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Alternatives for Freelancer Writers
Guest Post by Eric Bank:
A majority of freelance writers will testify that the arrival of blogging and site-building assignments cannot be reliably predicted. Intense periods of non-stop activity are often punctuated by unwelcome spells of “enforced rest”. Unfortunately, expenses keep mounting even during the non-productive periods. There are, however, a few fee-per-article organizations that freelance writers can turn to when necessary.
With a daily viewership exceeding 70 million visitors, the biggest and most well-known of these “content farms” is Demand Media Studios (DMS), the company that owns AnswerBag, eHow and LiveStrong. As with most other content publishers, DMS requires new authors to submit a writing sample of approximately 400 words. Upon approval, you initiate a try-out phase in which you have a week to complete three blogs. It’s up to you to choose your article topics from the DMS portfolio of over 160,000 titles. You can winnow your picks by screening for topic, file format, and fee. Let’s analyze each selection factor:
- Topics: DMS provides sixteen top-level topics such as weddings and automotive. Each topic can cover dozens of subtopics that guide you as you choose your articles. For instance, should you like weddings, you’ll see subtopics on brides, decorations, engagement rings, and so forth. Even though most competent freelancers can write cogently on almost any subject, it is sensible to pick topics that correspond to your interests and background. DMS favors a helpful yet professional writing voice that requires some familiarity with your topic. In other words, you are encouraged to select topics you already understand.
- Formats: You can select from about two dozen formats, ranging from item lists to full “topic views”, which are well-balanced articles that explore a topic from an array of viewpoints. You needn’t be worried about the details of different formats because DMS has a style guide for each one. In fact, DMS has assembled a fairly comprehensive set of resources that aid new authors in rapidly acquiring a feel for their assignments. Articles require 400 to 500 words. (To be honest, I invariably write on business topics that, in my opinion, require at least 600 words to cover in sufficient detail. I once got slapped down for writing a 700 word article. Bottom line — you should stay close to the length limits). You initially may find it useful to work with several formats — you’ll quickly discover a few that match your inherent writing style.
- Fees: Seriously, you are not going to retire on a private island working for DMS, but if you have other sources of revenue, the modest cash you earn from DMS might come in handy. Fees for write-ups range from $3 to $40, but the majority of articles earn $15 or $17.50. In addition, you can sign up for a revenue-share plan in which an author creates articles from his or her own subject list; the articles pay to the degree they assist in generating click-through revenue for advertisers. Payday is semi-weekly via PayPal.
It’s possible to reserve up to a dozen articles at once, but be advised you have only one week to complete the bunch. I usually reserve just two or three because there are always a lot of topics from which to select. Every article you post is edited by an experienced copy-editor. These folks will occasionally return your work so that you can patch up any particularly significant errors. Most editors will make the small fixes for you. You will be evaluated with respect to grammar and research; it is a one-through-five point rating system sorted by month. Just hang tight and you’ll quickly learn how to satisfy the editors.
Besides freelance writers, DMS works with movie makers, copy-editors and topic professionals. Wages vary by job. Other players within the content creation and distribution industry include iSnare, Writer’s Access, Suite 101, and About.Com (operated by the New York Times). If you want or need to earn some extra cash and can devote a little time, perhaps a gig with one of these content farms will be worth your while.
Based in Knoxville, Tenn., Eric Bank has been a freelance writer of business-related articles since 1985. He holds a Master of Business Administration from New York University and an Master of Science in Finance from DePaul University. Eric freelances through HedgeFundWriter.Com and EricBank.Com.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
A lot of people, including sahms are looking to make money online in their spare time (as if they have any!)so look to affiliate marketing as an option. Affiliate marketing, also known as internet marketing is increasingly popular as a way to make money online.
Stay at home parents, work at home entrepreneurs, and people looking to up their income are looking at monetizing their computers with affiliate marketing. It can be done in your spare time and you can even fire your boss and do it full time if you are really good at it.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Companies pay people sales commission for facilitating a sale for them. That means that you don’t have to physically sell the product but you do have to get people to buy a product through your link. Companies that have affiliate programs will set up a system that allows you to use a specific link to get people to buy from you or there are other ways to capture data about the sale as well. You can work through affiliate programs for individual companies and through affiliate networks.
How do you get affiliate sales?
There are a multitude of options for getting people to buy through your link. You can simply capture the attention of people who are looking for something specific and get them to buy through you and you can also pre-sell someone on that something specific so you create sales for yourself. This can be done any number of ways such as:
- pay per click advertising
- writing product reviews
- niche blogging
- article marketing
- e-mail marketing
- and more
What sorts of products can be sold through affiliate programs?
You name it and you can probably be an affiliate for it. It’s a win-win for the company selling it because they capture more sales and only pay you if there’s an actual sale. You can sell physical retail products and you can sell dowloadable products, and you can sell services such as consulting, memberships, and more. Affiliate marketing opens many doors of possibility once you learn a bit about target audiences, keyword targeting, search engine optimization, social media, and other aspects of online marketing.
How do you get paid?
Affiliate programs work in different ways. Some programs pay you instantly per sale via PayPal. Some programs send you checks when you reach specified payment thresholds. You’ll want to read all the fine print in any program you consider joining and look at what others say about the profitability of that program. Results will vary but looking into the potential of various programs is smart before investing time and / or money in them.
How can you learn to be a successful internet marketer?
You can find many online sources of free entrepreneur information and you can take some shortcuts and get earning sooner if you buy information products that are guaranteed to teach you. (For example, a friend and mentor, Matthew Bredel recently launched a learning program called Tru-Guru that teaches you how to start your own online business and if you join you get a free copy of the book “No Money Marketing” that I co-wrote) There’s a lot to learn but this can be a huge potential opportunity for you to supplement your income, replace your income, or get debt free and save for something awesome.
3 Ways to Work at Home Writing For eHow.com
Are you making money yet with ehow? Here are three ways that writers can make cash from the ehow.com website.
All of these options have the potential for great earnings. You’ll probably have to pick one of these, though because you’ll be unable to use all three due to non-compete clauses. I have opinions on which program is best which I share below.
Good Option: Get Paid to Work With WRG
Writer’s Research Group is a writing company that will pay you to write eHow articles due to their contract with Demand Studios. I worked for them for several months in 2007 and ghostwrote about 70-80 articles for the eHow.com website. They were a professional company but it took me about 3 months to get my first pay. You can get paid to write how-to articles through them and they have other clients as well but whn you write for WRG but must sign a non-compete clause. Writers should be VERY careful about signing non-compete clauses as it can seriously hamper your earning potential in the future. If you’re not in the U.S, this can be a good option for you to earn money writing.
Better: Work With Demand Studios Directly
Demand Studios owns eHow.com and will pay writers to write directly for them. They have a self-serve system where you can claim titles and submit your own ideas and they pay weekly via PayPal. I was accepted into this program after I left WRG, but luckily realised I wasn’t really eligible due to being Canadian before I submitted my first article.
BEST: Passive Income With The eHow Writer Compensation Program
The eHow Writer’s Compensation Program (WCP) is a system that enables you to do revenue sharing by writing your own articles. You get to put your own name on them also so these are NOT ghostwritten. I’d love to make money this way but it’s for Americans only (at least for the moment.) You can still write on the program if you’re non-U.S but you won’t get paid directly.
It can be good for high profile clips or to help you promote your other websites. If you use it now and they open up beyond their borders later, you’d be set to earn some cash. Because this site is a highly ranked site, it can help you get a lot of traffic!
How much can you earn?
Demand Studios doesn’t divulge the % or formula so you’re writing similarly to writing for Google Adsense where they keep the formula secret to maintain the integrity of the system. The great thing about the eHow writer compensation program is that instead of writing and getting paid once, you can write something once and earn from it for ever and ever. You do need to write the right way in order to maximise your earning potential, though…
That means you’ll need to learn a bit about hot trends to write on subjects that have good earning potential and you’ll want to learn a bit about search engine optimisation (SEO) as well.
When I wrote for WRG, I wrote some titles that I’m sure would have earned me a lot of money had I written them for the writer’s compensation program instead. They are coming up in the search engines regularly near the top (or at the top) of Google’s results even today. I now know that the $10 per article I earned could have earned me hundreds of dollars by now.
Learn to Maximise the Writer’s Compensation Program’s Potential:
My writing friend MariaO’Brien wrote an ebook on how to make money through this program. She’s been doing it for several months and is making over $1,000 a month now from the program, mostly through residuals. The longer you do this, the less effort it takes because articles you wrote six months ago could be gaining momentum.
I just finished reading her e-book and highly recommend it! Check out the book. Maria has spent a lot of time perfecting her methods and shares those methods in this book.
The great thing about this program is that taking ten minutes to write an article now could earn you money indefinitely. I once wrote a blog post for a shared revenue blog that took me literally 2 minutes to write and since late 2006 it has been earning me $20-$30 a month in Google Adsense revenue ever since and I’m not even getting all the revenue from it! I can only daydream about how much I’d have earned by now if it were on ehow.com considering their high monetization and traffic results! That’s why this program is so awesome. You get to capitalise on e-how’s Google juice to get maximum exposure for your articles which could have some great results.
