[Nick's Writing Blog] How to Earn at Least $100 a Day Writing Articles
Nick
Today I'm delighted to bring you a guest post from successful online publisher and author Ruth Barringham.
Ruth was my co-author on The Wealthy Writer, our comprehensive guide to making money writing for online markets (published by WCCL). In this post she talks about one of her areas of special expertise, earning money from article writing.
Take it away, Ruth...
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There is no question that earning money from writing articles is easy. And $100 a day is the very least you should be earning.
But there's a catch...
You have to actually write the articles AND they need to contain useful, quality information. But your articles don't have to be long and can be as little as 400-600 words.
Any good writer can earn money writing articles. Here are the top 10 ways to do it:
1. Writing Articles for Magazines and Websites
The old traditional way of making money writing articles for magazines was (and still is) a great way to do it. Magazine editors are always looking for great content. And if your work is good, it's possible to earn $200 to $400 just from one 1,000-2,000 word article. And now, with so many online magazines, websites and blogs starting up all the time, the market for articles has more than doubled.
2. Writing Articles for Your Own Website
Starting up your own website or blog means you can write all your own content. And when you monetize your site with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements and affiliate products, the more pages your site has, the more money you can earn.
You can also offer a subscription to a regular newsletter to keep visitors returning to your site for the latest updates.
3. Writing and Selling PLR Articles
Some people can't (or don't want to) write their own articles and so they will buy PLR (Private Label Rights) articles instead.
PLR articles are usually sold in batches of around 10-100 niche articles. Usually no more than 50 batches are sold of the same articles, so as not to flood the market.
These articles are sold without copyright, which means whoever buys them can use them or change them any way they want.
As a writer, selling bundles of PLR articles can be very lucrative. And you can sell them directly from your own website.
4. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular and profitable way to earn money from writing articles. You simply find a product you want to sell for commission, write an article (review) about the product, and upload it to your website along with your affiliate link.
But as a word of warning, it's far better to only affiliate to products that you believe are good, to keep the trust of your customers.
5. Writing for Article Directories
Writing articles for article directories is by far the best way to get visitors to your website or blog.
Other website owners are always looking for articles to publish on their sites or blogs. So if you're regularly uploading articles to the article directories, they will soon start appearing all over the Internet along with a link back to your website.
6. Paying Article Sites
There are some article sites that you can join that have a revenue-sharing scheme. This means that they will place Pay Per Click ads on your article pages on their site and share the income they generate with you.
Some article sites even let you advertise your affiliate products on your article pages too.
Some of these sites are HubPages, Squidoo, Suite 101, BellaOnline (a women-only site) and About.com.
7. Writing Reports and Ebooks
Writing articles can be the same as writing reports and ebooks. The only real difference is that you put more information in the articles and each one becomes a chapter in a report or ebook.
Once you start writing articles regularly, your mind will constantly spark with more ideas of what to write about. And you can easily turn all these ideas into a report or ebook.
Ebooks and reports are instantly downloadable and you can use a payment service such as PayPal to deal with credit card payments for you.
8. Print Books
Ebooks are great because there are no production costs (except time) and the selling process can be 100% automated.
But some customers might still prefer to buy a printed copy of your book. If you don't want to get caught up with printing and shipping physical copies of your book, you can use a free POD publishing site such as LuLu to offer a printed alternative.
9. Write Articles for Clients
If you don't want to get involved in the whole website-building side of things and you're happy writing articles for other people, there are several ways you can go about finding clients.
The easiest way is to bid for jobs on sites like Elance. This site has writing jobs advertised that you can bid on and state what you're prepared to do and how much you charge.
Classified ad sites such as Craigslist have hundreds of writing jobs advertised (both temporary and long term), but you usually need a resume to apply for these or have your own website you can direct them to.
Alternatively, you can advertise your own writing services on freelance sites.
But you really need to have your own website, because this is the best place to advertise your writing services.
10. All of the Above!
All the 9 ways listed above are great for earning money from writing articles. But there's no denying the fact that if you do them all, your article writing income will explode.
Just imagine if you had PLR articles, affiliate products and your own ebooks selling from your own website. Then add to this selling printed books, earning shared revenue, income from PPC ads, having your articles published in magazines and on websites every week, as well as receiving regular assignments from writing clients.
If you can't earn a minimum of $100/day from all this, then you're really not trying.
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Ruth Barringham is a writer and author from Brisbane, Australia. She runs a website for writers at http://writeaholics.net, and is co-author of The Wealthy Writer.
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Thanks again to Ruth for an interesting and inspiring article. If you have any comments or questions for Ruth, please do leave them as comments below!
Photo credit: Refracted Moments on Flickr.
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Posted By Nick to Nick's Writing Blog at 10/07/2010 12:32:00 PM