Juggling with 3 balls for Writers: Helium vs Associated Content vs Hub Pages

One topic I'm getting into a lot in this blogs is different online venues that allow writers to post and promote their own work with the potential of making money. Again, each of these places do things a little differently. On Associated Content you have several publication options, which includes upfront payment under some circumstances. On Hub Pages, the writer's earnings come entirely from ad revenue, and to make a little money you will have to sign up for those different services and activate them on your Hub pages account after you have posted several good hubs. AC is more journalistic, but hub pages can also get a lot of traffic and has a fun and artistically appealing interface for creating your 'Hubs'. Helium is another website that allows people who like to write to earn money from sharing their work.

It is possible to write for all three of these places, and several others, at the same time. It should be noted that to do it well you're not going to be able to focus on three or more at once unless you have time to treat it like a full time job. Over time, if you experiment with several and link some of your work together, you will up your traffic and earn more. If you are not already doing this and want to try one to begin with, I'd suggest that you join Associated Content first , look through the notes here, and then start experimenting with the other options. There are a lot of options, but AC is one good place you can start that I can verify payment from.

Get Paid to Write: Examples of Articles that Pay

A few days ago I submitted four more articles to Associated Content, all of which were accepted for upfront payment. They paid slightly higher than some of the previous articles I submitted, so I must be doing something right. I focused on things of local interest, useful information, and tips. The article I added photography to made the most, which is another thing to take into account. One thing I had to remind myself to do was convert my resource links to properly hyper-linked text, but that's fairly easy to do within the AC text editor.

Check out these three articles as examples of some that have been accepted for up front as well as performance payents:

Fun things to do Near the Space Needle

Ten Tips for Traveling by Bus

Beautiful Places to Visit Near Seattle: Mt Si and Mt. Teriniffe

Another Day in the Life

My writing sample got accepted at Experts 123, and now I'm just waiting for them to approve my profile so I can post some articles and see what happens. I was particularly delighted, because they sent me back a very nice acceptance letter. Of course, I can't be sure if that's what they send everyone- but it's nice when someone compliments your style.

After reading some reviews by other folks, I decided to also give Bukisa a try. They are very similar to Associated Content in terms of submitting content, but the payments work a little differently. Unlike AC, they don't offer up front payments. However, the rate they pay on the number of page views is a little more than twice what AC pays.

I'm not sure which of the available online publishers is "the best" to be honest. That's one reason I'm trying as many of them as possible. Another reason is the concept of cross-linking. As long as the links are relevant and make sense, it can only help. Different people will find your writing in different online venues, and may follow the links if you have other related content.

For instance, I have a short article on making money with Amazon Mechanial Turk posted here and on Associated Content. It focuses on some of the pros and cons of using it. Say I wrote another related article, on how to get better qualifications and offers on AmTurk. I could post it on Bukisa, and then link it to my AC article and vice versa. In theory, people interested in the subject would likely go on to read the other article. Because each service caters to a different crowd, one could conceivably get a lot more exposure by publishing in multiple venues.

If you've never heard of Buksia before and want to try it out yourself, you can join here:

Buksia - Share Your Knowledge

If you stumble through here and have experience with these different places to publish your work, leave us a message and let us know what kind of results you've had with each. :-)

A Day in the Life

How do I find freelance writing gigs that actually pay? The answer is that I'm constantly doing research and writing. To be able to make money online as a freelance writer, you have to do a lot more than just write in your free time.

You have to know where to submit your articles, and what kind of payment arrangements each online publisher offers. You should probably be writing in more than one place, and link those different places together through a blog or a website that serves as an online portfolio. Or several. This helps to market your work, which you are primarily responsible for when you try doing this kind of work.

Can you make a living at it? Yes. Is it easy? Not so much. Let me take you on my journey today, at least what I remember from it.

I checked my account at Associated Content, which I usually do after I get up. Still "author clout 4", but closer to "author clout 5" because I had a few more readers last night. My article on "How to Sell Books Online" went up, and was even given a small up front payment. (Woo-hoo! Hippies makin' money, who would have thought it possible?)

I had also sent a note to one of the community admins, asking for help editing a mistake in another article. I was extraordinarily happy that they fixed the errors in my "World Steam Punk Expo" piece. I had a lot of fun checking that convention out, and apparently a lot of other people are interested because it's gotten a lot of views. I didn't want to promote that article much until the errors were fixed, basically because I was embarrassed and didn't think it would look professional. ( The first paragraph made it into the published copy twice, with spacing and spelling errors in the first version viewable! Aaack! ) It happens, even to great writers.

I also noticed that my fun little articles about the Sims 3 game and the New Orleans Blues Musician Coco Robicheaux are getting more views, too. That's important if you write for Associated Content. Part of how they pay you is based on how popular your article becomes. I've only been with them for about a month, but have about 20 articles up already. I'm noticing that every time I publish a new one, it helps reader find the things I've already written and my page views go up.

That was all just in the first hour. Then I did a bunch of research on other online writing opportunities. It's Tuesday, and every week an online a newsletter called "Morning Coffee" is posted on freelance writing.com . The newsletter lists current freelance writing opportunities. I followed one of the links to the problogger job board , where I reread a notice about Experts123 looking for people to write articles.

Initially it hadn't really seemed like my thing, but I decided to take another look. It looks like they may offer better pay than a number of places I'm experimenting with, so I did my application and am waiting for approval. I'll update in the future about how that goes.

See what I mean? We're only at hour two, and I've already done a lot of things. I feel like I have to start a new post, because I want to showcase some other great sites I found, and don't want them to be lost on short-attention-span theater. :-)