Freelance writing sites have really taken off in the past year or so, so much so that if you are inclined to work your ass off, you can actually make a living of sorts solely by writing for people who post freelance projects online.

Some of the top freelance project sites include: www.elance.com, www.guru.com, and www.craigslist.com.

In addition to these sites, you can also pick up money through Google Adsense (or other pay-per-click advertisers) if you write for www.hubpages.com, www.helium.com, or www.associatedcontent.com. Helium and Associated Content also offer you the chance to sell first rights or total rights to your work, usually for between $10 and $50 per article, depending on the specific topic and the potential for earnings for the buyer.

To get started at the freelance sites you need to put up a decent profile with a real photo of yourself and list your qualifications. Elance has some tests you can take for a fee, and you can also pay a modest fee to have your references indepentently verified by them.

Elance claims that paying for these extras can help you get work, but I've found them to be unnecessary. Since buyers rarely reveal much of anything about themselves, I decided they don't need to know that much about me either, beyond the fact that I can write and I am willing to do it for money. Utimately it's your work that gets you work, after all. I do put my real self on my profile though, with a real photo.

As you might expect, writing for money on the internet is not easy, and you will need to heed certain warning signs so you can cut your losses at the first whiff of trouble before someone runs all over you for very little pay or stiffs you entirely. I've been doing freelance work online this since November of last year, and I've had good and bad experiences, but I've noticed that the bad experiences do fall into certain patterns that can be described in detail.

So, on suggestion of Hubpages favorite CJ Stone, I decided to share some of the bad experiences here by way of warning.

1. The buyer keeps changing the scope and/or terms of the project.

Keep it simple. You should always contract for the short term and be as detailed as possible about what you will deliver and when. Then write the thing, get your money, and be done with it. If the buyer wants more, you can always write up a repeat project as many times as you need to do it.

Agree to write a single article at a time or small batches of copy, nothing bigger at one gulp. This prevents confusion on both sides, but it also keeps the buyer from changing the terms in the middle of the project. This techinique of constantly changing up the terms is just another version of the "baffle them with bullsh*t" routine used by any number of con artists. Don't fall for it.

If you agree to write for a buyer who starts changing his mind constantly after you've already reached an initial agreement, stop immediately. Inform the buyer that you will not start writing again until he or she rewrites the project on the new terms, and you are able to rebid on it through your third party broker site (for example, Elance). That way you at least have a paper trail of what is owed for what.

2. The buyer wants to pay you outside the venue already set up at the freelance site.

Freelance sites charge fees. Elance charges fees on a sliding scale depending on the scope of the project and the writer's specific membership plan. For instance, I usually pay Elance 8.75% of what I make for keeping my payments in escrow and brokering the work. Sometimes buyers will suggest that they pay you through Pay Pal or some other method to avoid going through the freelance site and to avoid any fees or negative feedback should you get mad at them. If the buyer suggests this, refuse. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose once you are lured away from the (extremely minimal) oversight of the freelance broker.

3. The buyer is still asking for work after you've completed what was agreed upon.

The ugly truth is that sometimes you will get stiffed. If you have finished what you agreed to write and the buyer wants additional material or wants the material reworked in some way that was never spelled out at the beginning, you can (and in 99% of the cases should) ask to be paid for what you've done before embarking on any significant changes or additional work. Most buyers will pay if billed at this point, even when they are asking for more. If the buyer doesn't pay and goes off in a huff (this has never happened to me), at least you only got stiffed for one article, not one article and 12 rewrites.

4. After finishing a project and being paid, you receive a private email from a buyer asking you if you'd be interested in working on something else, outside the freelance site.

This one is tough, because it can be flattering to be pursued, but most of the time when a buyer does this its because they are going to try to run you around in some way that would get them kicked off the freelance site. A tactful way to handle this situation if the work sounds interesting is to say something like, "I'd love to do that. I'll write it up at Elance and when you accept the terms I'll get started right away. Can you escrow for it? Thanks!"

'Escrow' means the buyer puts the money up front in an account at Elance and then releases the payment once the work is complete. I never take any work anymore that can't be escrowed. It's much harder for a buyer to stiff you if the money is already being held by a third party.

5. Something feels 'off' to you about the project but you aren't sure what it is and you don't know how to back out.

If something feels off, it's because something is off. Trust your instincts. Don't waste another second of your valuable time analyzing what is wrong and why; just run! You know how to run. Say you have to wash you hair, your grandmother just died, you have projectile diarrhea, 'ta ta', gotta go, gotta get, whatever! Just cut the cord and get out ASAP. Seriously, you are not that important to whomever is driving you bonkers, so just get out and let them find someone more acceptable to torment. The sooner you get out, the sooner you can go on to a project that feels good.

Of all the bits of advice I've collected since I started freelancing, this bit has been the most helpful: Get out and don't look back when it feels 'off.' The best part of working for yourself is that you get to decide what you will do and for whom you will do it. You get to fire your clients when they aren't working out, and you don't have to give them your real reason. "I have to wash my hair," works just fine.

Writing for money online can sometimes feel like being pecked to death by pigeons. Twenty bucks here, a hundred there, a few dozen articles on the benefits of foot powder and twenty blogs posts on MLM schemes to sell the marketing plans for the foot powder... It's not all glamour and bright lights. Every now and then, let it go and write what you love whether you get paid for it or not.

The truth is, writing has never been a lucrative profession for most people who try it. It's like pro football: a few superstars make all the money and the rest of us work in call centers and retail and feel sorry for ourselves while purging our demons through penmanship on our own dime. Our writing may matter in the long run or it may be a complete waste of time. We really don't know what effect, if any, we are having on others, but we always can tell if we are happy with our own work or if it is driving us crazy.

So don't let the pigeons devour you. Pick up your chickenfeed when you need it, but don't let your paid work define your success and never confuse it with who you are as a writer. Get paid projects when you can, and get as much money as you can for pecking at them.

Then, write from your heart, for free.

One day, who knows? It might actually pay off.