If you want to get paid to write articles online, there are basically two types of revenue models that it my opinion can pay off pretty quickly.

• Ghost writing articles and website content for marketers
• Revenue sharing websites such as Hubpages

There are other ways to get paid to write articles, such as answering calls for submissions , or basically cold calling websites that might actually pay for freelance articles. This is the old way of doing things and it follows the print media model which is swiftly going the way of the Dodo bird. It basically leaves you at the mercy of editors with a large slush pile and most markets pay peanuts. So why bother.

Now I'm assuming here that you want to write articles to make money, as well as to express yourself and share your ideas. Of course, you can do both, but if you want to actually make money, it is best to focus on that aspect of things to make sure it happens. This will mean doing things like keyword research to see if the topics you want to write about are even potential money makers.

So let's take a look at our options.

I'm going to talk about the revenue sharing model first because In my opinion, writing articles for Hubpages (and other sites like this) is really the way to go. Why? Because you will continue to earn money from your articles long after you've published them. You will continue to own your content.If you aren't quite sure how the revenue sharing model works, you can read this explanation on earning revenue on Hubpages which will help it all make sense for you.

Now, by selling your articles to someone else (as ghostwriter or freelancer), you will get paid once. Now, let's say you actually are doing pretty well for yourself and you can sell articles for $50 each (which, let's be serious here, is unlikely to happen for most writers unless they are extraordinary and know how to market themselves extremely well - $5-25 per article is far more likely.).

So that's $50 you get and then you are done. That article can do nothing else for you. In order to get another $50, you have to write another article.

Now let's compare that to if you had taken your article and published it on Hubpages. Just to give you one example, this article of mine on Cheap Airline Fares has earned me $238.40 over the course of its life. I first published it on April 30th, 2007. I have never updated it. It's not even my best paying hub. I expect it to make money, ummm, forever. :)

Now this isn't to say that every hub is going to earn you hundreds of dollars. I have some that are still at mere pennies. I even have some that have never had even a single adsense click! But if you do your research well and write about topics that generate traffic and are focused around high paying keywords, you can do pretty well for yourself. And there's also money to be made from Amazon and Ebay, which is nothing to snooze at either.

And the hubs that do best for you will continue making money for a long time. So another two years from now, it's possible that the Cheap Airfares hub will have brought in another $200. Who knows.

I'm sure it won't surprise you that I really like Hubpages and so I encourage you to sign up to Hubpages and start posting your own articles here. I think it is one of the best sites for earning money online.

Ghost writing articles for marketers basically requires that you drum up business for yourself. Ideally, you would want to build up a clientele that bought content from you on a regular basis. You can either sell unique articles or plr.

Unique Articles - if you are writing unique articles for clients, they will usually provide you with keywords or article topics for you to write about. Each article must be unique. I think this is self-explanatory.

Plr stands for private label rights. This is basically content that you would sell to multiple buyers. Say, for example, you might right 10 articles on Acne cures, then you might sell those 10 articles to 25 different buyers who would also use them. You would expect to get paid less per article for PLR content, but you can make it up for that by getting paid multiple times for the same amount of work.

You have a few different options for finding clients who will hire you to write articles for them. Try Digitalpoint forums or the WarriorForum. Both sites allow you to post your services. I would recommend that you spend some time on both sites getting familiar with them and posting to threads so people get to know you before advertising your services.

You can also look for work on Elance, Guru and GetaFreelancer. Initially, it would probably be best to bid fairly low for jobs and then once you have built some reputation and have some feedback, you can increase your per article job rate accordingly.

Now one thing to keep in mind with using both forums and the freelance job sites is that you will be competing with writers around the world. If you live in the US and other countries with high living costs, you should realize that you will be competing with writers from countries who have a much lower cost of living (in US Dollars) and therefore they will be able to bid quite low for jobs. This, in my opinion, is one of the major drawbacks of ghost writing content if you happen to live in the US.

Some clients will gladly pay more money for content written in standard English by native speakers who are very familiar with idiomatic expressions and the rules of English grammar. These are the relationships you want to cultivate. But some clients only care about keyword stuffed content. If you care about craftsmanship, best to avoid these types of clients. They won't really appreciate your work.

Now, what are you waiting for? You've gotten this far, so why don't you just Sign up for Hubpages and try it out.

Spend at least a few months here working on quality, original content that people will want to read and it will pay off for you. It takes some patience initially, but it is a long term stategy for passive income and one of the best ways to actually get paid to write articles online.