How to Sell Reprint Articles: The Article that Keeps on Giving

Because very few people make hundreds of dollars per article when writing for the Internet, it makes more sense to sell reprint rights to articles than to try to make it big the first time around. Since the Internet is splashed with thousands of articles that have been repeated dozens of times, one has to be careful about how many times he or she sells reprint rights, but it can make you a more successful freelance writer.

In order to sell reprint articles, however, you must first understand the rights you are selling initially. For example, if you sign away all of your rights to an article, the copyright still remains with you but you are not given the option of selling reprint right to other publications. This is comparable to submitting articles to AC as "exclusive content"; once you click the "exclusive" button, AC technically owns that article.

When you sell reprint articles, you are selling the right to publish your article a second (or third...or fourth...) time. It means that you won't get as much for the article as you did with the first sale, but it does mean that you will continually make money off of work that you've already done.

Many Internet websites purchase reprint articles in order to drive traffic to their sites. The average price for a reprint (or non-exclusive) article is between $5 and $50, though you might be able to get more for a truly spectacular piece. Print publications typically don't purchase reprint articles unless they contact you specifically about an article you've written, so don't get your hopes up there.

There are a few ways in which you can sell reprint articles, but you do have to be careful. The first way is to post your articles on your own website and include a disclaimer that tells visitors that your articles are available for reprint at a cost only. This means that you are not authorizing individuals to reprint your articles for free; instead, they must pay you a fee for that privilege.

You can also find Internet publications which purchase reprint articles and query them about their content needs. For example, I once sold the same article to two different health and fitness e-zines because it fit the tone and voice of both of those publications.

If you're going to try and sell reprint articles, you should make sure that you carefully check the contract with the original publisher of the article. Some publications will reserve exclusive rights for a specific number of months or years before you are allowed to sell it again, while others have no such stipulation. Make sure that you haven't sold exclusive rights and that there aren't any competition infringements with selling the article to a similar organization.