Making Money Online - Article Writing Sites

HubPages is an example of a site where writers can join and post their own articles, on subjects of their choice, in exchange for a share of the site's revenue. Sites like this have several advantages over a blog.

• You don't have to keep posting new material regularly (unlike a blog, where search engines will drop you if you don’t add something new every week).

• You don’t have to worry about designing a layout or writing HTML – it’s all done for you.

• You're a member of a community (writing a blog can be a lonely activity, especially if you don’t get many visitors)

• The site works to maintain a profile on search engines, so you don’t have to – although you will do better if you do some promotion yourself too.

Of course, there's one obvious disadvantage – you get only a share of the revenue - sometimes only a tiny share! How much you get varies from site to site, and some sites (like Helium) won't even tell you how that share is calculated. If you'd like to see some pretty accurate estimations, check out Hal Licino's Hub about what writing sites pay.

However, even a low-paying site is likely to get more traffic than your blog, unless you know how to promote it effectively - so a small share of their traffic may be worth more than 100% of your own!

HubPages doesn't claim to be a place to make a living, although there's a handful of top-class Hubbers cashing in $1,000 a month.

I'm certainly not in that league! For the first few months, I made next to nothing on HubPages. These days I'm making about $120 a month with 90 Hubs - but I know I could be earning much more if I made an effort to promote them.

If you stop and work out how long it took me to write my articles, it doesn't sound like a great return for my effort. But the nice thing is that my Hubs continue earning even if I ignore them – and every time I earn $100, Adsense automatically sends me a cheque.

Compare that to Helium.com, where I have over 190 articles, but it took me 15 months to break $75 even though I promoted them. I can't just ignore the site, either - I have to maintain a rating star to earn anything at all. And they don’t send you any money unless you request it.

For more information, see my detailed analysis of Helium.

I've also tried Thisisbyus.com and MyLot.com, but found that both earned even less than Helium! I've heard similar feedback on Triond and the pay-per-view part of Associated Content.

It is possible to make better money by selling your articles on freelance sites (instead of just posting them online to make ongoing income), but competition is still fierce, with some places offering as low as one or two cents a word.

The problem is, there are lots of people writing articles free of charge on the net - not out of the goodness of their heart, but because writing articles is an effective way to promote other goods, services and websites. These articles may often be written by people without any particular writing skill - but hey, they are cheap content, and some sites are not that fussy!

Helium has a growing Marketplace section where you can compete to be selected by publishers, and there are sites such as Associated Content, Constant Content and Triond where you can advertise your articles for sale (note AC is for American residents only). On these sites, you know what your sale price is, which makes it easier to work out whether the reward is worth the effort. However, even here the prices are dropping as the market becomes saturated with more and more writers chasing online riches.

You'll also find freelance writing sites like Elance where you can bid for projects - but once again, when there are writers out there willing to write an article for $2, the market can be hard to break into. It helps to have a portfolio to show off (which is where sites like HubPages can be useful).

If you're still interested in trying article writing sites, I agree with Hal that HubPages appears to offer the best potential. Be warned - don't expect to earn more than a few cents for the first three or four months, no matter how many Hubs you write! It seems to take that long for your Hubs to start attracting clicks - and cash. You can sign up for HubPages here.

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photo courtesy of desi.italy on Flickr.