Writing Your Way To Success - Get Paid To Write

If you have ever thought about being a writer but didn’t really know where to begin or how to get published, there are several options available to you on the Internet and many different ways to make money writing including articles, blogs, ebooks, mini-websites, etc., so let's take a closer look.

There are several good sites that take article submissions and one of the best is the very site you are on right now, Hubpages. Several of the sites I used to use are now gone, including Helium Content, Yahoo Contributor Network (formerly Associated Content) and others. Another very popular site, Squidoo, has now merged with and become part of Hubpages. There are still several options available, depending on the type of writing you want to do. A few of the sites available other than Hubpages are Snipsly, Wizzley and Constant Content, to name a few.

While the ultimate goal of some writers may be to make money with their writing, your primary motivation should be the writing itself. In other words, your inner desire to express yourself through the written word. If you don't have this basic desire, you won't succeed. You just won't have the drive to keep writing more and more content.

Writing on a site like Hubpages allows you as a writer the most freedom to write on just about any topic you choose (with a few exceptions) and in any style you like. In addition to the text, you can ad pictures, videos or other content to compliment your writing. Indeed, you can provide your readers with quite a complete package to inform or entertain.

There are several ways you can earn income from your writing. Some sites will pay you for writing a specific article. These sites usually have customers that want articles written on a certain topic and put in a request for an article. Writers on the site can then write and submit their article for consideration. If your article is accepted, you receive the specified payment.

Other sites will pay you a share of the site's ad revenue whenever the page is displayed and your article is read. This revenue can come from several sources including ads displayed on your page. You may also be able to get a combination of an up front payment for your article and also ongoing ad revenue income for page views of your articles.

Depending on the site and the options they offer, there are other sources of income available to you as well, including the ability to put affiliate program modules on your page. These include Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliate Program, Ebay and others. You will need to start an affiliate account with these other sites to earn from them.

Most sites, including Hubpages, will combine several of these avenues of income generation for you.

The amount you can make writing articles is pretty much unlimited. It depends on how many articles you have published and how popular they are. The more the better, so the more articles you write and post on the internet, the more you can make. Take a look at some of the top writers on some of the sites and you will get an idea what is possible. If you are earning for page views at a rate of $1.50 per 1000 views and you get over a million views, such as some writers do, well, you can see the possibilities.

Blogging is a very popular way to write online now, with the style being a bit more informal than other forms of writing. Basically, if you can talk, you can blog. Blogs are usually topic specific. That is to say, a blog usually has a theme that the writer will contribute to on a regular basis. Your blog posts don’t have to be any specific length so you’re free to write as little or as much as you want for each post. If you have a particular subject that you would like to write about regularly on a daily or weekly basis, blogging might be the way you want to go.

There are several blog sites, most notably Blogger (Google) and Wordpress. You can set up a blog for free and once established, you can then monetize it with ads through Google Adsense or other affiliate programs. Don't expect to make a lot of money with a blog right away though. Just because you start a blog doesn’t mean you are going to automatically get readers. The trick to getting any income from the blog is to get readers to it so the ads are displayed. You'll need to post good quality content on a regular basis to get any real traffic to it.

While the easiest way to start writing online is with any or several of the writer sites or blogger platforms, the ultimate freedom is to have your own website. This allows you to set it up in any format and style you choose and have complete control over the content including what ads you allow and where they are located on the webpage. You also make the whole amount of the ad revenue yourself. You won't just receive a share of it such as on the community sites.

Believe it or not, it's not really all that hard to do this. All you have to do is register a domain name online, choose a hosting company and build your website. You don't have to be a wiz at programming either. There are several good options available for having your website built or if you are using a blog format, you can use Wordpress. It is very straightforward to use and they offer many different layouts for you to choose from.

While having your own website will allow you the greatest freedom, there are a few downsides. First of all, you will have to pay for it. Registering your own domain name and hosting isn't free. It's not outrageous, but it will cost you money. You should be able to set up a basic website for $100 per year or less. If your website becomes very popular and traffic to it increases to a high level, this cost will increase as you will have to purchase more bandwidth to accommodate the traffic.

Speaking of traffic, you will also be pretty much on your own with your own website. The writing community sites have a built in audience and you will get a substantial amount of page views of your writing from the community. With your own website, you will be the one that has to promote it, get backlinks to it and worry about search engine optimization.

First, I would recommend that you start out on one of the writing community websites such as Hubpages. They take care of a lot of the things that you will have to do on your own with your own website. If you become hugely popular, with throngs of avid readers waiting for your every word, you can always start your own website later. Start out the easy way and see how you do. Then, if it doesn't work out, you haven't spent any money to find out if writing is your thing.

As far as the writing itself goes, I'm going to say what every writer will tell you about writing. Write about what you know about or have a genuine interest in. If you're enthusiastic about what you're writing about, it will show through in the quality of your writing. If you're just writing about subjects that you think will get ad revenue in an attempt to make money only, that will also show through in your words. Your writing will be flat and dull. Write what you like, but like what you write. Write about your hobbies, your interests, your experiences, your aspirations, whatever truly inspires you.

I would also recommend that when you write something for publication online, keep a complete copy of the text on your computer or hard drive. I wrote articles for a couple of websites that folded and basically deleted my content from the internet. If I didn't have backups of my writing, all of my work would have been lost.

That's also a good argument to write on more than one site. If one folds, you'll still have the other one going. Just make sure of the TOS (terms of service) on each website you write on. If they have a requirement that your content be exclusive to them and not duplicated anywhere else online, you'll have to publish only original content on each site.

So, are you ready to start writing? Go ahead and give it a try.