Freelance Writing Opinion: Why HubPages Is Finished

HubPages Ain't What It Used to Be

Well this is a freelance writing post that's somewhat painful to write, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of flak back about it, but one thing I've never been afraid of in this blog was calling things as I see them (you should have seen the level of hate e-mail I received after my negative Helium.com review) so I'm not going to sugar coat this freelance writing blog post. I will add the caveat that a lot can change over time, and things could very well change in a year or two, or even less. But as things stand right now, I'm not going to pull any punches on what I'm feeling about HubPages because as much as it hurts (I've made some very good money and wonder at the potential had they lasted out one more year) they're a mess. Or as Lissie put it, HubPages is a train wreck. Folllow that post up with her earlier HubPages Earnings Update, and you can see pretty easily that a lot of previously profitable and prolific hubbers seem to be jumping ship, and it's hard not to see that trend continuing. Part of the reason I finally wrote my Keyword Academy review is because there was no doubt in my mind that even for beginner freelance writers, it was time to jump ship from HubPages.

So let's get down to it. A lot has changed in the past few years since I started this online writing blog, and a lot has changed since Google rolled out Panda, not the least of which is the general opinion of many people I talk to that their 1st page rankings are total shite. Nothing like typing in a term that should scream "informational request" and getting 10 shopping links from Amazon, Target, Wal Mart, Home Depot, JC Penny, KMart, and eBay. Note to Google: If I wanted to buy from a top 10 retailer, I would have typed in their website name myself. But I digress. This is about the changes in HubPages, and why I think the ship is not only going down, but it might already be 100 fathoms deep. So let's jump into this, and remember that this is my own two cents as of 07/13/2011.

Starting with the ELEPHANT in the room
I thought about having this further down on the list, in the traditional "4th spot to hammer the point home for good" slot, but this time the Elephant in the room is so big it really stays as my number one reason why I'm dubious HubPages will recover. First of all, if you've been in Internet Marketing at all and you've dealt with SEO you know there's one major rule for attempting to stay out of Google's cross hairs: Don't Embarrass Google!

This is a big one, and the way you embarrass Google is by intentionally and blatantly gaming the system and taking advantage of Google's algorithm to rank your site - especially if it's duplicate content, poor quality, thin content, or any of the above. And HubPages was blatantly gaming Google's algorithm. How? Internal linking. Anyone who has done Internet Marketing knows that keyword anchored backlinks are the key to ranking high in the search engines, and that external links are far more valuable than internal links, which are still important. So what was the problem with HubPages? The problem was the internal linking was so strong that it was easy to get duplicate content, lousy content, or thin content ranked in the top 5 in Google for relatively little effort based entirely or almost entirely on internal linking alone.

Take for example my old hub on Vaser Liposuction. When I wrote this all 100% of the content is original, I worked to provide a lot of information on the procedure, there were over 1,200 words of content in addition to links to authority sites (which Google claims to like). I also built nearly 30 backlinks to this page. At the time, a hub did indeed end up #1 in Google searches for the term "Vaser Liposuction." But it wasn't mine. It was a bland 400 word hub full of fluff with little original value and 0 external backlinks. So how did this page out rank mine? It drove me nuts, but finally with an SEO tool I saw only one major measurable difference: that hub had 60 internal links while my page only had 2 internal links. So I managed to get my hub ranked a little higher score wise, which got the internal links from HubPages sidebars pointing at me. With 30 of those I ranked #1 for the term at the time.

Knowing this, I tested my next two hubs and easily got their scores high enough for the internal links to kick in (they were based somewhat on hub score - so getting over 70 was critical and over 80 was excellent), and with 2 Ezinearticles to each and internal linking alone, they both way outranked pages with nearly 100 backlinks and which had more content.

How could this be seen as anything other than gaming the system by Google? Add in the fact that these out of control internal linking practices have NOT been changed at all by HubPages - despite making many others in response to Google that don't really make sense - so they might be changing a whole lot, but they've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about what clearly (and glaringly) stands out as their biggest flaw. Until that is dealt with, I don't see any serious recovery, and yet among many ridiculous changes, no mention has been made of this at all.

Time is not healing
You know that old saying "time heals all wounds?" Well according to HubPages traffic numbers and Google Analytics, that's not happening with HubPages' attempt to recover from the Panda update. For something like the fifth month in a row I'm still losing traffic and rankings. Some of my well back linked hubs are maintaining okay search engine positions, many others aren't. But either way, it's easier now to rank a brand new website from scratch and rank it for a keyword than it is starting a hub from scratch and ranking it for the same keyword - so why give up 40% when there's no advantage to doing so anymore? While I understand changes take time, there have been several more roll outs of post Panda adjustments, and I'm not seeing any positive changes.

The Amazon/California Situation
This is a huge deal. Maybe HubPages gets this sorted out, maybe they're okay with allowing hubbers in non Amazon affiliate banned states to continue profiting from Amazon modules on HubPage while they're not, or maybe they can move their corporate offices to allow themselves to become Amazon affiliates again. These are all viable options, but they also don't help individuals who are in states like North Carolina, California, and Illinois where Amazon won't allow individuals to sign up for their affiliate program (and a general "sorry" goes out to you folks). Then there's the chance that HubPages can't work in a way for themselves to profit off of Amazon and so shut it down. Since there's no way of knowing which of these scenarios will actually take place, that adds in a lot of uncertainty, and not a lot of "everything will be all right" options compared to further hammering on the HubPages model.

Baffling Official Response
Even with the disaster that was Panda, I'm with many online Internet Marketers who agreed that HubPages response was more damaging and damning than even the update itself. After the update they should have restructured the internal linking to make it far less powerful (which they didn't do), ban duplicate, spun, or low quality content (which they did), and then waited out the after effects to see how they would do with the next update before making any rash moves (which they didn't do).

So the changes like banning links to popular affiliate sites like Clickbank: terrible idea that chased away a lot of the best marketers. In fairness, I understand their thinking in that this idea looks good on paper, but it doesn't work in reality. Yes, Clickbank has many products that encourage spam, and they also have some excellent programs which used to make hubbers a lot of money. Now that all of that is out the window, and while trying to keep spam topics away is admirable: you could just ban spam topics or spammers. Just a thought.

Then there's the ban on pixelated images. WTF? Really, what's that have to do with anything?

Limiting capsules to content: I don't have a huge issue with this at all although they may have overdone it a bit.

Changing the AdSense layout has absolutely demolished the clickthrough rate (I can't give my CTR % because that's against Google's TOS, but I can tell you that my current rate is less than 25% of my old one). You were penalized for things other than ad layout - I'm not sure how cutting AdSense revenue by 75% further is really going to help at this point.

In addition, rampant complaints of the tone of interaction with moderators and administrators changing is giving off a lot of smoke. There are major complaints of much ruder responses, a shift in philosophy from "all of us together" to "we're talking to you." There are also the less friendly and longer responses, like promising a blog post in a "couple days" in response to the Amazon situation and the community waiting 14 days later and counting for a response. I understand when nothing happens, but then give an update along the lines of "we're working on it." Freelance writers who helped make your site deserve at least that much.

Because of the Marketer Exodus
When some of your best writers who know SEO, keyword research, and backlinking/marketing all leave, who exactly is going to rebuild your rankings? Many of the best marketers and writers are already leaving HubPages - and with no one promoting your site, how exactly are you going to rank in the future? If everyone who knows what they're doing are leaving and even taking down their hubs, it's not going to be good. Especially when Google notices all the backlinks going to pages that no longer exist, and all the internal or broken links to other hubs that no longer exist. This is going to make HubPages appear even uglier in Google's eyes. So freelance writers, beware. HubPages is not the sweet deal it used to be.

So what now?
So can you still make money on HubPages? You can, as long as they stay afloat (and many of us wonder if they're bringing in enough now to do that - although in fairness that is pure speculation), but the effort is MORE than building your own blogs or websites. So why would your bother with HubPages? If you're serious about the passive income, The Keyword Academy is the way to go. They adjust to changes, give amazing education, and provide all the tools needed to build up a long term passive income. Now that starting your own sites from scratch is faster than HubPages, and more stable and successful, it only makes sense to go with them.

As for which sites work for active income, or for a passive income split, it's probably long since time for me to put up another update, but that's coming next. For me, I'll keep an eye on HubPages, but I'm not holding my breath. Even the HubPages Ad Program has gone down considerably every month I've been in it, not only as total income put also $ per 1,000 so it'll be interesting to see if they can recover the way Squidoo did or not.

But for now, I have to stick by The Keyword Academy as the best passive income option and at this time I simply can't recommend HubPages anymore.

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.

Starting a Freelance Writing Career as a College Student

College Students as Freelance Writers

One of the great advantages in the changes of technology is that there exist great opportunities that didn't exist as recently as ten years ago. I graduated from college at the age of 21 back in 2002, and most of the writing websites that allow me to make a living freelance writing online now, the same online writing websites I will continue to recommend to my readers here, didn't even exist back in 2002, or were just looking to begin. How's that for strange? I've been a full time freelance writer in some form or another since 2005 - a mere three years after graduating college I held a job that didn't exist while I was going to college.

So there's no use in me being upset for not making a full time living or having my own full time business while in college because those opportunities didn't exist. But now they do. If you're a freshman in college, or a high school student about to go to college, and you like to write then there is absolutely no excuse for not having a very productive steady income by the time you're out of college - if not a full time passive income even before then.

Being a full time freelance writer does not mean you have to be an English major or use giant words from an extended vocabulary - in fact these things often get in the way. Studies show most adults read comfortably at what is considered a 6th grade level. So for a lot of web writing, this is exactly the level you want to write at. This makes it very easy for most young college students to learn how to freelance write online for a living.

There are many different routes to take. Guru.com and Elance.com are two fantastic sites to start a serious online writing career. It's hard to get started, but as you build a reputation the work tends to snowball, and both sites can provide a full time living with no outside assistance. Rentacoder and oDesk are two other sites I've heard some writers talk up, although I can't personally attest to either since I have not used either.

Even better for college students who want to make money writing is that they have something working for them that most other people don't (and the same applies to grad students as long as they are on scholarship or with a TA or RA job that pays full tuition), and that is time. Two years, three years, four years, even 8 years (assuming 5 year undergrad and 3 year MFA or something to that extent) where free time can be used towards building a long term viable passive writing income from a shoestring budget.

This is where Internet Marketing and keyword research come in. Learning about these topics while sharpening your skills as a writer gives you the time you need and the education you need in order to really make the most money writing online. Combining this with your writing can make websites like HubPages, eHow, Constant-Content, and many others pay off handsomly over the long run.

With time to learn about keywords, how search engines work, and to take this knowledge and have years to write content, there's no reason anyone in this position can't completely control their destinies by the end. College students are in an excellent position to create full time writing careers while still enjoying the college experience - I'm actually rather envious of anyone in that position and young age who has the knowledge and work ethic to be in this position, and I strongly would plead with them not to squander these advantages.

Beyond college students - anyone who is unemployed, going freelance because they were cut off from a steady gig, or just want a change of pace, I always recommend working on the long term income as well as the short term because it does pay off with every hour of work put in, and the sooner you get started, the sooner you control your own hours, your own income, and your own destiny.

Hope everyone is doing well, and have a Happy 4th of July!

Freelance Writing: 10 Places to Sell Your Freelance Writing Online

10 Places to Sell Your Freelance Writing Online

There are many different places to sell your writing online. Some of these sites are excellent markets for the beginning freelance writer, and places that even give the opportunity to make a full time living if you are good enough. The hardest part for many beginning freelance writers is working up the courage to get writing and selling.

This is true whether you are a person looking to make money writing for the first time, a part timer looking for a work at home opportunity, or a college student looking to make some extra money. By knowing where you can send your writing to make money, that makes it much easier to get started. You don't have to start from scratch to look for freelance writing markets online, because you already did your research and know where they are.

#1 Constant Content. This is one of my favorite freelance writing websites to submit articles to. You can join for free and write on anything you want, then set your own prices. There is a requests section you can answer, which gives you a better chance of writing articles that will get bought right away, or you can just write about whatever you want. Don't undersell your articles: people will pay for value.

What's the main downside of Constant Content for new freelance writers? You don't know when someone is going to buy your work, so there's no guarantee of a paycheck. But the more you write the better off you are. This site is also free for sign up.

#2 Guru. Guru is an auction based site that you must buy a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription to. While you need to get into the top 50 to make a full time living off of Guru, this is possible. It takes some time to build up your reputation, but not as much as you'd think. Without any help or guidance I was making over $1,000 a month within three months, and I was making twice that in five months. This was when I started at Guru three years ago, and there are a lot more jobs on there, and more high paying ones, as well.

Basically as a freelance writer on Guru you bid on jobs and then get to work on the ones awarded to you. This site is growing about 50% a year, making it possible for more and more individuals to make a full time living even writing for Guru alone. If you're serious about making really good money writing online, this is a must work site.

#3 Elance. Elance is the other big auction site for writers and also requires you to pay for a membership. Like Guru there's more value in buying a one year subscription up front. It takes some time to build a reputation, and for early jobs you may have to write for less than you'd like to begin building your reputation. But the minimum pay at Elance is higher than at Guru, and the ceiling is higher income wise for writers online than maybe any other website. Some long time writers ranked at the top have even been said to make six digits just writing for Elance. If you want to write and you don't know a lot about Internet Marketing, this and Guru are your best shots at a gold mine.

#4 Hubpages. At Hubpages you don't get paid directly for your writing, but you can demonstrate your writing skills by making web pages in which you can make money from affiliate sales from eBay and Amazon, as well as Google Adsense. Signing up for all three is easy, and diversifies how you can make money online, which is always a good idea.

You can get a lot of publicity for your writing, ideas, interests, and/or business here, which can often be valuable in snagging new jobs. You get to easily design web pages (even without any technical skills at all) that can give great backlinks if you build your own blog network. This area has a great community and fun "change of pace" place. If you're interested in learning more about Internet marketing, this is also a great place to go for that.

#5 Associated Content. AC pays up front for a lot of their work, and you also get passive income based on page views that continues to add up over time. AC isn't great for money straight out, as most pay falls in the $3-10 range (as a side note: there's a lot of demand for short how to videos, so if you have a video camera this can be a great way to make some good income here) but it will get you some steady income both directly and passively.

This is also a site where you could receive enough attention to get more and better work elsewhere (this has happened to me before). You earn passive incomes for views, so your freelance writing continues to earn money well after when you wrote it. My first article was from nearly two years ago, and it doesn't make much, but it gets enough traffic for about an extra $2 a month. This means I get paid $24 a year for an article that I haven't even glanced at in two years, and which still occasionally sells for usage rights off of CC, as well. That's a good deal.

One major caveat: Associated Content, even though they pay through PayPal, does not pay up front for articles from writers based outside of the U.S. This really sucks, even though they still pay the bonus for page views. So if you're in the United Kingdom or Australia, go ahead and knock this down to the bottom of the list (though even if in Australia I'd prefer this over Helium from my experience).

#6 Squidoo. Squidoo allows users to design one page websites on whatever interests them and get paid on a tiered system. Affiliate sales are also an option, as you can sell related products and get a cut, which you split half and half with Squidoo. Squidoo doesn't pay a lot, although some of the top earners do make over a thousand a month here. This is a good way, though, to learn about Internet Marketing, something all online writers should learn to improve their value and if you want the really big bucks, you need to understand this kind of stuff. It also has a great community and is a good change of pace place to write and get more exposure.

#7 eHow. I've only recently joined here, so I haven't been able to fully take advantage of everything eHow has to offer yet (so there's a good chance that it can move up this list and pass some of my other favorites), but I like the potential and other writers I trust have made good income here, especially passive income.

eHow is designed to write a tips based article that tells how to do something step by step. The format makes it easy to write a well organized and good article in a relatively short time. Pay is a combination of page views, score, and "usefulness." The writers get paid monthly, so an article that you write today can still be making you money over a year from now. This is a great place for new writers to get started, with a very friendly community.

#8 oDesk. This website is similar to Guru and Elance, but is free instead of asking for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. There are many jobs on here you can bid on, and some of them pay all right. One downside is that the pay does tend to be lower, and the variety of decent paying jobs here isn't nearly as high as on Guru or Elance, but it is free to sign up and skim through listings and if you have a good command of the English language and your ability to write, then you can trump the competition pretty easily.

#9 Triond. Triond and Helium aren't anywhere as close to being as good as the other sites on this list, but some writers have done well here. Triond puts ads on your article, and you get a share of the revenue whenever someone clicks on an ad. Some writers have done very well here, while others have had a harder time of it. It's not a bad place to "recycle" articles that you have sold and re-sold at other places before.

#10 Helium. Helium's best value comes from the Marketplace and contest section if you can make much progress in either. Some writers love this site, others hate it. The pay can be very low, and the payment method is kept secretive and unclear.

While some writers have done well, and you'll hear a lot of people market this site, my general thought is that it doesn't pay nearly enough and if you're good enough to make serious money here, then you should be making a full time living writing for someone else. There have been several reports of writers not getting paid or getting booted off for complaining about plagiarism. I can't verify any of these stories, but where there's smoke, there's usually fire. I don't recommend this site for new writers, or experienced ones for that matter, but caveat emptor. It's still your choice.

I hope this list helps you get started in the rewarding work at home career of freelance writing.