How to Become a Freelance Writer
One of the best ways to begin making money online right away is to learn how to become a freelance writer. Many people think that you have to have a resume that displays previous writing experience to get started. While that helps, it is not necessary to get started. There are many legitimate places you can earn money from home in exchange for your writing. There are two basic ways you can do this:
Bid for Temporary Writing Gigs
There are several freelance sites (more being added daily) that allow you to bid for writing jobs. While there might be a little effort up front with setting up your account and learning to navigate the system, once you get comfortable you can bid on writing jobs here and there as you have the time available or need the income. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
1. Odesk – it is free to sign up and at the time of this writing there were over 6,000+ writing projects and assignments available to bid on. These range from businesses wanting content written for them to solo-prenuers that want original content posted on their blog.
2. Elance – one of the first freelancing sites to come online and probably one of the most reputable. They have a tendency to attract the higher paying jobs here. There is still a good mixture of entry-level and advanced writing assignments.
3. Freelancer – is a similar site that allows you to apply for short-term writing assignments. There are between 1,500-2,000 writing projects right now that you can bid on!
4. Scriptlance – is a freelancing site that was originally designed for programmers. However, there are a decent number of writing projects here as well. I will admit that most of the writing projects are a bit lower financially from the others.
5. VWorker – while it has a smaller amount of writing jobs to bid on over the others, many freelancers like their payment guarantee that they offer. The are also registered with Square Trade and the Better Business Bureau.
There are more freelance sites out there but these are the bigger players for the most part. I would recommend signing up free accounts with each and then you can narrow in on a specific type of writing and monitor jobs on each of them. Having a few income buckets is a good strategy. You can also set up a spreadsheet to keep track of your projects if you begin to get busy. It can be a great thing to make money writing articles online!
Apply to Permanent Online Writing Jobs
There are also freelance writing sites that allow you to write content and get paid on a regular basis without having to work with individuals and bid on jobs. While there are many out there I am going to list just two that I have personally used in the past.
1. Demand Studios – You have to apply with a resume and a writing sample. They also have human editors that review every article that you post. The articles have to be of a high quality and pass their format guidelines. That being said, they provide article topics in the system that you can claim that range from how to wash your dog to starting an organic garden. You pick the topics you enjoy. Typical payment is $15 for 500 word article. They pay by Paypal 2x’s a week. I have written over 200+ articles for them in the past.
2. TextBroker – Another site that allows you to claim article titles and write articles in exchange for money. The assignments vary according to the writing assignments that employers want. It can vary between 150 word assignments to 700+ word assignments. The better your quality score the higher your income potential. It does not pay as high as other options but the writing is easier and you can complete more assignments quickly. I once sat down for two hours and wrote enough articles to collect. $67.89. They also pay by Paypal but only 2x’s a month.
