5 Ways to Make Money Writing Articles Online

One of the most popular ways to make money online is by writing articles. That’s quite a generalized statement, though, because there are just so many ways to make money by writing stuff online. In this article, you’ll discover five of the most profitable and popular ways to make money by writing.

Make Money Writing Articles 

1) Start a Blog

Blogging is one of the best ways to make money by writing online, which is why we’ve included it first. First of all, you don’t need any previous writing experience to start a blog. As long as you can type, you can blog — all you’re doing is putting out ideas and connecting with your audience. Just blog as you would talk to a friend. Nobody will be looking over your shoulder to check your spelling or grammar.

However, blogging has even a better advantage — you get to be your own boss. When doing the other stuff listed below, you’re working for someone else. Yes, you can work from home, but that doesn’t give you 100 percent financial freedom. If you’re writing articles for private clients, you still face deadlines and editors.

When blogging, however, you do achieve full financial freedom. You own your blog, and you can do what you want and when you want. If your blog is getting visitors and making money, you can earn money even when you take a random week off for vacation.

Starting a blog isn’t hard at all. However, you will have to learn how to monetize your blog – just having a blog won’t bring in any money. You’ll need to learn about stuff such as Google Adsense and affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is probably the best way to make money with a blog, and the earning potential is much higher than doing something like putting Adsense ads on your blog. However, there’s a lot to know in order to be successful with affiliate marketing.

If you want to start making money with affiliate marketing and blogging

I’d recommend that you join the Wealthy Affiliate Online University

You will get dozens of online classes on how to become a successful online marketer, you’ll have 24/7 support from a highly active community of successful bloggers. You’ll also get all the tools you need, such as a website builder and the newly released SiteContent platform, which lets you blog directly from your Wealthy Affiliate dashboard.

2)Join a Content Mill

Content mills are what they sound like. They’re companies that hire writers to write dozens of low-quality articles for very cheap. You’ll only get paid one or two cents per word on average, but there are often plenty of articles available, which makes it worthwhile for some people. Popular content mills include Textbroker, iWriter, and HireWriters.

3) Start Your Own Freelance Business

Another way to make money by writing articles online is by starting your own freelance writing business. Instead of joining a content mill and picking an article from the list of available articles, you’re going to find your own private clients.

The advantages of this are many. First of all, you’re not beholden to the price the content mill sets for their writers. Many content mills will pay you less than a cent per word when starting out. There is no way you can change this. However, with private clients, you can set your own prices. You can negotiate your prices if you want, as well.

So where can you find private clients?

The best place to start is by looking at online job boards, such as Indeed or Career Monster. However, I recommend that you bookmark a few sites that are dedicated solely to jobs relating to freelance writing. Some sites I recommend are the Problogger Job Board, Online-Writing-Jobs.com, and the Morning Coffee Newsletter.

The disadvantage of this method is that you will face a lot of competition. There are no articles just sitting there waiting for you to pick them up. You’re going to have to go out there and message potential clients. You’re going to need a great resume, a great collection of writing samples, and be able to send cold emails to many potential clients with convincing pitches. You’re going to have to be able to bear the fact that most people get so many applications that they will never reply to your emails.

However, once you get your foot in the door, so to speak, things get easier. You can get referrals from former clients and even other writers, and your reputation will precede you.

4) Join a Third-Party Freelance Network

Another way to finding private clients is through third-party networks which are not content mills, such as Upwork, Freelancer.com, or PeoplePerHour. However, there is a lot of competition, and there will always be someone who will bid a lower price than yours (and the client will probably choose them). You will also get paid through the third-party network, which can always lead to various problems when disputes arise.

The same goes for sites where you can sell gigs, such as Fiverr, Fourerr, or SEOClerks. You will face a lot of competition, you are limited in your ability to set your own prices, and you only get paid through the network. However, once your writing gig becomes popular, you can start attracting enough clients for a full-time income.

5) Join a Revenue Sharing Site

This method works a little differently because you’re not getting paid per article. Rather, you get to share the revenue with the site owner. For example, you may earn 70 percent of all the revenue that is generated by visitors to your page.

Hubpages is a good example of this. You can monetize your blog posts through built-in ads or Amazon affiliate links, and you’ll earn 70 percent of the revenue. Blasting News is another such site — you’ll get paid based on how many pageviews your articles get. Anyone can join and write news stories.

The advantage of such an arrangement is that you don’t have to spend time building up an actual website, only writing articles. However, in my opinion, you’d be better off just building your own blog and taking 100 percent of the revenue. Starting a blog or an online business is super easy these days, so there’s no reason you should have to write articles for someone else’s website when it could be for your own.

Your Turn!

Which method will you be using to make money writing?

Any questions?

Feel free to leave your comments below!