Freelance Writing

Jan

I’ve recently received a ton of traffic and emails about the post I wrote almost a year ago “Can You Make Money Writing For Examiner.com?” now that Examiner has undergone some changes. Everyone wants to know – What does the local Examiner writing bonus mean? What happened with Google news and Examiner? Is writing for Examiner still “worth it”? So then, let’s talk about the latest and greatest with Examiner.

What is Examiner.com Paying Per Page View Now?

When I did the math on my last month’s revenue the pay-per-thousand pay rate was $9.11. It’s still just over double what I make at Suite101.com per thousand page views, although my base revenue there is more than my base payments at Examiner. Of course, I’ve been writing with Suite101 for over three years so there’s the time and volume issue to consider. I still maintain that the key to making a good revenue at Examiner will be to choose a higher search volume topic – traditionally topics like finance which have higher pay-per-click with Google adsense also have lower page views and more competition and will probably not perform as well on Examiner. On the other hand, topics like recipes and sports which draw lots of page views, are topics which do poorly in traditional revenue share models so may be topics to consider for Examiner.

What did the Recent Local-Writing Pay Structure Change?

Honestly? Not much. Local Examiners now receive a $1 bonus for writing local-focused pieces. This is in addition to the regular pay! After a conversation with Examiner personnel via telephone I can assure you that Examiner is not going to delete posts that are NOT locally-slanted; those pieces just won’t be eligible for the extra $1 bonus. The reason Examiner specifically mentioned they have the ability to delete inappropriate content is because too many Examiners were posting articles completely off-topic, such as a Beauty Examiner posting about a sports team or some such thing.

Is Writing for Examiner.com Worth it?

I cannot answer that for you. I do know that with the new minimum requirements of one post per month it is EASY to contribute there. My articles are picked up by Google fairly quickly. I am able to drive traffic to other sites I write for or resources my readers would enjoy. And it’s definitely platform building. When I call someone and introduce myself as the Oklahoma City Alternative Medicine Examiner, they tend to take that pretty seriously. Which is nice. Am I getting rich? Nope. But it did pay for my plane ticket to #Blissdom (the blogging conference I’m speaking at next week).

Will it be worth it FOR YOU? I have no way to know that. There are pros and cons, to be sure. There are benefits that can come and I know many who are doing well there with their writing. I can’t guarantee you will be one of them but it might be worth a shot for the minimal investment it takes to contribute. If you do decide to give Examiner a try, let them know [2287] Oklahoma Alternative Medicine Examiner sent you. (affiliate link)

Nov

Keyword Research is Not One-Size Fits All

By AngEngland | Web Content

Keyword Research With Google Keywords External Tool

Use the Google Keywords External Tool for researching keyword phrases – especially if getting paid through a Google Adsense account revenue. This is a great place to start. The keywords external tool will tell you common keyword phrases related to your topic (leave the “Use synonyms” box checked), the average CPC (cost-per-click) and the average search volume.

Advanced Keyword Research for Web Writers

Some advanced features to look into as a web writer include the yearly search trends, the amount of advertiser competition, and competition you’ll have as a web writer from other websites and articles out there. You can use the yearly search trends column to find keywords that peak during your slowest times to even out your revenue potential. The advertiser competition is a good column to take a quick glance at - if there are zero advertisers competing for a keyword phrase consider chosing a different phrase, since there won’t be any (or many) Google Adsense ads paying for it.

Searching to Find the Number of Competitors

Use Google.com to search for the number of other websites competing with you for that keyword phrase. You can do this by searching the phrase in quotes. If there are 10 million other websites using that same keyword phrase it won’t be easy to get ranked for it. On the other hand, if there are only 10 thousand other websites using that keyword phrase you would stand a much better chance.

Customizing your Keyword Research to Work For You

So what does this mean? How can you use this information to bring traffic or increase potential revenue in your online writing endeavors? Well – the simple answer is – that depends. What do you need?

If you want website traffic or are making money through page view payment your main concern would be traffic (search volume) and number of other websites competing for those keywords. This would also be true if you are selling a product or service. Since you don’t depend on Google adsense for revenue, that part of the equasion is eliminated.

On the other hand, if you’re writing somewhere that shares revenue through Google adsense, you’ll need consider CPC. And writing for a larger, more highly ranked website, will allow you to be more competitive and you can target keyword phrases with higher competition from other sites. However, writing for a smaller, start-up site or personal blog means you will want to target keyword phrases with less competition starting out.

As you can see, there is a lot of information to be gleaned from researching keywords carefully. Tailoring to fit your need is something only you can do. For more details, and step-by-step pictures on how I successfully use keyword research in a variety of situations, watch for the coming ebook “Making Money Blogging – Moving Beyond Banner Ad Sales” being released soon!

Oct

Untrained Housewife Upgrade

By AngEngland | Sites That Pay

How to Make Money Writing at Untrained Housewife

By AngEngland | Sites That Pay

4 Comments

I cannot believe how excited I am to give you all this opportunity. I usually cover the ins and outs of writing at other websites, but today I am going to be talking about a contributing to a website that I own. How scary is that? Untrained Housewife has several categories available and writers are free to choose from any of them.

How to Start Writing at Untrained Housewife

Those who are interested in contributing will need to log in with a user name ID and create their own password, etc. Once you’ve completed the registration process, please fill out the author application. Your application will be reviewed, usually within the week.

How does Untrained Housewife Rights and Pay Work?

The Untrained Housewife splits page impressions with the authors 50/50 right now. Any money earned via ad clicks will go directly into your Google Adsense account. Authors are also allowed to include one affiliate link in their stories to relevant resources.

While we emphasize unique content, there is no waiving of rights by our authors. Writers retain all rights at all times and are free to repurpose content for ebooks, articles, etc. at any time.

What are the Benefits of Writing at Untrained Housewife?

Right now we are a fairly small website, just starting out, and not officially launched yet. This means that you will have lots of individualized attention from our editors to help make each piece as polished and effective as possible. The forums are also a bonus as we have the opportunity to speak and interact directly with our readers. They can ask questions which will lead us to additional story ideas, as well as building a sense of community.

What are the Potential Drawbacks of Writing at Untrained Housewife?

Again, we are a fairly small website and just starting out. Google Adsense is split 50/50 right now, with a hope to increase author percentage later, but traffic is still fairly slow. Obviously as more content is posted, and more authority built up, this will increase. In fact, I didn’t begin actively promoting the site in any way until just recently so we should see a pick up in search engine traffic soon.

Stories do not publish immediately, but are held in que for editorial review before going public. Sometimes if edits or discussion are needed this can delay how quickly your articles get published, however it is usually within the week. If a piece were particularly timely there might be an unwanted delay in getting it visible, although editors are available via email if special circumstances were to arrive.

Well folks, there you have it! So far Untrained Housewife has been doing marvelously and things are smoothing out as we move through the last weeks of our Beta testing in preparation for a full launch. Will you join us now before we launch? We’d love to have you!

Aug

Creating a Site of My Own

By AngEngland | Sites That Pay

3 Comments

As I hinted in a recent post about learning to balance time for others and time for myself, I have been cutting back on my outside jobs a bit so that I can focus on my own site. Not any just plain ole blog, this is a social community site for homemakers – The Untrained Housewife.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to have this site up and running – When I called for a few testers I had an amazing response! We have over three dozen authors now contributing to the site, sharing the tidbits of knowledge from generations past. The things that used to be handed down matter-of-fact but rather got lost in the midst of the sexual revolution.

The heart of the site is two-fold. One – I want to help enable women (and a surprising number of engaged stay-at-home dads or involved fathers) to manage their households well. It amazed me how I could be so succesful at web writing, teaching a class or speaking aloud in front of a large audience – yet be completely defeated by the mountain of laundry. You can read more about this desire, and my true confessional, in the Heart of the Untrained Housewife essay.

Two – I wanted to help women be successful in telling their stories. Following in the footsteps of Kelby, founder of the Type-A-Mom Network of websites, I hope that I’ve created a community environment that will give women a chance to express themselves, and earn some money at the same time. Writers who contribute to the site get 50% of the adsense impressions on their Google Adsense account.

I’ve been blessed to have three wonderful editors jump on board early in the game so we are nailing down our house style already. I need to make sure, too, that everyone knows I did not do the header design – that credit goes all to April, of Creations by Kethaera. Her graphic design ability is amazing.

So – There it is, all official and in black and white. Because that makes it real. Hard to believe! It’s been awhile in the making but sometimes dreams take a lot of time and hard work to bring to fruition.

Angela <><

Jul

How Fast Can I Make Money Online

By AngEngland | Making Money, Web Content

4 Comments

“Make $100 per hour in a week or less writing online. Just purchase this ebook telling you how for only $19.99!” Look familiar? Freelance writers, or even just honest folks trying to make a few extra dollars each month during tough economic times, have probably stumbled across multiple scams that look similar to that. The get-rich-quick writing schemes are partially responsible for more than one of these common myths about web content writing.

The tough part is that it IS possible to make a very good income writing online articles, but the truth is that doesn’t happen overnight. So let’s talk about what is possible in terms of making money online, and what is not possible.

Writing Online Won’t Make You Rich Immediately

Writing articles for the web will not make you a million your first week. Chances are you won’t even make a hundred dollars your first week unless you are producing a lot of content that pays upfront. I tend to prefer writing my content for residual or revenue share type of payment set ups because I have found that I can earn more in the long-run for these pieces. But that’s only helpful if you don’t need the money that second. Otherwise you would be better off considering some of the websites that pay you upfront for your work vs creating your blog site or contributing to content sites.

Writing Online Can Pay a Significant Amount of Money

I have written hundreds of articles over the past three years and one thing I can say with certainty: Online content production can most definitely pay off for you and make a stream of income that pays you month after month. That’s why I appreciate the residual pay models so much since I can continue to get paid “forever” for articles I wrote two or three years ago. Mind you, when I began I thought it was great to get $15 for a single article. Now I require $40 minimum for private contract work.

Affiliate Links, Revenue Share and Even Upfront Pay Take Time

Yes, you can make money quickly, especially by taking private contract jobs. But even using affiliate links, smaller upfront pay jobs and revenue share websites take time. However, they often continue to pay out over a long period of time, making you money for an extended period of time. Last September when I took a month off work to have a baby, I was able to have enough coming in from what I’d done in previous years to pay the mortgage! But it didn’t happen overnight.

The Magic Number

Usually it has been my experience at Suite101 that writers begin to see a decent return on their effort at 50-100 articles. Whether that takes you two months (one per day) or a year (one per week) is completely up to you!

Jul

Writing an Online Article – How-tos and a Basic Template

By AngEngland | Web Content

Writing for Demand Studios Pros and Cons

By AngEngland | Sites That Pay

2 Comments

So here’s the scoop on Demand Studios in a nutshell. (I don’t have a full website post about it yet)

They do NOT allow you to keep any rights to your work. At all. When you write the article, and submit it to them, it is theirs. You need to know that upfront.

Having said that – Demand Studios can be a really good way to make a set amount of immediate money. When our renters flaked out on us and we NEEDED to make X amount of money to cover the mortgage (granted – it was our fault for relying on that rent money and we’ve definitely learned our lesson) Demand Studios saved us.

Here’s How Demand Studios Pays

If you take one of the articles they have listed you will get paid $15. Search for titles you can do quickly and easily. Some of them are totally off the wall – like “How to Build a Solar Powered Robot Dog” or some crazy weird thing like that. The best way I’ve found it so find a cluster of article titles around a similar theme. “How Dolphins Use Echolocation”, “About Dolphins” “Why are Dolphins Mammals” “How do Dolphins Behave” – I can use one bundle of research to crank out five or six articles on a similar topic and get them written rather quickly.

If you SUGGEST a title you will only get paid $5. I do not recommend doing it often. $5 is hardly worth the trouble – better to search for a topic title you think you can do relatively easy. Especially when you consider that last year on Suite101 I averaged $15-$16 per article for the entire year. And I’m still getting paid for those articles this year as well.

They apparently have added some kind of revenue share program but my understanding is that it is rather a small amount of payment per 1000 pv’s. Anything under $2/1000 page views is rather too low in my opinion. I average about $3 per 1000 page views at Suite101 and prefer to write any “extra” articles there.

But, like I said. When I HAD TO HAVE $300 that month to make up the difference it was very easy to say “$300 divided by $15 = 20 articles”.

Demand Studios pays once a week directly into your Paypal account. You will recieve a W2 at the end of the year for payments. My profile with a list of articles I’ve written there – http://www.ehow.com/members/ds_angela10540.html

May

Five Essential Elements of Good SEO

By AngEngland | SEO Tips

10 Comments

There are five main components of SEO that a writer must keep in mind when writing for the web. Or rather, when writing any blog post, website article or copy that will be placed anywhere on the web – even though it is written for a human being to read. The truth is, if a writer does not have basic SEO techniques no one will find their blog post or article.

SEO Tip #1 Clear and Relevant Titles

If you ignore everything else in this post, please do not ignore this. You must have a clear and concise title. Otherwise it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, no one will ever find your website except, perhaps, a handful of your close friends.

For example, I could have titled this blog post “Be Like the Pied Piper” – a clever twist of words referencing drawing a large amount of followers to your blog or website. However, if I were going to type in a search term into Google to find the information in this blog post, I would search “Good SEO Essentials”. Therefore, those are the words that should be in my title. Google does not have much as a sense of humor, unfortunately.

See Kelby Carr’s (@TypeAMom) article for more details about SEO savvy titles.

SEO Tip #2 Introduce Your Topic Specifically

Unfortunately, most of today’s readers want to know what you are going to talk about and they want to know NOW. They will not spend two minutes (or two paragraphs) trying to figure out what your post is really about. They want to know whether it is going to tell them what they want to know. Soon. The first paragraph of your blog post should introduce your topic (and probably look very similar to your title) immediately. Be cute and witty later. After you’ve hooked your readers.

SEO Tip #3 – Focus The Topic of Each Post or Article

As @HeatherSolos pointed out at a Twitter Site-Warming Party, keeping a narrow, clear focus on each specific blog post will naturally produce strong keywords. There is a huge difference between writing about “Labor Pain” and writing about “Benefits of Massage During Labor” and “How to Use Massage During Labor“. Notice, those are two seperate articles. You can see how the keywords and keyword phrases fall naturally into place, because I have kept the focus of the article very specific.

SEO Tip #4 Use Subheadings To Increase SEO

As demonstrated in this blog post, subheadings are highly useful. They keep you tightly focus on your post topic because you can quickly tell by the subheading if you are veering off course. For example, if the subheading for this paragraph had said “Adding Affiliate Links to Your Blog”, but my title is about five basic SEO tips, than it is obvious I am moving off to a different topic.

Subheadings also break up the blog post, allowing readers to more easily skim your post and read online. If a block of text is too long, readers will give up before finishing your post. Subheadings also allow you to restate your keywords again. In the blog post I thought about using “Five SEO Tips” as the title, but instead chose to use that in my subheadings.

SEO Tip #5 Use Keywords Naturally

No one wants to sound like they are a robot spitting out keywords to serve Google Adsense. There are plenty of those types of websites out there for sure! But good, human-driven, high-quality content does not have to ignore search engine optimization – rather integrate it organically throughout the blog post or web article.

For example, in the Labor Massage article I mentioned above, the introduction could have said, “How my husband helped me while I was having my baby.” While that is certainly a valid introduction, you can see how this introduction, “Using massage to comfort a mother during her labor has been proven to help in many ways. See the benefits of touch for a birthing woman.” places several of the keywords and keyword phrases right at the top when readers are trying to figure out what the article references.

Remember to use good SEO techniques, even if they are just these five basics, when writing your blog posts and articles so you will be found by the readers you want to attract. Someone out there is looking for what you have to say – will they find you?

Additional Articles:

Why is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Important?

SEO Tips for Bloggers – Notes from a Conference Session I Taught

May

Can You Make Money Writing for Hubpages?

By AngEngland | Sites That Pay

23 Comments

Hubpages is a Squidoo type website where members can create individual webpages, called Hubs, and earn money directly into Adsense and other affiliate or ad accounts. There is definitely a potential to earn money through Hubpages so let me go through some of the how-to’s, whys, benefits and potential downfalls of hubpages for you. You can see some of the hubpages I’ve put together by checking out my Hubpages Profile. (Note – if you sign up after clicking that link I do get a small credit for the referral.)

How to Start Writing for Hubpages

Sign up and create an account. Everything is explained very step-by-step and I have found the hubpages VERY easy to put together. I like to put my little off-topic ideas up there that don’t really fit in anywhere else I write at. I’ve also reworked and expanded some of my articles previously published elsewhere. Easy, easy, easy.

Each component of the hubpage is easily added or deleted using the Module editor feature. Easy. SO easy. And, it’s like having a miniature website all your very own with none of the management/server/etc issues because Hubpages owns the website.

How Does Hubpages Pay?

The revenue modules (Amazon, Adsense, etc) are split 60/40 between you and Hubpages website. So if you have 100 people visit your hubpage one week, 60 of those page impressions will show an Adsense block with YOUR adsense information (ie YOU get the money if someone clicks the ad) and 40 of them will see an Adsense block with the company information (ie Hubpages gets the money). 60/40 is a decent split from other sites I’ve seen.

Benefits of Writing for Hubpages

It is easy to put a hubpage together. They go together rather quickly, and it’s easy to tackle the writing in a module- by-module way. Also, if the idea of putting together an entire website feels overwhelming to you, then consider making one hubpage. Then later, when you have time, make one more. And then one more. Because each hubpage is individual, you are finished with THAT hubpage as soon as you finish it. As opposed to this website which is never finished. Sort of like my laundry. Ugh.

Probably one of the best parts about Hubpages is that your content is completely yours at all times. Which is significant if you ever want to reuse the material elsewhere at a later time.

Are There Downsides of Writing for Hubpages?

As with all web content sites, you end up sharing some of the revenue with the website owners. But, as I said, 60/40 is a rather generous split, and the revenue comes to you daily. I can check and see which hubpages are getting adclicks, see immediately when someone purchases a theatre makeup kit from Amazon.com using my affiliate link, etc. I have found that for me personally, Amazon affiliate links were more successful than adsense, but one of my colleagues average $300 in revenue from a single hubpage so that is very significant. I’m not there yet with hubpages, but I’m working on it! *laughing*

My colleague supports her and her daughter as a single mother from her hubpages and writing at BellaOnline. Amazing. She said she has over 300 hubpages, which is similar to the number of articles I have at Suite101. Her income from Hubpages is currently higher than my income at Suite101 but my traffic and exposure at Suite101 is higher, so it might be a trade off.

I found Hubpages easy to write, a joy to put together, and I love the fact that you keep all rights at all times. Unlike many of the other content sites currently available.