Writing articles for website owners, bloggers, newsletter and ezine owners, ebook creators and any of the other areas of the internet which use articles as part of their day to day business, is a great way to earn a little extra money. If you are good at it, freelance writing for online publication can easily become a full time career.

Depending upon your level of competence, you can earn anything from a few dollars for a quickly thown together article up to hundreds of dollars for a well researched piece picked up by a major magazine or website. For the purpose of this article, we are going to look at beginning in the online paid to write market, as this is the area just about anyone can get involved with. No matter where you start, there is always the opportunity to move up if you find you have the talent and the desire to do so.

Two places you can get started writing articles straight away without a need for a portfolio, previous work samples etc. are: Associated Content and Constant Content!

Get Paid To Write Articles

Website owners will always need content for their websites, blogs, ezines etc. and invariably more than they can ever hope to produce themselves. There’s big money to be made from content rich websites and that’s where the article writing jobs come in. They need you to do the content creation through writing articles, performing guest blogging, writing ezine newsletters and even ghostwriting entire ebooks. There are thousands of new writing jobs posted online daily and native english speakers are in demand.

So, how do you get started writing articles for pay?

Getting Started

Before you begin contacting people offering your services as an article writer, it is a very good idea to actually have some experience of writing articles in the first place. Many people will ask you for examples of previous work so they can gauge whether or not to employ your services or not. If you have nothing to show them, then you will be unlikely to get the job.

Some article writers set up a simple CV style brochure site on a free hosting website like Yahoo Geocities or a free wordpress blog from wordpress.org but personally, I think it looks a little more professional if you actually spent a the little bit of cash it takes to buy a domain name and host your own website, with your own domain name. It also means you have control over what happens to the site, many people will attest to how their free hosted website disppeared after the free host decided to stop hosting for free any more. Check out AOL’s Hometown…that’s closing right now, anyone with a website there has to move. If you have been promoting a web site hosted there, you now have to start all over again.

Anyway, picking up a domain name is cheap and hosting equally so. A great webhost I have used for a number of my websites and have yet to have a problem with is Lunarpages. Here you can get basic website hosting for as little as $4.95 a month which also includes a FREE domain name. (the same .com domain name will otherwise cost you around $9.95 a year). Put into perspective, the cost of hosting your own website is about the cost of selling one article a month…you should be looking to sell many more than that!

Whether you choose to go the free route, or the more professional route, you will need to use your new space on the internet as a place to promote your expertise, your article writing skills and of course, your prices. Ultimately, it’s a place you should use to promote yourself.

I Got Myself A Website - Now What?

Sit down, think of some topics you think you can write on and then write around 5 to 10 articles on those subjects. Make sure they are properly formatted, contain good grammar and spelling and showcase the best of your writing abilities. These are going to be the articles you advertise to prospective clients as being your best work to so they had better be good. Put these articles up on your new website under a category heading of “examples of my previous work” or something along those lines.

You can also volunteer to write some articles for free through the webmaster forums in return for testimonials . This will give you experience of writing for someone else and at the same time, possibly give you a future client or two. Remember, a lot of website owners require a regular stream of articles and would rather work with someone who has given them good work before than hunt out someone new. If you are good, they’ll come to you.

Where To Find Article Writing Jobs Online

Once you have set up your web site you are ready to start looking for article writing jobs online. There are a number of freelance writing websites, webmaster forums and other places you can look for these. The places I list below are great places to start but there are many more.

Constant Content - This website allows you to sell articles you have already written. You set your own price, usage restrictions etc. and will be paid when someone decides to buy it. In addition, you can also use this site to sell other forms of content, like images, illustrations, videos as well as articles. Articles at Constant Content regularly sell for $30 or more so this is a great place to make some good money off of your article writing skills.

Digital Point - This is forum aimed at webmasters and anyone looking to make money on line. Jumping straight to the content forum, which is where the above link leads, will give you loads of paid writing opportunities. Digital Point is usually not the place to find high paying article writing jobs, typically you are looking at $5 for 500 words, but can help fill in those slow times.

Get A Freelancer - GetAFreelancer.com is a freelance jobs board where all kinds of freelancers come together with those who need to employ them in a wide range of areas. Writing, programming, graphic design, you name it, if you can freelance the service, there is probably someone here looking to employ you. There are always lots of article writing and content creation jobs on here with widely varying levels of payment and skills required. Many of these jobs offer long term employment and ongoing requirements too so this is a good place to pick up some permanent writing gigs.

Elance - Elance is another freelancers dream come true. The same kind of format as Get A Freelancer, you will find writing jobs ranging from “rewrite these articles for a $1 each” to “we need a permanent magazine article writer at $500 an article”…basically, a wide ranging list of requirements.

Associated Content - This site pays you for producing content for them. You write an article on something you think they would be interested in and submit it for approval and if accepted you will get paid for it.

So What Is Stopping You?

If you do not yet feel brave enough to start offering your services on the freelance writing job boards, then be sure to check out something like Associated Content or Constant Content and send them a few articles to see what you can earn. It’s a great confidence boost to see your name in print online and you will soon be using that new found confidence to put your skills to some really profitable use.