Freelance Writing Opportunities

Writing was never my first passion but I find that the more I write the more I enjoy it. I prefer writing for sites that allow me to earn residual income. Residual income means getting paid over and over for work that you do one time. When you write articles for clients you will generally get an up front payment. But how about writing articles about topics that you enjoy and submit them to popular sites such as eHow and Bukisa? These sites are a great way to earn money month after month from articles that you only write once.

I hope to be able to answer any questions you may have about freelance writing opportunities available online. I will also share my progress with two websites that I am currently earning residual income with: eHow and Bukisa.

Image courtesy of Botheredbybees, flickr.com

There are several reasons why I decided to look into freelance writing opportunities online. The biggest reason of course is the need to bring in more income. The economy has affected so many of us and I was naive enough to think that it wouldn't affect my family and that the constant overtime my husband was able to get on his job would continue. Not only did the overtime end but there is also the constant worry of lay offs.

Another reason is because I am always on the lookout for multiple streams of internet income online. I think it is important not to put all your eggs in one basket so that if one income source starts to dry up you have others to fall back on.

Believe it or not, I used to hate writing. In fact I used to outsource all my writing projects for my niche blogs and article posts. I have discovered however that by writing for eHow and now Bukisa practice does make perfect! I even won $50 in just my 2nd full month of writing for eHow and had this article featured on the home page for three days! This not only boosted my income but it also proved to me that with practice and strong determination I can improve on my writing skills, not to mention the more I write the more I enjoy it.

Do you worry about your spelling or grammar? Luckily there are a lot of text editors such as notepad that will help you correct your spelling errors by pointing out spelling errors. You can also ask a friend or family to proof read your articles for you. And just remember, practice makes perfect! We even have a successful writer on eHow with over 1000 articles and get this, English is not her first language!

My first month writing for eHow, do you know how much I made? 2 cents! Yep, you read that right. Why so low? I posted two recipes on eHow at the end of Feb and then lost interest for a few weeks. But then, my husband started looking more into eHow and found a few guides written by some very successful writers. Here are three of my favorite eHow writers and some information on their guides.

Janet Ford: Janet's eHow guide is the first one that I read and I was really impressed with it. At the writing of her eBook she was with eHow less than a year and making over $1000 per month. Janet is both friendly and helpful. If you visit the eHow forums you will find her there ready to lend a helping hand. Her guide is currently discounted at $15.00. I don't know why she is offering such a deep discount unless perhaps she is planning another one soon. It is worth every penny.
Click here to learn more about Janet's eHow guide

Writergig: I like Writergig's style and she has done very well for herself. Her guide is much shorter than the other two but still helpful. Do you need all three guides? Probably not but I will say that I have learned something valuable from each one. At $25 it is the highest priced eBook of the three.
Click here to view more details

Anthony Delgado: Anthony is another eHow success story who now makes his living online. Anthony focuses more on the SEO aspect of writing. In case you don't know what SEO means it is short for Search Engine Optimization which basically means getting your articles optimized for a lot of free traffic. Anthony also focuses on finding the profitable niches to write about. His eBook is priced at $19.95 and worth every penny. It doesn't just focus on eHow but also other freelance writing opportunities as well such as Bukisa. You can learn more about Anthony's Need Extra Cash ebook here:


I have a hard time recommending one over the other although I do feel that Janet's guide is a good place to start since it walks you through signing up step by step and takes you right through to promoting your articles. It is also very reasonable at just $15.00.

You may think that you have nothing to write about but the truth is, everyone is an expert at something. What are your hobbies? What are your skills? What do you find interesting? On eHow and other freelance writing sites you can write about pretty much anything. My interests include budget living, cooking, working at home, health and fitness, home and family and homeschooling. What are you interested in? What are you willing to learn more about?

Just to give you an idea of the types of articles anyone can write about, here is a sampling of some of my work at home articles:

How to Earn Money Free with Squidoo

How to Earn Multiple Streams of Income

How to Find Freelance Writer Jobs

How to Earn Extra Money to Pay Off Debt

How to Earn Five Dollars a Day Multiple Ways

With eHow there isn't a way to put our own articles in their own category. Eventually I will build new Squidoo lenses with my articles by category. Here is a listing of all my eHow articles (10 articles per page).

As I said before my first month with eHow I made just 2 cents. I had two recipes listed which supposedly aren't high earners to begin with. These same two recipes have now earned me 34 cents and a few other recipes have earned more. I have also branched out to other subjects that interest me such as health and fitness, budget living, home and garden and more.

Anyway, on to month two. By the second month I had a total of 31 articles on eHow and earned $8.51. Not a lot but again, these articles are very new and haven't had time to age well. As articles age they can move up in rankings on the search engines, gain back links and bring in new traffic which is why it is so important to give your articles time to start earning.

Month three was good for me. I had a total of 55 articles at this time, had won $50 in one of eHow's contests and got featured on the home page for three days. The extra income also brought a surge in traffic to all my articles so April was pretty good. I earned $36.69 in April for my articles plus the $50 for the contest. Since this was only my third month (second full month) with eHow this was probably above average.

I am now into month four and have only written two more this month so far. I have a total of 57 articles. Earnings are a bit less than last month but that is understandable since I had the large surge of traffic last month due to the contest. Right now I am averaging from 50 cents to $1.00 per day. So what will I do? Just keep writing articles that I feel are useful while the older articles continue to age.

May 22 update I have only written 5 more articles since the last update and my earnings are still consistently between 50 cents and $1.00 per day. Again this is normal because the majority of my articles haven't had a lot of time to age.

A nice surprise came to my husband, another eHow writer the other day when one of his articles was featured as eHow of the Day onthe home page. He is writing eHow very part time since he has a full time job but even with just a hand full of articles, having his article on the front page gave him a nice earnings boost.

June 11 update Now that I have several articles that are over three months old I am starting to see a steady increase. Mays earnings weren't as high as April due to the fact that I was featured on the homepage in April and that brought me extra traffic as well as a nice $50 contest prize. I ended with $17.53 in earnings for May but here it is only June 11 and I have already $13.33 for the month so far. I am very optimistic that this month will be at least double, if not triple last month.
Articles written in May: 11
Article written in June (so far): 6
Total articles to date: 71

June 22 Update I am happy to say that I have now doubled my income from May. My current balance is now $34.28 so far for June. I have one article in particular that is averaging over $1.00 per day. Some articles really can surprise you. Imagine having 10 articles averaging $1.00 per day. That would be $300 per month!
I do feel that SEO (search engine optimization) makes a huge difference. Write on popular topics that have low competition and give your readers good information.
Articles written for June (so far): 15
Articles to date: 80

Earnings for June My earnings for June came to $48.94. I also reached a personal goal of 100 articles as of July 23! ! I am now taking a few weeks off to catch up on some other online projects (including Squidoo) and hope to come back refreshed with plenty of new article ideas.

Earnings for July My July earnings came out to $42.34. I will admit that I was disappointed that they came in less than June. I had one article that I wrote in June that did really well then leveled off after a few weeks. For this reason my June earnings were higher. Had it not been for that one article my July earnings would have been higher.

Mid month update. The beginning of the month started out very discouraging with low earnings. However, over the past 2 weeks my daily earnings have increased. I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of my articles are getting older plus the fact that things tend to slow down over summer and are finally picking up. I can see why many writers give up the first few months and will admit that I got discouraged at times but the important thing to do is stick with it and give your articles plenty of time to age.
Articles to date: 110

You can easily take on freelance writing jobs and earn immediate income. I shouldn't say "easily" because there are a lot of freelance writers online competing. Sites such as Getafreelancer.com allows potential clients to post their writing jobs for writers to bid on and the competition can be fierce.

One the other hand, anyone over 18 that lives in the USA can write for eHow . If you don't live in the USA you can write for Bukisa which is showing a lot of promise. Now imagine this, in your first month you write 10 articles. Some earn a few cents, some may earn a few dollars and some may earn nothing. Month two comes around and those articles are starting to age a bit and gain momentum. Now the ones that were earning nothing have started to earn a few cents, others a few dollars and so on. In fact, these article that you wrote once have the capability to earn money month after month. That is what residual income is. Work done now that earn money many times over. Now just imagine those first 10 articles from month one are working for you and you continue to write month after month. Do you see the income potential here?

I am very new to Bukisa and at this time have only one article posted and have made 2 cents. However, like eHow you really need to give your articles time to age. In the meantime I will write a few articles per week to see where it takes me.