There are two basic ways to make money writing: write content for others to sell (or otherwise monetize) or write content that you sell (or otherwise monetize). Let’s take a look at both methods.

How to Make Money Writing Content for Others

We’re essentially talking about freelance writing here, and it’s my least favorite way to make money for a couple of reasons:

• In most cases, you only get paid once for your work (no matter what rates you’re eventually able to command, it’s always going to be an hour’s work for an hour’s pay), so there’s no opportunity to earn significant passive income.

• You’re competing with a lot of people, and there’s always going to be someone willing to do the work cheaper.
• In selling your work to someone else, you give up the rights to it. It belongs to a new owner, and, in most cases, you can’t ever use it again.

All that said, writing content for someone else is the easiest way to start making money quickly. (In the next section, I’m going to talk about building up your own sites as a way to make money from advertising, affiliate programs, or creating your own products–i.e. ebooks or training courses–but this takes longer to get off the ground.) You can find a gig on Rentacoder or post an article to Constant Content and possibly get paid within a month.

If you’re trying to make money writing right now, then this is the way to get started. Here are some sites you can check into:

Elance & Rentacoder — These are sites where you can bid to get freelance writing jobs. Someone may be looking for a ghostwriter for an ebook or content for a website. To give yourself a good chance of being chosen, you’ll want to put together an online portfolio with sample articles you’ve written (if you don’t have a site of your own yet, you can use some of the sites I’ll post next as places to “publish” your work). Chances are, the pay will not be good, as people generally come to these sites looking for as good a deal as possible, but it can be a way to get started while you work on other ways to make money from your writing.

Associated Content, Helium, eHow, Hubpages — On these sites, you create an account, and submit articles (you have a lot of freedom on what to write about). These sites make money displaying ads next to your work. In some cases you’ll earn a couple bucks for articles that are accepted, in some cases you’ll earn money based on page views (basically a percentage of what the outfit is making from advertising), and for some sites it’s a combination of both. An article that’s initially purchased for a measly $5 may end up making more if it becomes popular and gets a lot of views. The outfit will encourage you to promote your own articles so you can get more views and thus earn more (in my opinion, if you’re going to go to that much trouble, you might as well create your own site, and keep 100% of the advertising revenue).

Constant Content — This is another site where you can publish articles, but it’s a little different in that you get to set the prices for your articles. You’re not selling them to CC, but to buyers who will come to the CC marketplace in order to browse articles. You have the option of offering a usage price (meaning the article can be sold numerous times to folks who just want to use it and don’t care if it’s unique) or an exclusive price (meaning the person who buys it is the only one who can ever use it). The passive-income-loving writer in me likes the idea of selling articles again and again for usage rights, but from the message boards it sounds like most folks are lucky to sell articles more than once or twice.

How to Make Money Writing Your Own Content

This is what I love to talk about and largely what this site focuses on. The way to make good money writing for the web is to create assets that you control 100% and which pay you again and again.

Blogging — Creating a blog can be an ends in itself or it can be a launch pad for other ways of making money from your writing. I’ve talked about blogging quite a bit (check the category), so I’ll just touch on it lightly here, but the idea is to choose a niche you’re interested in, create quality content that informs people (if you can solve people’s problems, you can always make money), and build up the number of visitors it receives (through building links to your site). Once you’re getting a decent amount of traffic, you can make money from your blog by adding advertising, such as Google Adsense, or selling advertising directly to merchants. You can also sign up for affiliate programs and make money promoting products that are related to your niche.

Books, Ebooks, Newsletters, and Other Products — Once you have a blog built up, you can also use it as a platform to launch products of your own. While I’m a big fan of selling advertising (I love Adsense, in particular, because it’s so low maintenance and there’s absolutely no customer service involved), I fully acknowledge that the real chance to build wealth and control your destiny is to have your own products. As a writer, books or ebooks are natural first steps, but, depending on your niche, you may want to create higher-ticket products as well. Many entrepreneurial types favor training courses (which may be offered through membership sites) or paid-subscription newsletters. These types of services involve people paying for monthly, quarterly, or annual subscriptions, so you earn money over and over again, with earnings increasing as the number of subscribers increase.

No matter which road you take (you may like a mix of both), you can make money writing for the web. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise!

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

How to Make Money Writing for the Web

Maaaaaaaybe.

But there are some big considerations to mull over before you plunk down your credit card.

1. Do you trust and identify with the person selling the system?

If you’ve spent any time browsing the Internet and trying to find a way to make money, you’ve probably encountered The Long Sales Letter. You know the one: it’s designed to pull all your desire strings, rev up your hope, and have you speed-scrolling to the bottom so you click the “Buy It Right Now Before the Price Goes up” button.

If this sales letter is your first contact with the author of the product, don’t even consider buying anything. You have no way of knowing if there is any truth behind it. Chances are the product creator didn’t even write it, or if he did, it was substantially edited by a copywriter. Consider it a story, not a true representation of the product creator’s voice.

And, yes, that “voice” matters.

Before you buy one of these make-money systems, it’s important to know the author. I’m not talking about sharing lunch dates and golf games, but you want to have had enough exposure to the author to get a feel for their methods and their values.

Why?

Because your success isn’t just about the system. The system can work for the author, and it can work for someone else, but it may not work for you. For the system to work, it has to be right for you.

Let me give you an example. When I was a broke 19-year-old private in the army, I picked up one of those “business opportunity” magazines that consisted of little more than ads designed to sucker you into buying get-rich-faster-than-it-takes-to-nuke-a-bag-of-microwave-popcorn “opportunities.” I got suckered, and I bought. I sent away $30 for a system that promised to teach me how to make money at home stuffing envelopes in my spare time (yeah, I can’t believe I fell for it either–I like to tell myself the copywriter who put together that ad was exceptionally talented…).

As soon as I got the system, I realized this proven how-to-make-money-stuffing-envelopes system consisted of putting an ad in a magazine and selling people the same how-to-make-money-stuffing-envelopes “system” I had received: a piece of paper telling you how to make money by selling people pieces of paper on how to make money.

So, I could make money if I was as willing to trick other people into falling for the same “system” I had fallen for. Gee.

While some people could make money following the steps, I wanted to be able to sleep at night, so I opted out.

And that’s why I recommend you know who something about the author of any system you’re considering. There actually are a lot of ways to make money (especially if you like to write!), but not every way is going to be a good fit for you.

To increase your odds of being successful with whatever program you choose, make sure you’ve read what the author has written on forums, on social media sites, and on his blog (in this day and age, anyone selling a system should have a blog), and make sure you agree with the ways he makes money.

Make sure you could see yourself doing what this person does. In fact, you should get excited by the prospect of doing it. If you don’t, then keep looking.

2. Does the author of the system do what he teaches, and could he duplicate his success today?

This is especially pertinent for Internet-based systems. The techniques someone used to make thousands a month from blogging or PPC or affiliate marketing or site flipping three years ago may not work today.

Rules change. The way search engines index sites changes. The amount of competition changes (the more people who buy that system, the more people there are trying to make money with it).

While there are some principles (like creating good content) that are likely to be profitable for the long road, a lot of how-to-make-money systems rely on shortcuts that probably aren’t going to work eternally (and may not even work next year).

If you find a system that appeals to you, and it relies on the Internet (or any other sort of rapidly changing technology) to succeed, find out whether or not the author has done what they teach recently. If he hasn’t, find reviews of the system (not testimonials from the author’s sales page…) and make sure people are succeeding because of the advice they received.

3. Have you already purchased other how-to-make-money systems, and if so did you do anything with them?

I’m always surprised how many people become chain purchasers of these types of products. If the first one you buy doesn’t work for you, stop and figure out why before buying another.

Chances are one of two things kept you from succeeding with the first system:

1. You were ethically opposed to what the system told you to do or it was just plain B.S.
2. Something inside of you is keeping you from persisting long enough to reach a payoff.

If it was the first, you’ll know to research the author a lot more before buying another product. This is an easy fix.

If it’s the second, the fix may take a little more work. Buying system after system isn’t going to help. You need to figure out what’s holding you back.

For a lot of people, they get into the trap of rabidly consuming information on making money without taking action. They fail to actually do what they’re reading how to do themselves. They are afraid to make mistakes, because they believe mistakes are tied to failure. And if they fail… then they’ve lost the hope that this system (or maybe any system) can help them reach their dreams.

But you only fail if you quit.

You can’t worry about knowing everything–you have to just jump in and take action. Mistakes speed up the learning process (some day I’ll make a huge list of all the mistakes I’ve made and share them here as a what-not-to-do guide). We forget what we read about, but we remember–and learn from–what we do.

Need motivation? Inspiration?

Some authors/speakers you may want to try reading (or listening to):

Earl Nightingale
Zig Ziglar
Denis Waitley

If there are others you’d recommend, list them in the comments below, so we can check them out!

Did I ever use a how-to-make-money system?

For those who may wonder, I never bought an information product when I was working through how to make money online. (The whole envelope-stuffing fiasco made me leery of information products for a long time.) I muddled my way through it, mostly by learning from people (the ones who were successful) in webmaster forums. There are always people willing to share what they’ve learned for free.

I do think that, if you find the right system for you, buying a product (or even better, finding a coach to teach you first-hand) can shave some time off your learning curve.

On the other hand, most people I’ve come across who have found success took their own path. They may have learned from successful folks who went before, but ultimately they created their own “system.”

What do you think? Have you ever purchased a system? Did you use it? Did you regret it? Would you recommend it?

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

3 Questions to Answer Before You Buy a “How to Make Money” System…

Today, I’m going to answer some questions sent to me by David the Freelance Writer.

“I truly love to write, and I even enjoy the research a lot of writing takes, but I really don’t know how to get started with a blog, draw enough people to my site to interest advertisers, or how to set all that up. Could you steer me to articles or sites that explain the process you described for those of us who don’t know all the lingo yet? Is there a ‘how to make $ writing a blog for dummies’ book out that would explain this step by step.”

Okay, let’s start with the basics.

What Is a Blog?

A blog, short for web log, is a type of website with a user interface that makes it easy to update, or create “posts” for, without any knowledge of html or other programming languages. These posts are typically displayed in chronological order with most recent entries at the top.

For a more thorough description, check out this wonderful post from Problogger: What Is a Blog?

Why Does Every Writer Need a Blog?

If you intend to make money as a writer, whether through authoring a book or freelancing or publishing your own content to your own sites, the blog will be your cornerstone asset.

It can make money in and of itself (you can place advertisements next to your content as well as “affiliate links”–being an affiliate of an Internet shop is like working on commission so you get a percentage cut if a product is sold through your link), but it can also be the means by which you attract potential buyers or clients.

There are several reasons blogs work well for attracting people:

1. The ease of updating a blog (no coding required) means you can post regularly without a big time investment.

2. Your blog software will “ping” blog indexing services that are devoted to monitoring what’s going on in the blogosphere (an example is Technorati), making it easy for the world to see that you’ve updated your site.
3. By default, blogs let readers leave comments, which allows a conversation to begin and facilitates the formation of a community with you as the organizer who brought everyone together.
4. Blogs have a grass roots beginning, and even though many have been commercialized, most are still updated by a single person. Folks often trust a blog more than a big business site.
5. Through your posts, readers get a feel for your expertise and your writer’s voice, even as they get a glimpse into your life. In short, blogs can humanize your business (and, yes, we writers are in a business–as soon as we decide to make money, that becomes true!).

*Note: A blog need not be your whole site. It can exist on a portion of your site while in another area you can have a shopping cart where someone can buy your book or ebook. In yet another section, you might have sample chapters. The blog is often the means by which you get people to your site, but if they like your style and jive with your message, they’ll probably explore farther.

How to Get Started with a Blog

There are two ways to get started with a blog. You can purchase a domain name (ex. http://yournameoryourbusiness.com), a web hosting package (I use site5.com), and install blog software (WordPress is popular and free) in the space provided by your web host. The other option is to sign up with a free blog company, such as Blogger, where a wizard guides you through creating your first blog.

For a professional blog–one that is going to make you money in one way or another–you should definitely get your own domain name, hosting space, and have your own blog installed. (Read my earlier post on why it’s a good idea to install your own blog and have full control over it.)

However, if you’re brand new to blogging, and you just want to get some practice in, then there’s nothing wrong with starting with a freebie site. Blogger makes it very easy to get up and running in a few minutes by following the prompts and filling in the boxes. You can even tinker with learning the ropes, attracting visitors, and making money with a free blog.

I should note that once your blog is set up, it’s equally easy to update both types of blogs (self-hosted and hosted on free sites). If you’re not a techy type, you can pay someone to set up your domain name, hosting, and do the initial blog set up for you.

How to get people to your blog

It’s easy to get started writing to a blog, but getting noticed is a little harder. If you want to make money, whether through advertising or attracting potential book buyers, then you need people to come to your site.

There are books written on traffic generation and search engine optimization (SEO), so I’ll just do a brief explanation here.

As far as the business aspect goes, the best types of visitors are the ones who find our blog through the search engines. This is because they specifically logged on to look for information on a topic and were led to your blog when it appeared in the search engine results.

In order to be found in those search engine results, you may want to do some “keyword research.” This means figuring out what people are typing in to look up topics related to your niche.

For example, let’s say you’re writing about weight loss. You might want to find out if more people are typing in “weight loss” or if “diet” trumps that term in popularity. Then you may want to name your site and choose your URL using whichever is the more popular term. If a keyword is located in the title, the URL, and the content of the site, search engines know that site is going to be more relevant to searchers looking for information on that subject.

A free spot where you can tinker around and see which terms are most popular for your niche is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Not only can you see how frequently terms are being searched each month, but you can get an idea for how much merchants are bidding per click for keywords in your niche. This can help you identify which subjects are more likely to be profitable for you. We’ll talk about that more in future posts though.

Using keywords in your title, URL, content, etc. is part of what’s called on-page SEO. How well your site ranks in the search engines for your keywords also depends on off-page elements, especially links.

The more links pointing to your blog from other sites, the more authority your site is deemed to have. If a lot of people are linking to you, then your site must be a good resource (that’s the assumption anyway–a lot of people do work to game the system). In addition, it helps if people link to your site with your keywords in the link text.

Okay, how are we doing? Clear as mud?

If you’re new to all this, it’s natural for it to sound like industry jargon, but as you work on building your blog and getting more visitors, you’ll start seeing these suggestions frequently, and everything will eventually click.

For now, just know that it’s important to get links to your site. We’ll talk more about how to get those links in the future, but in the beginning, you can just ask friends with blogs to help you get started by linking to your site!

Books and sites for beginning bloggers

You could spend days and days reading all the content Darren Rowse has put up at Problogger, so that is my site recommendation. In the center of his site, he has a section that lists popular posts, and there is a beginners series. Check that area out if you are new to blogging, and then explore more from there.

As for books, I’ll post a few links below. They’ll take you to Amazon, where you can read the reviews, but if you’re trying to save bucks, I know many library systems will have these too.

This first one I read a couple years ago. It covers more than just blogs, and gives you an overall idea of ways to make money online. I think it would be a good resource for beginners:

Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free: Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cash

I also have Joel Comm’s book on Adsense, though it is more geared toward people who already have websites and are looking to monetize them. It’s basically a primer to Adsense (all of the information can be found online, but sometimes it’s nice to have it all in one place):

The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense

Let me also give you the link to the “Dummies” book on blogging. I haven’t read it myself, but from the contents list, it looks like it might be a good starting point:

Blogging For Dummies

And finally, here is Darren Rowse’s book:

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

This one is still in my to-read stack, but I have been reading Darren’s blog for three years, and I know it will be a good resource.

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

How to Get Started with a Blog (and why all writers should)