Online freelance writing is one of the
ways you can make steady and legitimate income online. If you are going to make
online freelance writing a career, or even just try to supplement your income,
you need to know how online articles earn money. It will be good to know that
if you write an article and place it online it earns, but knowing the
difference between pay per view or pay per click and up front pay versus
residual pay will dictate what you write, where you place it and how often you
need to write.
This will also help you in deciding
whether or not you should write for yourself to keep 100% of the profits or write
for a content site and share the earnings with the publisher. Let's start with the basics. There are
basically two types of payment options when writing online. You can get paid up
front, which means that you get paid certain amount for writing a certain
number of word articles.
Once the article is complete, you get paid.
This is a pretty straight forward formula. Residual pay on the other hand, is a
bit more complicated. You never know how much you will earn when you write the
article. Let's discuss the simple one first.
UP FRONT PAY
The good thing about up front pay is you
know in advance how much you'll make. For example, if a publisher is willing to
pay you $15 for a 500 word article, you know how many articles to write if you
want to earn $300. The formula is simple arithmetic. As mentioned earlier, the
rate of pay for online work is much less than that for offline work and $15 for
an article, as unfortunate as it may sound, is a “good pay rate” for an online
article.
There are some sites that offer a
percentage of the pay for longer articles. Don't get me wrong, there are higher
paying online publishers, but you have to look long and hard to find them. As
with every good side, there is always a bad side. The downside to writing for
up front pay is that writer burnout is very common.
Because it takes a large number of
articles to generate a decent income, often times writers bang out a ton of
articles only to eventually hit a brick wall. Let's face it, spitting out
article after article on topics that are not near and dear to your heart can
become tiring after a while. When a writer hits that brick wall and suffers
from burnout, all writing stops for a period of time. Some cases a writer
burnout is mild while other cases are not. Unfortunately, the need to pay the
rent, and meet other financial needs forces writers to work through it, but
once a writer reaches burnout, the task of writing becomes a joyless endeavour
(similar to a 9-5 job).
As
a freelance writer, you don't get paid vacation, sick or personal time, so if
you stop writing articles, the money stops too. This isn't too much of a
problem if you have managed your finances responsibly and put money aside for
those weeks when you just didn't feel like writing. But what about unexpected emergencies?
What happens when you get on a roll and
start banging out a bunch of articles only to find that you are called out of
town or your computer decides to crash repeatedly or your dog eats your home work?
If anything happens and you are unable to write, you do not earn money. You
can't call your boss and make an excuse for not coming to work or take a sick
or personal day.
As a freelance writer, you are the boss
and when stuff happens (as it usually does), your income takes a momentary
nosedive. When you write for up front pay you are trading time for money.
Something else that needs to be
discussed here when writing for upfront pay is that sometimes the article you
really need to be revised. While rewrites and revisions are commonplace for
writer, some unscrupulous publishers ask for extensive rewrites.
Depending on the amount of the rewrite
and how much you are getting paid, sometimes it's just not worth it. Remember,
writing for upfront pay is a time for dollars scenario. You'll have to make the
decision as to whether or not the rewrite is worth your time.
My advice: Keep working hard and you'll surely make it. It's just a matter of consistency, a little patience and motivation. Stay focused.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to drop your comments...