Writing for Money: How to Make the Most Money Writing Online

I have gotten to the point where I am making a decent amount of money writing online, and as a result, I get questions from friends and family members about how they too can earn some money writing online.

There are three main sites I write for: Textbroker, Constant Content and Hubpages. I have tried other sites, but so far these are the best I have found. Each of these sites has its own advantages and disadvantages, so I'll give you an overview and you can decide for yourself which is the best choice for you.

The first two sites, Textbroker and Constant Content, are best for short-term writing money. Textbroker pays twice per month and Constant Content pays monthly, so if you need money fairly quickly, you'll want to start with one of these sites.

However, for long-term income potential, Hubpages wins hands down. It is not unrealistic for a Hubpages article to earn a couple bucks per month or more if you know what to write about. This might not sound like much, but if an article earns $2 per month, it is making $24 per year, and it keeps earning as long as it keeps getting traffic and clicks.

Before I tell you more about these three sites, I need to let you know one more thing. Where possible, I have used affiliate links when giving a link to a specific site or program. This article is about making money writing, so I'm sure you understand that although it is my desire to help you, I also want to get paid! Keep reading to learn more about the best ways to make money writing online.

When you sign up for Textbroker, you'll have to submit a writing sample. Make sure you do your best work on this sample because they will use it to assign you an author rating. All assignments are rated from 2 (legible) to 5 (professional). It's really hard to get an author rating of 5. You have to write level 4 articles consistently for a while to be considered.

The pay for each assignment depends on the quality level requested. For example, if a job is for a level 3 article you get level 3 pay even if you are a level 4 author. You can write jobs with a lower quality rating, but you won't be able to access any jobs you are not approved to write.

I started off as a level 3 writer, which pays $0.01 per word. That's $5 for a 500-word article. Level 4 pays $0.014 per word, which is $7 for a 500-word article.

Each article is rated for quality and your author rating moves up or down based on the average rating of the last few articles. It seemed to be like they graded the first few articles a bit more harshly. It took me until my fourth or fifth article before I got my first 4 rating but after that, they have all been 4's.

It takes me about an hour to write a 500-word article, so I find that I can make about $7 per hour writing for Textbroker as long as there are level 4 jobs available.

Most of the assignments involve SEO writing. This means you will be writing articles that target specific keywords. Sometimes you are required to use the keyword a certain number of times within the article.

Textbroker pays weekly but you have to make sure you go into your account and request a payout each week. If you don't request a payout, the money will stay in your account until the next pay period.

You can make more per article on Constant Content because you set your own rates. Don't set them too low. It will just annoy the other writers, and your articles will sell at the higher rates if someone is interested in buying them.

I set my rates at $0.03 per word for one-time use and $0.05 for full rights. I have found that real estate and Internet marketing articles usually sell well. I have also had good luck writing requested content. Keep in mind that multiple authors can submit articles for requests and the customer picks the one(s) he likes best.

They only pay once per month. You'll get paid somewhere between the 1st and 5th of each month for the previous month's sales. They take a big commission (35%) but I still make more per article at this site. My rate for a 500-word article is $25 and after the commission is taken off I still get $16.25.

You will only be able to submit a few articles to Constant Content at first. There is a limit until you have had a certain number approved. They check every single article before it goes up for sale so make sure your work is of good quality and most importantly, original.

It usually takes a few days for articles to get approved and put up for sale, but they give priority to those written for requests. If you write an article for a request, it is usually approved and sent to the customer for review within 24 hours.

OK, obviously you know about Hubpages. But it's possible you might not be making as much money as you could be. Not everyone knows how to maximize the earning potential of this site. If you choose your topics the right way, an article on Hubpages can earn several dollars per month.

The keys to making good money writing on Hubpages are choosing the right keywords, writing solid keyword-targeted copy, and getting lots of backlinks. These are the same techniques used in good SEO writing for any website.

There is a lot of information out there on how to choose good keywords and get backlinks, but some of it is crap. Other sites have good information, but it is incomplete. There is only one place I know of where you can get comprehensive training on how to pick good keywords and get quality SEO backlinks. However, it is not free. It costs $1 for the first month and $33 per month after that. Normally, I would not pay for something like this. If the trial hadn't been just $1, I never would have signed up for this. However, it has helped me boost my Adsense income enough that I decided to stick with it.

Even if you decide not to continue with the membership, I highly recommend you do the 1-month trial so you can watch the videos to learn how to pick keywords that pay well on Hubpages (and your own websites, if you choose to go that route).

The site I am talking about is The Keyword Academy. Here are the benefits you receive from TKA that makes it worthwhile to have a membership:

Keyword Tool at Niche Refinery: The use of this tool is included with your TKA membership. This tool makes it really easy to find keywords that pay well and will be easy to rank for. This tool by itself is worth the $33 per month membership. In the past three days, I have found over 400 keywords with good earnings potential using this tool. This would haven taken much longer if I had to enter each phrase into Google individually to check out the competition.

The Keyword Academy Guest Posting System: Through this system, you can post articles to hundreds of different blogs and include two links to your hubs in each article. This is a great way to get backlinks for your hubs and improve their ratings in the search engines so you will get more traffic.

If you have an article site of your own that uses Wordpress, you can set it up on the Guest Posting System so that other people can post articles to your site. These articles may need some minor editing but it is still free content for your website. I have been a member of TKA for about 3 months and have received about 95 posts on my article site at InfoBonanza.com. If you go there and take a look, you'll see the sort of articles you get from this service. I only posted one article on the site myself (the first one). The rest all came from the Guest Posting System. This site doesn't make a huge amount of money for me yet, but it has started getting a little bit of Adsense income.

If you know the right way to pick keywords for your Hubpages hubs and you do the work taught at the Keyword Academy to get backlinks to your articles, you can make more from your Hubpages articles than you will make at any of the other pay-to-write sites that I have found.The only drawback I have found with Hubpages is that it usually takes 2-3 months before any given article starts making Adsense income regularly, so if you need money quickly it won't help much. However, since you keep earning money month after month on each article you write, Hubpages is the only writing site I'd recommend if you'd eventually like to retire on the passive income you've built up from your writing.