ihatemyjob

If you’ve ever started a blog, you know that it isn’t a quick path to riches. Actually writing the blog posts amounts to about 1/10th of the work of managing a blog. The rest is all promotion, promotion, promotion. You can spend hundreds of dollars on programs ‘guaranteed’ to get your blog ranked at the top of a Google search and/or dozens of other tricks that are supposed to help you make hundreds of dollars a week doing nothing. Just slap up that website, write a little something, and watch the money pour into your bank account, right?

Wrong.

I mean seriously, don’t buy any of these programs or videos. If you could make money that easily just by writing a blog, everyone would be writing a blog.

Oh wait… Everybody is writing a blog!

Well, OK. But not many people are making money off of their blog(s). Most are doing it for fun or for the experience or because they need a place to air their strong opinions.

You can make money writing online, but blogging probably won’t be the most direct route. You can go to any number of freelance job boards and bid on work. Two good ones are Elance.com and Guru.com. You’ll have to pay a fee to bid and you’ll be charged a percentage of what you make for using the job board. Elance usually takes about 8% of whatever you make. I haven’t used Guru, but I assume it’s similar.

Some people using the job boards make five figure incomes, but most don’t. This year I think I’ve made about $5K on the job boards–not exactly great wealth, but not bad either considering I can do it sitting in front of the TV in my jammies with my laptop open. Some of the work is awful and some of the pay is bad (I mean REALLY bad–I’ve seen requests for 500 word articles at no more than $1.50 a piece), but after you’ve been doing it awhile you do come across some pretty interesting and decently paid gigs, and sometimes you even get them.

You can also join a blogging community that allows ad revenue. I like HubPages.com and have been there since November of 2007.  I’m not getting rich there either, but I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, and HubPages pretty much lets us write whatever we want as long as it isn’t obscene, profane, or defamatory.

Two other online communities some people enjoy writing for are AssociatedContent.com and Helium.com. Both have a payment system based on page views, and both have a venue for purchasing articles outright. I like Associated Content because they let you choose what rights you want to keep, or if you choose, you can sell all rights.

This ability to choose is rare online–most websites claim all rights to your material, so keep this in mind before slapping up your masterpiece without reading any fine print. HubPages is unusual in that they do leave you with all rights to your own material. They just ask that you not publish it online anywhere else. You can re-publish in print, no problem.

I’ve been writing online for about a year now, and it’s been both more lucrative than I thought it would be and less lucrative than people seem to think it should be. You have to spend A LOT of time writing to make money writing for the internet, and it’s very competitive. People sometimes stiff you. You never know what will be popular, and some of your personal favorite pieces will fall flat while something you tossed off carelessly rakes in the ad revenue for no discernable reason. You will not get the respect you would get for in-print publications.

Many professional writers still regard writing for the internet as hack work and more than a little disreputable.

But can you make money writing online?

Yes. Yes you can.

It’s just a matter of how badly you want to make money writing online, and how much time you have to devote to doing it. Like anything you do for money, writing for money eventually turns into a job.

I’m thinking even Shakespeare had days when he just wanted to go fishing.

I know I do.

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