Content writing isn’t a exciting & glamorous profession. It certainly isn’t a cop-out. But it’s flexible & it’s the fastest way to make cash online. But as an alternative to a full time job, this is the closest thing you can possibly get. Forget AdSense or affiliate marketing – this is the kind of thing that will get you earning cash tomorrow. The downside is you have to work for it.

Basically, as a content writer you’re writing 500 word articles on a wide variety of topics – from ‘iPhone Review’ to ‘football match’ & everything in between. Five hundred words might sound daunting to start with, but you’ll quickly become used to writing to a word count & producing the right level of quality. A lot of the writing comes down to common sense – by sharing your general knowledge on a subject matter
you can often provide sufficient detail for the news story. Technically, all you have to watch for is that you stick to the client’s keyword requirements – that means including any keyphrases in the news story that have been provided by the client.

So, if the client wants you to write 5 articles with the keyword ‘iPhone Review’, the phrase ‘iPhone Review’ should appear in the 500 word news story around 3 times in its exact form – this is for search engines & doesn’t need to be explained further here.

At the lowest unit price you can expect, working the maximum time you can expect whilst still having a day job, you can earn $300 a week, every week. It’s basic maths – $5 per editorial, writing 10 articles (max. 5 hours) a day for seven days of the week. It’s hard work but it’s safe work. So if all that hasn’t put you off, it’s time to move on to how you can win work as a content writer online & how you can go about reaching the levels of earnings.

Where You Can Find Jobs
There is an unlimited amount of writing work out there. “Content Is King” because people need content for a quantity of reasons – for AdSense, for news story promotion, bum marketing – whatever. The fact of the matter is that there’s so much work out there, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. Here’s an indication of where to go to find work that’s already out there, before you need to start thinking about hunting some of
your own clients.

DigitalPoint (and other forums) – the ‘Content Creation’ forum is the place to go to find content writing work. Most of the time the rates come in at less than $0.01/word (which is the maximum you should ever be writing for – anything less isn’t worth your time, wherever it is you happen to live). However you can sometimes find decent work in this forum alone, & it’s possible to make some money, especially if you look after your clients to get some repeat business. Here’s a tip – don’t be afraid to check out the separate ‘Copywriting’ forum at DP – I’ve found there can often be a few threads looking for writers posted in the wrong place, & since this forum seldom sees any traffic there’s often not much competition for these jobs.

RentACoder (and other freelancer bidding sites) – I wasn’t surprised to learn that there’s a quantity of writers on RAC earning full-time wages from writing content articles. There’s lots of work going around & you have the added advantage of being able to build up a visible reputation. there’s usually around 250 writing projects open at RAC at any two time. Say that the average project open is worth $50(which is probably more like a maximum value  than an average) – that means there’s $12,500 (minimum) worth of work out there that you know you’re going to get paid for, & have a nice chance of winning. Still think you can’t win  a fraction of this work with my tips?

Other major freelancer sites I’ve used:

GetAFreelancer.com
Elance.com
Guru.com

How To Win Work

The first thing to do is to work on your bid. First impressions really do count. You wouldn’t apply for a job with a casual note saying ‘I’m ready to do this job’. That will never be , yet you’ve no idea how common it is to receive messages like that whenever you post a project until you’ve actually had to sift through a mountain of spam applications.

one of the most obvious things you see as a content buyer is how unprofessional bidders are. I posted a project on DigitalPoint the other day & within twelve hours I had 17 responses – of which only 1 was even remotely acceptable. Content writers don’t seem to have the professionalism to understand how to win work nor do they understand they’re often competing with non-native speakers at the lowest level.

Obviously your bid should be in English. Don’t go for ‘leet speak’ – write ‘you’  than ‘u’, capitalise your ‘i’, put in full stops & commas. Be informative, be upbeat – after all, the buyer will see hundreds of ‘i can do this 4 u no problem in u deadline’. Anything descriptive about you that displays your writing style will turn heads. Buyer’s aren’t looking for magazine standard, but they are looking for competent English & you’ll never be able to convince someone to spend funds if your bid is sloppy.

Write out a standard bid template & use it for all your projects. This can be like your sales page & can save you so much time when it comes to individually bidding on projects, which can leave more opportunity to get writing & bring in the funds.

Your Portfolio

Along with your standard bid text, you’re going to require to work on a portfolio to send off to your clients. One of the most professional things i have ever seen when working with writers is a lovely looking, neat writing portfolio attached in PDF format – that writer got the job, and I was so impressed I stole that idea.

Write two or four articles on topics that interest you. Weight loss, online dating, gardening – try to get a lovely spread of topics to show you can handle most things. Spend a day writing these articles for your portfolio. Obviously you won’t get paid for them but by making them nice, you’ll win so much more work than you would otherwise. Surprisingly, the majority of content writers try to win work without sending through samples, leaving the buyer to get in touch if we require to see more. It’s far better to have a standard portfolio that you can send out with every bid in order to show what you can do and win you more projects. Again this will make you stand out, which will make you
appear better for the job – even if it is only for one or two articles.

It could also be a nice idea to find a graphic designer to make your portfolio document look professional – for around $30 you should find somebody willing to organise your articles and add a little creative input tomake you stand out even more and give you a better chance of winning that project.

The added benefit of this is that it will give you some experience of writing articles, if you haven’t done so before. In other words, by writing your portfolio (SEO keywords and all) you should be ready to write articles for clients by understanding how much work is involved and how long it’ll take you to complete.