Making Money Online - Feb 13th Entry

Making Money Online. The primary reason that I got back into the Web business after being mostly out of it for the past 4-5 years. This past summer, I was able to predict a shortage of money for various reasons, so turned to the Web to start bringing in extra money to help ends meet. As a result, I started to freelance write for AssociatedContent.com, then have expanded my efforts since then to a decent degree of success. Unlike what you will read from other folks on the web, I don't make a killing doing web-based freelance work or web authoring...mainly it helps me get by. I'm still in the just over 1K a month range, and trying to get to 2 phase. One of the things that annoys me with many on the web today is the lack of sharing about how the normal person has success without having to buy an e-book, etc. So...that's why I've decided to start posting at least weekly what I'm doing, what works for me, and what doesn't. If it helps one other person save some time or make more money freelance writing or web authoring than me, so much the better!! Since this is the first post, it will likely be more general to catch the 2 people besides my mother who read this blog up to speed....

Making Money Online - My Freelance Writing Efforts to Date

First a shameless plug for two related articles on the subject:

Making Money Freelance Writing - My Experience

Freelance Writing Jobs - My Top Ten Producing Article TItles

Now, I'll try and not repeat much of what I wrote in those two if you felt like reading them. But, to catch you up...in late October 2008, I started writing for AssociatedContent.com. I covered all manner of topics on there at first, some good, some bad if you read my old stuff. Really, just learning how to freelance write and structure articles for SEO. For those who don't know Associated Content is a freelance writing website which pays money upfront (1-4.50 USD) as well as a going rate per thousand views (1.50 to start with a max of 2.00). I don't think that I've read of anyone who has had a bad experience with AC. THey pay regularly on the 2nd Wednesday of every month for page views, and twice a week for up-front money articles. Sometimes the editors can be a little inconsistent as well as take up to a week to review up-front payment articles, but once you have 3 published the author can self publish for page views-only to the web! Now, after I wrote for AC for about a month, I figured out that the 60 bucks I made writing freelance articles for them wasn't going to get me from here to there. After conducting some research, I decided to apply to Demand Studios who pay $15 USD an article, but you don't get moeny from page views.

Making Money Online - Freelance Writing for Demand Studios

So, I was a bit intimidated after reading several articles on writing for Demand Studios about the rigors of AP style formatted articles, moody editors, lack of topics to write on, etc. Well, I shouldn't have been. I put together a resume, applied and got accepted within a few days. Since then, I would have to say 95% of my editor comments are very valid feedback, and the only two that weren't were on technical topics with editors that were of the say Poet background...
In 2009, the content availability has significantly expanded on DS. I'm shooting for 20 articles a week for them. So far I hit my high at 18 last week ($270). For a point of ref, to-date I have made about $320 on AC (writing since 36 Oct 2008). One of the things that I tell say the less technical friends is that you have to be willing to research a little bit to write for DS. If you've owned a home or played sports you should have a niche on there...let alone if you know things about car repair, business, and so forth....now I would have to say, that I get burned out some with DS. You are basically writing EHow articles for the DS branch of the company who owns Ehow. That's why you won't see me leave AC..can't beat the freedom there even with the lesser amount of pay realized!

Making Money Online - Writing Directly for Ehow

Now, about 8 days ago, I decided that I would make writing for Ehow my third publication forum. Primarily because I didn't want to make Textbroker.com my third outlay any longer (low pay, boring topics...1cent a word though others I know like them). To date, I've written 13 articles for them in the 8 days I've been on there. My profile there is: http://www.ehow.com/members/javanx3d.html. Now, one complaint that I've seen from folks on eHow is that they keep the compensation formula secret so you don't know how much you're going to make freelance writing for them. I don't really know either, 1 week on there (I think they updated the money you've made weekly), 615 views, 13 articles, $.10... needless to say, if the dinero doesn't increase then I'll shift those efforts to other areas. Common feedback for Ehow is that you need to make a lot of friends and burn time on reading and commenting on other freelance authors material in order to make money online in that forum. We'll see. I'll keep you updated. I'm playing nice in the sandbox there (reading, commenting, etc), and hope it comes out to at least a little bit a month!!
Thats all for this post on my efforts on making money online. My next post will cover my efforts on web site hosting with content creation for creating more passive income streams. Comments and feedback are always welcome.