Writing for money online: maximizing your content revenue

Many people see online writing opportunities as being unprofessional or low paying. Its frequently seen as fruitless, not respectable, a gamble or underpaid.

Certainly all of these views have a founding in reality but there are certainly many very real opportunities online. Im not going to debate the merits of web vs print. Im not going to explain the importance of keywords, seo optimization or proper subject choice.

I am going to show you my method for making money writing online, both upfront and recurring using basically the same content.

No, Im not selling anything!

My individual articles usually net me approximately $50 per article upfront and at least $5 per month recurring. I do this by using multiple publication sources and selecting evergreen topics that are guaranteed to continue generating revenue for years to come. I do the research once and then write multiple versions of unique content for each publication source.

So for those who claim that writing online is underpaid, hows $110.00/hr sound? Of course, this is paid over time, but my system is specifically made to ensure that income is derived from upfront purchases (immediate payment) AND revenue sharing (payment based on traffic and/or clicks generated by page)

Good money on the web is made by writers who understand that traffic generation is your purchasers and partners main goal. Traffic is generated by search engines responding to keywords in your content.

Keyword research is an art in its own, but we are writers! What if you someone else will do the research for you? They will!

You will need accounts with these resources:

Constant Content

Associated Content

Hubpages

Demand Studios

eHow

These sites will not only pay you or share revenue with you, they will also do your keyword research for you, if you know how to look!

Constant Content offers the largest upfront payment from any writers clearinghouse I have discovered. The trade-off is that they also have the strictest editorial guidelines. This is to be expected as they are able to offer great prices usually 30-50 dollars per 600-110 word articles by ensuring quality content.

Once you are a Constant Content writer you will have access to their requested content feature.

Above is an example of the requested content page, it is updated daily. The article requests are made by webmasters who are looking for content for their pages. You can be sure that they did there research before offering 50/ per article! These are good topics to write about. There are more detailed explanations including sometimes suggested formats or keywords included in the detailed explanations.

Even if an article is not accepted by the original poster you can offer your content for sale via constant content with a varied amount of usage rights, you set your own prices.

Go ahead and sign up for constant content now

Navigate through the requested content and see if their is a project you would like to pursue, if their isnt one today..there will be other days. The trick is to look through the varied sites and find a common theme that they are all looking to pay for. Then when you research and write you can market unique content to each with minimal extended effort.

Step 2: Find Similar themes at eHow and Demand Studios

Both eHow and Demand Studios offer upfront payment and revenue sharing for articles. Although, there are required formats for each site, it is not difficult to adhere to them.

After signing up for accounts via each service, you can go to your writers dashboard and claim content you wish to write. Many times you can find very similar articles to constant content needs and ones that overlap within the publisher network. Both services offer a search engine to quickly find content requests in your areas of expertise or interest or even just those that much up with constant contents demands.

Claim your topics, than read over formatting requirements.Research your topics, take great notes and save your sources. I find Google notebook to be very helpful for this process. Especially if you use the related firefox plug-in.

Start writing! into text files, (not directly into publisher windows). An added bonus to this method is that you will be able to create backlinks for your own articles within your new content!

Write your eHow or Demand Studios articles and put them aside for a moment.

- For a short time, the Xobba Network is accepting new writers that are exiting the HubPages and eHow models. The majority of the opportunities are reserved for closed door discussions, but if you consider yourself to be a writer or marketer who puts forth their best effort and would like to move towards self sufficiency in your online writing career ... you should look into Xobba

The application process is informal - begin discussion about Xobba Opportunities, be prepared to show existing portfolio examples and converse briefly about marketing models you follow. Serious Inquiries will be rewarded, it is worth your time and the offer is only open for a very limited time. Traditionally, the network is invite only.

Xobba features

• 90% In Post Impression Share
• Geo-Locating Amazon Impression Share
• Backend tools including link shorteners and image editing
• Hyper Responsive Administration
• A community of writers from DS and HubPages
• Assistance in Learning the Wordpress Format
• Rewards that include Free Hosting and SEO tasks
• An intelligent community
• A closed door policy
• Monthly Contests
• ..more

Contact Xobba with your interest and background - the best opportunities are never public

Step 3; Be your own resource, generate revenue and create backlinks

Unlike most revenue sharing programs, HubPages places the revenue creation directly into your own hands. By easily signing up for the included affiliate partners one can earn income directly via clicks in the adsense program or sales in amazon or ebay.

As an added benefit, HubPages is a respected resource and links from it can quickly help your other revenue sharing articles.

Get a HubPages Account

Using HubPages for Keyword research

1. Use the Ideabank : Read through the selected content requests in the IdeaBank that has been selected by staff members, they have done their research looking for subniches and themes that are underdeveloped on the web, it wouldnt be there if they didnt imagine it could be profitable.
2. Use the "Hot" and "Best' tabs to see topics that are generating great traffic now and have been generating traffic for a while. By appearing in these sections you know these topics are strong and in many times they have very undeveloped competition

Getting back to the process:

Since you just wrote and researched your articles for Demand Studios or eHow, you should have the concepts fresh in your head. Write a HubPage article on this topic, a unique one, that incorporates the title and keywords found in your other articles, you should be able to do this in a very short amount of time, under 15-20 minutes.

Publish it!

Copy the URL to your notebook , open your Demand Studios or eHow page, insert your properly formatted article, within the resource box, add your new Hubpages URL, voila, instant backlink.

Step 4: Get a couple of bucks and a backlink by submitting a quick rewrite

AC pays in general around 2.50-5.00 per article, directly to your PayPal within a week and offers 1.50 per 1000 page views generated by your article for the lifetime of the content (or as long as they exist!)

This is not good pay, so dont give them good work! Sneeze out a quick article, maintain proper grammar and spelling, stuff with high paying keywords (this will cause them to offer more upfront), once again between your notes and your mind this should be very easy if you just researched the themes!

Insert your HubPages URL as a resource. Submit.

Associated Content is also great for finding trends and topics via their requested content console.

Get an Associated Content writers account:

Above is an example of a detailed request for content, use their topics to write your own articles on HubPages or your own sites, note that they even included keywords that you can use to optimize your content for adwords

1. Use Writers networks to find topics and keywords
2. Find overlapping topics in order to get paid multiple times for the same research
3. Use various networks to create backlinks for your other articles, Be your own authority!
   
4. Count your money, try to avoid checking stats every 5 minutes on revenue share!
   

Examiner.com is rapidly growing and is a very special kind of opportunity. Early reports show that pay is better than most traffic based sites. But a real bonus, is the reputation and exposure you can gain as a regular contributor. Stories abound of good writers on examiner, being approached for high paying opportunities

Earn money generated by your articles. Write for Examiner.com.

My experience: Hubpages vs. The Examiner

More writing opportunities with freelance updates

Writing product reviews and summaries of new services that you have affiliation agreements with via Publisher networks can be the most profitable of all methods.

Best Affiliate Network for Beginners

Get exposed to to top quality resources and up to date news in online publishing, marketing and seo at HubsAcademy at Facebook

Using the Constant Content module, I receive updates when new requests are made. A request was published seeking "How to find the Top Selling items on eBay" 20-30 per article.

Demand Studios was also seeking an article "What are the top selling items on eBay" - they were offering 15.00, and required it be written in the "How to" format as it was for publication on eHow.

I wrote the article following strict guidelines for Constant Content. Submitted it for review.

I then wrote the article for Demand Studios, wrote an associated content spin off and a hubpages article.

Demand Studios accepted and paid me 15.00, Associated Content accepted and paid me 3.30 plus revenue share. I included a link in both to one of my related HubPages, within a week i saw substantial increases in traffic to the HubPages article - resulting in 3.00 in adsense revenue and 2.60 from an Amazon sale.

Consant Content has yet to confirm purchase, but research that cost me less than one hours time has already paid me over 18.00 upfront and generated 5.60 in revenue in less than a week.

This wasnt even a high paying keyword!