earnmoneywriting

I joined Bukisa several days ago. Bukisa is a site where you can earn revenue from your published articles. The articles do not have to be exclusive, although Bukisa encourages submitting exclusive content as well, so for starters, I had uploaded 6 of my articles published elsewhere. Today, four days later, I already have some money on my account from pageviews.

Bukisa currently pays $3.95 for every 1000 unique pageviews. This is far better than Associated Content and Helium, so I see this site as having good potential for building residual income from my articles. Even if all I do is upload my non-exclusive writings sold or published at other places, there will be some money coming in.

Bukisa pays via PayPal, within 30 days of the end of the month they you reach $50 on your account. It is open to non US residents.

My first payment from LetterRep has arrived today, for a letter I had written and sold on November 23. That is LetterRep’s policy: the writer’s payment is made 30 days after the letter is sold. The reason is that clients have 30 days to ask for their money back if they are not satisfied with the letter. According to LetterRep, it happens rarely. I am certainly glad that it did not happen in my case.

LetterRep is growing and going through some changes. I have not been able to devote much time to this site, but I do like their system and plan to submit more letters in the future. The best part is that when a letter is sold, it stays in their system as a template, available for purchase again, so you can make money from it in the future.

ForumBooster is switching to a new platform called ContentCurrent. No new posting jobs are available at the old ForumBooster, and if you try to log in there as a writer, you are directed to the new site.

At ContentCurrent, you can both log in and apply as a writer. Writers can pick posting jobs they would like to work on and enter the amount of completed posts and threads for each one. A new feature I like is that you also get to enter your alias for the specific forum, so you are no longer stuck with one nickname, you can choose different ones, just remember to report them.

Those who wish to apply as article writers can do it at ContentCurrent as well; the list of available articles is available for approved writers to choose from. I have not found where you can check your current earnings yet, but I’m sure it will be taken care of as the new site develops.

SharedReviews.com now accepts writer’s applications for what they call “Content Bounty Service” – an opportunity to earn by writing requested content. The program is still in its beginning stages. For now, in order to apply you need to: A) have an account at SharedReviews as a reviewer; B) live in North America (other English-speaking countries may be accepted in the future as well), and C) be able to show examples of your work.

Accepted writers will be able to work on “bounties” – specific content requests, which at the moment are only articles, with photos and videos planned to be added later. SR promises competitive pay. Sounds interesting, I’ve just applied.

Well, yesterday I received my first payment from Today.com; as promised, it went out on the 10^th of the month.

I’ve been blogging at Today.com for a little over a month, and between my two blogs, this one and another one dedicated to marriage, I have reached the required minimum of $50. My payment was actually a little over $57. Most of the money is generated through the dollar-per-post payments; pageviews are not bringing me that much cash yet. Since my blogs are still new and developing, I suppose it is normal. I have not received any money from referrals yet, either, but I will the next month.

So the gig is working. Pick a topic, make one 100+ words post a day, and you will get paid of the 10^th. Oh, and don’t forget to mention that you are referred by rusty when you register.

From the early days of Helium.com, writers who submitted articles there were also expected to rate articles written by others. There have been many discussions about the rating system and its flaws, but the fact remains that if you want to earn at Helium, you need to rate, and regularly.

The process is rather simple: you go to the “Rate Articles” section, where you will be given two articles on the same subject to compare. You then need to choose which one is more helpful. There are three gradations of that: Slightly More, More, and By Far. You choose one, click on it, and submit your rating; when it is accepted, you will be given the next pair of articles to compare, and so on, and so on.

So why is rating important and how does it contribute to your earnings? Well, up until recently the main reason has been that when you rate, your own articles get rated by others as well and thus go up to higher earning spots. And if you don’t rate, your articles will sink to the bottom of the pile. Not very long ago Helium has implemented other incentives. Good raters are rewarded with more revenue share. Also, there has been talk of taking money away from inactive accounts and distributing it between active writers. Since I don’t write for Helium anymore, rating several articles a day is a good way to keep my account active and make sure I cash out when I reach $25.

LetterRep has implemented a new feature that allows writers to contact the client requesting a letter. This is done so that the writers can ask for more details, which is needed in many cases, but there is also another incentive: if you, as a writer, convince the requester to join the site and prepay for the letter, then the letter is yours to write and get paid for – exclusively. No other writers will compete with you for it.

The new feature currently works only for unpaid requests. I have checked the site, and there appears to be a glitch caused by it: links to submit letters in response to an unpaid request have disappeared. I sent in a question about that, we’ll see whether it gets corrected and how soon.

SharedReviews.com still has its revenue sharing program suspended, but the company is working hard to get back to start paying its reviewers again. In the meantime, they try to keep the community of writers interested by running paid contests. You can win from $5 to $25 for your participation on the site, submitting new reviews and voting for existing reviews by other members. New writers are encouraged to join.

I would advise to join as well, I believe in this site. SharedReviews continues to grow despite the fact that reviewers currently do not earn from their reviews. When the paying mode is back, all reviews submitted earlier will be eligible to earn from.

At Associated Content, writers have the option of submitting articles on any subject they like or answering calls for content – specific requests on specified subjects. The list of calls for content, of C4C’s, is always available on the site. If you like a suggested topic, you can claim it by clicking the Claim button, which means that you promise to have it written and submitted by the said deadline.

I was under the impression that calls for content paid more. Well, it turns out that I was wrong. I checked out many of them today, and only two had upfront payment offers of $2.50 and $3.50. Others were pageview bonus only. AC claims that those topics are hot search items, so you are likely to get many pageviews and cash out on that. I suppose it is up to the writer whether to wager on that or not.

After my initial success on LetterRep with two letters sold on the first two days, I have been writing more but not selling any. My letters are all approved and stored in LetterRep’s database, available for customers to view and purchase, and they are getting clicked on (I can see that from my work report where all clicks are monitored). However, there are no sales.

I have been writing letters mostly in response to customer requests, regular, not prepaid. That means I run a higher risk of not selling: the customer who has requested a letter is not in any way bound to purchase it. While they are being notified that their request is answered and a letter is ready for them, they can change their mind any time and chose not to buy.

Prepaid requests are better because the customer has shown their strong interest in the letter by having already paid for it. The downside of it though is that several writers usually jump on such a request, so each has 3, 4, or 5 letters offered to choose from. The customer will only pick one, of course. With my luck, it won’t be mine (and don’t talk to me about positive thinking, I’ve tried that).

So I don’t know. Do I keep answering zero bids unpaid requests or try competing for the prepaid ones? Neither sounds appealing. I suppose I’ll keep checking LetterRep for interesting requests and submit an occasional letter or two, but I’d rather focus on other venues with guaranteed pay.