Write an article and be in with a chance of winning £200

Write an article for How To Books

According to Nick Lewis of How To Books, the best article submitted to the site in July will win £200.   The winner will be announced in the middle of August.  This should give you a big enough reason to write an article for the site to see how you get on with it.

Write an article for How To Books and keep on earning from it in the future as well

In addition to the prize the site is offering during July, it also pays a portion of Google Adsense earnings that each article receives.  So as well as having the chance to win £200 when you write an article during July, you could start bringing in a reasonable income from any articles you submit to the site that are subsequently published.

This is just one way you could start earning money from writing online.  When you write an article for this site, it could start you off on a whole new career as well.

Need more information before you write an article for How To Books?

If you have any queries about the competition you can direct them to competition@howto.co.uk.  More information is available online at http://www.howto.co.uk/competition.html.  Good luck – and remember, when you write an article for the competition it could be the start of regular earnings with How To Books too.

Advice about finding online ghostwriting jobs

Are you good at finding online ghostwriting jobs?

It’s called ‘Online Ghostwriting Jobs – Are You Using All The Ways You Can Find Work? and the title is pretty self explanatory.  I’ve touched on this subject before so hopefully you will find it useful.  It seems a lot of people are out there wanting to know how to find the best online ghostwriting jobs, and given the current state of play with the economy and job losses, it isn’t hard to see why.

How many online ghostwriting jobs are out there?

You know, when you first start looking you might think there aren’t enough to go around.  But when you keep on looking you will start to unearth all kinds of things.

Online ghostwriting jobs are there in their thousands, believe me.  It just takes perseverance to find the best ones for you.  It only took me a few days to find my first one (which was a pretty dire job with hindsight, but it got me started) and from then on it was all pretty good news.

Can you find enough online ghostwriting jobs to make a living at it?

I certainly did, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t either.  It just takes time and perseverance (yes it’s that word again) to get the results you want.  I cannot guarantee you will be successful though – that’s up to you.

In the meantime, if I make any further progress with Triond, I’ll let you know.  Until then, why not read the article and see whether it could lead you to your very first of many online ghostwriting jobs?

You bet.  I have been writing a few new hubs about online writing and other subjects for Hubpages recently as part of my online writing efforts, and one in particular has got off to a great start.

Not surprisingly it is about online writing.

I am often asked where I find the jobs I get as a writer, and where I make the connections that enable me to be a full time online writer as well.  So I decided to write this hub to reveal some of those answers.

Clearly it has touched on a popular topic and answered something a lot of budding online writers want to know!  You can read the hub by visiting it here at “The methods I use to find online ghostwriting jobs.”

How much could you earn from Google Adsense when delving into online writing with Hubpages?

I hope you enjoy it.  I also hope you may feel inspired to write for Hubpages yourself.  The main reason why I write for them – apart from the fact that I love writing and I like to do something for myself as well as writing for clients – is to earn some money from Google Adsense.

How does Google Adsense figure in the subject of online writing for Hubpages?

It’s easy.  All you need to do is associate your Adsense code with your Hubpages account.  That’s it!  You can then focus on writing some good hubs that ideally bring in traffic and result in people clicking on the ads that appear next to them.

This starts trickling money into your Adsense account – a trickle that will eventually turn into a flood (hopefully!).  Some hubbers are already reaping significant rewards from their online writing efforts on this site.

So why not set aside some time to try online writing for Hubpages now?

Knowing how much writing income you earn from your online writing (or any other writing you do, come to that) is exceptionally important.  You may not be so worried about it if you only write part time for some extra cash.  But if you want to turn that part time income into a full time writing income, you’ll certainly need to know what direction you are going in.

Important things to consider as a full timer with regard to writing income

Is your writing income heading in the right direction?

If you are a full time writer it is even more important to know what your writing income is each month.  I’m not saying this because it is imperative you should earn more with each and every month that passes, because this isn’t necessarily the case.  I always try to increase my writing income in different ways each week, and for the most part I do manage that.  But if there happens to be a week when my earnings go down for some reason, I don’t get too hung up on it.  There is more to life than money and freelancing, after all.

The task of monitoring your writing income

But with that said I do always focus on making a note of how much I earn on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.  I always want to be sure I am bringing in more than enough to pay all the bills and get the quality of life I never had when I was working as an employee for someone else.

And since I always jot these figures down in my diary (I always keep a diary and have done for several years) I can look back and see whether I am doing better now than I was, say, this time last year or even two or three years ago.

Keeping track of your writing income is important in lots of different ways.  Primarily I can make sure I am earning enough each day to pay the bills.  In addition to this I can see how well I am doing when compared with the same time last year.  And I can also prevent myself from having unnecessary worries.

Peaks and troughs

For instance certain times of the year are invariably a bit quieter than others.  The run up to Christmas is notorious for going this way, although since my partner and I also have an eBay business this actually works really well.  I get less writing to do and more time to help pack up dozens of orders on a daily basis!

So if I get a quiet time the first thing I do is look back on the previous year to see whether my writing income was the same back then as well.  More often than not it turns out to be just like that.

It’s up to you how closely you monitor your writing income for your own personal reasons.  We’re not talking about how much tax you should pay on it, or anything else official like that.  We’re just talking about the things you personally need to know, such as whether you are hitting the goal you set for yourself for bringing in a certain amount of writing income each day, week or month from your writing.

Find out more about goal setting for writers

If you want to know more about goal setting in writing, go to that section of my blog to read more information and ideas.  And don’t forget, you are in charge of your income as a writer.  If you aren’t happy with it, go all out to increase it.  And if you are happy, good for you!  Only you know what level of writing income will make you truly happy.

Here is a screenshot of the increase in visits to my hubs and to my profile on Hubpages:

Now that is as a direct result of my effort to add a few new hubs to my account.  This week has seen no new hubs from me so far, although I have plans to add perhaps one or two later on this evening if all goes well.

So let’s see how things go from here.  I have picked up a few new fans as well, not to mention some further comments on my new hubs.  Needless to say I will keep you posted on how things progress from here.

Now I finished work early today and I was really in the mood for doing some writing for ME for a change.  So I got my thinking cap on and published three brand new hubs in a fairly short space of time.  Here they are:

• Using Google Reader to help you find online writing jobs – this is about a technique I use to keep abreast of the latest writing jobs available.  You can refine this as much as you like until you get just the right results for you.  I’d definitely recommend it.
• What should you be earning as an online writer? – ah the perennial favourite!  Everyone asks this question sooner or later, but you don’t have to settle for whatever you are earning now.
• How much time do you spend searching for online writing jobs? – as you can see, all these new hubs are focused on writing.  This is my niche and most of the hubs I have published on this topic seem to do well.  Watch out for more coming soon.

So it has been a productive evening.  Let’s see how my Adsense earnings start to add up as I add more hubs over the next few weeks and months.

But magazine writing is a lot harder to get into and find regular work in.  Online writing on the other hand is easy.  It all depends on whether you want regular work or not.

It could well be that you can write an article for a magazine and get paid several hundred dollars for it.  But how many of those articles are you likely to have accepted in a single month?  Online work on the other hand is much easier to find – and you can get it regularly too.

The other advantage of online writing is that it covers a multitude of possibilities.  Just to give you an idea, here are some of the things you could be writing in the near future if you take this path:

* Website content
* Blog posts
* Articles
* Reviews
* Web pages
* Promotional sales pages
* Product descriptions

And there are many other versions of online writing available for you to tackle as well.  It all depends on what you like to do and what you are good at.

And while some of it is badly paid, you can get very good rates as well if you are prepared to work up to them.  The better your reputation and skills are as an online writer, the more money you will be able to command.  But you must work up to that stage and work at getting some experience and knowledge before you can expect to get those higher rates.

So for my money, online writing will always be better than magazine writing.  I make a good living from it, so it works for me.

But you will find my first hub on Hubpages right now.  It’s called “Are make your own beer kits a good idea?“  The idea came from the fact that we have a home brew shop in the family here in the UK, so I did some research into keywords and that’s what I came up with.

Needless to say my approach will be refined and developed as I carry on, but I thought this was a reasonable start.  The idea is to gradually increase the number of hubs I have on the site, so I can bring in some residual income alongside all my other writing jobs.

Watch this space for more news soon!

But you may also have read that there are sources of much higher paid writing work out there as well.  The trick is in knowing where to find it.

Is your writing income going in the right direction?

And this is where you need to think about the money you are earning from your writing.  Because you see, if you aren’t happy with that amount, you have to do something about it.  It won’t change all by itself.  YOU are the one who is going out there finding the writing jobs and applying for them.  YOU are the one who can put yourself in situations where you can grab more writing gigs.  So if you aren’t getting the level of income you want, you have to do something about it.

Question is, what do you do?

The first step is to take a look at what you are currently doing.  Is everything working nicely?  Are you constantly taking on new writing work or are you scrabbling round to find enough of it to keep you busy?

If you are constantly working and you aren’t happy with your income, then you are writing for too lowly a wage.  You need to go up the gears a bit and find some writing gigs that pay you more money.  No one will offer them to you if you are happy to write for lower fees.  YOU have to make the changes here.

If you are struggling to find work, you have to think about where you are looking, and how many jobs you are applying for.  Don’t be afraid to mix things up a little – don’t stick with the same sites all the time – try some new places.  I have found writing jobs in the weirdest of places.

I remember once I was surfing around on Squidoo – that’s where I have my main writing lens, called Online Freelance Writing Jobs (kind of a sister to this blog I suppose!) – when I found a lens written by an online writer.  I pored over it for a while and the writer mentioned someone they had worked for in the past who had a writing agency.  I thought to myself, if I can find this person I could fire off an email to them and maybe pick up some writing jobs.

After a bit of detective work online – which took around five minutes I think – I sent that email.  That was two years ago, and I still get regular work from that person.

This is just one example of how you can increase your online writing income just by keeping your eyes open and taking every opportunity that comes to you – no matter how much of a long shot it might seem at the time.  Don’t forget that YOU are in control of your destiny here, so if you want to earn more as an online writer, you have to work for it.  Create those chances and take as many as you can.

Whew!  This turned into a bit of a long blog post.  Hope you enjoyed it.  Even though I am full time now and have been for over 18 months, there is still much to learn and I still have to make the effort to work at increasing my own income.  It is all part and parcel of the job.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and solutions for increasing your writing income.  Send a comment now!

Here's a great idea to help you with your writing - are you thinking in batches yet?

If you are new to online writing and you have got your first few articles under your belt, you might be wondering how to develop your writing career a bit further.

Here is a good tip for you.  Start thinking in batches.

Now what do I mean by batches?  Well, this can apply in two different situations.  Let’s take a look at them below.  You can get started with one of these or launch straight in and start using both.  It’s really up to you.  But whatever you do, you can make a lot of money when you start thinking about selling articles in batches.

1. You can look for article jobs from clients that request more than one article at a time.  These are good to do because they bring in more money.  They will usually focus on one topic, so you might be asked to produce, let’s say, ten articles on the subject of internet marketing.  The client might provide the individual topics or you might have to do that yourself.

But however you do it, you will find that writing several articles on the same topic is actually easier than writing several articles on a number of different topics.  This is because you only have to do research on one topic.  And if you already happen to be an expert on that topic, so much the better.  You will earn your fee even faster!

2. You can write more articles for yourself to sell on various websites.  There are websites online that enable you to sell your own work directly to buyers for a fee that you set.  Now obviously the more articles you can display on these sites, the better.  So writing them in batches enables you to upload more in a shorter period of time, because you can focus on writing all about one specific topic.  You can then progress to another topic when the first one has run dry.

Do you see how this works?  If you start thinking in batches in order to sell articles rather than individually, you will be surprised at just how many more articles you sell.  And how much more cash you bring in too.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead