Make Money Writing Online

There are a bunch of ways for anybody who can string a few words together to make some cash in this crazy online world. Here, though, I'm going to focus on those sites that I've discovered so far that are actually worth writing for.

Now, there's a lot to be said for paid blogs. I'm not going to get into that subject, though, because everybody has an opinion - and unless yours is really interesting, and you're really lucky, you're never going to make enough to bother with blogging.

The 'real' money in online writing comes from penning articles and other informational / entertaining content.

But, where is an aspiring writer to go, to earn such elusive cash?

Well, here's my favorite six sites, and the reasons why I like them. From least to best, they are:

AmericanChronicle.com
GZYN.com
ThisIsBy.Us
HubPages.com
Helium.com
AssociatedContent.com

First up, American Chronicle. This site actually doesn't pay, which is why it comes in last. However, there are a LOT of benefits for writing here. First of all, they have very high quality standards - every article goes through extensive review before being published, so, if yours makes it, you know you've got good stuff.

What's more, American Chronicle isn't a single site, but a whole family. If they pick up your article, you'll be published in no fewer than 21 online journals, from Los Angeles to Florida. The exposure is incredible, and just being seen here has the potential to open a number of doors for your career as a writer. At the very least, your page rank on Google will get a huge boost, increasing the odds that you'll get read elsewhere, where you do get paid. That benefit alone cannot be understated.

Next is GZYN. This site pays, but in a round-about way. How it works is that you can put up any written content you like, and GZYN sticks ads in it. The more popular your content becomes, the more the ads get seen, and thus, the more you make.

However, these ads are administered by Google's AdSense program, so you never actually get paid directly from GZYN, but only through Google, and only once the ads on your articles have made enough money - which takes a REALLY long time, even if your stuff is very popular.

Coming in at number 4 is ThisIsBy.Us This site has a strange method of calculating how to pay you. Again, you can write anything you like, and users view it. You are paid based on your "goodness" score, which is how many views there are in a given day, multiplied by the number of 'votes' the article gets that day. For example, if 20 people view your article, and three 'vote' for it, you'll have a "goodness" of 61 (you get 1 point free, because they assume you like your own writing).

From there it gets even more complex. They take the total earnings the entire site made that day, and divide it up between all the articles that had "goodness" that day, based on the percentage of the total "goodness" that they had. For example, if the site made $1, and there were 10 articles that each had "goodness" ratings of 1,000, then they would each get 10 cents.

Also, you can earn just from commenting on articles, but that is a similarly complex system.

Number 3 is HubPages. I really like how this site is set up; they give you 'capsules', or components of a page that you can play with. You automatically get the basics: text, comments, etc., but you can add all kinds of nifty things, including income generating bits like Amazon and Ebay referral sections, where 'relevant items' are displayed for sale.

Best of all, you can change around the order of the capsules, even put them side-by-side, which gives you unprecedented control on the layout of the page.

This site primarily pays through Google's AdSense also, which can be a bit of a drawback, but, if you're using both this site and GZYN it does kind of simplify things.

The major flaw for these three paying sites is a low user count. There aren't many people surfing them, so it's unlikely that you'll get high enough page views to make publishing on them worth your while.

However, all of their user lists are growing every day. It is impossible to say how long it might be before an author can generate some serious money on any of them, but, eventually... In the meantime, they serve for garnering yet more exposure, and do get you a little bit of pocket change.

Number two is Helium. This site is a little different, in that authors don't pen individual articles, they write to 'topics'. There are thousands of titles available, and, if you can't find one that covers an idea you'd like to write about, you can always request a new one just for that.

Helium's pay system is a little complex, though not so much as ThisIsBy.Us. Once you've written an article, it gets rated by other users against all the other articles in that title. Once that happens, your article is given a rank, like '3 of 10'. There are various perks associated with a better rank, not the least of which is increased pay.

Helium does not plainly state how much an author earns per page view, but they do make it clear that an article ranked '1 of 20' will get a lot more moola per click than one at '14 of 20'.

Now, there are two things about Helium that makes writing for them a bit harder. First, they have peculiar quality standards. Articles (with some exceptions) must be at least 400 words. That's not such a big deal (though you might have to babble a bit to fill out the word count on a short-and-sweet type topic). Additionally, you cannot include any personally identifying information in your articles. The idea is that it might foul up the rating system, which is supposed to be anonymous. However, if you so much as say "In my experience as a _____ Professor," or some similar credibility-building statement, your article might get rejected, edited, or deleted.

Helium's editors can be quite fickle. Sometimes they'll reject an article that deals with a specific issue or item of news, saying it's 'too focused'. Other times, they'll reject a general approach to the same subject matter, saying it's 'too broad'.

Sometimes you can just revise your articles to correct whatever the problem is, but you will end up with a goodly stock of wasted work for those times when an article just cannot be broadened or focused without losing its coherence.

The second big drawback to Helium is that you can't get your hands on the money you've earned until you're due at least $25. Once you've got a bunch of articles on Helium, you might hit this number fairly quickly, but, just starting out, earning a little here and there, it might take a while. A lot of people get frustrated and drop out before they reach that mark.

The best site for paid freelance writing, overall, is AssociatedContent. First of all, you get paid a heck of a lot more than any of the other sites I've mentioned here (and they are upfront about it): $1.50 per 1,000 views. On top of that, you can get up-front bonuses, if your writing is good. For example, a college research paper might net you $4.

While HubPages and ThisIsBy.Us allow you to add photos to your articles, AC lets you add up to 5, no matter how short your article might be. Unlike the others, AC also automatically breaks your work down into multiple pages, for ease of reading.

But the best aspect of AC, among it's many other pluses, is that unlike any of the others, you can submit content in non-text formats. Any user can create audio and video content, and get paid for those too. Frankly, I don't know why YouTube is so popular, when you can do the same thing on AC and get paid for it.

AC, of course, does have its drawbacks. For one, you can only enter a maximum of five search tags for each article. There are also a limited number of categories an article can fall into. For example, if you write an article about life as an active-duty soldier, you'll have to decide if it would fit best under 'lifestyle' or 'society'. If you want to discuss international trade regulations, you'll probably have to stick it in either 'politics' or 'opinion'.

I could go on for quite a while about the unique features and benefits of each of these sites; however, at the end of the day, this article is about making money for your writing. With that in mind, above all else, AC is surely your best bet.

That said, though, it is important to remember that you, as a professional writer, don't need to pick only one.