If you would like to make a living as a freelance writer then there are various options available to you. One, of course, is to join up with websites like hubpages and then write articles on subjects which interest you and which you know a bit about. This can be great fun and a good way to learn your craft as you get complete freedom over what you write about and you also keep complete ownership and control of your writing after it is published. Some people do make a living writing for sites like hubpages, but unfortunately most do not.

The other option is writing what publishers need rather than what interests you, and this is often how most freelance online writers make their money. You can advertise your services as a freelancer on various sites, and this might get you some work, but one certain way to make money from writing is to write reviews. There are various sites, which I will list here and give a bit of information on, who are always looking for people to write reviews of various things from books to movies to electronic gadgets and so on. You won't ever make a fortune like this, but there is always work out there and the great thing is that a short review which you can knock out in 20-30 minutes is often enough, so you get a steady income without it eating up too much time. You can then still keep looking for more glamorous freelance jobs which may pay highly whilst earning your 'bread and butter' money from reviews.

Book Reviews Bookmarked is a new site lauched recently where users who sign up for a fre account can submit and vote on book reviews, join groups etc. It lets you write reviews of any book you like and then publish it and start earning from your work. You can make money in two ways: firstly if you have a google adsense account then you can add your publisher id from your profile page after you sign up for a free account, and then you get a share of the advertising revenue generated by the whole site (not just the pages your work is published on!) depending on how popular your reviews are and how many you have written. The second way to make money is to sign up for an amazon.com affiliate account and include a link for people to buy the book you are reviewing along with the review itself - you can include this in the submission process so that the title is auctomatically turned into a link - and you get to keep 100% of the money made from people buying after following your link.

If you like you can also submit book reviews that you have written and published elsewhere, in which case you can't include an amazon affiliate link but you do still get to take part in the adsense revenue sharing program, although on-site reviews will generally get more traffic, more votes, and so make more money. Take a look now and make money writing book reviews

 Reviewstream.com pays for reviews on a wide variety of products from hotels and travel to electronics to cosmetics. You have to pick from their list, so you can't just review whatever you like and then submit it. You get paid a basic rate of $2 for each review that they accept from you and then you can make a bit extra on top of that if people vote for your work. It's not a lot of money but then they don't ask for a lot from you, so it is a fair rate really. The main problem with this is that many of the items they want reviewed are expensive items and so you may have trouble finding a large number of things which you can get access, for example if your insurance provider happens to be on their list then great - you can write a review of them easily - but your not likely to go out and change your provider just so that you can get $2! If your friends and family don't mind you grilling them about things that they own / use then that may help, but otherwise you will probably only get a handful done before you start to run out of products that you know anything about.

 This is another one like Book Reviews Bookmarked which is based on google adsense and amazon to make you your money. The adsense revenue share is similar, but you only get a share of your amazon earnings not all of them. On the plus side you do have more options as you can review dvd's and music as well, so if your not really much of a book lover then this may be a good choice. Visit them at reviewparty.com

 If you have your own blog which you run then you can make money from sites like payperpost.com for writing reviews of websites or products and then publishing them in your own site. You have to have a domain name for most of them - so you can't do it on a free wordpress blog or anything like that. If you can find things in their database that fit in with the general subject and style of your blog then this can be a nice little earner, but that isn't always easy and it can be a fine line to walk keeping up the quality of your blog whilst adding enough paid posts to make money. Some people also have trouble with google punishing them for paid post and paid links from sites like this by dropping their site down the rankings.