3 Types of Freelance Writing Gigs and How to Find Them

Most freelance writers have several sources of writing work where they can get paid to write articles. Some are ongoing, some are one-off, and some are gap-fillers. All can be good. Read on for a bit about each of the above categories and how to go about getting those types of writing jobs.

Ongoing
Finding regular writing clients can be a good thing. Do a good job and you might get ongoing writing work.

One-Off Jobs
By marketing yourself, you can find writing jobs that are one-off scenarios. Someone might need a press release written, might decide that they want to write a new sales letter, want help re-vamping their website content, or want another freelance writing service. Marketing can help these clients find you.

Gap fillers.
There are content companies and busy clients that may offer you an all-you-can-write buffet. Having a few of these eggs can be a good thing because you can make fast money writing when you need to up your earnings or when you have a gap in your schedule. You an also spend some of your gaps working at upping your passive income streams through writing for revenue sharing sites, such as InfoBarrel and HubPages, or through developing content for your own sites and blogs.

How to find Writing Gigs:

Find ongoing and one-off clients by marketing on an ongoing basis. Freelance writers who market can get found by clients and some of those clients could provide you with regular work.

In terms of gap fillers, sign up with a writing agency, start a profile on a freelance bidding site such as Elance, sign up with content companies such as Textbroker, Internet Brands, and Demand Studios so you can dive into one of these options as and when you need to.

Getting paid to write articles can be a business of feasts and famines. By diversifying your incoming writing work sources and by continually marketing yourself you can have a wide array of options available.

Get Paid to Answer Questions

Quite a few sites want to offer people the ability to purchase knowledge and if you want to work at home, you could be answering questions for pay. People can buy answers online, they can view some of them for free, and they can get answers on their mobile phone, too.

If you’re looking to work at home and like doing online research, this could be something lucrative and enjoyable for you. Some sites offer revenue share and some offer paid services. Do beware that some places only offer pay if a customer is satisfied with your question.

Should you do a per question answering job or a revenue share option?

Up front pay might be what you’re looking for but be aware that revenue share options could result in passive income and might amount to more money over time.

Several Paid Question Answering Options:

Weegy

If you’re looking for a part-time work at home gig, consider joining http://www.Weegy.com.

Weegy pays about $0.20 USD per answer. You get paid via PayPal when your account hits $20.

WebAnswers

Webanswers.com pays with revenue-sharing. You can ask and answer questions. You get paid directly via Google Adsense so need your own account. There’s no guarantee with revenue sharing but it can have more long term earning potential if your answer is popular.

ChaCha

ChaCha.com is a popular choice and is said to pay ChaCha Guides between $3-9/hr for answering questions.

JustAnswer

JustAnswer offers a variety of paid questions for various rates and pays via PayPal.

AnswerGem

Answergem pays $9-$45 per answer. There are several levels of expert and clients can also pay to see archived answers so you can receive passive income here as well.

Askables

Askables.com is one to watch. They currently offer revenue sharing for those posting articles and points system for those answering questions. High points = more revenue share on your account. The site is also planning to roll out paid expert services as well in the near future.

Many won’t work full time answering questions from home but find it to be a nice sideline for a part time work at home job.

(photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/cobrasoft)

How Do You Find A Work at Home Job?

Querying the internet for real and legitimate work at home job leads can produce results that can confuse anyone. How do you find a real job opportunity for something that can pay you to do work from home? How to do you dodge the scams that are rampant on the net? Should you ever pay for information or pay to work for a company? There is a lot of information out there. Here are some basic tips for finding a work at home job:

Researching Work at Home Job Opportunities

Research a lot! Don’t jump into something quickly, rather check out various opportunities from more than a single source so you can be sure that no one is out there warning people against a scam. If someone is touting themselves as a guru to try to get you to buy their book or join their website, do some research on that individual as well.

Reviews

A lot of review sites exist that talk about what’s hot and what’s not in terms of learning programs you have to buy into. If you’re looking to start your own home based business that’s a bit different than simply working from your house for someone else so be sure you understand what you’re about to invest in.

Paying For Jobs

A company that wants to hire you should never charge you but a company that can show you how to create your own online income may charge you for that knowledge, coaching, and mentoring. Some teaching institutions can teach you how to launch a home based income opportunity as well but it’s important to choose an online school wisely and be sure they’re accredited as well as find out what % of graduates actually achieve the results that school promised.

Telecommuting, Job Lead, and Industry Specific Community Forums

There are a lot of places where people gather online to share knowledge about various topics and WAH is one of them. There are work at home Mom forums, work at home Dad forums, telecommuting forums that exist regardless of whether you’re a parent or not, and plenty of professional organisations online as well. Joining these is often free and can help you get information and ask questions.

WAH Job Lead Sites
There are a lot of work at home job lead sites out there that share job leads and tips. Subscribe to a few so you can have news about this industry sent to your e-mail box. Subscribe to this blog here for instance: The WAH Blog – Work at Home Tips. There are also plenty of classified sites that offer telecommuting job postings as well.

Informed Decisions

The most important thing you can do is to make sure you embark on any new opportunity with your eyes wide open and because there is such a vast amount of information available online, it’s easy to get dazed and confused and overwhelmed. If you take your time researching opportunities and take advantage of the many online resources that exist for those who want to develop internet businesses or find a work at home job, you’ll be able to make an informed decision.

Finding Freelance Writing Jobs

How do you find freelance writing jobs? This post will give you several job lead sources:

  1. Freelance Writing Job Blogs. There are a lot of blogs that offer daily job leads
  2. Craigslist. In all major cities is a writing job category
  3. Google Alerts. Set up a Google Alert for freelance writing jobs and you can even set on up for your specific niche.
  4. Google. Search on the type of writing job you want
  5. Writing Forums. There are internet forums dedicated to writers and these often have job listings in them.

Writers: Use The Web To Your Advantage!

If you want to become a writing wahm or just a freelance writer, the internet provides a wealth of opportunities for finding writing jobs. You can research how much a freelance writer gets paid, look at other writer’s sample resumes, set up your own writing website, and more.

Beyond the resources listed here, why not consider creating your own website to show your talents? Bring writing clients to you!

I’m a freelance writer, editor, and consultant and I support my family with my online income. I won’t say it’s easy but it’s very doable if you are motivated!

Can You Make Money With Amazon MTurk?

Amazon Mturk (mechanical turk) offers the ability to make money online from home. You can make cash if you have a US bank account or transfer earnings into an Amazon gift certificate and if you’ve been to Amazon lately you’ll know you can buy just about anything on the site!

what is the Amazon Mturk program?

Human intelligence tasks, aka HITS are offered to people who are members of the program and you can make a penny to several dollars for tasks that include things like writing, answering questions, doing admin work and more.

Is the pay on Mturk good?

The pay is really low. There are article writing jobs that pay much lower than you’d earn on many content sites and there are other tasks that are priced quite low as well but the site might be worth joining if you’d like to earn a bit of money in your down time for filler pay when not much else is available. This can be a good start for those just dipping their toe into the waters of working at home because:

Positives of Amazon Mturk

-it costs $0 to join

-Amazon is a trusted company

Negatives of Amazon Mturk

The negative side of things beyond difficulty cashing out if you’re not American, is that buyers have to choose to accept your work or you don’t get paid so if you’ve accepted a $10 job to write 10 articles and the buyer doesn’t like your work, you’ve wasted your time.

Writing on spec is something experienced writers don’t typically do because without a ‘kill fee’ that you’re paid if the buyer doesn’t like your writing, you can definitely lose out. Not all the jobs are writing though as some are research related or administrative.

There are a lot of ways to make money online beyond this site. Dig through my posts and you’ll see many online job opportunities. But, Mturk could provide you with some easy opportunities and the penny and nickel gigs could add up in your spare time for some spare change. Realise that you are financially responsible to pay tax for what you earn and again, you could spend time working on a project you won’t be paid for. I’d love to hear from other MTURK hit providers to see what their experience has been.

Tips To Make Extra Money For Christmas

f you’re just taking the plunge into working at home and are desperate for ways to make some quick money for the Christmas season, here are some helpful tips for you. This is by no means an exhaustive list of online money making options but for those looking to get started quickly to get some income flowing, these tips can help.

  1. Sell some items on eBay. There is a wealth of information on the eBay site that’ll enable you to get started.
  2. If you can write, start writing how-to articles for sites like Bukisa and eHow. These sites share revenue with you and some writers on ehow, for instance make over $900 a month in residuals. You may or may not hit payout in time for Christmas but if you start straight away you could at the very least have earned some funds before those first 2009 credit card bills come in.
  3. If you can write, you may visit an online webmaster forum and look in the classifieds section to find pay per post jobs as well as people looking for virtual assistants.
  4. Open your own online niche store. If you get started in November or early December you could cater to the hungry Christmas market.
  5. Join a job bidding site like Elance where you can make money selling your services which could include writing, translation, technical or virtual assistant services.

Make Money Writing Articles for Bukisa

Check out Bukisa. It’s another revenue-sharing earning program. I already write for their ArticlesBase website so already know that this company knows how to promote and monetize their site. They also have lighting fast response times to support issues which is important. I joined another article site lately and their support sucked so I haven’t bothered to go back.

Anyway, this site looks to have great potential and a multi-level referral program which makes the money making potential pot even sweeter. Check it out

Work At Home Resumes – Are You Making It To The Short Pile?

When you come across what looks like a perfect work at home opportunity, it can be frustrating to wait for a reply after applying. If you don’t hear back you wonder if it was something you said or something you didn’t say. The fact is, some companies that offer telecommuting jobs are just so backlogged with resumes that you might not hear from them unless you do two important things:

  1. You follow their directions closely first and then
  2. You make sure you stand apart as a cut above the others in the short pile
  3. A hiring manager will generally sift through the large pile of resumes and glance quickly to decide if the pile will go into the trash or into a short pile to be looked at more closely. In work at home opportunities there is often a larger number of applicants than the advertiser initially expected so it starts off as a process of elimination before it becomes a close look at skills and suitability.

    Here are some tips for getting from the tall pile in the resume inbox to the short pile of resumes actually being considered.

    Follow Directions!

    Follow directions! Because the interviewer has to weed through a lot of responses, they’re not going to read it if something is off from the start. Some companies put a test in their classified ad to make sure you can follow instructions such as asking for the resume to be sent in a specific format. Be sure you read and re-read the applying instructions otherwise you might get deleted before you’re even read.

    Are You Qualified?

    Don’t apply unless you truly are qualified. This is almost always true in a high demand work at home job because of the vast number of resumes coming in. Some hiring managers get hundreds or even thousands of responses when they send out a call for new hires so typically aren’t looking for an inexperienced intern. There are times when these types of learning opportunities are available but generally in the highly competitive telecommuting world those are few and far in between unless you have an inside scoop.

    Personalize Your Application

    Take the time to personalize the application. You might be sending your resume out to 100 work at home jobs a day but each prospective employer needs to see that you’ve taken the time to understand their advertisement. While it’s ok to use a template that you update for each job you apply for instead of taking the time to craft a brand new resume and cover letter, if you send a form letter you might be ignoring a specific direction on the classified ad and you won’t appear original enough. Take some time to research the company and you can inject a bit of this research into your resume. Showing you’ve taken the time to learn about the company can set you apart from the crowd.

    Do you work at home? What are your secrets for standing apart in the crowd?

Work At Home Job Lead: Work As A Google Rater

If you’re interested in working from home as a Google quality rater, there is a lot of call for this if you have specific language skills in French, Dutch, Persian, Italian and other languages.

Job application URL: http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/topic.py?dep_id=1094&loc_id=1628

More information:

http://www.wahm.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=180800&PN=1

Who/Where/When/What’s A Google Rater and How Much Does It Pay?

Google raters are under NDA (non-disclosure) so you’ll have to apply to find out.

Pajama Uniforms – Work At Home Ideas

Want to work at home but not sure what you’re qualified for? Here are some ideas of ways you can make a part-time or full-time income working with your PJ’s as your uniform!

  • Virtual assistant. Virtual assistants can work from home, make money online, have a flexible schedule and work in their pajamas! You can work for one company or as a freelancer
  • Freelance writers. Freelance writers can make money writing online content articles, blogs, manuals, press releases and more.
  • Telemarketing. You can have a special phone account set up at home and do telemarketing in your spare time and make money from home.
  • eBay selling. A lot of people are are making money selling things on eBay. Worried you don’t have enough junk in your garage / basement to sell? That’s ok. eBay doesn’t have to be done with old stuff. You can set up an online store selling wholesale products that you don’t even have to stock!
  • Affiliate marketing. Promote products online through various programs and make a commission
  • Do surveys for cash. Some sites will pay you money for your opinion. Sign up with a bunch of these sites and get invited by the higher paying sites and you can get some great rewards
  • Socialize online. This is an interesting and relatively new concept. A lot of new sites pop up that will pay you to hang out, play games, post in forums and more.
  • Forum posting. Forums are a big thing for companies and online revenue sites and many of them need professional conversationalists to help them keep conversations moving or moderate discussions.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways you can put your computer to work! For some more ideas, take a look at Legit Online Jobs