Getting a Fair Price for your Writing: Constant Content

If you're serious about making money from freelance writing, Constant Content is the way to go.

It's basically a marketplace for articles. You produce a piece of writing and upload it to the site and people looking to buy content browse articles on the site and purchase the articles that meet their needs. If there's nothing already there that's suitable, the customer can issue a custom request, specifying the topic and length of the article and the amount they are willing to pay.

On Constant Content, you set your own prices. If you think an article is worth $70, list it for $70. Yes, there are buyers willing to pay that much for a few hundred words of quality writing. I sold an unsolicited article for $70 during my first two weeks on the site.

Constant Content take 35% of every sale you make. Yes, that's a lot. But the amount you are left with, if you're pricing your articles correctly, is still more than you would get working for a content mill. If you sign up through my referral link (for which I'd be really grateful and happy to help you get to grips with the site if you need a hand - just get in contact) then I get 5% of the value of your sales, but that comes out of CC's 35%. You still get your full 65% share.

There are three ways to sell your work on Constant Content.  You can offer usage rights, unique rights, or full rights.

• Usage Rights: the customer buys the right to use your article, in its original form, and with you credited as the author. You retain ownership of the article and can sell further usage licenses or use it yourself.
• Unique Rights: the customer buys the right to be the only publisher of the article. The article must be published in its original form and you must be credited as the author.
• Full Rights: the customer buys the right to take ownership of the article. They can alter it, publish it under their own name and even resell it.

You can also offer all three, priced at different levels, and leave it up to the buyer which one they go for.

Pros of writing for Constant Content:

• Set your own prices.
• Buyers will actually pay a fair price for content - a quick glance at content that has recently sold on the site shows the majority of articles selling at $40-$50.
• You can write about whatever you like - or write in response to requests if you're stuck for ideas.
• If you sell for usage rights, there's the chance of passive income as more licenses get purchased, and you'll get your name in print (or more likely on screen).
• If a customer likes your work, they can make private requests to you for more articles.

Cons of writing for Constant Content:

• You need patience: the review process that takes place whenever you upload a new article can take up to a week.
• You need even more patience: even though many articles do sell quickly, you might be waiting a long time for some of them to sell.
• No guarantee that an article will sell. If your content isn't selling at all, try lowering your prices, writing in response to requests, or changing the topics you target.
• You need to produce high quality work. If you didn't proofread it, it's not going to get accepted.

Yesterday I received my first paycheck from CC, for $107.45. I've written 8 articles and made 5 sales (3 full rights + two usage). I've identified a topic in which my articles get snapped up quickly, so am hopeful that I can make some good money here - if I can put aside all my other writing projects long enough to produce some articles! The lack of deadlines at CC means that I do tend to neglect my activities here, which is silly because it earns me more than any other site.

Click here to sign up at Constant-Content

First Bright Hub payment!

I just received my first payment from Bright Hub, for a grand total of $15.02.  Okay, so it's not a fortune, but I've only been a Bright Hub member for two weeks.

The $15 is for the one article that I've published so far, How Calculus is Used in Astronomy.
The $0.02 is revenue sharing for the one day that the article existed for during July (I published it on July 30th).

Verdict?  Bright Hub seems like a great place for writing about science, health, business or technology subjects.

What I like about Bright Hub:

• Upfront payments of $15 per article, plus ongoing revenue sharing.
• Bright Hub suggest titles of articles based on what people are searching for in google: basically, they do the hardest part of making money through content - keyword research - and leave you to get on with writing.
• Supportive and relatively speedy editing process. My article was published two days after submission, with only minor changes required (moving an image and fixing a hyperlink).
• Bright Hub encourages you to write under your own name, which means it's a good place to build up a portfolio of work.

What I don't like about Bright Hub:

• Their behind-the-scenes site is complicated, confusing and difficult to navigate. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time, but I can't help feeling it would be improved by being simplified.
• The options for laying out your article aren't great either. You can't resize images or add captions, or create floating text boxes for key information.
• Because Bright Hub has quality standards, I feel as though I have to make each article perfect. For the time I spend creating an article, $15 is a poor rate of pay. The compensations for this are:
1. I'll probably get quicker with practice.
2. Article continues to pay out once its published, without me doing anything more.
3. The fact that I had to answer to an editor is actually a good thing when it comes to using Bright Hub articles to apply for further work. Anyone can self-publish an article, but to have an editor approve your work as worthy of payment shows some writing ability.

I will definitely continue to write for Bright Hub.

Have you written for Bright Hub? Share your experience in a comment :)

Sites Where I actually Earn Money

Now that I've shared some of the places I write online that don't earn me money, I think it's high time I shared some of the ones where I do!

Reviews of the following sites coming soon:
1. Clickworker
2. AMS/Londonbrokers
3. Constant Content: Read Review
4. eCopywriters
5. CloudCrowd

Follow this blog to be the first to see the new posts.

Hubpages

Hubpages is one of the first sites I started writing for, under the name topquark. I mostly write about physics and mathematics.

What is it?

Hubpages is an article hosting site which shares advertising revenue with its writers.

How does it work?

Sign up for an account and start writing about more or less whatever you like. The articles ("hubs") that you create will display advertising automatically. You can claim 60% of the revenue from that advertising by providing Hubpages with your Google Adsense code. See the previous post to find out how to sign up for an Adsense account.

Hubpages have also recently started running their own Hubpages Ad Program. This is designed to run alongside the Google Ads, so you still need an Adsense account to sign up for it.

How much can I earn?

In the few weeks that it's been active, the Hubpages Ad Program has earned me a measly $0.84, although the rate of earning is steadily increasing as I publish more hubs and get more followers. The great thing about the Hubpages Ad Program, as far as I'm concerned, is that it pays per impression rather than per click. That means that so long as you have readers, you're getting paid, regardless of whether they are interested in your ads.

I hardly earn anything through Adsense on Hubpages.

You can also earn money by using your hubs to promote products, for example on Amazon or eBay. Hubpages makes it very easy for you to include affiliate links to Amazon and eBay products in your hubs. You will need to apply for an Amazon Associates account (or the eBay equivalent) if you want to use this way of making money.  I'll do a post later with more information about affiliate marketing.

I feature science books from Amazon on my hubs, but have never made a sale.

Recommended?

I love Hubpages, even though it doesn't earn me very much money. Interaction between users who publish hubs in the same subject categories is encouraged, so you will have an instant audience who are interested in what you are writing about. I've gotten some great feedback from other Hubbers.

Hubpages has a page of Success Stories, which features people who make hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month in passive income. These people have usually published hundreds of hubs, so don't expect to get to those figures overnight!

I mostly use Hubpages as a portfolio of my science writing, which is useful when apply for other writing jobs. I have just been accepted as a writer on the Space channel at Brighthub - a science and technology website that shares revenue with writers and also pays $15 upfront per article. I believe that using two of my hubs (Exoplanets and Dark Matter) as writing samples to support my application helped me get accepted.

Pros

• Easy to set up.
• You can write about pretty much whatever you like (within Hubpages terms of service).
• The community aspect is a big plus in terms of audience and feedback.
• Opportunity to showcase your writing work.
• Passive income from advertising.
• Once you establish a presence, getting traffic gets easier.

Cons

• Low earnings unless your traffic is very high.
• No 'purely personal' hubs - i.e. you can't just write about your life like you would in a blog.

How do I get an Account?

Sign Up Here. If you end up writing in the science channels, I'll probably end up reading and commenting you. Drop in at topquark.hubpages.com and say Hi!

Google Adsense / Blogging

Any writing that you publish yourself online can make you money through Google Adsense.  If you look around this page, you will see adverts by Google on display. I use Google ads on both of my blogs, TheParticlePen and Go-Go-Vegan, as well as on my Hubpages Account.

How does it Work?

If you display Google ads on your blog or website, you will be paid every time someone clicks on one of your ads. It's that simple. Blogger makes it especially easy to include Adsense on your blog. For other sites, you might have to copy and paste some HTML to get the ads to show up.

Adsense will display ads that reflect the content of your site. For example, if you look around this blog, you will probably see ads about working from home, freelance writing jobs, writing courses or how to make money from your blog, because that's what I write about on this site. There is also the option to target ads based on your users search history. You can turn this option on or off by adjusting your account settings.

How much can I expect to Earn?

That depends very much on what your site is about and how much traffic you have. The amount you get paid per click varies widely - different ads pay out different amounts per click.

As a word of warning, some subjects work much better with Adsense than others. I've been displaying ads on my blog, TheParticlePen, for nearly 6 months and have yet to earn enough to buy a cup of coffee. I suspect this is because most of the ads aren't really relevant to my readers, who are looking to read about theoretical particle physics rather than looking to buy anything.

Some people set up sites that are devoted to earning money through Adsense. Some of my ghostwritten articles have ended up on this kind of site, which I can only assume are earning enough money for the owners to cover the cost of purchasing the articles - I've sold articles for this purpose for anything up to $25 each. This kind of site is usually on a niche topic and is designed so that the ads are providing a service to the user by offering to put them in touch with products, services or information related to the search query that landed them on the site.

How to get Google Adsense

In order to put google ads on your site, you have to sign up for a Google Adsense account.  To be accepted, you have to already own a website or blog with some quality content - i.e. not spam.  The easiest way is to sign up for a Blogger account and make a few posts - on whatever topic you like - before you apply. If you attempt to sign up with an empty blog, you will be rejected.

Once you've got the Adsense account, you can place ads on any of your sites, providing they comply with Google's terms of service.

Pros

• Easy to set up.
• Once you've created your content and posted your ads, you're done. But money will keep rolling (trickling) in, so long as you have traffic.
• You can write about whatever you like and retain the rights to all your content - unlike when you make money by writing and selling articles.
• Sites running Adsense can also serve another purpose for you.

Cons

• Earnings can be low, unless you're going to research what pays and build your site around those ads.
• You need to apply and be accepted to the program (although this is not difficult).

Recommended?

I don't earn a lot of money through Adsense. If I created a niche site and really targeted Internet users who are looking to buy, maybe I could get a few more clicks. All of the pages that I run Adsense on are serving some other purpose: either to drive traffic to a site that does make me money (more on this later) or simply to get examples of the kind of writing I really want to do (science writing) out there on the web.

If you're going to publish content yourself online, for whatever purpose, you may as well put Adsense ads on it - so long as they're not so intrusive that they risk driving your readers away. You'll probably earn something - but don't expect to get rich that way.

One last thing

Don't click on your own ads. Ever. Even to test them. Google does not like this and will suspend your account. I wouldn't recommend trying to outsmart the system by using a different computer to click on them either. No matter how smart you think you're being, Google is probably smarter.

Introduction

My background

I didn't train as a writer. I actually started out working in scientific research. My love affair with science hasn't ended, but I have fallen out of love with research. Working in scientific research was nothing like studying my experience of studying physics in school or university. Learning about science involves seeking out and absorbing new information on a whole range of fascinating topics; research involves focusing all your attention on a particular problem and hammering away at it for months. If learning about science is having your eyes opened to the world around you, doing research is being left in the dark in a tiny room, where you are expected to continuously bash your head against the wall in the hope that it will one day result in a breakthrough.

I am in the process of leaving academia. I've been thinking about it for some time. Not knowing what to do next, and aware of the need to establish an income source, I fell into online writing as a way to raise some extra cash.

Why not get a 'real job'?

Well, primarily because my partner (also an academic) and I are likely to relocate soon, and I don't yet know where we'll be going. It depends on where he can get a position - the other downside of academia is that where you live is dictated by where the jobs are. Also, I quickly realised that I quite like working from home. I enjoy my own company. I'm easily distracted by noisy environments such as offices. And finally, I find that being able to wear my comfy PJs and drink tea continuously throughout the day does a lot for my concentration. I've had office jobs where I've spent the afternoon counting the minutes until I can go home; now that I am home, I can get engrossed in what I'm doing and only realise several articles later that I haven't moved for three hours.

Why do I write, and why do people pay me to do it?

I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be a scientist. I gave up on the idea when my parents told me there was no money in it and pushed me to focus on science and maths instead. I'm quickly realising they were wrong. Quite aside from the entire offline publishing industry, the web runs on content. If there is one thing that is truly prized in our society, it is information. Much of the writing I do is content generation, through a variety of sites that I'll review in the course of this blog. A lot of the articles end up on sites selling related products.

Am I a salesperson?

Not really. Whilst my article may highlight to the reader why they might need the product, most of what I'm asked to write isn't aimed at closing a sale. My role is to bring visitors to the site, through keyword SEO, and to provide them with useful information when they get there. Sometimes I am asked to write a sales pitch, and that's fine, but more often my job is to collate information and present it in a reader friendly format.

Actually, I also do a certain amount of writing under my own name (or username). Most of this is science-focused and is currently more of a hobby than something that brings in any serious money. I would love to make money out of being a science writer, but I'm not there yet.

What this blog is about

Freelance writing is an experiment for me. If I find I can't make enough money this way, I'll eventually have to call it a day and look for work in the real world. In order to judge whether I should be making that call, I need to keep track of how the experiment is going. This blog is one of the ways in which I document my progress.

Currently, I'm still on a learning curve. But I've been doing this for a few months now. I've figured out which sites are best to work for and which are best avoided. I know where I can find a reliable supply of work.

When I first started out, I spent a lot of time searching online to find reviews of various freelance writing sites. I spent a lot of time browsing through forum threads or trying to figure out whether reviews were genuine or simply an advert for the company. What I'm offering to readers here is a consolidation of reviews of all the sites I write for, as well as the ones I decided weren't worth wasting time on.