Being successful as a freelance writer requires more than good spelling, grammar and research skills. Any skills you can bring to the table beyond writing can help you gain access to a wider array of jobs and a better pay scale. Here are 5 skills that can help you expand the field of jobs for which you can qualify:

WordPress

Not only should you learn your way around WordPress as a Content Managment System (CMS), you would do well to learn about plugins, tips and tricks to make it run better and how to maximize a WordPress site for SEO. At the very least, set up your profile site on WordPress so that you can learn how to run this type of site. It’s becoming the industry standard and without the know how, you’ll fall behind. You can qualify for even more positions if you understand a little about web design, CSS and html. No need to take a class. Just set up a WordPress site, preferably on your own host, and see what your clients go through in running their sites. Google anything you don’t understand and you’ll quickly learn the skills. Classes are available, but WordPress is so easy to use and customize, most people can learn it by trial and error. Get the essentials right from the horse’s mouth at http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-started. These days, most hosts have an interface that lets you install WordPress right from the host site through simple scripts or other software.

HTML

You do need to understand HTML code to fix small annoying problems that crop up in WYSIWYG editors. Only when you look at the code can you see what’s causing the quirky look of your blog post. http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp is the best place to learn the basics. Get into the habit of writing posts in HTML instead of the Visual editor in WordPress. Google solutions to problems you find and you will gain confidence in your expanded skills.

Basic Image Editing

Some say you should know Photoshop. I say you just need to know where to find free public license images and how to crop and resize. Check out http://www.morguefile.com and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. I rarely have to go beyond these sources for good blog images. I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager as my editor for simple crops and resizing. Photoshop is pricey stuff. Unless you intend to do logo design or web design, it’s not worth it. Few writers are expected to do any more than crop or resize.

Search Engine Optimization

To learn SEO, don’t rely sole on the blog posts all over the Web by every Tom Dick and Harry. Some of the info is trustworthy, some is just plain wrong and some is outdated. The best thing to do is use Google’s own tutorials at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=70897&hl=en. Take the Google 101 lessons and you’ll be in much better shape. Take it slow, though. This stuff takes time to understand and master. Use your WordPress site to practice the techniques and gain a full understanding of them. After you’ve gone through that training, I recommend http://www.bruceclay.com for the best SEO tools, education and information. The most important things to understand are keyword research, keyword placement, formating images and formating anchor text.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEO has to do with the on-site elements, like keywords, headings, headlines and the way you code images within a post. SEM is a broader skill set that includes an understanding of how often to post, how to use social media, social bookmarking, guest posting and other link building strategies.

Essentially, you need to have all the basic skills of a webmaster. To be a great Web writer and find your way into better jobs like content manager and site editor, you need to know these things. It is also easier to appeal to clients when you can understand the frustrations they face and help them manage solutions.

For those of you at the point in your careers when it’s time to consider outsourcing, you are facing quite a challenge. Finding a way to get quality content at a rate that will offer you a profit is not easy. The trick is to develop your skills to the point where you become a qualified editor. You need to be a good spell checker, grammarian, teacher and mentor. Having a gentle touch with nudging writers in the direction you need is important. Hopefully, once you’ve reached this point, you’ve also managed to increase your rates to a profitable point. Here’s a great piece on how to increase your rates, by the way.

For me, it was about establishing myself with an excellent reputation, learning how to sell myself effectively and then building up enough work to sustain myself. I then began bidding on work beyond what I needed at twice the usual rate. It only took a few months for me to establish new clients at the new rate. One older client still gets the old rate, but only because I love the job too much to give it up.

Outsourcing Writing Work

So now I outsource some of my work, and I use Textbroker for most of it. But there are downsides. You don’t really know what you’ll get. You may pay for a level 4 writer, but get level 3 work. Being a softy, I’m not going to reject an article unless its truly junk. I feel bad for the writer putting all that effort in for low pay.

Well, that’s about to change. Textbroker (no affiliation) has changed their rating program. You can now see how writers do it specific areas of the content.

Other improvements are making the job for outsourcers easier. They have implemented new features (which I haven’t tried yet), such as:

1. SEO Options: Keyword-Checking
2. New Order Form
3. Order Templates
4. Automatic Export to WordPress and more
5. Improved Evaluation Options
6. Feedback Tab

The evaluation options are what I’m focusing on today, although I am also excited about the templates option as well. Now you will be able to report on the following components of style when evaluating writers:

- Subject Knowledge
- Spelling and Grammar
- Style, Tone and Phrasing
- Dependability and Responsiveness

I think the biggest problem I have had is with style. Writers who have been spending too much time doing keyword work forget how to write for voice, which is most important to me. Style is easily fixed when I post the work, which is why I still use Textbroker. It is still the most dependable source for work I have found, with the fewest complications in managing. It’s quick and easy.

It can be frustrating for writers trying to produce new and fresh content for websites regularly. Since this is how many writers make their living, it is an important issue. It is hard to image that any author has one superb, search-engine-friendly, explosively viral article in her every day. You need to examine your own abilities and decide where you are and where you want to go.

If you are just starting out writing online, you may need to use passive income sites to build your portfolio. You should consider using sites that allow you to republish existing content, just to make things a bit easier and build your web presence quickly. But if you are already selling articles here and there, you may wish to begin focusing on marketing your writing abilities and hanging out of freelance job boards while you try marketing articles on constant-content. Here you may sell articles for usage, unique or exclusive rights. If you are a seasoned professional, you’ll be writing nothing but exclusive content for clients, but the pay will be the best available as a web writer.

Passive Income Writers

One could argue the web is so vast that one good article published on ten websites is unlikely to be viewed twice by a person in the same day. If you write articles for your own passive income purposes, your article published in five places should not damage the ranking of others if the content is good. No matter which article the searcher decides to read, you are getting some passive income out of it.

Understand that you may only make a few dollars on each website, but with all the eyes on the web, good writing should make you at least a few dollars. There is the potential that you will get lucky and make good money through your several revenue streams. In addition, your name will be all over the web, increasing the rank of sites that show your content.

Search Engines and You

Online writing pays only a fraction of printed publications, and writing an original article that produces good traffic is no easy task. For these reasons, it should only be fair that writers be able to publish the content in several places without penalization. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. The reason: SEO (search engine optimization). Web crawlers search the net and give lower rankings to sites that have duplicative content.

The companies buying content would disagree, however. When original content is in demand, the website displaying that content gets all the traffic. The webhost that paid for the content wants all that traffic. This is why exclusive rights and unique rights are more valuable than usage rights and elicit a higher sale price. Those buying articles on sites like constant-content want the highest return on investment possible.

Know Your Rights

So what does that mean, “usage rights”, “unique rights” and “exclusive rights”? These are three types of licensing for online content. Usage rights allow the purchaser to publish content wherever she sees fit as long as the author gets credit for the writing. Other people can come along and purchase usage rights again, but you are locked out from selling unique or exclusive rights later. Unique rights allow the buyer to publish wherever she wants and prevent other webhosts from buying or using the same content. Exclusive rights give the buyer the right to use and publish the content, even to change the content however they please. The writer does not get credit for the article.

Just Do It

No matter which road you choose, always remember to focus on writing content that will be helpful and useful to your readers. Write from your heart and give generously to your audience. In the end, good writing sells itself.

Everything I have written here is factual, but I want to make sure you know that this is a referral link. If you want to try Constant Content, I’d greatly appreciate it if you supported KillFive by joining through my link. Thanks so much!

Textbroker Rating and Review

One good place to start writing online is at Textbroker. This one-of-a-kind website pays only a few dollars per article, but the staff will rate your writing, showing you if you have the skills to write online. You may also work towards better writing with each submission and improve your rating. Textbroker rates its writers on a scale of 2 to 5 with 2 being the lowest acceptable standard. If you can achieve a rating of 4, you probably have what it takes to become a professional writer.

Textbroker will pay you after your minimum balance reaches $10. You must request your payment to get the funds transfered to you via Paypal on the 10th of the month. If you request payoff after the 5th of the month, you must wait until the next month to get your funds.

Textbroker does not pay alot and that is why I recommend it for those new to writing online. However, I still use Textbroker as a great source re-write assignments frequently. Re-writes require less time because all the research is already done. You only need to re-word the article, saving you time.

The first order I filled at Textbroker gave a meager return because I started out with a 3 star rating. After a little practice, I increased to 4 stars and began making better money. I never did make 5 stars and I know it is not an easy task from talking to other writers about it. Pay for me averaged. $3.75 per article. Most articles were around 500 words. When I figured in the time it took, the hourly rate was about $7.50 per hour, but I was a much slower writer back then. Experienced writers may be able to eke out twice that. No great, not bad.

If you are ready to get started with Textbroker, click here.

Helium Review

Helium is a great site for all types of writers, but their system for earnings can be complicated. The site has more rules than any other of its kind, with rules and procedures to follow, so be sure to read instructions carefully. Helium works on the premise of peer ratings. Writers judge writers on an anonymous basis.

Standards

Helium sets certain writing standards to ensure the quality of the site. Your article must be at least 400 words and 1,500 characters. They politely ask you to follow a reasonable set of rules that is too long to go into here. Make sure you read the User Guide before you publish.

Empty Title Bonus

The empty title bonus is a nice feature on Helium for passive income article writers. If you write to a title that no one else has written to, they will credit you $1.00 at the beginning of the next month. Helium places these titles based on research showing the title should do well with search engines, so you get another bonus in more traffic for your article.

You want to limit the empty titles you write, though, because you must have a certain number of competitive titles to get Writing Stars (yet another complicated issue).

Be a Star

Writing stars are earned based on the number of competitive titles you have published and your rank among your competitors in those titles. I easily earned two stars in my first month. You can get up to five stars, once you have 500 articles on Helium. You can also earn Rating Stars and must have at least one Rating Star to earn passive income on Helium. Each time you publish an article, Helium redirects you to the ratings area with the idea that if you write one, you should rate at least one.

Selling Your Work

To sell your work, use the Marketplace feature. Marketplace titles are hard to win, but winners make around $50 for an article. Five star writers can compete for Premier Titles that pay around $200. Earnings vary wildly on this, so check it out for yourself. When submitting entries, either try to be the first in or the last in. The articles in the middle tend to get lost in the shuffle.

There seems to be a tendency for article ratings to start out high and then taper off over time. If you do not win the title, your article will be transitioned to the passive earnings section and you will receive a $1.00 kill fee.

Did You Win?

After you submit your entry to Marketplace, expect a wait of a week or ten days before you know if you have won. At first, this feels like an eternity. Passive income pieces are published immediately.

Passive Income

To publish passive income articles on Helium, you need to go through their Title Finder and choose an existing title for your article. If your piece does not fit in any of the titles they provide, you are pretty much out of luck. Trying to get Helium to add a title is like banging your head against the wall. Still, more often than not, you can find a place your article will fit, or you can browse topics and write to one that calls you. You can also publish poetry, creative writing and debates, types of writing rarely addressed by other writing sites. That’s what makes Helium so great for writers.

Overall, I really like Helium. I do have trouble keeping up with rating since I am busy with assigned work from my own clients most of the time. Still, I really like peer rating. Some complain that total morons sometimes rate articles poorly, but accepting negative feedback is just part of being a writer. Most of the feedback is reasonable and accurate.

Rating other writers has its own rewards as well. While reading the pieces of other writers, you may find a surprise piece stabs you in the heart when you least expect it.

Everything I have written here is factual, but I want to make sure you know that this is a referral banner. If you want to try Helium, I’d greatly appreciate it if you supported KillFive by joining through the banner link. Thanks so much!

Constant Content is an online marketplace where writers can sell their finished work, write to “Public Requests,” or receive direct assignments.

Constant Content Review

This site can be a good source of income for serious writers. Constant Content (CC) demands professional, grammatically correct writing, never written in the first-person voice. The editors’ strict requirements add to the site’s reputation for providing good articles and blog posts to websites. The site also offers photographs, illustrations and videos up for sale.

New Writers Take Care

New writers should approach CC with extreme care. If CC rejects your writing three times, you may be barred from further submissions. Make sure you read and follow the submission guidelines carefully before you submit your first piece. You should also look at the way other writers are marketing their articles on the website before you submit yours. Follow the example of successful writers and you should do well.

Public Requests

When submitting to Public Requests, make sure you get your article in fast and use an engaging voice. This will be your best chance at profiting from CC. Buyers tend to purchase the first acceptable article they lay eyes on.

Selling Articles on Constant Content

Articles placed on CC for sale without a Public Request often languish there. The chances that someone will come along looking for articles on the subject you have already written about are small. Many buyers will not bother to sift through articles on the site and instead simple put up a Public Request. You can be quickest to respond if you already have the right article on the site.

When the holidays arrive, you are more likely to sell articles already in your inventory. There is a higher demand for articles and a lower number of available writers. When this happens, writers can get premium rates for articles on popular Web topics, about 20 cents per word. CC takes 35% commission. If your Public Request submissions don’t sell, you can leave them on the site for sale or use them elsewhere.

Everything I have written here is factual, but I want to make sure you know that this is a referral link. If you want to try Constant Content, I’d greatly appreciate it if you supported KillFive by joining through my link. Thanks so much!

This is the first in a series to help you get an idea of what it’s like to write on different sites. Today, we’re looking at Associated Content (AC), a company recently bought out by Yahoo!

Associated Content Review

What is Associated Content?

Associated Content is a revenue sharing site for writers, video makers, slideshow makers and podcasters. They offer small upfront payments and ad revenue for page views for each of these types of content. Being a write, I can only tell you what it’s like to write on the site. If you have ever worked with AC on videos, slideshows or podcasts, let us know what you think of the site.

Does Content Have to be Unique?

While AC encourages you to write unique work for them, you can submit pieces that are also published elsewhere, allowing you to develop more than one income stream for the same piece of writing. Not every revenue share site allows this.

Most Web writers avoid duplicate content because it gets rated lower or not shown at all by search engines, but as long as someone is reading a piece of content that belongs to you, do you really care? I don’t. I have not noticed a big difference in different versions of articles at sites compared against the same exact article in three locations. That’s a great idea for an experiment though!

How do I Make Money with Associated Content?

You should also know that Associated Content increases your performance payment level as your “clout” increases. Your clout is determined by both the number of articles you publish and the traffic your articles generates. Once you reach a clout level of 7, you begin receiving a rate bonus of 5 cents, which improves incrementally up to a clout level of 10, which gives you 50 cent bonus. I’m at 6 right now. I hope Yahoo! doesn’t go changing things right before I hit my bonus!

Is AC Easy to Use?

The old version of AC was a little trying to navigate, but the new one is a clean, mean, Web machine. Associated Content puts up posts called “Calls for Content.” These are a listing of articles they are looking for that match the profile you have submitted for writing topics. There are rarely any topics of interest that actually pay upfront. But if the site is looking for a title, it’s because they believe it will do well generating revenue, and you get a share in that if you write the title.

How Much Does the Associated Content Pay?

When Calls for Content are paid, it’s about $3.50 up front for the article (after they approve it). The payment is issued immediately to your PayPal account. Your article will then generate passive income for you on the site. I sometimes find wait times for approval are too long, as much as ten days. Most sites can approval articles in three to seven days.

Performance payments are issued at the beginning of the month once your balance reaches above $1.50 (5,000 page views). After one month, my 22 articles generated about 500 page views and earned 80 cents, so the payment appears to be better than the published numbers suggest.

Some articles received no views at all, an odd event, since all of my articles on other sites were viewed at least once. Other articles received no views at all for weeks, then suddenly became popular.

Including upfront payments, my total was about $7, with another $12 in upfront payments pending. I can here your expletives at reading only $7 per month. But extrapolate that results to 1,000 articles. Now you have $350 per month, plus your higher clout should bring you another $80 or so. Good for extra money but not a career. But the nice thing about passive payments is that once the work is done the money keeps rolling in. I haven’t added an article to AC in almost a year and my clout has risen anyway. My 44 articles have been viewed 15,538 times. I’ve made $91.51 altogether. Just be sure you write about topics that will always be relevant. Like a good suit, a well-written article is timeless.

Holy cow is all I can say. Yahoo! is buying Associated Content (AC) for $100 million, closing the deal this fall. I wonder whether it will improve earnings or hurt them? It should certainly increase traffic for our articles on AC.

B to B reports that Yahoo! wants to take the “how-to” content and turn it into better, more engaging content. I know exactly what they are talking about. You can take basic content, add an angle, a little bit of artistic flair and you turn a so-so article into a knock out eyeball magnet. How long do you think it will take AOL to buy Helium, Bukisa, Triond or Hub Pages?

Also, some good news for our global readers from countries like India, Australia and Ukraine. Yahoo! plans on expanding the Associated Content system globally! I always feel a little sad for the lack of writing work available to our global brethren. This may level the playing field for them a bit.

Although the pay for writing AC pieces is very, very low, it’s still a great place for beginners to build a portfolio, all the while getting some residual earnings. Over time you can build your ranking and earn more, making it a little more worthwhile to post articles there. AC also offers occasional assignments that writers can claim. Trying to build a writing career on AC may be an exercise in futility, but it was a huge stepping stone in the first few months of my writing career. I’m still glad I wrote there for peanuts.

I was recently contacted by Aric Mitchel, whose friendly face you can see posted to the left. Aric was having trouble finding a way to attract writers to work under him. He was considering Craigslist but was concerned it might look like a scam, not to mention the $25 you have to shell out to post a job ad there. Being new to hiring writers, Aric had tried Constant-Content and Absolute Write with limited success.

I couldn’t add Aric’s listing in the top ten because I am working to help established writers find the best-paying work. But it is also important to me to help fellow writers in other ways as well. The solution was to help Aric by letting him place a free ad there for a while.

Sourcing Content

This interaction with Aric got me to thinking. I hire writers under me as part of my Content Management and Editing gig over at billeater. While I had found my writers at Craigslist, I started to think that maybe I could have followed another course more affordably. After doing a little research, I found that I could have gotten work from the same sources where I got my start as a writer.

Where to Find Writers on the Cheap

I have a little bit of personal conflict writing on this topic because I want us all to make better income as Web writers. But we all have to start somewhere. I was writing for less than $4 to $7 per article when I started at Textbroker, making just $2-$3 an article. I even wrote for passive income sites, making pennies, just to build a portfolio and practice my craft. Each job does lead to a better one and each job makes you a better writer so that you can get those high paying jobs more easily. Add to that the understanding that many of us are editors who need to source content, and I think I really should cover this topic.

Textbroker

I have to say this is the best source I have tried for the money. I’m not saying I found the best writers, but I did find writers who could do the job well enough that I could edit and make them work. A $10 article needed about 15 minutes of editing, with most of the research I wanted already done. For $15 I was able to secure an article that needed very little editing on my part. Each of these was delivered within hours of my request, which was just astounding. In retrospect, this might have been the better way for me to go, instead of using Craigslist, but that would require a lot of follow up and I’d have to come up with articles and post titles myself.

Constant-Content

As a writer, Constant-Content has been hit or miss for me. I do best around the holidays, probably because bloggers are too busy to write their own stuff, making them willing to pay $60 for an article. After the 35% commission, I ended up making $35. There are some articles available for $10 or $20 but I’ve never seen an article with enough depth for that price to use as a source for content.

Absolute Write

I have not tried AbsoluteWrite. I know the forum is a little rough, not the type of encouraging atmosphere I believe writers should provide each other. I’m also turned off by the “nothing but ads” above the fold of the forum. You can try it out and see how you do.

Craigslist

I received an avalanche of responses to my ad on craigslist. I heard from writers of every ilk, from published professionals to beginners. Within seven days, I had three people I needed. One ended up being a hit and run writer, delivering once and disappearing. The other two are still with me, one is excellent, the other is good enough. Either way, it worked out for me. I have them come up with their own article ideas, sending me the pieces I need on established schedules so I don’t have to chase them down. It works well.

eCopywriters

I see eCopywriters having trouble getting orders filled on time regularly, but I do not know how they handle it, since I have never been on the hiring side of that equation. I would hope they would have some staff writers who get that stuff done on time. Because they do not publish their rates, I have no idea if they can source content affordably.

Writers, what has your experience been with these services? Let us know via your comments below!

Photo credit: cohdra from morguefile.com

Here’s the deal. There are those who are conscientious objectors to war who will give you all sorts of subversive advice on how to evade taxes to avoid financing the death of strangers in foreign lands. Personally, I see paying the taxes I owe as a patriotic duty that shows I love my country enough to contribute to its success. I’m not happy about the war, but if I fail to pay my share, how many mouths will go hungry? How many kids will be cheated from a proper education? It just seems like good karma to pay what I owe. Failing to pay my taxes will not stop the war.

But I can’t expect the same attitude from you. What I can do is lay out all the information so you can make up your own mind.

The Rules

The IRS requires you report all income. If it’s not on a 1099 form, you have to report it as income on Schedule C. Your clients are required to report any income they pay you over $600 and send you the 1099 for your records. Sometimes you might not get the 1099, but don’t assume that means they did not send one. Things do get lost in the mail.

The Risks

If the client sends a 1099 that reports a lower income than you claimed, it will trigger an audit. Even if you did not get a 1099, the client has up to three years to amend the return. Plus, if you don’t provide your Social Security number, the client must withhold up to 31% to cover your tax liability, putting you both in a pickle.

Understand that the IRS is much more likely to pursue you for an audit that some large corporation, even if it’s obvious that corporation is evading taxes. It’s easy and cheap to go through you records. The records of a corporation can take years to sort through for a single audit. The IRS goes for the easy pickings.

That being said, you have to make up your own mind. Is the risk of failing to report all your income worth the reward? You decide.