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Which of you freelance writers is actually making a decent living off freelance writing? I'm talking getting paid $100-$300 an article or making like $500 or more a month. Not no $5-$15 or $20 a month or every other month or year etc.
I know I have made some money but it's "rare" as I mentioned above I only see money like once a month to every other month to once a year at times.
I have another business so I am currently making my main living from that. I do get some royalty payments from book deals and the occasional fat check from writing.
During the peak of the economic downturn I relied almost completely on freelance writing. Mostly content dreck. I was making between $2000 and $4000 a month. I'm not proud of the content dreck, although it saved my butt when there was no other money coming in.
I was able to write a lot of stupid $25 content articles in a short amount of time because I understood what the client was looking for. Keywords, not quality.
I also got a $30,000 book deal during that time based on my content dreck.
Think eHow. Livestrong. Chron. DexKnows.
And scores more.
All of these are crap content sites, written and edited by laypersons. Riddled with inaccuracies. Cracks me up every time I see someone using eHow or Livestrong as a cite.
But back in the day, if you could churn these things out quickly and legibly, there was decent money to be made. I'm just glad I used a nom de plume.
I wrote for Demand Media (and some other clients, but mostly Demand.)
For several years they were pumping out thousands of crap articles a day, and I wrote close to 4,000 of them. They paid $25-40 per 500-ish word article and I could do ten a day. Although at the end of the day I was pretty much in the fetal position, sucking my thumb, snot running out of my nose and whimpering. It was unbelievably soul-sucking churning out McArticles.
The heyday of content is mostly past, though. Unless you are established, an incredibly dedicated and successful blogger, or a staff writer for HuffPo or something, it's probably not possible to make much on content these days.
Get a copy of Writers' Digest. And go online, there are hundreds of writing websites.
Learn to write. Learn to query. Identify your niche. Then write. And query. Lots.
I augmented my living with a 30-some year career freelancing. Before I hung up my keyboard, I was being paid from $.75 - $1.25/word for 1,200 - 2,500 word articles.
Those rates are paid by national and state/provincial glossies for features, sometimes accompanied by photos (extra $ if you provide them) or layout art (usually the mag's staff).
Along with the advice provided by chiroptera's last paragraph, I'd suggest developing an area of expertise. If you have a hobby that you enjoy, learn everything you can and write about it. Mine was fishing. I became good at it and found I could get paid by writing about it. In time, low-paying newspaper columns led to regional magazines which led to nationals and ultimately, a book now in its 10th year in print.
"Write what you know" is a hoary writing maxim poo-poohed by some of today's literary cognoscenti. But I believe it is the 1st commandment of selling non-fiction (and within the top 3 for fiction).
If you have/develop an area(s) of expertise, possess reasonably good writing chops, put in the requisite hours studying markets/styles and how to approach editors/publishers - you can aspire to something more than spitting out content for nickels on the net.
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