get a taste for what it’s like to actually make money online with freelance writing. If you want to work from home, it doesn’t have to involve get-rich-quick schemes or selling cosmetics and bath soaps to your friends and family. If you are a natural born writer, you really can earn a very respectable income by earning money online. Read on to learn how to work from home doing what you already love to do, through online writing jobs.

How to Make Money Online With Freelance Writing Jobs.

There are thousands of ways that you can make money online, earning a lot of income from various online writing jobs. Most blogs and work at home websites will tell you that you need to create your own website or blog and work at building enough traffic to generate ad revenue. In time, they say, ad revenues will generate steady streams of income. While this is partially true, for both your own blogs as well as for content websites like Associated Content, the truth is that those sites will produce steady income later. What you are looking for are ways to start earning good money by working from home right now.

Make More Money by Working on Writing Projects

You’ve probably scoured the Internet for freelance writing sites where you could work for buyers who list writing projects on those sites. Many of the websites are either so poorly created that it’s horrendous to navigate and even figure out how to bid on a project, or the bids on projects are so low that you feel like it’s useless to even try. I’m here to tell you that the bids are misleading. You can win writing projects at these websites, and you can earn significant income from them. The secret is to bid correctly, present yourself extremely professionally, and then perform above and beyond the call of duty. Below, I’ve reviewed the three websites where I earned the most income from online writing jobs. Each has pros and cons, but by using all three, you could be just as successful (or more!)

Constant Content - A Freelance Job Posting Site

It always amazes me, whenever I visit this website, how such an oddly designed site could produce so much income for writers. Constant Content is somewhat difficult to navigate if you don’t really understand how it works.

After you’ve signed up as an author on Constant-Content, to find what jobs are currently available for Freelance writers, you need to scroll down the left side and click on “Requested Content” under the Author Login section. On the requested content page, you’ll find a list of writing projects posted from buyers. These buyers will range from print magazine publishers to website designers. What they all have in common is that they are simply looking for quality articles written by good writers. On the requested content table, you’ll find the requested titles, the date of the request, and even what range the buyer is willing to pay for the completed article. The way the process on Constant Content works is this:

• First, write the article according to the guidelines set by the buyer in the request
• Make sure to assign a price within the range the buyer requested
• Submit your article. You’ll need to wait a few days for Constant-Content to approve it
• Once approved, go back to the buyer’s listing and suggest your article to the buyer
• The buyer will pay you through Constant-Content

In upcoming blog entries, I’ll take you through an actual real-world step-by-step process of submitting articles to buyers on Constant-Content and getting paid for them. This page is an example of what your profile will look like, and any articles you write that don’t sell remain for sale so that other visitors on the web can purchase your articles. Keep in mind that Constant-Content takes a whopping 30% commission for all of your article sales through their website. It’s highway robbery, but without them, you’re article wouldn’t be seen by quite as many potential buyers.

Scriptlance - A Freelance Job Bidding Site

Scriptlance is the one freelance website where I finally discovered that it really is possible to earn a substantial income from writing. This is the king of all freelance sites. It’s focus is website design, but for an online writer, such a website is a goldmine of opportunity to write online content for website designers. When you first sign up with an account, you’ll have a profile page like this.

This profile page is where you’ll monitor the status of all of the projects that you bid on, as well as all of your active projects that you’re working on. Your current balance is displayed, and as you complete projects successfully, your rating will eventually rise - winning you more and better paying jobs. Clicking on the “View Projects” link under Member Login on the left switches to the page listing the latest project postings.

This list is where you’ll spend much of your time, monitoring the latest posts for projects that you could potentially accomplish. Remember to keep an open mind - website designers need content covering a very wide variety of topics. If you’re willing to write about anything, the opportunities that come up are endless. When you see a project you like, post a bid amount that’s competitive but reasonable.

In an upcoming post, I’ll take you through the process of bidding on, and winning, Scriptlance bids by writing winning private message board messages that win over the buyers. The secret of success at Scriptlance is perseverance. Never give up, even when you lose bids, just keep bidding and eventually you’ll have more work than you know what to do with.

Miscellaneous Sources of Freelance Writing Jobs

Other sources for writing work can be located all over the Internet, if you know where to look. It’s best to avoid the websites that are obviously a sales pitch for membership at some freelance listing site. You don’t need to invest money to obtain good freelance jobs, you just need to be diligent about searching for opportunities and applying wherever any arise. Free classified listings are filled with job opportunities from all sorts of folks who need articles for different purposes. By searching these sites, you’ll discover a few additional sources for some excellent freelance writing opportunities.

• Craigslist - Search jobs for “articles” to find writing opportunities from buyers across the world.
• USFreeads - Search through the “employment” and “business opportunities” sections for listings.
• Yahoo! Classifieds and Google Classifieds (Base) also list great opportunities in the job categories.
• LiveSimon - Another popular online classified site listing occasional writing opportunities.
  

There are thousands of free classified listing sites across the Internet with unlimited ways to make money online with freelance writing - the only real limit for earning income from home is how much time you have available to write. Keep searching for those jobs, and make sure to bookmark this blog (or subscribe) for the latest tips and news about the newest online writing opportunities within the writer’s market.

Please use the comments section to share some of your own freelance writing stories and some of your own successes or failures!

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Work at Home With Legitimate Online Writing Jobs

One of the most common questions I’m asked whenever I tell people the sort of online writing work that I do is whether it’s really possible to earn money online through work at home. My answer is always the same, yes - it’s absolutely possible. But you won’t succeed by answering those too-good-to-be-true ads about earning $100,000 a year from home by letting your “computer do all of the work for you!” The magic bullet that I’ve found comes from using your god-given talent to earn a significant income for your family. There are four simple steps you can follow that will get you there. First you need to be honest with yourself about your abilities, then you need to decide that you’re going to work your tail off in order to succeed, and finally - you’re going to decide that quitting isn’t an option.

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The Best Technical Writing Fields of 2008

Whenever an English major graduates, they often find themselves faced with finding a way to make income from a creative art - and this year a fair number of them are asking, “What are the best technical writing fields of 2008?”

Finding the Best Technical Writing Fields of 2008

According to a 2008 article on JobWeb.com
titled “Class of 2008 Steps Into Good Job Market,” the top ten degrees in demand don’t hint at what the best technical writing fields are. However if you review the list closely, you’ll recognize an important advantage to English graduates who excel in creative writing.

Mastering the Art of Writing

The JobWeb.com article lists the usual top “in demand” degrees, including
almost all technical, computer, business, and finance. No surprise there. But what these lists don’t share is a unique new trend that should have creative writing enthusiasts smiling from ear-to-ear. And that is - most technically savvy individuals do not have a clue when it comes to writing. All of the things you’ve learned in the course of earning that English degree may seem useless when you’re undertaking the daunting task of finding a job that actually pays. However, you can earn a substantial living if you’ve mastered the written word.

Success in Freelance Writing

Conduct a search for “freelance jobs,” and you’re likely to get inundated with an endless array of shady looking “job search” sites where you’ll find
“projects” posted for bidding. These are usually run in an auction-style format where you need to bid on a project against an array of other writers. Some of these are legitimate, but others are worthless. Yes, it really is possible to make money by freelance writing, but where do you start? One of the biggest reasons I’ve started this blog is to help good writers learn how to do just that.

Making Money in the Best Technical Writing Fields

I started out as a freelance writer out of necessity. My family needed more money, but I didn’t want to work a second job at night and leave my family alone at home, so I started writing from home. I started out on many of those freelance auction sites, and then before long I’d impressed enough of the people I’d networked with, that the existing client base kept me working as much as I possible could. Before long, there was not even any need to look for a job - they just kept on coming!


Online Technical Writing Fields

The internet has introduced a whole new ballgame for English graduates. An entire world of a seemingly infinite number of websites has been born, and website content is now in demand. Webmasters outnumber good writers by such a large degree, that a huge majority of new websites sit dormant and empty as webmasters search for someone with the ability to produce high-quality, SEO optimized unique content.

This need has opened up an entire niche market for English majors that never existed before, and the sad part is, so many creative writers and technical writers who would excel in this field either do not know about it, or they are stuck in the “old-school” literary mentality where Internet writing is “beneath” them. Meanwhile - the rest of the smart writers are left to reap the financial rewards. How? It’s not that hard, and you don’t need to be a technical writing genius.

• Freelance Websites - One good example of a high volume freelance site is Scriptlance. You’ll find yourself competing with writers from India who can hardly string together a coherent sentence, but once a few of the web designers realize the quality of your work (you’re allowed to provide samples), you’ll get hired quickly. But at first, you’ll need to keep your rates competitive - you can raise them later, once you’re established. This blog will host a review of the top Freelance Websites in coming weeks.
• Advertisements - One of the last places most writers look for work are free online ad communities. Yes, while you may need to sift through countless ridiculous “work-at-home” ads - more and more you’ll discover webmasters, lawyers, and businesses seeking anyone who can write exceptionally well to develop content for their websites.
• Get a Job - Sure, as an English major, you’re sick of hearing that phrase from family and friends. Maybe you’d like to focus on writing that first novel, instead. Well, you can still support your family by signing up to write for the many blogs and websites that pay writers an actual fixed “salary” for writing a certain number of articles or posts every month. Didn’t think such a job really existed? Well it does - and many pay fairly well.
• Earn Royalties - There are countless websites that offer to pay writers royalties on the ad revenue their articles earn. Honestly, this is a way for websites to take advantage of writers. You could earn more by starting your own blog and posting your own articles. Except for one thing - they’ve got traffic that you ain’t got. So that means that while you’re not working on writing projects, you should be building an entire archive of “revenue-earning” articles at as many of these sites as you can find. These will be reviewed in future blog updates as well.

The Internet has Opened a Whole New World of Writing

Whether you’re a recent college English graduate, or you are a stay-at-home partent with exceptional writing skills, you can work from home and earn a fortune. Writing has been an undervalued skill for many years. But now - writers are going to take over the online world. Through patience, research, and hard work, you can build an amazing career within this unique and promising niche. Subscribe to this blog today, follow along every day, and get ready to kick-start your writing career.

Coming Next: The path to work from home and earn over $50,000 a year.

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Twilight the Book Teaches New Writers How to Get Published

By now, everyone is starting to understand that Twilight the book and Twilight the movie are quickly becoming the next cultural phenomenon, much like Harry Potter was. But, as a writer, one of the most amazing things about Stephenie Meyer’s novel, Twilight, is the fact that it destroys many of the myths about getting yourself published. And more importantly, Stephenie provides a wonderful play-by-play of her experience getting her first book, Twilight, published.

Twilight the Book offers New Writers Hope

Stephenie Meyer’s completed her spellbinding manuscript of Twilight the book in only three months. This is an amazing feat, regardless of the fact that she describes how the process of writing it became almost like an addiction. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, but was at least able to control the desire to write enough to only write at night after the kids were in bed. Her description of the writing process, which she provides in detail at her website, is almost as intriguing to me as the novel itself. Every writer out there can feel the sort of emotions she describes as she struggles to get the words on paper in the same way it appears on the movie screen of her mind. Soon enough, the book would become Twilight the movie. But first, she needed to get published.

How to Get Published Using Twilight, the Book, as a Guide

The story that Stephenie describes is a wonderful lesson in humility and perseverance. Every new writer who has ever attempted to publish a book can feel the pain and rejection she describes when receiving rejection after rejection, some more harsh than others. She describes one case in particular as follows:

The only rejection that really hurt was from a small agent who actually read the first chapter before she dropped the axe on me. The meanest rejection I got came after Little, Brown had picked me up for a three-book deal, so it didn’t bother me at all. I’ll admit that I considered sending back a copy of that rejection stapled to the write-up my deal got in Publisher’s Weekly, but I took the higher road.

The Process of Getting Published

The process she describes to get published, however, is a perfect outline for all new novelists to follow. Unlike common belief among young writers, you do not simply mail off your manuscript to every publishing house you can find. The first step is the most difficult, you need an agent. It may be a long and difficult road, but a good writer with excellent skills and an amazing storyline will ultimately find success, just as Ms. Meyer did. The road she took to final publication was as follows:

• Subscribed to WritersMarket.com in order to find publishers and literary agencies that accept unsolicited submissions
• Listened to advice regarding “good” literary agencies with an established reputation
• Sent out multiple queries to all of those contacts
• Suffered through countless rejections until Writers House asked to see more of her book

Her description of the moment Writer’s House asked for her entire manuscript is every writer’s ultimate dream. She writes:

It was a very nice letter. She’d gone back with a pen and twice underlined the part where she’d typed how much she enjoyed the first three chapters (I still have that letter, of course), and she asked for the whole manuscript. That was the exact moment when I realized that I might actually see Twilight in print, and really one of the happiest points in my whole life. I did a lot of screaming.

Every Writer’s Dream

A month later she was picked up by Jodi Reamer, an agent with Writer’s House. After a bit of editing work and Jodi promoting her book, before long Stephenie’s novel was picked up by Little, Brown and Company. The entire process? Six months. The book is not skyrocketing in popularity and is due to become a blockbuster hit as Twilight, the movie, is set to break records. It’s an amazing tale isn’t it? Stephenie’s tale, that is. And every writer out there, the successful and the not-so-successful, find a bit of solace in her success, because if it’s still possible for new writers like Stephenie to realize such wonderful success - then there’s still room in the world for future success stories just like hers.

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