Freelance Writing 2011: So What Now?

Freelance Writing Online Never Stays the Same

If you've been freelance writing online for any amount of time this spring then wow, you know how crazy the landscape has been changing even by online or writing market standards. If you're hoping for a quick read, this isn't the post. So feel free to bookmark and come back later, or get ready for a marathon run. But first a very important announcement: to those who took me up on the offer of buying my friend Ashley Cowger's first book "Peter Never Came," the report I was finishing for all of you become very outdated with the most recent Google Change and the reaction of Xomba, HubPages, Yahoo Contributor Network, and others towards them. So instead of giving a report that was half obsolete, or making you wait for just a few updates, instead I'm going to finish the freelance writing e-book I'm creating and giving you all the whole thing, including the bonuses.

So it'll be even better than what I promised, it will be completely up to date, and it'll be about two more weeks - but it'll be worth it. I'm very sorry for the delay, this was a prime example of "life happens" along with "Google happens." So since all of you have been so nice and patient with me, I'm just going to give you my entire freelance writing e-book for free.

So onto the long delayed blog post. There's a lot to cover, so this will be a long one and I'll try to cover how freelance writing online has changed, the HubPages ad program, residual income, and everything else that changed/shifted or didn't with the last big Google change.

Xomba updates their policies
Xomba has recently updated their online writing policies, especially in regard to bookmarks. Previous to this, one of the best ways to use Xomba was to bookmark your articles and blog posts, as Xomba bookmarks tended to get amazing rankings in Google all on their own (while their articles didn't which I still find strange) and even better, pretty much guaranteed indexing of whatever you linked to. For those of you who know the frustration of writing 100 backlink articles and hoping they get indexed, you know how valuable it would be to be able to link to every one with a Xomba bookmark and know that those articles would then be crawled. That's very powerful when you're trying to build your backlinks. Now you can't do that. You can't link to your articles, you can't link to your blogs, and well you can't really link to anything. So what does this mean? From my point of view, it means that Xomba no longer as any place in my online portfolio. A 50/50 AdSense on articles on a site that doesn't have the juice of other options out there (options who share more of the pie) doesn't appeal.

Because of this I no longer recommend Xomba as a place to write for online freelance writers looking to make money online or use it as part of a passive income campaign. If writing is just a hobby for you and the money is bonus, then that might be the best place for Xomba, but without the bookmarking benefit, it's just not a good ROI on effort as opposed to benefit, in my opinion.

So where to go now to help stack links and get your articles indexed and keep them that way? If you're an old hat who knows how to use Bookmarking Demon software, then you're already set. For the rest of us, I'd probably recommend two bookmarking site who have revenue share programs: Snipsly.com, and Shetoldme.com. I don't expect these to have the same impact as a Xomba bookmark did, but it's much better than nothing and Snipsly especially is pretty painless to use.

If you have no idea what link stacking is, then take a look at this video blog on the importance of link stacking. It's a great introduction, and Blogger Illustrated is a great marketing blog to get familiar with anyway.

The big Google update - is it time to panic???
The short answer is absolutely not. Google updates are going to happen, and they're going to happen every year. This time sites coined as "content farms" were hammered (how eHow escaped this designation is beyond me), and the cutting down to size of HubPages is the one that really got a lot of attention of online freelance writers and beginning marketers. Part of the reason for this is that HubPages had a ridiculous level of authority in ranking new hubs, which made it attractive for marketers, writers, and unfortunately also douchebag spammers.

My suspicion even early on after the big time slap HubPages received was that the main action was to discount internal HubPages links. The internal linking structure of HubPages was too effective. Sometimes you could get page one rankings for decent keywords with nothing but 30-50 internal links and not a single external backlink. It was only a matter of time until Google did something about this, because that type of system is too easy to abuse. Now don't quote me as Gospel on this is what happened, but others who are much better at analyzing technical data then me just in the past week or two are starting to say the same. Personally, most of my hubs with a lot of external backlinks still rank very well. The hubs whose main strength was strong internal linking were absolutely decimated.

So are HubPages still worth it? For true freelance writers (ie those of you not into Internet Marketing but whom still want passive income) HubPages is great, and the backlinks are still solid even after the Google Algorithm change. Squidoo was declared left for dead three years ago when they were slapped much harder by Google - and my earnings from that site are four times what they were back in 2008. HubPages is making some major changes, and I fully expect them to bounce back over time. Now there are no shortcuts and you need backlinks, but hubs can still rank very well, and you can backlink a lot quicker to hubs than completely brand new websites.

So what happens if you were building original niche sites with solid original writing, good articles, and keyword based URL names? In my case, and the case of hundreds of others, the keyword rankings for my niche websites (especially the long tail keywords) jumped. In other words, if you were concentrating on your own sites which you have full control over, then this last update probably actually helped you out. And if you spent a little too much time on HubPages building easy income instead of investing in your own websites (and I'm not judging - I'm nailed based on this criteria), then take this Google update not as a step back, but as the kick in the pants you needed to do what you should have been doing all along.

At the end of the day this confirms that in the online world change is constant and that people writing high quality original content and who build solid (not thin, not spammy) sites the right way pretty much still have nothing to really worry about. Keep at it.

The HubPages Ad Program
One of the major programs rolled out after the Google-content farm smack down was HubPages' news that they were rolling out their own advertising based program. This was planned even before the Google action and is being rolled out in waves starting with the most prolific and trusted hubbers and as the bugs get worked out the rest of the community will eventually be able to take part.

The earliest beta test only involved 9 hubbers, so take the early results worth a grain of salt, but they reported that AdSense + Hub Ads combined to equal a lot more than what just AdSense alone from Hubs earned. Everyone reported double digit % improvement, while some saw jumps as high as 40 or 50%. This was before the Google slap, but I've been with the program most of March and while it's still early to say anything too definitive (there's just not enough data at this point), I can say that while my Google AdSense coming directly from HubPages has plummeted, the Hubs AdSense + HubPages Ad Program = 6% income increase for me which might not sound like much, but considering that over 80% of my AdSense income came from HubPages, and all of March was post Google slap for HubPages, then a 6% gain is actually pretty damn impressive. And yes - I projected February as a 31 day month to match March so the three day difference has nothing to do with the 6% increase.

However I still have a couple of reservations. I had a couple uncustomarily big days with AdSense that ramped up the monthly earnings, while the overall number of double digit dollar days from AdSense plummeted. However, with the Hub Ad Program there might not be a lot of high days, but daily earnings are consistent which helps bring up the bottom line. The biggest problem is without those two really big days my combined earnings would have been lower. In fairness there's a chance that if I stayed all AdSense on my Hubs, the March numbers would have been even lower than projected. This will bear some testing.

I'm going to be watching through all of April and all of May to collect more data. On the plus side, as this program gets stronger and the changes being employed to HubPages should only make them stronger in the search engines, the Hub program pays directly via PayPal. This means you can still earn AdSense and Amazon from Hubs and build them independently from niche sites, but you also now can have a new income stream from HubPages which definitely helps the diversification process - and add in the bonus of building links and getting a little AdSense and Amazon action on the side and HubPages could really end up ahead on this one. As much as I dislike where Xomba is going with their remodel, I really like the direction HubPages is going for online freelance writers.

Good news - markets are getting better
Granted, this evidence is anecdotal, but on the good news front is I'm finding work much easier to find since before the big recession/economic crash in 2008. Overall many people I'm talking to agree that the demand for freelance writers is rising, and one of the benefits of the most recent Google slap and their strong public argument for quality content is that a strong movement is forming away from Indian and Philippines outsourcers and towards native English speakers for writing articles. The movement is towards at least basic quality, and even if $5 for a 300 word article isn't much at all, a good Native English speaker shouldn't have any problem writing 3-5 of these an hour (assuming Internet standards of quality and not New York Times-Pulitzer Prize level). Even at the minimum there, $15 an hour isn't bad compared to you know, $0 from being unemployed or not being able to find any work.

Now, I don't have an issue with many Philippines outsourcers who are paid to write quality and can do so, but I am against making outsourcers write $1 articles at obscenely fast rates like 125 articles per 40 hour work week. You can't get quality from that. Those of you living overseas who can write quality articles are going to find yourselves in higher demand. It may take some time, but this is a good thing in the long run.

So generally speaking, especially with a changing perception from many Internet Marketers about wanting more original content and wanting more quality, the outlook for freelance writers and especially beginning freelance writers is excellent compared to recent years.

Individual Niche Sites & The Keyword Academy
Individual niche sites are still the way to go with Amazon and AdSense based sites, or you can go with the super site model. The point is, many people who wrote high quality content and invested in their own sites are still doing well. The old model of 5 pages with thin re-hashed content and tons of backlinks and nothing else isn't going to work anymore. However a rock solid niche site with twenty or more pages of original and high quality content can do quite well.

In other words, those of you frustrated seeing cheap crap rank ahead of you because you developed your own sites with original and high quality content that took some time to develop then don't worry and keep working because my niche sites are doing fine. In fact, they've done much better since the last update. If anything, the only thing this last update did was to confirm what many Internet Marketers have said all along: go ahead and use blogger, HubPages, Squidoo, and the like for links but INVEST in your business with your own websites which you can actually control and which can't arbitrarily just be taken away from you.

This also brings us to what I believe is the best tool out there for online freelance writers or marketers, especially novices or beginners or even those somewhere in the middle. I am a firm believer in The Keyword Academy (and yes, that is an affiliate link) and see the teaching, lessons, and resources they offer as more important than ever. If you want to work towards full time residual income, then in my opinion you'd be a fool not to join this program. It's the only monthly membership site I belong to, and I anticipate it's the only one I ever will.

First of all, there's an e-book and video tutorials for beginners that are extremely detailed and helps even the greenest newbie understand basic SEO, how to build niche sites, and how to get going with making money online. Add in support forums, a great community, and some unbelievable tools and it's not hard for people to see why the Keyword Academy is so well thought off by its members.

There are amazing tools that make keyword research a breeze, help to get a large number of good backlinks (the hardest part of SEO and ranking in the search engines), and to teach the technical aspects of setting up WordPress blogs. Those videos in particular have been huge for me, helping me to learn how to change the blog set ups as necessary to optimize my sites and get the most money out of them.

The way it currently works is the first month is free, then it's $33 a month for the premium membership after that (go with the premium as the webinar recordings and Forums are worth the extra $4 a month). Any one of their major tools alone would be worth the money, so the combination is outstanding. They're recent webinar push towards further quality content convinces me that they're dedicated to building amazing tools that will last.

If you are ready to really pursue the passive income options from working online, then you want to check out the Keyword Academy. They're the best teachers I've found with an amazing array of tools and a great support system. Worst case scenario, take the free month, learn all there is to know, and then cancel if you're not ready for the rest or simply aren't sure if it's right for you. Right now they're even sharing 4 "super sites" they're building from scratch so you can literally follow the process along the way.

The e-book
I'll be working to wrap this up shortly - was just about there when a huge series of changes made big sections of the e-book obsolete. So now working on the overall and I'll be bringing it out before too long. It's aimed primarily at beginners and people just getting started but there will be some solid advice in there for some people who are at that space of being more than a true beginner but not where they want to be yet making a full time living writing online.

My goal is to provide clear cut information on all the sites I've written for and how to get the most out of each one. This will not only give readers the ability to make a full time living writing online, but also get the most out of each and every site I go over. This way readers won't have to spend six years learning by trial and error like I did: they'll get all the benefits of my experience with one reading and be able to get to their goals much faster than I did.

I'll keep everyone posted on more as that project develops.

So finally at the end...
So this will probably go down as one of the longer freelance writing blog posts I've had here, but this brings us about up to date with all the changes that have gone on. I'd love to hear everyone's experience with what's going on and what your plans are to make the most of it. Hope everyone is doing well and keep at it - the reward at the endgame is worth the long online freelance writing journey.

How I Became A Freelance Writer

Update: I'll be addressing the eHow/Demand Studios situation shortly, but since I already started this post, this is the one I want to finish out while gathering more information on the new eHow situation before making a post or updating my review pages.

The only major regret I have with starting this freelance writing blog post is that I don't have a picture of the maladjusted Frankenstein of a computer I started my online writing career with. Because no matter how I describe that thing, it would never compare to a photo of it, and that single picture might encourage more people reading this blog to get writing than anything I could ever say. Because if Master Dayton could get started on that piece-mail p.o.s. with a dial up connection, everyone who saw that picture would suddenly believe (and rightly so) that they could do it, too.

But alas, that horror remains a memory with no photographic evidence, so we'll just have to move on and deal with the mental description later. For a while now I've hinted here and there that eventually I would get around to telling my story of how I became a freelance writer, including the embarrassingly low amounts I used to write for, the "lucky" breaks that pushed me to the next level, the "so close but not quite" moments, and all the ebb and flow that led me to this point.

This story starts out around late 2004 heading into 2005. At this point I was attending my second year of graduate school at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska (UAF) ((several of my friends up there who saw my situation joked that it should have been FUA for F**k U, A-hole based on "truth in advertising")). Even before the spring semester it was becoming pretty apparent that not only were my efforts to graduate early going to be blocked, but that a series of odd situations and "slightly" imbalanced individuals were not only going to keep me from having any chance of getting my degree, but were escalating things to the point where I feared for my physical safety, and after flunking the spring comps exams by a 3-2 vote and not having my space renewed in the program, I was done.

No degree, no job, no place to live, and no major prospects. At this point I knew nothing about freelance writing, and didn't even know where to look. Keep in mind that this was in 2004, and the Internet as a widespread thing was still kind of "new" to most people. Many of the writing sites I use today either didn't exist back then, or have their roots in those days.

I left Alaska and went to Iowa, deciding ahead of time to do the only thing that made sense in my position was to take the money I had saved from working, and to go Kerouac. At that point I was a creative writer, and although a couple of independent work study writing jobs at the University gave me the beginnings of a pretty impressive freelance writer and editor's resume, at that point I had no idea how to convert those experiences and skills into something better.

Besides, I was 24 going on 25, had some money, and some buddies who were willing to road trip with me that fall. Turning down an offer of a job doing maintenance at a camp outside of New Orleans that no longer exists (and if you did your math, yes, that would have been the year Katrina ripped through) in 2005 we went to the Northeast living from campsite to campsite and failing to find any work to allow us to stay more than a month and change. I did get a lot of creative writing done on the road, but came back and within a couple months was broke with student bills coming due, and sleeping on my friend's living room floor while living out of a suitcase.

On December 7, 2005, on my 25th birthday, Gabe and I lost control of the car on an icy road and flipped over a bridge, the undercarriage of the car catching, and flipping us so we hit roof first.

That entire night and the miracle of getting out with "as little" damage as we did could take up pages by itself, but the long story short: I had severe deep bone bruises from my ankles all the way up to my hips. The way the doctor explained it to me was to clasp your hands together with fingers intertwined. That's your bone with the marrow inside. Now move your hands an inch and a half apart while untwining your fingers. That's in simple terms what a severe bone bruise is - dozens or hundreds of "micro fractures" that take a long time to heal. In fact, it was over 3 years before the purple and black bruises on my legs disappeared completely.

So now I was broke, injured, and couldn't work anywhere. We had a computer that had a dial up connection, and there were only two skills I had that could make money online: playing poker and freelance writing. So that's what I did. On a dial up connection on a computer that looked like this: both sides were completely open, as the tower system was a 2000 PC that had been specially built to only function properly when running Windows Millennium (remember that piece of crap?) and that was attached to a partially burned out motherboards (as in at one point the old computer started smoking and there was black soot all over it) from a Gateway computer working as the brain. A CD disc drive was held in place with bubble wrap, folded cardboard, and duck tape and several of the wires from the original motherboard that ran Windows ME were literally cut and spliced to work with the gateway. The monitor's cord had to be run in through a hole in the side because there were no plug-in spaces in the back where they were supposed to be.

It was that ridiculous of an abomination a computer, and yet it started my freelance writing career. To this day I have no idea how Tim managed to get it to work.

So I started looking around and found Constant-Content, a website I still happily write for to this day and can still whole heartedly recommend to beginning online writers. I wrote a few articles, and within a week had two accepted for $40. In retrospect, I should have made $100 of of those two, but I was just getting started and two Andrew Jacksons are a lot of money when you're broke, injured, sleeping on a living room floor, and in need of food. The other site I found was Guru.com. I had enough left on one credit card for a one year subscription, and about $10 of room after that, so I did my research and decided jump jump in. I bought the 1 year subscription to Guru, knowing I had to make it work.

One long term positive that came from working with Guru was that with 100 bids a month, I had to write a lot of query letters. While you could save templates, learning to form a good query letter and how to adjust every template towards each bid is a skill that has paid off huge and is necessary for the success of any writer. The first month was hard, as I was accepted for only one job and received $200 as a kill fee - only to have the job fold in the first week. The second month on Guru I only managed one job, $45 to re-design and re-write a brochure that required 3 revisions - but this did lead to my first positive feedback.

I kept working on my query letters, and I could tell they were getting better as I was getting more and more communication with questions from potential employers, but the lack of feedback made it hard to get more work. But what happens to most really good writers who work hard happened to me as well: I worked hard enough to "get" my "lucky" break.

In March I was offered a job to work on some overflow work that a couple of writers were doing for a friend before they were overflowed. Unfortunately, since I was the second overflow, the 30 page e-book on poker was going to pay a measly $60. Still, I needed the work and took the job, especially because my gut told me I liked the tone of the guys. Thomas, from Journey Beyond Travel, was actually the one who gave me a lot of this work and more that followed, way back before they got such a nice website and really took off. After that poker book I wrote a koi pond e-book for the same price, and received a lot of apologies from them for having so little to pay.

But after they caught up, they liked my writing enough to hire me to provide Morocco travel articles and content, at $12-$15 per 400 words in batches of 10 and 20. That boost got the snow ball rolling, and after a few more jobs adding positive feedback, it snowballed. By the end of March I had over $700 of work not including CC sales, and in April I broke $1,300, not including CC. In May I was just short of two grand - and I still hadn't figured out how much I was worth and that I was under charging for my services.

Life happened in an odd way that summer, and as my friends who had put me up were both moving across the country, I received word that several of the professors and administration who had made my life a living hell up in Fairbanks were gone, and some of the very few professors who had supported me were in more powerful positions to help me not get screwed over. With a little encouragement, I did go back and finish, and by May of 2007, barely a year after starting my freelance career from virtually scratch, I accepted a job offer in Austin, Texas, for solid salary and amazing work at home benefits because of my skills as a poker and e-book writer.

Obviously anyone who knows my story knows that job disappeared a year and a half later, but I still get some of my best freelancing work from them, and I continued to develop my skills as a writer, learned about the opportunities available online, and began my quest for passive income.

There are some major points I want any beginning freelance writers to get out of this post:

• I didn't start of with any experience freelance writing
  
• I didn't start out with a strong support structure to support me as a writer
  
• I could not write a good query letter when I started freelancing online
  
• I didn't have any connections at all when I started my freelance career
  
• I had terrible equipment when I started writing
• I started off in a huge financial and life "hole" that worked against me at every turn.

Despite all these, in a year and a half I had an office job that would pay $38,000 a year and still allow me to work at home instead of the office while freelancing on the side. In retrospect, I did not take advantage of this nearly as much as I should have, but you live and you learn.

The main point I want to make is: Basic writing talent and a RIDICULOUS work ethic is MORE than enough to create a freelance writing career from scratch.

I want everyone to realize this. Basic writing talent, work ethic, and stubbornness is enough to get you from nothing to a full fledged career. I think that's really important for people to understand because too many people are being held back wanting to be perfect or not being sure if they can do it at all. Work. Then work some more. Then work even more. If you do that, you will succeed. There is always more space for a good hard working freelance writer.

I hope this was encouraging. This wasn't meant to be bragging or bravado or a "look at me and how great I am" blog post, but it underlines the fact that good solid writers who have an incredible work ethic and are willing to be stubborn and pursue that goal of a freelance writing career against all odds and hardships, will make it to the Promised Land.

Freelance Writing: Freelance Writing Movie Reviews Online

Freelance Writing Online Movie Reviews for Money

If you're a freelance writer who loves the movies, the idea of freelance writing online movie reviews for a living can seem like a dream job. Who wouldn't want to get paid for writing movie reviews and selling them? Aside from the money, you finally have an audience who will hang on your every word while you get to go to movie theaters and watch every film that comes out.

Well if you're hoping to make a full time living freelance writing solely by writing online movie reviews, the bad news is that's probably not going to happen. And by probably, I mean almost definitely. BUT, there are many ways to make really good side money writing movie reviews, and if you have a great writing style, can think outside of the box, and are willing to learn SEO and social & Internet marketing, then there's a good chance that over time you could make an exceptional side income freelance writing movie reviews - and maybe even enough to write full time, even if it's not all simply about cinema.

There are several ways to go about freelance writing online reviews to make money, and in some ways this road is similar to freelance writing video game reviews for money. There are a few main sites to write on that will often times pay for movie reviews, and there is always the option of starting a blog and building up a following, then monetizing that blog once the traffic is right. While there are several options, most will not pay great, and getting even a solid or steady income writing online movie reviews can be difficult, but if this is your freelance writing passion, then it is one that you should pursue.

First, I've found that Constant Content is a good place to sell movie reviews online. This is especially true of reviews of brand new movies that have just been released, movie list articles (like Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Films of All Time) or movies that are in line for an award (like the Oscars), but were smaller and maybe didn't get the press as the larger blockbusters. In my experience if you're doing a review of a movie from opening night, a usage review can easily go for $28 (often times I've found by offering only usage rights I even sell the same review 2-3 times), unique rights for around $39, and I don't believe full rights are usually worth the time as the bids don't seem to go much beyond $44, and at that point you don't even have your name on it.

Once in a while you'll even sell a review years later, as there are always new start up blogs concentrating on movie reviews. As an example, at the end of 2007 I sold usage rights to a movie review of "Trainspotting" for $19, a full 11 years after the movie was released. So this does happen.

Associated Content is another place where you can sell movie reviews, although the up front pay tends to be pretty low, and PPV bonus doesn't last because once a movie has run its course through theaters, there aren't going to be a lot of people looking for it anymore. AC might get you some name recognition and more of a following than selling articles through CC, but still not nearly enough to make any serious type of pocket change.

There are two more main options, which can be (and until you make it big, should be) used if you are going to try to make money freelance writing movie reviews. The first is to create a blog and/or website and monetize it. The hardest part of this is getting a strong readership because online movie blogs and online movie review sites are EXTREMELY competitive. If you're going this route, find some good affiliate programs, but learn about SEO and search engine traffic first to get steady traffic before monetizing the site. Concentrate on Google, and consider Yahoo! traffic a bonus.

Obviously this is easier said than done, but building a readership to a blog in any competitive field takes time, and you have to be willng to be stubborn, persistent, and to do the work (and homework) to get your blog or website ranked as high in the Search Engine Rankings as it needs to be. If you don't know enough about how SEO works, Google "Justin blogging zombie" or "Grizz make money online for beginners." These guys will teach you literally everything you need to know about SEO.

The other part of setting up a killer blog or website is the writing. When you freelance write movie reviews for money, you have a lot of different options as to your writing style, focus, etc. A great writing style is important in this particular niche, because one of your goals should be syndication. That might be one of the best ways to make money writing movie reviews. If you have dozens of sites and dozens of newspapers (or hundreds, even?) that all pay you for your movie reviews on a weekly basis, then suddenly even at only $10 a pop, you can start making some pretty decent money freelance writing reviews.

Writing movie reviews for a little extra pocket change is actually pretty easy - it's turning this gig into a serious money maker that is extremely difficult, and you have to have one hell of a blog/website, a great writing style, and hopefully some serious syndication in order to make more than a restaurant meal's worth.

If you tend to watch a lot of movies and like writing movie reviews, then you mine as well freelance it for some extra cash (and then the movie tickets become tax deductible). There are a few ways to do this, and this article went over the main ways to do this through freelance writing. If you're happy with about $100 a month extra through Constant-Content, then this is fairly easy to do. If not, then be prepared for the long haul if you want any serious success freelance writing movie reviews for money. If this is your writing passion, then it should be one you're willing to fight for.

Make a Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Get Started from Scratch

How to make money writing online as a full time freelance writer

Freelance writing: a lucrative job offering great freedom, or a slave wage job with long thankless hours for chicken scratch? Well when you're looking to make a living as a freelance writer, especially with an emphasis of making a living as a freelance writer online, you're likely to have both. Being a full time freelance writer has great benefits, and I wouldn't trade it for a 9 to 5 office job ever, but there are lean times, too. So this brings me back to the e-mail I received (and sorry for the delay on this post – a hectic December of which I'll go into further later), which was basically along the lines of: 'I've been laid off, I only have a couple months of unemployment, help me!'

So instead of making an e-book to sell (besides, making a living as a freelance writer online is way too broad for one e-book), I'm going to write this post to answer the question of how to become a freelance writer. I made a full time living as a freelance writer for two years and change before getting a remote working assignment writing for a company, a dream job which has now come to an end as I was also laid off in the end of November.

This was the first time I've ever lost a job, and the "punch in the gut" feeling is one I'll never forget. So I'm back to freelance writing, and for anyone else in the same situation, I hope this post really helps teach you how to become a freelance writer, and to avoid many of the mistakes that I made when I was just starting out as a beginning writer.

So before I begin giving tips for becoming a full time freelance writer, there are several conditions and parameters that need to be addressed.

1) There are many different ways to make a living as a freelance writer, and many different routes to take. I'm not saying this is the best way or only way, it's the way I would start from nothing all over again considering my experiences writing and personal lessons learned.

2) This isn't the exact way I'm going back to writing full time now – but this post is for true beginners who might not understand the web or writing business the way I do now

3) This plan is aimed at people who are unemployed, or disabled, and want a side or full time income, though this could also work for work at home moms, college students, or anyone who wants to make a living writing online

4) This plan also assumes that sometimes it's more important to scrounge enough dollars together to pay rent than to always "work for high hourly wage."

With those out of the way, let's get on to making a living as a freelance writer, starting from scratch and I'm going to assume you need to get some income coming in relatively quickly, and that you have a limited budget. I'm also going to focus almost exclusively on writing online for money as opposed to print.

Starting an Online Freelance Writing Career from Scratch

On a limited budget, especially if you've just been laid off or are living off Social Security disability, knowing where you don't have to pay for a membership, but can still make some pretty decent money writing, is very important. There are several great places where writers can sign up for free and make money writing online.

#1 Constant Content: Constant Content is one of my favorite places to write online. CC is a place where you can write articles and set your own prices, offering different prices for usage rights, unique rights, and full rights. Full rights articles sell the most, and you can charge the most for them, but once a full rights article is sold, you never get to use that article again, so make sure you set your prices high enough. For 500 words, the lowest area I'd set full rights prices is between $27-37. If in doubt, set the price $15 higher than you think it's worth, and you can always check the "best offer" button.

If your article is about a highly specialized area or highly technical, then charge even more. For Constant Content, your articles need to be very high quality, completely free of grammar errors, repetition, etc. This site has tougher editorial standards, but that's what allows them to sell articles at much higher prices than most other sites. The other thing is that even though CC will sell articles' usage rights, meaning you can re-sell those articles, they will not accept articles previously published online. So only submit original articles.

To learn more about how to make money with Constant Content, take a look at my complete Constant Content review, which I wrote earlier on this blog.

#2 Ehow: Update: Ehow no longer has a writing program, although you can still write for Demand Studios on a pay per article basis.

Ehow is a great place to write, in part because it's one of the best places I know for online writers to build a passive or residual income. Ehow is really worth a look, especially to individuals who know how to write great "how to" articles, or to writers who like structure. Ehow designs itself so you make step by step articles, add some links, and your pay is based off advertising revenue that your articles generate. Some people are making literally over $1,000 a month in residual income from eHow – which means they're making over 12k a year for articles that they wrote once and never had to touch again.

Based on many different people talking, making several hundred dollars a month in passive income is pretty common, but it takes time to build up. In other words, if you write 100 good articles in a month, you probably won't see $100 your first month, but in a couple months your articles might very well be making that type of money, and continue to make that every month for infinity. This is more of a long term place to write, and these also need to be original articles, but because of the unique step by step style, it's very easy to write and rewrite articles to use at ehow and other places.

#3 Associated Content: Associated Content is another free place where writers can write and get paid. Up front payments in my experience generally range from $3-$6 an article, which isn't much at all, but when used in conjunction with CC and eHow, this can be an excellent website that not only gives you some up front payments for writing (along with actual name exposure for your writing that can lead to other writing jobs – I've made some good money via PayPal through jobs I landed because of an Associated Content article) but also allows for passive income through a pay per view (PPV) bonus. This starts at a bonus $1.50 per 1,000 page views for your articles, and as your all time views climbs, you can get up to $2.00 per 1,000 page views. It doesn't sound like much, but I make about $40/month on PPV, so that's $480 a year for articles I already wrote, and early on I did EVERYTHING wrong in writing articles that will keep getting traffic over time.

Used in conjunction with eHow and Constant Content, Associated Content can be a very valuable part of your online freelance writing portfolio.

These three places are good places for online freelance writers to get their start, and even more important for some, these are all free websites where writers get paid for their work. Another place worth mentioning is www.oDesk.com. This is an auction based site where employers put up jobs and allow writers to bid on providing the service. oDesk is a poor man's version of Guru or Elance, and if you are truly starting from nothing or worse, it might be a good place to get some work and some decent income into your checking account quickly.

That said, don't expect any high paying jobs from this site, and in my experience it is definitely worth the extra time, effort, and money to build your reputation at Elance or Guru. Which brings us to an interesting point here. After Constant Content, Associated Content, and eHow, there are several paid sites like Guru and Elance, which pay a lot more but require paid memberships, and then there is the Internet Marketing branch of writing, which also often crosses writing.

For right now, I'm going to make the Internet Marketing a topic for another time, but there is a lot more money in this than there is in writing, and the writing skills can really give you and edge if you're a quick learner with the marketing. Squidoo is an example of a place where you can make money by building websites, and if it's in the top 80,000 you get money based on a "tier" system, you can also get money through affiliate sales. Squidoo is a place I really enjoy, and if you get into Adsense and monetizing blogs, then it's definitely a place you should be, but it is probably 75% Internet Marketing and Affiliate work, and 25% writing.

It's also not an extremely fast way to make money online. That's why I mention it as something that's great for looking into the future, and for diversifying your streams of income. You never want all your income coming from only one source, because then if you lose that main source of income, you lose all your income instead of just one small part.

Guru and Elance are the two best online places to write for money. Both require membership fees, but the reason for this is to make sure the best writers are hooked up with the best employers. The minimum amount anyone can make from Guru is $25 a job, while the minimum for Elance is $50. Both auction websites give out tons of good or high paying work, and it is definitely possible to make a full time living off one of these sites alone. Guru allows you to buy a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription. I always buy a yearly because it gives you the best deal, and because I know from experience you can make a full time living off of Guru – and I've never been rated above #49 among their top providers. I would say that easily the top 100 providers make a full time income writing for Guru, and it would surprise me if that number was closer to three or four hundred.

Elance only allows a monthly subscription, and while the ceiling for how much you can make is even higher for Elance than it is for Guru. There are some individuals who make six figures writing only for Elance. I would also say that Guru is a little easier to get started with than Elance is, but for people who are serious about becoming full time online freelance writers I would strongly recommend building your reputation on both websites.

A year long subscription to Guru is in the $250 range, and Elance is $10 a month for individuals, or $20 a month for businesses as of this writing. If you can afford this, then you should work to really build a sparkling reputation on both sites, and it will take time. Look early on for lower paying jobs or jobs that specifically say they are open for beginning writers, just to get those early credentials to build off of. Once you begin building your reputation, your work load starts growing exponentially, and that even takes into consideration that you'll start charging a lot more as you get more work.

My first months at Guru, and I was working off a dial up Internet on a piece mail computer and this was three years ago when there wasn't nearly as much work on Guru as there is now, my income went as follows: Jan $50, Feb $200, Mar $650, Apr $1180, May $1675, Jun $1,899. There is far more work now, and I'm convinced that good writers who can write a decent query and who target lower paying jobs early on to build their reputation can climb the monthly income far more quickly.

The most I've ever made from one month on Guru was $2,500, and then I wrote a lot less because I was going to grad school and moving. My per hour income continued to climb, however, and if I was writing full time for Guru, I would expect to be able to make $30,000 a year or more. During that month, I also snagged two jobs that would net me $2,000 in future work, and eventually the remote location job that paid over $40,000 a year. There are often companies on both these sites who will hire impressive freelance writers full time, so there is a lot of opportunity.

As for the free freelance writing sites mentioned earlier, learning to reuse the same research and resell articles is critical to making a really good living as a freelance writer. For example, suppose you write an article for Constant Content and only offer usage rights. Once that article is on CC (and it's critical to know that CC does not allow their articles to be indexed by Google, since they are selling content to other websites), as long as only usage rights only are on sale, go ahead and sell it to Associated Content as original content since it hasn't been published anywhere, but only sell them non-exclusive rights. Pick up any up front payment they will offer ($3-5 usually), and you'll also enjoy the PPV bonus from those articles month after month as long as the website is around.

If the article you wrote as a freelancer is a how-to article, you can rewrite it and put it on eHow and further enjoy the benefits of passive income from article views! If you can write 3-5 articles a day, then at the end of the month you have 100 articles are more. If you received up front payment for all of them, then you have $3-500. Sell even 10 Constant Content articles (and that is a low amount if you have 100 posted) and you could be looking at anywhere from another $150-$300. Add in the page per view bonus and whatever you earned from eHow, it's not much, but it's possible to be close to a grand in your first month.

And when you're unemployed that's far better than zero. Writing income also grows exponentially. Suppose you make $1,000 your first month because of the work you do, then you do twice as much the next month. You probably won't make $2,000 in that insanely busy month. You'll make more. The freelance writing income continues to grow, and the larger a body of freelance writing work you do, the more it tends to build on itself.

Guru and Elance are nice because when you get a job, you are going to be paid, and at respectable rates for writers because the employers know the value of good writing and are often willing to pay very good money for it.

I would use all of these freelance writing sites, as they allow me to get my name out there, earn up front money, set up the beginnings of decent passive income from more than one source, and build my reputation on two websites that can help you build a full time writing income.

This has already been a very long post, and the basics of what you need to know have already been mentioned, so for a short aside: if you want to make a really good living online, especially if you are interested in writing for passive income, then look at Hubpages and Google Adsense.

Also: Avoid Craigslist and Helium.com like the plague. There are legitimate writing jobs on Craigslist, but there are also tons of scams. Helium.com might not be a scam, but it is a site to avoid. Read my complete Helium Writers Website Review to find out why Helium.com is a total rip off.

There are more ways to make money writing online, and I'll go into more later, but this post is how I would tell someone starting over to make a living writing online. And I STRONGLY recommend signing up for Elance and Guru if you can afford to take a few months to really establish yourself as an online writer.

Use all of these resources at your disposal, and follow the advice here, and you will be on your way to becoming a successful online freelance writer. There is always more advice and other ways to get there, but there's enough information here for you to start making a reasonable living easily in 6 months, if not far sooner. Now you have to do it. If you want to know all about passive income online and the long term, then take a look at this Keyword Academy Review I wrote as I truly believe in their program!

So good luck, feel free to ask for advice in the comments section, and happy writing until next time!

Freelance Writing & Gambling: Thoughts on Writing from Las Vegas

Beginning Freelance Writers & Gamblers Have Too Much in Common

Freelance writers never completely take a break. I just took my first true vacation in three years, and am in fact typing away at 1:35 a.m. after getting back from Las Vegas, which was one of the best vacations I've ever had. Aside from a long list of articles and reviews that I'm going to write for Constant-Content, Associated Content, and other possible venues (some print), it was impossible to not notice some of the similarities between the thousands gambling on slots and the expectations of many beginning freelance writers that causes them to give up way too early on the dream of becoming a full time freelance writer.

In Las Vegas they sell the dream of becoming rich with one push of the button, pull of the switch, or roll of the dice. Many freelancers mistakenly have the same idea about writing, and the same can be said about creative writers, as well. If I just sell that one book I can quit my day job…or if I take that one big trip National Geographic won't be able to say no…I just need that one big break.

Sound familiar? If you think I'm criticizing you, relax. Writing is hard. Freelance writing is hard. We all think that at one time or another, it's simply part of the growth process. The thing is, it's never about the jackpot.

The way you get rich in Las Vegas is the same way you make a great living as a freelance writer. Want to know the "secret?" Here it is: hard work and avoiding wasting money on get quick schemes. That's it.

In Las Vegas you don't make a ton of money gambling…but you can make a lot of money working a high tip job. Some of the better waitresses and bartenders can take home a couple hundred dollars cash a shift. If they don't put that on the roulette wheel or video poker machine on the way out, then over time that money can add up real quickly.

The same applies to writers. If you work on building a solid base, building a reputation, and hammering away even on those frustrating and gloomy days, then eventually between active income and passive income (and we'll discuss a lot more on this second one in later posts) you will start making a good living by not giving up and not wasting money on rip-off e-books (there are some good ones, but why waste that money when you're getting good info here for free?).

That's the key. Freelance writers who write and are persistent are the ones who learn all the nuances needed to succeed as a freelance writer. The same applies to creative writers who want to get published. In graduate school I heard over and over again: "It's not the best writers who publish, it's the most persistent ones." That doesn't mean you can get away without some level of base talent, but as a writer you need to constantly work and refine your style and get your name out there, get feedback.

Another bit of advice for those who are trying to sell their creative writing for money: go ahead, but it's A LOT harder than becoming a freelance writer. Some websites estimate that as few as 200 individuals can make a full time living writing just fiction. That doesn't mean this isn't a goal worth pursuing, but if you don't mind doing article, copy, or technical writing, it's much easier to make a living as a freelance writer and work on the creative stuff as a side project.

But don't expect a big break. If you put everything you have into a big break, you're going to be disappointed. Get your name out there, find work and do a great job, get paid, and repeat. The average paperback up front payment for a first time author is something in the range of $2,000-$8,000. That's not a big break, and 95% of books never sell enough copies to earn royalties.

So if you are a beginning freelance writer who wants to learn how to make a living as a writer, take a tip from the smart people in Las Vegas: work, save, and repeat. Build a reputation, and in the same way paying off debt in real life tends to avalanche for the better when you have good habits, you'll find as your reputation grows as a freelance writer grows, the jobs, money, and payment per hour avalanches for the better.

You might not have wanted to hear about hard work and persistence, but beginning freelance writers need to know this, and time is on your side. Just keep plugging away, and overtime your situation will just get better and better. More advice will come weekly on this blog.

Best of luck, and happy writing!