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 :)

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!