Writing on the Internet

Posted on: May 25th, 2009 By: Shen-Li

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In Writing Magazine, there was an article about making money writing on the internet which I thought was quite interesting. For many writers, writing on the internet may be the easiest way to get your work published where it may be viewed by anyone and everyone. However, whether anyone actually reads it is another question altogether.

Nevertheless, if you have something in print that is accessible to a reader, you are still considered a writer, are you not? You could write a book, have it self-published and not succeed in getting a single copy sold, but there it is – a book written by you in black and white. Or are you only considered a writer if someone actually reads your work?

Anyway, I’m not here to debate the finer details of what defines a writer and what does not. I merely wanted to add that there are other ways to write on the internet and earn and income besides the methods that were outlined in Writing Magazine – which I thought highly limited.

Just in case you don’t read Writing Magazine, let me briefly explain the method they outlined. Basically, what you are required to do as a writer is to look for paid writing jobs or assignments and bid for them. If you’re selected, you write the article as per the instructions provided and submit it for payment. You could be paid as little as $1 for 500 words to something like $250 for a one page article, depending on where you sourced your assignment from.

As you can see, it can be a profitable method of making an income, especially if you can score a few of those $250 assignments. However, with the price tag comes the requirement of proving your writing skills and ability.

I have tried something similar to this through a site called Academia Research. Before you get accepted on their panel of writers, you are required to pass a test – which is to prove your writing ability. From what I gather, the sites that actually require you to sit for a test generally offer better paid writing assignments so it is worthwhile to take the extra effort and sit for the test.

I only ever joined one such group so I don’t know if there were other writing sites that were better or worse. My main gripe was that it was difficult to score assignments if you didn’t access your computer regularly. Secondly, the deadlines were usually extremely short – quite difficult to meet if your daily schedule is as unpredictable as mine.

The good news is that there are other ways to make an income writing on the internet. You can join writing groups that split the profits generated by the site across its writers. For instance, Helium and Hubpages are two such sites.

What I like about sites like these is that you can write your articles on topics of your choice, you can take as long as you want to write them and you can submit as many articles as you want. Generally, the more articles you write, the better your income.

The downside is that you have to write a lot of articles before you start to see a decent income. Hubpages recently sent out a 30 day writing challenge where they invited their writers to submit an article a day. They believe that you need to have at least 30 articles before you can start to see some money and more if you really want to make a serious income. If you want to, you could also take that suggestion and do the same with Helium – start publishing an article a day for 30 days to see what happens to your earnings.

I’ve been thinking about taking on that challenge myself (I’m a writer on both Helium and Hubpages) now that I’m feeling more energy in my second trimester of this pregnancy.

If you know any other writing sites available where writers can make money writing articles for, please list them in the comments below – thanks!