Almost everyone can write, I mean we were all taught at primary school. Writing is an essential part of everyday life, and some of us are much better at it than others. There are many advantages to writing and different reasons as to why people write. Some people are purely in it for the money, this is fine but it has many other benefits that must be appreciated. However there are many who use writing as a career and therefore are able to work from home doing oen of their favourite things. One of the greatest pleasures of writing is expressing yourself, and sharing your experiences and knowledge with others. I find this very rewarding especially when you receive comments from other showing their gratitude for your views or advice given. Therefore if you have soemthing useful I believe you should past it on and share it, you never know who could be waiting for that tip or knowledge.

You can write about anything under the sun, from the weather to travel, to sport to exercise. I normally write about health, travel and money making on the internet but I am planning to expand my niche. If you know something about a topic then write about it. But the key is to write on topics you have a genuine interest in or have a knowledge of. It is fine to write a specific article on something you are not 100% sure of if you are prepared to put in a vast amount of research. Just remember someone will want to read it so you want to tell them the truth and provide accurate facts, if you dont this person may never read one of your articles again. Writing is all about building a good reputation, and if you want someone to take you seriously you must provide them with something that makes them leave your article with a good impression of you and perhaps they will bookmark your page and revisit to read your future articles. Additonally you never know when a publisher may read your work, and make a decision of whether to offer you work based on your article.

After you create your article there are many websites that will pay you for featuring your article or else pay you outright for your article. I have listed a few of my favourite websites here:

• Triond
• Helium
• Associated Content
• Squidoo
• Shared Reviews

I will consider each of these in turn now and highlight the features of each.

This is the first writing site I joined! It is available for international members and you can submit written articles on any topic including poetry, short stories, reviews and factual articles. It also has the added benefit of letting you add photos, drawings, music and videos, so if you are an all rounder you could earn money for all these.

You are paid on pageviews and the amount paid depends on the category of your article. Google adsense ads appear beside your article and you earn 50% of the revenue for these. Health articles have higher revenue, and earn you around 6 cents per 10 views. The great thing about Triond is that they have a very low minimum payout of only 50 cents which is paid into your paypal on the 15th of every month.

A great site to get you started i your writing career, and comes with the added advantage of a community where you can add friends and send messages. You can also view the comments people leave below your articles and see how many people like your article. Excellent confidence booster.

A professional looking site where you have multiple possibilites to earn. You can submit articles on a variety of channels,and it is best to browse the channels and select a topic of interest and then read the current articles on this title before submitting your own. Articles on a specific title are rated accordingly by helium users and the articles at the top get the most pageviews and earnings, so make sure you write a quality article.

Now this site has two additional ways to earn, the writing contests and marketplace features. Writing contests run weekly and the top 4 competitors receive a prize, with 1st earning $75, second $25, third $10 and fourth place gets $5. Contests run from thusday to the following wednesday, and you have 25 articles to write on. I would suggest writing on around 6 of these, better to write 6 quality articles than 12 medicore articles. The way it works is that the higher your articles are rated the more points you get. It is important to note that if you write a poor article you may get points taken off. The person with the highest points at the end of the contest wins.

Helium marketplace is where publishers advertise articles they want and helium writers can select their choice of article and write on this. If the publisher selects their article they receive the payment. Publishers will pay from $16 to ovr $100 depending on the type of article they want.

Helium pays through paypal around the 15th of the month, and the minimum payout is $25.

Great writing site! Put your articles on display and get paid on pageviews. This option is for international members. However if you are from the US you have an option of submitting your article for upfront payments. To be honest I like the pageviews option best, and it suits me as I am not from the US.

Payment summary

1000 views $1.50

10000 views $15

100000 views $150

100000 views $1500

Squidoo is a fun site which lets you create pages, or 'lenses' as they like to call them on your topic of choice. You can add many features to your pages such as pictures, videos, polls, and other unique content. I have around 5 lenses there now and use it to promote my money making and my writing.

You can make money with squidoo in two ways. Firstly you are paid on the amount of traffic and average lensrank your lens has. The key is to have many high rank lenses with lots of traffic. Therefore it is important to promote your lens and pdate it on a regular basis. Secondly you are paid as an affiliate. You can add amazon and ebay products to your lens as well as other products such as those from commission junction or clickbank products.

The site pays into paypal, and payout can be set as low as $1.

I was originally against joining a review site simply because I thought I could not write reviews but how wrong I was. Shared Reviews are extremely easy to write for, and you can publish reviews on almost anything. After you publish your review you should go over to the forum and introduce yourself and make some friends, read and vote for their reviews and they will do the same for you. The ad revenue from each review is 'shared' amongst all those who voted for it. I am only new to this site so not really sure of potential earnings as yet.

After you have submitted your article to the desired website, you shoudl prmote your content. Remember the more pageviews you get the greater your earnings will be. There are several ways to promote your articles.

1. On your blogs and websites
2. As a signature in your emails
3. On social networks such as myspace, facebook and yuwie
4. Forums
5. Digg
6. Stumbleupon