reginapaulwrites

I get this question a lot from people interested in breaking into freelance writing. The truth is paying anyone to get leads in my opinion is a waste of money. There are a number of reasons I believe this, one of those reasons is my own experience with having tried one of the paid services when I first decided I wanted to write full-time. What I discovered astonished me because at the time I was under the impression that all writers got their start that way. What I discovered is that most job leads that a paid service gives you can be found elsewhere for free. That’s right for free. Fortunately for me I was able to get my subscription cancelled before I lost more than $32.95, but I know a lot of beginning writers aren’t so lucky. Another reason paying a service is a bad idea is that the jobs are rarely updated. I frequently found jobs on the one paid for site that I had a subscription to that had been openly posted on free sites as being filled and no longer available. Many of these paid for sites can be found as Google ads, saying things like, “Make $1000 a day with your writing!” and other unsubstantiated claims. I usually avoid any Google ads with writing gigs for this reason. Another trick they use is where someone will put up a one page website that lists these so-called “services” where you pay a monthly fee to get job leads, keep in mind these are just leads, not actual jobs as the Google Ads sometimes deceptively give the impression of.

I’ll bet you’re wondering about bidding sites right? Well, bidding sites can give you jobs, it’s true, but the problem with them is that there is always going to be someone that is willing to bid much lower than you. Quite frankly I’ve never been able to win jobs on these sites because I refuse to accept less than what my work is worth, even for a good review. Throw in paying a monthly fee to be able to move around and bid on the number of jobs I want, and you begin to see why I think they are a waste of time. If you decide you do want to try a bidding site anyway, Odesk is the only one that doesn’t charge and gives you a large number of monthly bids. But again, while you don’t pay a monthly fee, what I’ve found on the site is that people are willing to get paid almost nothing in order to outbid you and get the job.

The best way that a beginning writer can start making money is by writing for one or more of these sites:

 Associated Content (they pay a flat rate as well as pay for every thousand hits)

E-how (this is revenue share unless you sign up with Demand Studios then you get revenue share and a flat rate of pay ususally $15.00/per article)

Hubpages (revenue share)

Squidoo (revenue share)

These are just a few of the places that pay writers. I work regularly with the top two listed and then the others sporadically as I have time in between my higher paying gigs.  You can also look on Craig’s List which posts thousands of writing jobs weekly.

Remember you don’t have to pay anyone to find writing jobs!

Good Luck!

While it is possible to get writing gigs even if you don’t have a portfolio, it definitely makes getting gigs a lot easier when you do have one! When I made the decision to write full-time I knew I was going to need samples of my writing and if those samples were actually published this would be in my best interest. Not wanting to take the time and energy to put up a website I decided instead to look for places that I could post articles for payment whether by revenue sharing or a flat payment or both. The two places that I chose to write for initially were Associated Content and E-how. Associated Content has both flat payments and what they call a bonus program where you make a certain amount of money each month based on the number of views your articles receive. E-how has a revenue sharing program that has become quite lucrative for me and I know of others who make up to $1000 a month on E-how.

So, why am I tell you this and how does it relate to having a portfolio? Well, it relates in this way. Since I started my freelance writing career, two of my longest standing gigs came from people that came to me and asked me if I wanted to write for them because of articles they’d read that I’d written on Associated Content. That’s how writing for websites like Associated Content and E-how can really pay off in terms of both money, gigs, and having a portfolio. People that need writers look at websites like Associated Content and E-how for writers, and when they see someone whose writing they like, they do offer that writer a job.

Websites like Associated Content, and E-how can not only help you make money writing, but they can help you build a portfolio that brings you more money because they can net you writing gigs. So, the moral of this story, yes you do need a portfolio, Virginia. However, why not get paid to create your portfolio while you are waiting for those higher paying gigs to come along?

Have you ever wondered what all the talk about affliliate marketing and blogging is all about? Well, believe it or not as a blogger ie writer you can make more income, passive income in fact by combining your blogging with marketing affliliate products.

Affliliate marketing is where you promote someone else’s product for them, and if you make a sale for the author of the affiliate product, they pay you a portion of that sale.  Here’s what you need to be able to successfully market affliliate products:

1. A high traffice blog on a subject of interest. Don’t worry if you don’t have a blog that  gets a lot of traffic or if you are just starting out. The important thing is to build your blog and your traffic first. This can take up to a year, but I’ve seen some that were able to do it in six months.

2. A click bank account so you can look up different affililiate products that relate to your blog’s subject, or if you already know of affiliate products then use those.

3. Some knowledge of HTML. The way this can work is that rather than putting ads up on your blog for affliliate products which it has been my experience turns readers off, you can instead find words in your blog postings that relate to the the subject the affiliate product is on and then make those words a link to the affiliate product’s page. It doesn’t guarantee a sale, but at least people may be curious and click on the link to see where it goes. Be sure that you don’t litter your posts with these. Don’t link to anymore than three affiliate products in one post, otherwise you’ll turn your readers off.

 Oh, and keep in mind that Today.com does not allow this sort of promotion in their blogs. You’ll need to put up another blog at Blogger.com or some other platform to be able to put this into motion.

Up until a year ago I had never even heard the term PLR and because of that would never have considered it to be an avenue to helping my freelance writing career. PLR stands for Private Label Content. The great thing about PLR is that online business owners are always looking for it. PLR articles and content can be rewritten and in fact it is encouraged that business owners rewrite any PLR articles or content that they purchase from writers.

So how does this help you the freelance writer to make more money? Well, believe it or not, you can write PLR content. That’s right you. Even if you’ve never written PLR articles before you can start right now. The nice thing about PLR articles is that they don’t have to be perfect, nor do they have to be particularly long. The main things online business owners who purchase PLR articles are looking for are a) articles that fit their niche b) articles that are written well enough that it is easy to rewrite them c) articles that don’t cost an arm and a leg

As a writer you have two avenues for selling PLR articles and content, you can a) sell them yourself in packages from your own website using a Paypal buy now button or b) you can find a website online that is willing to pay you to write PLR articles and content for their membership website. Personally, I prefer the idea of selling PLR articles from my own website. While this does entail a bit more work on my part such as advertising and setting up the Paypal buy now button, I like it because I can set my own price and I get to keep 100% of the money made.

A few pieces of advice I would give those just starting out writing PLR articles a) don’t get too detailed, or do tons of research because typically you’re only going to make a few dollars an article on PLR articles b) Pick a niche, research it and then write spend a day or two writing ten or twenty articles in that niche, then you can sell a pack of twenty articles for $20 c) If the idea of not being able to claim the work bothers you ie that you don’t get to say “you” wrote those articles since this is essentially ghostwriting, then you may want to skip writing PLR content and articles.