Can you make fast money from writing online?

Well it all depends what you mean by ‘fast money’. I was browsing on Yahoo Answers recently and it was amazing how many people wanted to know about making money from writing, how easy it was and whether they could do it quickly. All these questions started around two years ago, when the economy was really going to the dogs. You can’t blame them for asking, but why is it I wonder that they all immediately think of writing when they want some fast cash?

I totally understand that many people are looking for extra streams of income. It’s not surprising that they’re looking online for it either. But most people who are actually earning some cash from writing online (or doing anything else online come to that) will know that it isn’t easy and it isn’t fast. It requires effort, perseverance and determination to get anywhere. I remember when I first started looking for writing work it took around three weeks to get my first gig, which turned out to be dire. I learned a valuable lesson from that experience though, and I ended up moving on to my first proper paid gig just a week or two later.

How fast is this ‘fast money from writing’ really going to be?

In theory you could set up an account with one of the outsourcing sites – Elance for example, or ODesk or whatever your own personal choice would be – and start looking for work immediately. If you were lucky you might be able to snag your first writing job within a day or two, complete it in a similar time and get paid shortly after.

But most of the time it is going to take some hard work to get that first paying job. Many would be writers head straight for sites that pay according to how well their published articles perform. Sites like Triond, Hubpages and Squidoo all pay along these lines. You can earn a decent income from them if you work hard enough and you know all the tricks and tips for doing it. It’s something I may write on in more depth at a future stage. I am a member of all three, but I don’t get the time to work on them too much now; client work keeps me busy along with all my other websites and ventures. I have had the most success with Squidoo, although with that said it definitely didn’t earn me fast cash from writing. I do make the odd Amazon sale from there though and I earn a few dollars a month for efforts I put in a few years ago. More than anything my lenses there drive traffic to this blog and to a couple of affiliate sites and links, which is where most of the cash comes from for my efforts.

Is ghost writing the best bet for getting fast money from writing?

I believe so. But you need to get out there and look for work. You can’t expect it to come and find you. The more you can make a name for yourself by creating and maintaining a blog and getting your name known online, the easier it will be to start generating those pennies.

Of course, there are other ways to earn money from writing. Blogging is a distinct possibility, but you need to work at it for a good long while before you start seeing any rewards. This blog started life as a Windows Live blog, before moving over to its own domain a couple of years back. I’ve just redesigned it and gone for a completely new theme as well, so it is in another incarnation. I make a small amount of money from the blog at present, and hopefully this will increase in the future. But it was always primarily designed to help new and budding writers more than anything else. Of course you could always set up a blog on a completely different subject and monetize that instead. If you know all there is to know about growing vegetables, woodworking or any number of other topics, you could be onto a money maker there. But you have to have perseverance – you won’t make fast money from writing a blog.

How can YOU make fast money from writing?

Perhaps this is the best question to ask. My quickest route to cash was to write articles and blog posts for clients. But you may be the best blogger around when it comes to growing vegetables at home. You might know all the tricks of the trade when it comes to getting and monetizing your website traffic. This might appeal to you more than writing for other people.

The point I’m trying to make is not so much to look for fast cash. It’s to look for what will earn you the most money for the long term. Sure you can find a couple of clients and write lots of material for them. If you can do this pretty quickly it could be just what you need to bring in some cash. But if you’re obsessed with affiliate marketing, set up a blog and write some product reviews instead. It might be what you’re cut out for. We’re not all cut out to be ghost writers, after all.

So if you do nothing else today, make sure you ask yourself that all important question: “How can I make fast money from writing?”

There are two possibilities here.  You can write for yourself, or you can write for other people.  Lots of online writers do both.  They act as ghostwriters, writing articles on all kinds of subjects for clients who then put their own names to the work afterwards.  But these same writers can also write for themselves, writing articles and selling them direct to websites or website owners with their own name on the work.

Now despite what some people might say, it doesn’t matter which way you want to do it.  You can do one or the other, or both.  It depends what your preferences are.  What you need to do is what feels right for you.

When you sit down to write an article, who are you writing it for?

Some internet writers start out by writing for other people to make a regular living.  Then as time goes on and they start learning more about the internet and how to make money on it in other ways, they start writing articles to promote their own products.  Some writers create websites on various subjects and start adding Google Adsense and products to them so they can make money on an ongoing basis.

So you might start by writing for other people and not thinking about doing it for yourself at all.  But then as time goes on you can start thinking along the lines of building up some residual, ongoing income from your writing skills by putting those websites and products together.

It often takes longer to start earning money from your writing in the second way, i.e. doing it for yourself.  But this is the way that will eventually pay off in the long term.  Writing for other people is perfectly fine – I do it a lot myself – but focus on your own needs too if you really want to make it big.

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

If you have been reading a lot about online writing lately, you will probably have come across the term ‘ghostwriting’.  But what is it?  How is it different from any other kind of writing?

Could you be an unseen ghostwriter?

In truth, if you have got your first writing job you might even have done some ghost writing already without even realising it!  You see, ghostwriting is basically writing something for someone else that they put their own name on and publish.  So for example, you might be asked to write an article on cheese making (sorry, that was the first thing that came into my head!) for a client.  So you write it and you turn it in, and they pay you.

But then they stick their own name on it and publish it or do whatever they like with it, because they have paid you for full ownership of it.  They won’t tell other people they had someone else write the piece on cheese making – they will say they wrote it themselves.  You have ‘ghostwritten’ the piece and you will remain a mystery in the background, as people don’t even know you exist.

I actually fell into ghost writing without even realising it.  I was poodling along doing my writing and developing my client base, and I read an article on ghostwriting.  And I suddenly realised that’s what I was doing!  Talk about being the last one to know…

Some people have an issue with giving ownership of their writing to other people.  That’s fair enough though – I can perfectly understand that.  I think I have been there and got the published magazine clips, so I was happy to write for other people.  Although with that said I still like to do the odd magazine piece with my name on it (or online piece, like this blog for example!) from time to time.

It’s really a case of horses for courses.  If you like the idea of keeping your own name on everything then go for it and write for markets that make this a possibility.  If you like to write for all kinds of different people and markets, then go for a mix of everything.  Remember that this is YOUR writing career so you get to choose who you want to write for and when you want to write.

This is an important question because it can have a big influence on your future writing career.  One of the best ways to work for lots of different people is to join a ghostwriting team, because you will naturally receive plenty of work from all kinds of people.

But you should still make the effort to find other clients of your own, because this will help to protect your income and grow your writing skills still further.  You can search for higher paying writing jobs too; I found my highest paying one by far after a couple of hours spent surfing around Craigslist, for example.  You just never know where you will find your next job.

As a freelance writer, you could be working for anyone

The thing is that writing jobs are just like any other kind of work.  There will always be the danger that a particular job will cease to be, and if you have relied on that as being your main source of income it could leave you in a sticky spot.

In many ways being a freelancer protects you from the ups and downs of the job market, because you are likely to receive work from several different directions.  This means that if one falls through for any reason you still have plenty of streams of income coming in from other sources.

So take a look at where you get your freelance writing jobs from.  If you only rely on one or two sources then perhaps it’s time to up your income by adding a couple more.