Today you can make money if you know where to look. There is good money to be made writing articles for other people. Those people are usually website or business owners (like myself) that need articles on certain subjects.

If you can write or at least do some intelligent research chances are you can assemble some decent articles.

When I say write an article, most people think this long drawn out detailed expose that you would find in your favorite magazine.  That is a common misconception.  While there is definitely a market for longer detailed articles I am mostly talking about articles that are tailored for the Internet.  There are two basic types of article formats out there.  These are the two that I most often either buy or create myself.

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The average length of these types of articles is from 500 to 600 words. Not bad right? These types of articles are key word based, which means they are based on a certain subject or keyword. That keyword is what someone would type into Google to find something they are looking for. So topic is important in this example. However the quality is generally not as high as what you would have on your website.

Content articles are your best written stuff that you publish on your site to give value.  Anyone can go to a site and order a widget, but most sites will not have content available for reference.  Who would you rather buy from?  If the prices are the same, the site that has the content gets the advantage.  There is also another advantage, Google looks at sites with more content and brands them with “authority”  Authority is part of the Google page ranking formula, so the more you have the better off you are.

The best way to answer that question is to figure out where those types of people hang out.  Where they hang out is where they post ads for the services that they are trying to find.  Knowing this makes all the difference in the world.

Elance is a job service site that matches up providers with projects.  Providers are authors or service providers.  Someone may post a project about getting a website built as well as finding a good content writer.  The site is broken down into sections so everything is organized.  You can join as an author and begin bidding on jobs that people post, it is very simple.  Elance makes things simple by allowing payment to flow through the site and holds everyone accountable.  You can tout your talents and find jobs that interest you.

Where do website owners go to find stuff and get smarter?  Why they go to website forums and chat rooms.  Forums help them find solutions to answers that they may have about their sites.  They can also go into marketplaces and post jobs or services that they offer.  This is usually a great place to find work.  You can post a job and work directly with a client without any interference from the forum.

SitePoint.com

Go to the Marketplace section and then click advertise your services.  There is a small very reasonable fee and the ad runs like an auction with a start and finish time.

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Another forum with a good reputation. You will go here for the direct link to the forum http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

http://www.v7n.com/forums/

You will go down to the marketplace section.

Guru.com is another good one

You can find tons more forum information if you Google search the term “webmaster forum” You will find a lot of returns that will keep you as busy as you would like to be.

I love Craigslist.  I have been able to post article writing jobs locally and have very good luck with responses.  This is a free service and you can often get a lot of replies in a short amount of time.

You can both post an ad or answer an ad.  I like to do a little of both.  In a post I might put what my area of expertise is and see what comes from that as well as answer a few about other subjects.  It’s all up to you.

That is all up to you.  I know plenty of people who make a good living at providing content.  The key is to build a good relationship with your customers and get repeat business.  If you do a good job they will keep you busy over and over again.  You can look on Elance at all the different authors and see what their yearly earnings are.  Some are very low (maybe hobbyists) and some are impressive.  It would all depend on how aggressive you want to be.