Eight ways to make money writing online

If you enjoy writing and can turn out readable prose there are several ways of making money writing online. Here are some ideas.

Blogging - Write your own blog. It's free at blogger.com and wordpress.com. Many people believe it is better to host a blog on your own website rather than have it hosted on these sites. Get the wordpress software free at wordpress.org. Make money from your blog with affiliate products - either hosting affiliate ads or better still, text links from your posts - or pay per click such as adsense. You could also link to your other money-making sites such as your Amazon shop.

Blogging - Paid per post. Get paid for each post you write. Sign up with Pay Per Post. They advertise companies who pay you to write posts about their products. The amount you get depends on the company, the product and how well-read you blog is. You can use your own blog or have one hosted by Pay Per Post.

Articles - Promote your own product. Write lots of articles and post them online at article directories like ezine-articles. Articles are most often used just to generate links to your site. But if the link points to your product page you can make money directly, just make your article informative and not 'spammy'. You are unlikely to get a huge number of click-throughs, but it may be worth it if your product is high value. Most directories will not accept affiliate links.

Articles - Write articles for other websites. If you can show real expertise in a subject, email webmasters of suitable sites or online newsletters and offer to write articles for money. You may have to do some for free at first, unless you are well known in the field.

Articles - Go freelance. Sign up on sites such as elance and guru and post your CV/resume. People wanting articles and other writing work done tender for work on these sites and you can bid to do them. Know your own worth and don't continually accept low paid stuff. Once you've done some work, look for repeat work from the same client.

Squidoo and Hubpages - Write your own pages. Create pages (called lenses on Squidoo and hubpages on ... well, you guessed it!) on subjects of your own choice and post them free to the site. Make money with affiliate links, Adsense, Amazon shop and so on. Hubpages rotate your Adsense and theirs so that you both make something. Squidoo put some Adsense on your lens as well as yours, they take a bit of the revenue and give the rest to charity. A nice touch is that you set how much you get and how much the charities get. These sites have a great social feel and there is lots of help and advice.

Cafepress - Write and publish your book. Write your best seller, How To guide or whatever and upload it. Cafepress handles the printing, binding and dispatch. You decide on the design, size, how many and all that. Costs vary according to what you want to do. This is the only method in this list of making money writing online where you have to pay out in order to earn.

eBooks - Write and sell. eBooks, particularly of the How To type, are very popular because they are relatively cheap and can be downloaded instantly. Write your eBook and convert it to .pdf. Then upload and sell it from your website, online store such as Payloadz, or through affiliates on Clickbank (you'll need your own micro-site for this).

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