Wallet Squirrel

Get Paid To Write Articles: 20+ Websites That Pay You For Writing

Getting paid to write articles is one of our favorite ways to earn extra money, so much so that we made a list of websites that will actually pay you to submit articles for their publications. This is a great way to earn extra money while building your writing brand. #earnextramoney #sidehustle

20+ Websites That Pay You For Writing

Get Paid To Write on Listverse - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Anything with a Top 10 Tagline How Much Can You Make : $100 per 1,800 word article (via PayPal) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 8.02M monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here Listverse is full of (you guessed it) lists! Top 10 lists and such are a great attention grabber for readers and Listverse pays for articles with at least 10 list points. They will easily shell out $100 for good quality list articles. If you have a great idea for an attention-grabbing list, submit your list idea to Listverse for consideration. It may be a quick way to get paid to write articles, making $100 per article on our list of websites that pay you for writing. Just make sure that you do your research on your lists, avoid easy grammar issues and create a really attention-grabbing headline.

Smithsonian Magazine (online)

Get Paid To Write on Smithsonian - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : History, Science, Innovation, Arts & Culture, etc. (Smithsonian stuff) How Much Can You Make : $1,000 per article Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 9.81M monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here How ambitious are you? The Smithsonian is a big deal and one of the more prestegious websites that pay you fro writing. So you may be surprised to hear they do accept submissions from freelance writers. Although you need to provide at least 3 links to previous writing examples, and if you don’t have good ones, you should move on. If you do have all of that, you should “pitch” an idea for an article you have. Don’t worry about having crazy good photographs, they’ll provide the photography your article needs, you just need to supply the 250-300 worded idea and eventually final article if approved.

how to make money publishing articles

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Get Paid To Write on HubPages- Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Anything How Much Can You Make : Pennies Per Page View (via ads) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 3.18M monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here HubPages is an online community that writes about anything and everything. Once you sign up for free, you can write about whatever your passionate about. Your article will have ads on them and you’ll receive a portion of that revenue while you get paid to write articles. The more popular your articles are, the more money you’ll make. This is similar to having your own blog , but HubPages host your articles for you in return for a small portion of the ad revenue your articles produce.

Get Paid To Write on iWriter - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Topics They Ask For How Much Can You Make : Up to $40 for a 500 word article (depending on writing level) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 591.52K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here How iWriter works is that people pay iWriter to write articles for them. So a client will pay iWriter to write an article on “Baking Bread”, for example. Then iWriter will send the request to its army of writers (you) and you’ll take the job. The client will pay iWriter and iWriter will pay you in return. The more great articles you write, the more you’ll earn from iWriter based on their 4 tier (Standard, Premium, Elite & Elite Plus) writer levels. Once you receive Elite Plus level, you’ll be paid $40 for a 500-word article. You’ll pay will depend on the level of writer you are and the number of articles you write. What’s nice is you can accept/decline as many articles as you can write from the comfort of your own home. This is nice because the email request will come in with different topics where you can get paid to write articles.

Get Paid To Write on Tuts - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : How To Articles for coding, web design, Adobe Products, anything graphic How Much Can You Make : $200 per tutorial (increases the more you submit) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 19.74M monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here Tuts+ is a site I used to visit all the time when learning Photoshop. They have some great tutorials by some awesome teachers, so this probably isn’t for new writers, but people who can prove they’ve written similar tutorials for well-known websites. This makes them one of the top websites that pay you for writing, paying around $200 (starting out) for How-To’s. There are opportunities to create written and video how-to-tutorials. Just make sure you have the depth of experience to back up what you’re teaching. Here is a list of tutorials they’re looking for people to teach .

Income Diary

Get Paid To Write on Income Diary - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Tips to help out bloggers (blogs, social media, making money online) How Much Can You Make : $100 – $200 per article Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 303.49K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here The Income Diary is a website focused on helping new bloggers to set up their site, write content and monetize it for future revenue. Since this is a specific niche, there is much similar content that currently exists on the site. While you may be able to earn $200, it is a very difficult way to get paid to write articles and get your content accepted. However if you have an idea that you think fits well with their audience, submit your idea and they’ll tell you if it’s worthy. Otherwise don’t bother writing an entire article until your idea is accepted. If you do get your article idea accepted, you should jump for joy because they are one of the top paying websites that pay you for writing.

Travel + Leisure

Get Paid To Write on Travel and Leisure - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Trip Ideas, Destinations, Hotels (travel stuff) How Much Can You Make : $1 a word (articles range from 400 – 2,000 words) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 6.03M monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here With an audience of 1 million viewers per month, Travel + Leisure receives many writer submissions so they’re looking for high-quality articles from writers with previous writing experience. If you’re interested in writing for them, go over their website and understand what type of articles are published. Then go over to their contact page and email them a short email with your “pitch”, don’t bother writing your full article. If they like your idea, they’ll email you back with the guidelines they want. About 95% of the articles on their site are from freelance writers so you may have a shot. They’re one of the few proven websites that pay you for writing.

Transitions Abroad

Get Paid To Write on Transitions Abroad - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Volunteering, Work, Living and Studying Abroad How Much Can You Make : $50 – $150 (for a 1,250-2,000 word article) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 422.94K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here While not the most aesthetically pleasing website, these guys have tons of articles submitted by people around the world relating to volunteering, working and living abroad. So much so that their “Travel Writer Guidelines for Submissions” page is heavily detailed on what they’re looking from their writers. Overall this is a great place to share that amazing study abroad adventure you had in college and share all those little secrets you learned along the way like don’t buy cheap outlet plug converts or how to use hotel key cards as knives for your PBJ sandwiches . If you have any of those wacky travel stories, consider this one of the first websites that pay you for writing that you try.

Back To College

Get Paid To Write on Back To College - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Things important to adults going back to college How Much Can You Make : $55+ (for a 1,000-1,500 word article) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 386.82k monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here This is an old-school website but maintains high popularity for people interested in going back to college later in life. This site makes money by ads and selling leads to college recruiters. So articles about sharing your personal story about going back to college or how your thinking about going back to college may be ideal. This may be a great place to get paid to write articles if you’ve ever considered going back to school.

The Travel Writers Life

Get Paid To Write on Travel Writers - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Getting paid to travel whether it’s writing, photography, tours, etc. How Much Can You Make : $50 – $200 (for a 300-600 word article) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : less than 10K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here This is an interesting writing topic because The Travel Writers Life showcases popular ways people are making money while traveling. So you won’t find any fluffy travel stories here. It’s more about how you paid for your study abroad apartment by working at your landlords banana stand. If you have any stories where you made a little money while traveling, this is a great place to share your story on one of the few websites that pay yforfro writing.

The Matador

Get Paid To Write on Matador - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Wide range of topics from life style, culture to family and night-life How Much Can You Make : $20 – $60 Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 3.35M monthly visitors Since this is such a popular website they receive numerous writing solicitations and thus don’t have to offer much money for people looking to get paid to write articles. While they don’t pay much, this may be a good place to start if you’re a beginner writer. If you’re looking to try it out, you’ll have to create a profile on their contributor page and send them your article idea. It’ll take them a month or two to review it and if you don’t hear back, don’t take it personally they get a lot of ideas. Try submiting another idea. When it comes to larger websites like this, it’s a numbers game. Luckily you have the option to write about a wide range of topics on their websites that pay you for writing.

A List Apart

Get Paid To Write on A List Apart - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Web development related to code, content, design, process, business, etc. How Much Can You Make : $50 – $200 (1,500 word articles avg.) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 543.71K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here This is a very niche website related to website development. If this topic interests you, send their team your pitch idea (ideally in a Google Doc) for review. They review all ideas once a week and rarely accept pitches on the first draft. However they’ll likely help you develop your idea further making it worthy of their website. They’re currently looking for new writers so if you have a story to share regarding web development or user experience, shoot them an email.

Flywheel – The Layout

Get Paid To Write on Flywheel Layout - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : All things WordPress Website related How Much Can You Make : $50 (They give you a list of topics with prices) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 712.64K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here These guys have one of the most efficient ways to get new writers. Beyond their super easy sign-up page where you submit your credentials, they give you a list of topics to write about and how much they’ll pay for each one. It looks like someone on their team realized keywords they want to rank for and added that list for potential writers to write about. Most of the articles they currently have posted only pay $50 per article, but they claim up to $150. Keep in mind, most of the articles they are looking for are related to how to code WordPress websites, so it may be a little niche for most people. If you have the WordPress knowlege though, it’s one of first websites that pay you for writing you should consider.

Get Paid To Write on BootsNAll - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Trip Ideas, Destinations, Travel Adventures (travel stuff) How Much Can You Make : $50 per article (articles range from 1,200 – 2,000 words) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 160.98K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here This is a site I really enjoyed right after researching. It’s a very indie type travel site where it encourages really exploring your travel destinations over high-end resorts. If you have a travel story/idea that you want to pitch, send it to them after you check out their article guidelines to get paid to write articles. Most of is it pretty basic, but something to keep in mind. If you’re not sure your work is good enough to submit, try their “Guest Post” guide where your article won’t be paid for, but you can submit it in front of their audience. It’s a great way to gain travel writing exposure without much pressure on our list of websites that pay you for writing.

International Living

Get Paid To Write on International Living - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : All things related to retiring overseas (cost, living, places, etc.) How Much Can You Make : $75 – $400 Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 712.64K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here International Living has both a blog/newsletter (they call it a Postcard) and monthly magazine that they’re looking for contributing writers to get paid to write articles. If your article gets accepted to the Postcard, it’s worth around $75 while the monthly magazine is worth $250 for 840 words and $400 for 1,400 words. If you’re curious what to write about, they love inspirational stories about retiring abroad in your dream location ( use SEMrush for popular keyword ideas ). They want to know how your money will stretch longer in other countries and how that affects healthcare and other lifestyles. If you’ve ever been thinking about retiring in a small tropical country or somewhere cooler, maybe this is one of the websites that pay you for writing for you.

Get Paid To Write on Cracked - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Anything Pop Culture with a funny twist How Much Can You Make : $100 – $200 Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 19.24M monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here While most websites actively look for experienced writers, Cracked is all about encouraging new writers to submit ideas with lots of different ways to contribute and get paid to write articles. You can write the long lists they’re known for like “ 26 Sexy Halloween Costumes That Shouldn’t Exist ” or creating funny graphics they can use on their social media accounts. They are heavily reliant on content writers like you can contribute to their online publication. If you think you have a sarcastic or satire writing personality, definitely register as a writer for them and jump into the hilarious world of Cracked. This is one of the most popular websites that pay you for writing on our list.

Get Paid To Write on Photodoto - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Articles About Great Photography How Much Can You Make : Likely Around $50, not listed Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 151.96K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here This is a really open category, photography. Everyone has tried photography at some point in their life. It’s pretty easy to point and click to great a great image. Either to sell via stock photography , share with your friends or hang up in a gallery. The point is, most people have a photography lesson learned or story to share and Photodoto is the perfect place for topics such as Photography Inspiration, Tips, Gear or post-production. Take a shot at this website to write a guest post, they seem to be very excited to hear about pitch ideas.

The Dollar Stretcher

Get Paid To Write on Dollar Stretcher - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Anything to help people save time and money (stretch your dollar) How Much Can You Make : $0.10 per word (Most articles 500-700 words) Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 151.96K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here Now, this is a site we can get behind, another personal finance website! If you have some great ways to save money/time this is the place but keep in mind, The Dollar Stretcher has been in circulation since January 1998. They have TONS of articles on how to save money so if you’re going to pitch them you need to be creative, inventive and very specific. They ask you don’t pitch them “ 7 ways to save on groceries “, but rather “7 ways to save money on ground beef”. If you email them your pitch and don’t hear anything, they likely already have similar content and didn’t bother responding. Try pitching again being more creative, everyone does something cool to save money. It’s a great way to get paid to write articles if you’re able to niche down into specific money saving ideas.

Get Paid To Write on Curbly - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : DIY Home Improvement / Interior Design Projects How Much Can You Make : Likely Around $50, you set your price. Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 271.60K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here Yay I’ve been looking for a good DIY site where I can get paid to write articles. Curby started as one man’s journey doing home improvement projects and grew into a vibrate community of 271 thousand visits a month focusing on cool home improvement and interior design projects inspiring people. Now they’re one of the top websites that pay you for writing about home improvement projects. If you have a home improvement project that all your friends just rave about, consider pitching Curby to see if it’s a good idea for their site and get paid!

Get Paid To Write on Blog Paws - Websites That Pay You For Writing

What To Write About : Life of a Pet Owner (tips, hacks, pet stories, etc.) How Much Can You Make : $75 per article Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : less than 10K monthly visitors How To Become A Writer : Sign Up Here Many websites that pay writers are related to web development or travel so it’s great to see sites like this that pay for articles that most people have experience with, like pets. This site focuses on connecting pet owners through their site and social media. More importantly, they help animal shelters and rescues connect with a wide range of pet owners for possible adoption. Blog Paws really tries to capture the reality of life with pets and can use writers that can help others navigate that world. If you’re a pet owner that can’t stop talking about how great it is to be a pet owner, this may be a perfect place to get paid to write articles on our list of websites that pay you for writing in 2018.

Consider Writing For Your Own Blog

How To Start Your Own Blog That Makes Money on Day 1

Writing for others is a quick way to get paid writing and build up your own portfolio. However, you’re working for other people and making THEM money. Consider using our guide to Starting Your Own Blog That Makes Money on Day 1 ! This is a nice alternative utilizing your writing creativity. Having your own website allows you to display a portfolio of your writing work and earn money for yourself from the awesome content you create!

Get Paid To Write Articles – Our Thoughts

Hope you like our blueprint for starting to get paid to write articles! We absolutely love websites that pay you for writing, helping fellow freelance writers and side-hustlers. While writing this and looking at the criteria these websites are looking for in contributing writers, it’s actually a really easy way to earn extra money . Most of these websites paying between $50 – $150 per article even for beginners, you could write an article every day for a month (30 days) and make $3,000.

how to make money publishing articles

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

how to make money publishing articles

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This is a very beautiful thing to know that money is everywhere online. In fact, content is and always will be king on the world wide web. Thank you for sharing this beautiful information with us. DrewryNewsNetwork is in your corner as a solid supporter of WalletSquirrel! 🙂

I had to double back to this post and say that I never knew Smithsonian paid everyday people to write content for them. I’m completely blindsided knowing this now. I’m wondering how many links are you allowed to include in a Smithsonian post linking back to your blog or website before submitting content to them.

They would not only be excellent for promoting WalletSquirrel, but also help improve your long term SEO and side hustle income potential.

Hayes @ Absolute Budget

Wow, thanks for doing all the dirty work and getting this awesome list out there for us! I can’t wait to dig into some of these!

Good morning Andrew and Adam,

This is beautiful news to know that websites pay writers for organic content marketing. This goes to show that there’s more money online in job security then traditionally working for the man on a regular day job in America. You gotta invest in yourself I tell people instead of making your employer rich without a pay raise!

Rosalyn

Heya exceptional blog! Does running a blog like this take a large amount of work? I’ve no expertise in computer programming but I was hoping to start my own blog in the near future. Anyhow, should you have any ideas or techniques for new blog owners please share. I understand this is off subject nevertheless I simply had to ask. Cheers!

Wallet Squirrel

Hi Rosalyn! It really doesn’t cost much to run a blog. We share all our blog costs in our monthly reports and provide screenshots on how to start a blog . Let me know if you have any other questions!

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Best Sites that will Pay You to Write Articles Online

Best Sites that will Pay You to Write Articles Online

Updated - February 22, 2024 By David Trounce 202 Comments

Are you looking for article writing websites so you can start earning money online? Freelance article writing gives you the opportunity to work from home. Jobs, where article writers can be earning money, are listed every day.

We provide article writing services for a living and have learned that just knowing where the writing jobs are online is half the battle won.

writing articles for money

EARN MONEY WRITING GET INSTANT ACCESS TO 200 SITES THAT WILL PAY YOU TO WRITE.

Plus:  10 Free Premium Tools to Help You Write and Get Published!

Being able to write and earn money online can be very rewarding. You can choose to work with the clients, and websites or create your own website that interests you most.

You’ll find freelance job portals very helpful since employers themselves are posting updated jobs. All you have to do is create a writer’s account and start browsing job offers.

Enhancing Your Writing Skills

There are many other legitimate ways for freelance writers to make money online . But you need to have the skills to be chosen among the large pool of applicants. So, it’s crucial to enhance your writing skills  and develop the right attitude towards this craft by being open to all possibilities.

Web CEO SEO Tools

There are further opportunities for writers to achieve a top ranking on Google. You have to complete all tasks within a given time. One way to enhance your skills is to use an advanced paraphrasing tool to rework existing content into new, original pieces. This allows you to practice different writing styles and expand your range of writing abilities. Meanwhile, an AI rewording tool can help you add more creativity in a shorter time frame. This can lead to more freelance projects and save time for other related tasks.

Enhancing your knowledge and skills as a writer can help you earn money, which can even be a reliable source of your bread and butter. Take a look at the following tips on how to enhance your writing skills so you’ll find high-paying writing jobs  online:

Know The Latest Trends:

Writing is an ever-ending journey, which means that it would require an intense thirst to improve your skills. For instance, Search engine optimization (SEO) involves creating content that aims to rank in search engines. This would be especially important for an SEO agency or an Adwords consultant

Meet Other Writers:

Take Writing Short Courses:

As a freelance article writer , you also get to enjoy working at your own pace, setting your own price (as demand for your writing grows) and you get to enjoy a steady income as a freelance writer .

If you want to earn money by writing online for others, here are 10 sites where you can get paid to write your own articles.

Wow Women on Writing: $50-100

Wow Women on Writing  does one thing really well: They look after female writers, encourage them and genuinely seek to offer opportunities to budding freelancers. Their audience is diverse and all focused on providing excellent content for women.

Wow Women focus on innovative business, freelancing, and training. The articles are generally detailed and designed to help writers improve their skills and showcase their work. You have an option of either asking for a payment by Paypal or, if in the USA, by Check.

How to get started

Start by reading other Wow Articles. You will want to have an idea of the tone of the site. The site is informative, relaxed and excited about showcasing good writers.

  • Ensure that you are not just duplicating their content and re-editing an old idea. Be creative.
  • Wow will pay up to $150.00 for a 3,000-word feature article.
  • Focus on being useful. How will your post help readers?
  • Practical, actionable advice is what readers want with easy to follow steps.

Wow Women focuses on women, writers, and a monthly theme. I am not sure what they offer in terms of a link back to your own content in the articles but they do link back to your site from your Author profile.

Please note that they do not open attachments. Your article or pitch needs to be presented in plain text in the body of the email. Sending a Bio or a link to other published work is a good idea and will improve your chances of getting published.

Strong Whispers: $50 – $150

Strong Whispers offers readers a range of articles about lifestyle, environment and other social issues. The range is wide. Your contribution is not limited.

Articles can range from corporate greed to education reform or change in world leadership to letting the people govern and make decisions on the way we treat the environment and exploitation of resources.

Article earnings are negotiable, but they typically pay  $50-$150  per published article. They are willing to pay more for the right article and website aims to publish 2-3 guest posts per month.

Step 1: Send them your best outline for an article you would like to write along with your fee expectation. Topics need to be unique and have a high impact.

They also ask that you send your current blog URL or an URL to published work so they can understand your writing style. They will tell you if the topic is of interest to them and if your sample meets their review criteria.

Step 2: After you have been invited to write for them, go ahead, write your article and submit it for review. They won’t publish simply mediocre or just okay guest posts.

Each article must be well written, accurate, grammatically correct and original content. You will get to view their guidelines so you can be sure to tick all the boxes.

Step 3: After you submit your article online, it will be reviewed. After review you will receive one of 3 emails:

  • Rejected – Poor quality.
  • Requires minor changes

If approved, it will be set to publish either immediately or at a future date. Once set to publish, you will be paid via PayPal and start earning money online.

Want to Start Writing and Earning Straight Away?

Vocal enables you to monetize your own writing by publishing it on their platform. The more readers you get, the more money you can earn .

Link-Able: $100 – $750

Link-Able is a great way for high-quality authors to earn money publishing for a wide range of clients and industries. Link-Able matches writers who are able to publish on relevant sites with businesses looking to earn mentions, links and traffic to their sites.

Founded by Jay Douglas, Link-Able offers good rates that depend on the sites you have authorship on – or are able to successfully pitch to. niches include business, finance, marketing, health, sport, tech, retail and more.

Note: The site will generally only accept native English authors and those with a track record of high-quality work in English .

The platform is simple and easy to use. Once you have been approved as an author, just browse the available writing jobs and apply.

  • Apply for an Author account and choose your area of expertise
  • Once approved, browse writing jobs
  • Read the job specs carefully. Recommend a site or sites you can write on and a concept for your article.
  • If you win the job, you write, publish and get paid – simple!

A quick tip – You will have more success if you limit your areas of expertise to only those things you are truly passionate about.

A Few Tips on Writing the Kind of Article that Gets published

  • Make sure your article is free from grammatical errors. We suggest using a tool like the  free grammar checker by EduBirdie
  • Make sure your article is original.
  • Make sure you follow the editorial guidelines regarding word length, style, and tone

These are basic to getting people to show interest in publishing your article and are absolutely necessary.

Cracked.com: $100 – $200

Cracked.com is basically a humour site. If you are a funny/smart/creative person, Cracked.com offers a good opportunity to earn some extra cash with article writing.

No experience necessary. If the content is good, this is a great way to make money blogging . You get to talk directly to the editors. Their content includes articles, photoshops, infographics, and videos. Take your pick.

Register for the site, click on the writer’s workshop, which leads you to the message board where everyone pitches their articles.

You pitch an article idea by writing the article idea, along with the five subtopics under the idea, a full column, and the information.

  • At the time of writing, you get $100 per article.
  • If you get up to five published articles, it goes up to $200 per article.
  • If your article finishes in the top ten articles of the month (rated on website traffic.) you get a $100 bonus.
  • You also get $100 for coming first in the Photoshop competitions of which I think they run two a week.

There is a bonus that runs in the design section also from time to time. It includes $500 for designing a winning T-Shirt, and a thread where you post (presumably humorous) infographics and they’ll pay you $100 if it’s featured on the site.

Watch Culture: $25 – $500

Watch Culture offers its news, opinion and entertainment coverage to millions of users worldwide each month.

As an online magazine based in the UK it covers the popular zeitgeist. Each day dozens of writers are earning money by publishing articles on Film, Music, Gaming, Sports, Television and much more to their ever-expanding five-million a month strong audience.

Several hundred articles are posted every single week from contributors, some of which you will see from time to time on Sky News, Metro Radio, BBC Radio, Dublin FM and in the national newspapers.

What Culture have begun rolling out a system entitling all writers to earn money from every article they contribute.

In the Beta testing phase, some of the contributors have earned as much as £700 from one individual article. The system is based on a  per views basis, rewarding the very best writers whose content matches what their audience wants to read.

Typically, writers who could come up with original concepts and execute them well have really reaped the big benefits.

If writing isn’t your thing, they are also planning to set up a larger video presence and are looking for talented filmmakers and YouTubers to produce high-quality content for the site.

So if you think you’ve got what it takes to write interesting articles or create popular videos and make money online while doing it, get in touch with them at [email protected]  for more details.

If you’d prefer to chat on Skype, the address is ‘whatculture’. Or if you live anywhere near Newcastle in the UK, they can arrange a face-to-face meeting.

Developer Tutorials: $30 – $50

Developer Tutorial provides its users with a regular supply of programming and design guides keeping them up-to-date on new and emerging technologies and techniques.

To help fuel this effort they utilise freelance writers to produce unique, high-quality tutorials in the following categories:

They are also looking for articles referencing cool and useful lists that users would both be interested in and benefit from reading.

An example of this might be, “30 Cool Web Tools to Make Your Development Easier” or “30 Awesome Photoshop Movie Poster Tutorials”.

They pay cash for your tutorials and list-based articles so not only are you helping out fellow coders and designers but you are making more of a name for yourself as a freelance writer.

Pay rates depend on factors such as the quality of the tutorial/article and the demand for the topic it covers.

  • Pay rates for published list articles currently range between $30-$50.
  • Payment is sent via PayPal immediately after your article is published.
  • List based articles must target web developers or designers.

Tutorials are required to be a minimum of 1000 words and should include illustrations (screenshots etc) if needed to more effectively portray your message.

B. Michelle Pippin: $50 – $150

Michelle Pippin is looking for articles aimed at helping small businesses increase their profits, influence, or impact.  Michelle Pippin provides sharp and high-quality business and marketing content to a wide audience.

If you have some original work, a great idea or a hack for the business, marketing niche, this could be a site to consider. While the site focuses on women in business, it provides an even-handed mix of articles on profit, entrepreneurial resources, marketing and case study articles as well as relevant news on the business world.

The site has a large audience and a wide mix of business and marketing related material.

Your articles don’t need to be too technical, as though they were being prepared for a peer-reviewed journal, but they should go beyond the basics.

Michelle will expect you to do the research and if it reaches her members only audience (which is a print edition) you will likely receive a bigger pay cheque.

Word count on the site for your average business or marketing article is about 800 words.

  • Obviously, your work must be original work.
  • If your work gets published in my members only (print) newsletter, you’ll get paid more money, but you will not be able to republish your article elsewhere.
  • Payment is on a per article basis and will be paid via Paypal on the 1st of the month following the month it is posted.

Don’t send over full articles. Just complete the form and tell them your areas of expertise. A short pitch should be fine but keep your offer short and sweet.

Metro Parent: $50 – $75

Metro Parent Publishing Group is open to experienced freelance writers to help build the content of their magazine and website. Their general goal is to have a good mix of fun and substantive local stories of interest to local parents.

Here are a few factors to consider before sending your pitch.

  • Make it local. They are looking for stories and sources that reflect the communities they cover: Livingston, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw and Wayne counties. Therefore, southeast Michigan ideas and sources are preferred.
  • Pitch early. Content for Metro Parent is determined months in advance. Story ideas should be pitched a good two to three months before the month it would run. This is particularly important for seasonally-anchored stories.

If your article submission is accepted or you have been assigned a story, you should submit an invoice (within an email is fine) that includes name, address, phone number, Social Security Number, name of story and payment amount.

The invoice should be submitted within a week of submitting the story.

  • Features 1,000-2,500 words: $150-$350, depending on the complexity of topic and number of sources required.
  • Department columns: $50-75
  • Parent Pipeline pieces: $35-50
  • Reprints: $35

The finished story should be single-spaced with a hard return at each new paragraph. Do not indent for new paragraphs. And include only one space after punctuation marks.

  • Include your byline plus the preferred tagline
  • Font should be Times New Roman, 14-point
  • Include a suggested headline and/or dek
  • Subheads (i.e., within the body copy) are strongly encouraged for stories 1,000 words or more.

Metro Parent prefers stories to be sent as a Microsoft Word attachment. For those who don’t have Word, send the story within the body of an email.

Be sure to include the name and phone number of sources at the end of the story, in case they have follow-up questions.

Sitepoint: Visit Link for Pricing

Sitepoint writers are generally web professionals with a passion for development and design. Site Point is specifically looking for content that is technical, instructive, well-written and innovative.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, Site Point works with article writers from all over the world. The editors are web developers and designers at the top of the industry. They claim to pay above-industry rates for quality articles.

Site Point covers the following topics:

  • CSS, JavaScript, PHP
  • Ruby, Mobile development, UX
  • Design, HTML

You will have to inquire using the link above for rates and process.

Uxbooth: $100

Uxbooth is into design. I figured that much out. The rest of their site is gibberish. For example, their “About us” page begins with these words,

“The UX Booth is a publication by and for the user experience community. Our readership consists mostly of beginning-to-intermediate user experience and interaction designers..”

What that means is anybody’s guess. it might be good for the user experience  but it’s nigh useless if you were looking for a reading experience . Nevertheless, they offer you money to join them in the art of gibberish.

Uxbooth does not accept fully written drafts outright. Instead, they pair authors with editors in order to collaborate throughout the writing process. It works like this:

  • You pitch a topic or idea that you’d like to share. Don’t be shy!
  • If accepted, a development editor is assigned to you in order to help you develop your narrative in accordance with their style guide. The two of you discuss and evolve the idea until it’s ready to share.
  • That’s it! Articles are usually published four-to-eight weeks after they’re initially pitched.
  • They pay $100 per article.

Related Article: Go deeper and learn how to set yourself up as a freelancer online.

Know about other great writing gigs? Do these need updating? Speak up in the comments below.

  • Author Details
  • More from this Author

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February 26, 2014 at 5:38 pm

Thanks for the list. Writing’s a great way to earn money when you find yourself sitting at home.

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July 18, 2014 at 5:51 pm

Thanks Kiran. Hope you make some money out of it all!

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November 15, 2015 at 6:03 am

Hi Sir i hope you will be good, i want to start online job, for the basic what is the best job, and how can i get money, For example if i am writing articles for some one how will he/she pay me ? i look forward to hearing from you. Thanks

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April 22, 2016 at 4:47 pm

Your article was great. I write articles on animals, history and travel mainly. I made very good money submitting to Bubblews before they went out. I have also submitted to other sites.

I really need the money so could you let me know where I could submit my articles. I have submitted over 9000 articles to different sites over the last several years.

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September 11, 2016 at 1:07 am

You can create a blog or website (for passive income and portfolio) and monetize it with revenuehits or infinity ads, then add a Hire Me button and advertise the blog or website for free on Craigslist or with pay on people’s websites with Google Adwords.

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May 22, 2014 at 11:18 pm

thanks for the list.

July 18, 2014 at 5:43 pm

Thanks for the Thanks!

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June 9, 2014 at 7:37 pm

I did not unerstand that how to make articles…………

June 10, 2014 at 8:34 am

Saif, article writing is a skill learned, like any other skill. To begin your learning I would suggest:

1. Write in the language you are most comfortable in. 2. Write about subjects you really like. 3. Read. Read all the time. Read the articles that are already being published online in the area you are most interested in.

Once you have a good knowledge of your subject and you have some ideas about where you might want to get published, hit me up for a chat. I will show you how to write up your article.

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July 26, 2014 at 4:12 am

Hi David, this is quite informative and I must say the little knowledge I had about article-writing websites and their rates has greatly been improved. I have a request though, do you have any account that you can help me out with. I am a beginner, a year to be specific, and still in college.

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November 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm

Fantastic stuff, I re-designed my site and the search rankings plummeted I have added you in my reading list, keep up the interesting work.

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November 9, 2015 at 9:24 am

I am a Finance and business writer even though I can write about other subjects as well. How can I get going? Any work available or links?

November 9, 2015 at 9:35 am

You could try Penny Hoarder. Those are both large fields so it would depend on your particular niche.

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June 21, 2014 at 8:09 pm

Sir, I Want suggestions for writing article. First of all I want to ask you that I could write articles on my behalf or suggested by authors. I want to ask u that I have many subjects on writing about god, soul and about the cause of birth of a man in side the world………………………. suggest me pls sir

June 21, 2014 at 8:57 pm

Hi Vaibhav,

I have emailed you a response to your questions. Let me know if I can help you some more.

July 18, 2014 at 5:40 pm

I recommend visiting one of the sites in this list.

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July 18, 2014 at 2:30 pm

Hey Friends,

If you want to earn money by doing part time work, you can do it just by following these great business ideas.

100% trustworthy.

July 18, 2014 at 5:37 pm

Thanks for the feedback, Mahendra. Are you any relation to Niel?

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July 19, 2014 at 12:14 pm

Sir thank u for listing links related to earning good amount of money from writing articles .Sir can u advice me how can i improve my writing skills.

Regards, GHUFRAN

July 19, 2014 at 12:27 pm

Practise is the key, Ghufran. Practise in your own language for your own people. Write about the things that you love in your own culture and community. You should also join a forum like Writers Digest and try and learn from other good writers.

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July 22, 2014 at 7:34 pm

Hello, I want to write articles. I have never written any ,but I am in serious need of money. I want to do any online job and whatever the paying is. I am student in university. I hope sir you will help me.

I shall be thankful for your guidance. THANKS IN ADVANCE

July 22, 2014 at 7:57 pm

Asim, if you are new to writing and you want to make some money, you could comment writing. It’s easier than writing a whole article. You can sign up to Post Loop in the link toward the top of this page.

They pay money for writing comments. You will need to read the instructions and follow them carefully. But once you do, you can earn a little bit of money by writing comments online.

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July 25, 2014 at 3:46 am

Hey David… I also want to earn online….plz recommend me a website so that I may start earning……

July 25, 2014 at 8:54 pm

If you are new to writing online, you might want to start with something fairly simple – commenting for money. You will find a link near the top of this article. If you feel confident, you could try signing up for scripted.com for single jobs that pay better, you could try Blogging Pro’s Job Board here: http://www.bloggingpro.com/jobs/

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July 29, 2014 at 11:41 am

Awesome article! In my opinion, if you’re already writing, why not start a blog? A Blog is one of the most effective ways to make a long-term sustainable income online.

Blogging is HUGE! You just have to know how to tap into it correctly. I started a blog in the “cooking” niche which is my passion less than 6 months ago. I’ll admit, my first couple months we’re definitely a struggle. Luckily I found a “blogging success” blueprint so to speak, and ever since then, I’ve been averaging $200+ per day..and that’s without any of my own products. All through affiliate sales.

Once again, great article! I’ll be subscribing for more!

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August 22, 2014 at 7:11 am

Hi, the comment that you post really grabs my intention since I’ve been struggling for years to earn money on the internet. Thanks so much, David.

August 22, 2014 at 1:42 pm

My pleasure Harold.

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October 7, 2014 at 10:50 am

How did you manage to gain success? I’ve been thinking about starting a blog, in the hopes that I could get a full time career out of it, but I’m not sure where to begin!

There are so many blogs out there, so much that I can’t shake the doubt that nothing will come of it.

Your help would be much appreciated!

Cheers, Lisa

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October 17, 2014 at 3:05 pm

Thanks a lot, i will be glad to help you let me know how.

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May 12, 2017 at 9:24 pm

Please suggest best affiliate sites for the blog . I want to earn at least $5 per day through the blog . Also, tell which sites are best that gives money to comment.

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August 2, 2014 at 1:22 am

This is a great website for my article writing needs.

August 2, 2014 at 8:11 pm

Thanks Gerald, glad you like it.

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August 3, 2014 at 8:17 pm

I’m so happy to have come across your post. If possible, can you email so we can chat some more? I have been doing content writing for a while now, but I’m hoping to start taking it to the next level. I’d love advice from someone who is knowledgable in the industry.

Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.

August 3, 2014 at 10:10 pm

Happy to help if I can. Let me know what kind of questions you had and I will do my best.

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August 11, 2014 at 6:25 am

Thank you for the great articles. You did a great job putting them together. Regina

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August 13, 2014 at 9:38 pm

This article surely helps, thanks David.

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August 19, 2014 at 6:58 pm

Are you looking for the best tool on the Internet these days? Are you looking how to make more money on the Internet? Do not waste your time ! Get it right now!

August 20, 2014 at 3:30 pm

Hi Sonia. No, not really looking for any tools. I find that I get plenty of tools leaving comments on the blog and don’t need to go looking for them.

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August 20, 2014 at 7:15 am

Thanks for the tips! But I have a query. I submitted an article on What Culture but I think it is small. Will it be rejected because of the article being small?

August 20, 2014 at 3:28 pm

Hi Raajit. Glad you like the article. Though I am not a decision maker at What Culture, I have given it some thought and yes, your article will be published and you will go on to have an awesome career in publishing. You may even win a prize of some sort one day. Well done and congratulations in advance!

August 20, 2014 at 6:44 pm

David Sir, you are being funny. But thanks for the encouragement!

August 20, 2014 at 6:54 pm

Yes, Raajit, I was being funny because, without actually seeing the article – and since I do not own What Culture – I have no way of knowing whether they will accept it or not. If you want to send me a copy of the article I will be happy to take a look at it.

August 20, 2014 at 9:07 pm

Please give me your email id so I may sen you the article.

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August 25, 2014 at 4:51 pm

Thanks for this site. This site really helpful to write article for every new writer.

August 27, 2014 at 5:47 pm

No worries Nahida. Good luck.

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August 26, 2014 at 1:02 am

Hello am a full time writer can you recommend to me any client who has writing projects

August 27, 2014 at 5:45 pm

Hi Morris, check out some of those listed in the post. Also check out Pro Bloggers job listings.

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August 31, 2014 at 7:44 am

Hi, Thanks for the list but do you have a site that one can just register and get articles to write?

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November 17, 2015 at 7:11 pm

I have been freelance writing since August and have a lot of education background in science, graphic design and political science. I found some academic writing sites that pay very well for writers with a higher education.

There are others, but none pay as good as this one. The support is great and you can call them with any issues. I recommend this only for writers with a strong background in writing academic essays. There is no startup fee but you will need to provide a transcript to prove your educational ability prior to bidding and sending proposals.

After a week I had 10+ invitations to write daily. I’m supporting my family and enjoying more time at home. Best of luck everyone, stick with it!

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June 7, 2017 at 9:26 am

Hi , i want to write on some topics related to science and human moral development.what may be the best site for me in order to start writing and earning money as early as possible.

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September 5, 2014 at 9:57 am

Some of these sites are fine – Cracked in particular is great – but I would be really careful about promoting WhatCulture to anyone.

I’ve heard some real horror stories from many, many people about them. They have a history of plagiarism, which they went to great lengths to cover up. They’ve lied about job descriptions so that they can trick people into doing free work for them. They’ve withheld pay from their writers and refused to pay others all that they are owed.

Maybe if you want to get a tiny amount of cash for an article titled ‘Best Sex Scenes Evah’ they’re fine, but otherwise I wouldn’t risk being exploited.

September 5, 2014 at 10:10 am

Never! Thanks for the feedback. We update this list all the time to keep it useful. If you find a site that’s reliable, let us know.

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June 1, 2015 at 11:59 pm

Couldn’t agree more. I have never written for them but, having seen friends do so, I have spoken to them about the possibility. They were the most childish, unprofessional people I have ever interacted with. Petty nerds, quite frankly. Since then, my friends have either left or been forced to leave their writing duties because of the incompetence and harshness of the idiots in charge. Matt (editor in chief) is an idiot in particular. Peter is also a moron.

June 2, 2015 at 6:40 am

Thanks Ellie. I think it’s time I gave WhatCulture the boot. If you know of a good alternative, let me know.

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September 17, 2014 at 4:54 pm

Really an inspiring article with earning keys…. thank you…. I want to know that I am from India.may I earn through these sites…. ? With regards… let me know sir…

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September 21, 2014 at 4:22 pm

This list is like a treasure to the writers. They will surely enjoy this list. I would like to ask one question. Why did you mentioned the name as “Watch Culture” in your list when its real name is “What Culture”. I didn’t got that. Is there any specific reason behind it or it’s just a typo?

September 28, 2014 at 10:33 pm

I am a homemaker,currently i do surveys online and earn 2 to 3000 per month. I am looking for some better options to earn more will you please guide me.

October 7, 2014 at 10:53 am

This is awesome, thanks for the information!

Just wondering, what do you think is the best way to get my blog successful enough to pay the bills? Have I got a better shot posting articles for these companies, or running a blog myself?

October 23, 2014 at 9:01 am

Lisa, It depends on the niche your blog is in – and how competitive the niche and how you monetise it. Yes, you can make a good income writing for others, and in many ways it is less stressful – once you have the client base. Then again, building up your own online writing business or blog can be very rewarding.

Give us a shout if you would like to have a chat about your particular situation.

November 8, 2014 at 9:15 pm

I was leaning towards health and fitness. Unfortunately this is an extremely common subject, so if I end up having a go at this, I need to find a new and interesting way to portray it… to seperate myself from all the other fitness bloggers.

Any help/advice would be great.

November 11, 2014 at 8:06 am

You are right. The niche is highly competitive and standing out is hard. You have a couple of options, but both require the same precision. You could start your own blog or you could write for others.

One involves you marketing yourself to targeted (and well developed) websites, the other involves you marketing your own website and then finding a way to monetize it.

The precision issue is this: You need to narrow your niche interest down to one, or three elements at the most.

Sit down and come up with a list of all topics related to your interest. Health and fitness is generic, competition too high. So you want to aim at just one niche market in that industry.

For example, your speciality might be:

Women’s Fitness Programs. You could review and recommend them – a nice affiliate opportunity right there.

Weight Training for Women Exercising from Home Fitness training for mums…

You could even get more specific: Weight Training for Mums at Home (Ewk! – but again, a nice affiliate opportunity there). Belly Gym for Working Women – Entirely focused on one aspect of fitness and health, say, Daily exercise tips for working women that help maintain a figure.

The key factor is this – be precise. Start within a very narrow niche and become an authority on it. Then build from there once you begin having success. Become the Belly Gym Expert for working women.

There is a great angle right there – feel free to use it! I see that, amazingly, the domain is available – it’s a great short, easy to remember domain name and business title – quick grab it before I do! [www.bellygym.com]

All the best, Lisa.

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October 12, 2014 at 9:57 pm

Thanks for the heads up. This is my first venture into writing an article. Can you suggest a site(s) where I can be able to practice and have my “work” assessed?

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

October 23, 2014 at 9:03 am

Most sites won’t give you a lot of helpful feedback unless they know you well. Most times it will simply be yes or no to your submission.

You can send your article to me for assessment if you like and I will be happy to direct you to the most likely sites to publish your work.

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November 11, 2014 at 1:15 am

Hi. I am student of 11 grade. And I wanna make my self fully equipped with English writing. So, I was suggested to put my glance on this website and you get every thing. I expect that you will email me with warm welcome. Regards. Abdul Rafio Memon.

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October 13, 2014 at 3:32 pm

The above mentioned 10 sites is great collections. It is helpful for writer to make money writing articles.

November 11, 2014 at 1:19 am

Sadia, if someone wants to improve his writing skills then which websites are best. Regards

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November 7, 2014 at 4:01 pm

Nice List! One new site is NichePage. It is similar to Zujava and HubPages but it is completely focused on sharing information about amazon products and each page is structured for products alone.

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November 10, 2014 at 4:26 am

sir I like to earn money by article writing and registration. please provide me guideline. thanks.

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December 5, 2014 at 7:28 am

Subscribed and really enjoyed reading this post! I am sure you have other posts that give your readers some tips about the many differences to article submission guidelines, right! Probably it’s great practice to get your first articles approved by ezine articles or hub-pages (guess one of my last rushed works I wanted to add to hub-pages wasn’t approved uuh ooh) to have happy readers. Please let me know about these. I would also like to share this or any other post or article you would recommend with my “How To Make Money Online Newsletter Readers? Please let me know! Thanks again for your work! Respectfully, Oliver Ohene-Dokyi

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December 7, 2014 at 1:47 pm

Awesome list. I would like to recommend one more that pays you for guest blogging. Web Tool Hub.

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December 15, 2014 at 1:57 am

Thanks for this article. I have been searching for information on this topic for a while and your article has encouraged me to get started writing.

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December 18, 2014 at 6:35 pm

Online business is all about the content. If content is king for your website you will do OK.

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December 21, 2014 at 9:45 am

Thanks a lot David.

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March 4, 2015 at 7:04 pm

Now a day’s content writing is not an easy affair for everyone due to high competition and due to plagiarism matter. It needs creativity and mind power. There are a numerous websites are coming to the internet everyday and those sites needs fresh and unique contents. Writing articles online can provide you money and fame. yes you are right there are a number of sites who are providing enough money for articles to add their site. That’s why freelancer content writers are getting enough writing projects with lots of money.

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March 11, 2015 at 9:56 pm

I love writing and I am from Nigeria. Thank you for this great help.

March 15, 2015 at 8:09 pm

My pleasure David.

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March 17, 2015 at 1:22 am

Great article! Thanks a lot David.

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March 23, 2015 at 12:09 am

Hi David, I would like to write on issues like meditation and self healing. Could you please suggest something ?

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April 5, 2015 at 3:06 pm

Really I am highly impressed to learn about make money online by reading your blog! I pray to almighty that you can grow up more and more and share your knowledge among us. By the way do you have anything special on your blog about oDesk Tests? looking forward to your reply.

April 11, 2015 at 11:57 am

Hi Odesk. What an unusual name you have. Thanks for your comments.

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April 22, 2015 at 7:15 pm

Hi Sir I have read over 150 books in past 4 years and my thirst for reading didn’t end so I started reading articles and then began writing short stories. Here I found your blog which really spurred me to take a step further. To earn through writing.

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May 2, 2015 at 6:18 pm

Nice list, good work, my question is have you ever tried one of this ways of article writing?

May 10, 2015 at 6:38 am

G’day, Hitesh. Yes, I have. It is hard work, but once you get a foot in the door it becomes easier.

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May 2, 2015 at 9:43 pm

David, really a good work done by you. I am also interesting in write articles. Thanks for your help.

May 10, 2015 at 12:12 pm

I also want to start something in article writing but I am not getting a start

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May 21, 2015 at 4:59 am

Hi David, Thank you, I need a piece of advice I have good experience of writing essays, reports, articles and dissertations for universities in UK and Australia. I want to make it big. I will appreciate if you could guide me through. Thank you, Sonu Sran

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June 15, 2015 at 6:34 am

At The Daily Heckle, we pay between £10 and £20 for articles. We’d love to be on this list.

June 15, 2015 at 8:09 am

Hi Malcolm, thanks for stopping by. That sounds doable. Check you inbox for my email.

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June 19, 2015 at 3:10 pm

Hi David, Thanks for your information. It really will be very helpful for me. I was helpless thinking what have to do. But now I’m thinking there are something by which I can start.

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June 28, 2015 at 9:15 am

THANKS for the list David!! Did I say thank you?…THANKS A MILL!! 😀

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July 1, 2015 at 5:23 pm

This is a very useful list of content writing websites that pay upfront payments. On top of that, as Lisa has suggested, a writer should not overlook the option of setting up his/her own blog, and using Adsense monetization. Blogspot and WordPress are the most popular free blogging platforms. Or use IZEA and other websites where a writer can find sponsored article opportunities. I am amazed with the fact that Penny Hoarder can pay up to $800 or What Culture up to $700, for a single article, as you have mentioned! Is it how incremental payments add up? Of course, I wouldn’t even try Ceramics.org, since I am totally ignorant on this topic. This is regardless of how much I would be tempted to write a 5,000-word article for the incredible amount of $950. This is definitely a niche market. Perhaps another established market for online writers is Constant Content, as it has been testified by writers that make a decent income there.

July 1, 2015 at 8:03 pm

Thanks for the tip on Constant Content, Barge.

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July 2, 2015 at 2:51 am

It all sound good. A bit complicated but good.

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July 13, 2015 at 4:26 am

Thank you for the insightful article. I’m impressed at your willingness to help and give advice to those who request it and that’s why I have decided to seek your help and guidance.

I’ve been blogging for 7 months now and while making money isn’t my primary focus yet I was wondering if you could guide me on how to carve a niche for myself writing football articles and also on how to make money writing sport articles. Writing football is my passion.

Many Thanks

July 13, 2015 at 9:33 am

Hi Paul, I have replied with some suggestions to your email address. Give me a shout if I can be more helpful.

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July 13, 2015 at 7:50 pm

Dear David Sir ,

It is very nice thought “writing” Please suggest a site , who purchase online my articles . I think its is very nice idea of self employment. In our mind so many thoughts of our brain every minute and every second , so it’s nice thing writing and earn something for our family.

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July 19, 2015 at 8:00 am

I was just looking at your Best Article Writing Sites for Earning Money Online website and see that your site has the potential to get a lot of visitors. I just want to tell you, In case you didn’t already know… There is a website service which already has more than 16 million users, and most of the users are looking for topics like yours. By getting your site on this service you have a chance to get your site more visitors than you can imagine.

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July 23, 2015 at 10:37 am

I am interested in writing articles on God and faith. Are there any websites that are interested in Spiritual uplifting and do they pay?

I also have a handbag business. Do you think I can write articles about women’s handbags.

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July 28, 2015 at 1:06 am

nice article David. I want to start a food and relationship blog but don’t really know how to start. Pls i need ur help. I’v also writen some poems. Is there a way i can make money with that? Cheers!

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August 13, 2015 at 3:28 pm

I just started writing articles and so looking for some good websites to publish my articles online and hence earn money out of it and also a number of visitors as well. I would like you guys to suggest me to go through some best article publishing sites.

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August 13, 2015 at 8:20 pm

Respected David sir It is really great and awesome that, we got a website to narrate our thoughts and develop our writing skills .Iam really having a great passion and enthusiasm to write different articles in English on different topics,so that if you would help me in edifying my request and passion, I would be enough and more satisfied in my life. looking forward to your reply by Tony

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August 14, 2015 at 5:08 am

Sir David Writing is a wonderful skill to attract people according to their mental requirements. The difficulty is how to judge the mind of the people; whether, your written stuff will have impact on their mind or not. Is there any suitable gauge exist to determine the liking of audience before writing our stuff or consulting others?

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August 28, 2015 at 10:15 pm

This was very useful. I am currently taking some time off work and was exploring writing opportunities online, and came across your article. I have been writing for a while now but have never published anything (online). I have done a lot of report writing, case studies and success stories for organizations working in the development sector. I am working on a research article nowadays and hoping to have it published some time in the near future.I was wondering if you could provide any direction regarding sports websites that are in need of freelance writers. It is an area of interest and I think I may be able to contribute.

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September 5, 2015 at 1:34 am

Hi David, I’m glad I have come across your site 🙂 it seems vey helpful indeed. My aim is to earn money through online writing. I have written several articles and I want to send you one of them to you for assessment if it is possible. Thanks in advance Cheers, Marwa

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September 6, 2015 at 8:35 am

i am a newbie and above website seems high ranked. can you suggest me some other website from where i can start as a newbie

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September 8, 2015 at 5:42 pm

love what you are doing sir, thanks a lot.. I am into writing short stories and would like to ask if there is a site that you could recommend, thanks once again

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September 10, 2015 at 8:03 am

This is really informative. Thanks and keep up the good work

September 11, 2015 at 11:47 pm

Thanks Nick. I hope you find some success from one of these sites.

September 11, 2015 at 11:49 pm

Thanks Nick. Hope you find a site worth writing for.

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September 10, 2015 at 9:13 am

Sir, i want to earn money by writing articles, but i don,t know the procedure of it. Kindly tell me how can i registered myself and how can i get articles topic for writing?what should i do for it?

September 11, 2015 at 11:46 pm

Hi Hussain, use the list in this post to find a good article writing site. Make sure you choose a site that writes about the things you like.

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September 12, 2015 at 7:08 am

Hello friends,

I am a blog writer and article I am going to start write where I can earn after posting blogs, articles and comments, likes, reviews, etc on each and every thing you will get a flight point which will convert in to money and that will be paid by cheque. This is very easy way to earn money by working from home. By writing blogs and articles you can earn money for writing.

September 13, 2015 at 11:49 pm

Thanks for dropping by, Vipin. All the best with your writing.

September 15, 2015 at 4:47 pm

G’day Erik. Glad you found it helpful. All the best with your money making efforts and your writing clients.

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September 19, 2015 at 5:50 pm

Hello…this has lots of information. Thanks for such nice article.

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September 25, 2015 at 7:06 pm

Sir, I have read all these suggestions, which websites that hire writers to post about computer games and hardware /software technology would you recommend?

September 26, 2015 at 5:15 pm

Faraz, I would start with Dev Tutorials, Tutts and SitePoint, depending on your niche.

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October 2, 2015 at 10:51 pm

Please can you help and guide me to how to start my own blog? I have lived in Africa spent a lot of years in Asia. I have a huge experience on what life is all about in these parts of the world. I have mingled with the locals and seen a lot. Thanks

October 6, 2015 at 10:21 am

Hi Nathan. Sure, happy to help. What kind of help did you want?

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September 27, 2015 at 1:55 am

This Article is very helpful and informative.

Please can you tell me the sites in which I can write Articles on Football. I’m a huge Arsenal Fan 🙂 and I can write short or long Article about Arsenal or about English Premier league. I have been watching EPL for the last 5 years.

Even though I don’t have any experience in writing Articles….

But I believe in myself. I have been practising on writing Articles for about 3 months now.

Just need an opportunity….so can you tell me any site other than Watch Culture where I can write Articles on Football and can make decent amount of money..

September 29, 2015 at 9:35 pm

Syed, you could get a regular gig on gfe sport. Even if they don’t pay you, you would get exposure that helps you fill out your resume. Email them. If you do well, then you will be able to point to those articles when talking to paying gig sites – they always ask for published samples.

September 30, 2015 at 12:32 am

Okay. Thanks for the help David. I’ll try it out.

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September 30, 2015 at 6:51 am

After searching for information on writing online and only finding sketchy results, this list of actual paying sites instead of craigslist click bait was quite refreshing.

I’m 23, and I graduated with an English degree last year. I am confident in my writing ability; I only need to learn how to write for the online market. Is it really that simple? Just write and submit to these sites? Or are there other things to learn, like the proper citation format for sources and links in your article, how to write a query letter, maintaining/knowing your rights….I noticed that most authors/bloggers have a personalized “signature” or banner at the bottom of their article, along with their email and picture. Are these provided from the site, or are they made and coded by the authors? I understand making a blog is crucial to creating an online presence, but I’m wary of spending too much of my time writing for free. I’m not looking to make a living at the moment; I just need a second income. I’m in Canada, if location makes any difference. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you,

October 6, 2015 at 10:34 am

Hi Mel. If you just want to earn a little extra in your spare time then writing for others is ideal. You don’t have to worry about having or maintaining a website. As far as writing for free goes, your blog is an investment. It’s a property. Every link that points to it and every bit of good quality content that you write on it is increasing its value in real monetary terms. So, if you love to write, you are not really writing for free. You are increasing the value of your site with every article.-

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September 30, 2015 at 5:10 pm

Hi, David! An excellent article you have here! I’m sure it’ll help many other people (sure did give me a lot of information).

My question is; what do you think about sites that pay you per view/share/like and so on? I’m talking about sites like HubPages, Bubblews etc. I’m sure you know about them. Apparently, they pay 1 cent ($0.1) per view or something similar. Do you think it is possible to expose articles written for them enough to earn a significant amount of money? Some sites pay for ad clicks as well (like HubPages). Do you think it’s worth the time, or not? I’ve been doing some research, and I found many people who claimed to have earned $300~$900 as ‘passive’ income through such sites.

Thanks for giving your time to read this. Regards, K. Joshi

October 6, 2015 at 10:32 am

Sites like that tend to have a small handful of users who are genuinely making money, the rest of us are just propping up the site with all our hard work and articles. It’s not the way for a serious writer to go if they want to put bread on the table. Aim high.

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October 14, 2015 at 1:24 pm

Thanks for the list. There are innumerable opportunities available these days for on line content writing but this goes without saying that the content should original and fresh enough so as it brings a good deal of traffic on your website.

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October 21, 2015 at 10:24 pm

hi, I’m new to the writing world but would love to make some money online, what advice and / or suggestion would you give

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October 29, 2015 at 3:39 pm

Thank you so much David.

November 5, 2015 at 10:23 am

No worries, Shanu. I hope you find a site you can write for and make a profit from. Good luck.

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November 5, 2015 at 12:23 am

Your article is very helpful for me. I will follow your instruction. Thank you.

November 5, 2015 at 10:21 am

HI Habib, thanks for your feedback. All the best.

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November 10, 2015 at 9:01 am

In my view, earning money online depends on how much traffic you will be able to generate for your blog. Super targeted traffic is essential if you are going to be able to make your money via online.

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November 14, 2015 at 10:33 am

Hello, sir i am from india i want to know that if i am living in india. So can i writing for cracked.com or some other site from india. Please reply me sir… Thank you

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November 17, 2015 at 10:58 am

Thanks for providing such great value information. Sharon.

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November 21, 2015 at 12:53 pm

Halo Sir, Really Tnx for your article. It is really very helpful. I have a ques in my mind and i would like to ask you that. Is there any site where i can post article about any subjects and if it is choosen then they will pay? The name of the sites you have mentioned are quite good about choosing there own criteria and then writing about that,but i am lookin for a site that is open for all. I would really be grateful if u kindly ans my ques. Eagerly waiting to hear from you.Tnx.

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December 1, 2015 at 12:18 am

Thank you so much for compiling this 🙂

It’s nice to know I don’t have to settle for .005 cents per every 1000 views like a lot if theseller ridiculous sites .

December 1, 2015 at 9:32 pm

Thanks Nicole. Yes, you can earn a living writing, but you have to start strong and really bring focus to all of your marketing and content – not just the content you create.

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December 1, 2015 at 6:52 am

Oh….I am very grateful to find your article since I was looking for the way to earn money through my writing skills. I do hope that I can prove that earning from home is true, since nobody (around me) could not believe that. Thank you, David. Hope the best for you.

Regard Made Sandat

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December 2, 2015 at 9:08 am

Thanks for sharing this list! It provides an opportunity for the budding Indian writers to share their articles with thousands of our visitors and start publishing.

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December 4, 2015 at 6:06 pm

Hello Sir , Is there something for students willing to earn money through their writing skills as well ? You know for many of us writing and reading is not just a passion anymore , it is salvation.

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December 5, 2015 at 12:57 am

A really helpful article, all told. As a international university student in the UK, I have wanted to pursue a part-time income for a while now. While I have little skill in writing, I am an absolute beginner at it’s online equivalent and was hoping you could advise me on how to start out.

Is there any particular site you could recommend for me? Or at least a place to test the waters and find my own niche with a few articles?

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December 6, 2015 at 10:35 am

Hello Sir, Sir could you please help me out? Actually I want to write articles but I want to be given specific topics. Please suggest me some site. The topics can be absolutely anything. I’m sure I can write them. I hope you’d consider this. Thanking you.

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December 12, 2015 at 2:36 pm

Hi David I want to earn by writing.I can write well about women’s issues and other related things and also about current issues.But Iam not able to understand how to start and to send them please help me out. Thank you

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December 12, 2015 at 3:17 pm

Hi i know very well about College Humour, just now understand with this article there are so many site like this, as you mention, firstly will try with Wow Women on Writing site, thanks for sharing.

' src=

December 13, 2015 at 8:53 am

Thanks. Writing is really an underestimated source of revenue.

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December 14, 2015 at 7:46 am

you can write your articles for Redgage and this site will pay you money for your content. So that you can earn life long for your article.

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December 22, 2015 at 8:10 am

I wanted the article writing job to earn money and please help me how to submit the article.

' src=

December 17, 2015 at 10:15 am

I prefer Earn Honey to make money from home by playing games .

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December 23, 2015 at 12:04 am

Loved it. Some really good points in there. Cheers, have a great day

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January 1, 2016 at 9:56 am

Thank you for this great information Am a Kenyan,funny,social and got this love to write and finaly start a blog someday.I intend to start writing for pay.How will i get my money given i that i got my bank account in a kenyan bank?

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January 25, 2016 at 1:17 pm

Hi sir I want you to suggest me some sites where I can able to publish articles on Indian society and other social causes and also some of my single lines quotes. So that I can make money from them and can enjoy my studies too

February 4, 2016 at 3:06 am

Hmm, sorry Gourav. Not being Indian myself, I have limited knowledge on writing on Indian Society. You could try Life Hack.

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January 29, 2016 at 10:59 am

Please help me. I want to make income by writting on internet.What first step do i take?

February 4, 2016 at 2:59 am

John, take a look at the sites on offer at the top of this post.

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January 29, 2016 at 8:38 pm

Hi David, really like your article!!

I currently write for two of SB Nation’s blogs and cover Spanish football, but I’m not being paid – and my search for websites that take paid contributors has been futile.

Would really appreciate any help 😀

Thank you!!

February 4, 2016 at 2:57 am

Sarthak – I have 200 sites available for download – take a look at the top of this article for the link.

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February 10, 2016 at 9:15 am

David, could you add my website http://www.ewriticle.com to your list. I am paying up to Rs300 for each article.

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March 14, 2016 at 5:33 pm

David , really article writing on website is best online job.Nowadays it became popular in young generation.your website is really better than other.I have a site on online jobs.

' src=

March 24, 2016 at 11:02 am

Very nice and informative site. Thanks.

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March 25, 2016 at 10:19 am

How can I commence content writing to earn money.

' src=

May 14, 2016 at 6:51 pm

Hi, Great Cover Article. People should follow your tips to make money. Passive Money Ideas to submit Article on Making Money Online.

' src=

May 22, 2016 at 9:58 am

When you’re just getting started to make your own home business, you need to sit down and think. You should also write down what you need to do, just so you can reference your notes later. You’ll need notes, because if you want to start a business, there’s a lot of things you need to consider.

What are my skills? What are my talents? What can I do to make money? Those are just a few of the many questions you should ask yourself. You need to know what your skills are, just like you need to know your talents. If you can combine those two elements together, you’ll have a way to start generating ideas for a business opportunity.

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June 15, 2016 at 3:51 pm

Hi…. I m a home maker.I like work from home…can u please help me ..how to write and how the user will pay amount .what i should do?

June 15, 2016 at 5:45 pm

Hii……im a home maker i like to do work can u help ..what are the steps to follow….how tey will pay amount …to me? If i finish work…say me clearly

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June 16, 2016 at 8:36 am

You doing really a good job. I have got so many tips from your article. Thanks.

David, I like writing about philosophy, time travel, all that stuff related to human existence, how human were created, who created us. If God created us were did they go, were they people from another solar system, another Galaxy, witches, superstition, ghost, spirit, life after death, metaphysics, the beauty of nature. I write about how I feel when the cold wind passes by me touching every part of me, and the moon struggling hard to shine as bright as she can despite of the dark cloud making all their effort to cover the moon. The sun, the running river, etc, etc. All this stuff which people don’t talk much about. All my writing are only thoughts that run through my mind. I don’t have strong evidence to prove my thoughts and that’s what make me not to publish my articles. I try searching for the niche familiar to my writing’s. But I find none. Do you think , there will be a niche related to such topics. If yes, please do let me know. Yes, I too can write article on any niche if I give time and research on it. But, my priority goes to the above outline I mention which is very rare in the world of Internet I guess. Thank you.

best regards Krishna Chhetry.

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June 19, 2016 at 5:57 pm

sir I am Vishal. I wanna earn money online. I know that I can earn money by blogging,creating site or by writing article. But I am not understanding what should i choose? How to start? How shall I get money. Plz help me sir. I shall be thankful to you.

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June 21, 2016 at 3:20 pm

Thank you for sharing this info 🙂

Best regards, Errol Muller

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August 7, 2016 at 4:57 pm

Hi, As you know, Paypal doesn’t support some countries. Do you know some websites which pay online money with alternative payment methods? If yes, I will be very grateful to send their list to my email address. thanks

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August 12, 2016 at 1:20 pm

Hi, after reading your article, I have been boosted up and want to do something which I have been afraid of…I am into writing poetry a lot and fiction is my interest. I have started a wordpress blog and posting into it whenever I can and so I want to know, what should I do with my poetic talent to start earning money.

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September 7, 2016 at 12:56 am

Hmmm, wish I had good news, Graham. Most Poets don’t make their money until they are returned to the dust from whence they came.

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August 15, 2016 at 5:01 pm

Its one of the best posts full of good resources on writing content. I have not visited all of the sites yet but I am going to check them all one by one. Thank you so much.

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August 25, 2016 at 9:50 pm

Great information. God bless you!

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August 26, 2016 at 9:42 pm

Amazing Content!! Making money from home is made so simple now and days! i didnt have a penny to my name last year, and i currently make 1,500 a month from the simple steps given by David at Mallee Blue Media. This is a great company to learn self development, entrepreneurship, and how to generate an extra income!!

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September 1, 2016 at 2:37 pm

Great content is an essential need for every website. I was really upset and discouraged when I wasn’t getting good traffic due to my bad content for my website readers. I found an agent who provides awesome contents for my website. Now I enjoy traffic with ease and joy because I know I have audience who will be reading. I have been using his writing services for sometimes now and he is the best so far.

' src=

September 10, 2016 at 12:12 am

This is just the sort of straight forward points I love to see!

It makes things clear and great to understand Thaniks 🙂

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September 10, 2016 at 4:04 am

Most of online business is about affiliate marketing and ecommerce but there is almost no leverage because there is lots of hard work involved and everybody know that it’s tough to make money that way. Anyone can spend a bit of time understanding the new business model and make money effortlessly regardless you’re newbie or not.

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October 15, 2016 at 4:08 am

Thanks for the writing site update. Finding a site that pays well is difficult for all writers, you shed a bit of light on the subject.

October 20, 2016 at 2:42 pm

No problem, Marlene. Glad it was helpful.

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December 13, 2016 at 4:10 pm

I want to write my articles considering fashion and lifestyle will that well go with this online site

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January 17, 2017 at 3:12 pm

Thank for the list. It’s amazing when we can stay home and still make money right? I love that so much.

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January 20, 2017 at 1:17 pm

I gained a lot of insight after reading your article. I am going to redesign my website in the light of what you have said. Thanks.

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January 28, 2017 at 12:39 am

What’s up, all is going perfectly here and of course every one is sharing facts, that’s really excellent, keep up writing.

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February 20, 2017 at 7:27 pm

It really is truly a nice useful part of facts. I am just thankful you contributed this useful info along with us.. free business training Remember to keep us updated like that. Many thanks for expressing.

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March 8, 2017 at 6:41 am

Thanks a lot for this article. Very useful David.

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March 11, 2017 at 3:20 pm

So do links from Twitter activity now contribute for search engine optimisation? I was told they do after the Panda Google algorithm update Will surely be coming back, its a great blog!

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March 15, 2017 at 4:22 am

Hey! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a collection of volunteers and starting a new project in a community in the same niche.

Your blog provided us useful information to work on. You have done a wonderful job!

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March 27, 2017 at 11:32 pm

Hi David, Thanks a lot for the guidance through that article, That is so much informative. I want to write stories and articles on life,travel,sales thought process etc but i don’t have that much good communication skill for English. I want to know is that possible to write those articles or stories in Hindi as well to earn some money and fame if I am capable to. If you have any suggestion for this query kindly mail me. that would be so nice of you.

March 30, 2017 at 7:53 pm

Hey Harry, take a look at the ebook of over 200 sites or use one of the 10 listed here. Find a subject you enjoy writing about nad try these sites. You can also let me know what your interests are and maybe I can help you with your first article.

March 30, 2017 at 7:59 pm

David, I am not a professional writer but on regular bases I try to write something new related to Life,relation,career,politics etc. My max blogs or stories are about relationships and politics.

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March 30, 2017 at 10:40 pm

Interesting piece of writing. I will be joining some of these websites. Thank You, even if I am late.

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April 10, 2017 at 4:13 pm

Inside the top 10 of my favourite posts, thankyou!

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April 14, 2017 at 7:45 pm

hai!! I know Hw to write a movie of social life bt has no one to help me. Now think I have an idea ..

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April 18, 2017 at 10:25 pm

Thanks for the article! I’m a teacher in China (from the US), and I’m looking for ways to supplement my salary because I only actually work about 20 hours a week. I have lots of time to do other work, but my contract prohibits me from taking on tutoring and the like.

Anyway, I realized I can get away with working online, and I’ve been looking for a venue ever since. I considered Textbrokers, and I may try that approach, but I wasn’t aware that there are more substantial opportunities out there for entry-level freelancing until I read your article. I tend to underestimate myself and overestimate the competition, but I’m realizing that I likely have a good chance of making some money and enjoying writing. I wrote some feature articles in magazines in the past, and I have a degree in English. Even though it’s been a while, I suppose the sort of writing you suggest would actually be doable for me.

Another option I considered is technical writing of some sort. Do you know of any entry-level opportunities?

Thanks, again, for the heads-up!

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May 26, 2017 at 6:59 pm

Jared, thanks for your comments and feedback. I think writing is a good way to earn a living, but it does take time to build up a convincing portfolio. All the best.

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April 24, 2017 at 10:12 pm

Hi there, These are the really very good article sites. i want to start writing, these sites will really help me out. Thanks

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May 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

Hi there! This blog post couldn’t be written much better! Looking through this article reminds me of my previous roommate! He continually kept preaching about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he’ll have a great read. Thak you for sharing!

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May 25, 2017 at 2:51 am

Being a new bird , it takes a lot of time to understand the proper road to reach at the destination , but your information is truly precious. I am from India and have started my work as a reviewer. Thanks

May 26, 2017 at 6:51 pm

Hey Deepak, glad it was helpful.

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June 13, 2017 at 10:22 am

Am I the only one who only sees 4/10 here? Where are the other 6 websites?

June 13, 2017 at 11:04 am

Yes, Lou, you are the only one. Everybody else clicked either Like, Tweet or Google +1 – 😉

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June 27, 2017 at 6:38 am

SEO has never really had a proper home. Because it’s technical, it’s best suited for workers who have learnt the business and have practical experience. This can be quite rare with a lot of professionals though.

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Side Hustles

Side Hustles For All

Home Writing & Editing Gigs Get Paid to Write Articles

Close view of a writer at their desk holding a pen and working on an article.

Get Paid to Write Articles: 110 Sites That Accept Pitches in 2023

November 17, 2023

Written by:

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Alba U. Román

Alba is a writer for SideHustles.com. In addition to writing, she has done work as an independent graphic designer and has...

Requirements

Making money as a freelance writer is hard, especially when you’re just starting out. Once you’ve established a solid reputation and made a few industry contacts, landing writing gigs will get easier, but in the beginning, you’ll have to put yourself out there and actively pitch to clients and publications.

Pitching is easier said than done. Sometimes, it’s hard to even figure out who’s in the market for your work.

There are plenty of lists of publications that accept articles from freelancers, but these aren’t always up to date. Sometimes, you’ll find that the websites on them have closed their doors to new applicants—and with the recent craze for AI-generated content, it’s anyone’s guess whether the sites that remain will be interested in paying you a fair rate.

To make things easier, we’ve sorted through what’s out there and put together this list of sites that will pay you to write articles (current as of November 2023). To use it, just scan for the type of content you’re most interested in and see if any of the publications appeal to you.

01. Business, finance, and e-commerce

02. parenting, 03. tech and web development, 04. travel and food, 05. lifestyle and entertainment, 06. history and culture, 07. news and current affairs, 08. fiction, poetry and creative writing, 09. children’s magazines, 10. book reviews and summaries, 11. writing and copywriting, 12. science and environment, 13. outdoor interests, 14. women's magazines and feminist publications, 15. employability and coaching, 16. miscellaneous, 17. freelance writing platforms.

If you don’t have any luck submitting to any of the publications listed above—or if none of them interest you—then don’t give up. You can also find freelance writing work on online job boards.

For almost every industry or interest you can imagine, you’ll be able to find at least a few clients who want skilled writers to produce articles about it.

You can look into:

General-purpose freelancing websites

These websites are some of the largest online job boards. They offer gigs in other niches, not just writing (for instance, you can also use them to find proofreading and editing jobs).

  • PeoplePerHour

Content writing platforms

There are also several websites that are specifically dedicated to writing jobs:

  • Constant Content
  • ContentWriters
  • ContentGather
  • Crowd Content

The downside of these websites is that they’ll generally take a commission from you. In other words, when you land work, they’ll take a cut of your profits.

This means that many experienced writers prefer to avoid them and land work elsewhere. However, in the beginning, they provide a relatively simple and convenient way of landing paid article-writing gigs.

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Robert Jellison

Managing Editor

Robert is a writer and editor for SideHustles.com. He has 7+ years of experience in freelance writing and previously worked as the in-house editor for Compose.ly, a platform for remote and part-time writers.

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Get Paid to Write Articles: 9 Sites That Pay $75+ Per Post

Khanyi Molomo

  • Updated on January 9, 2024
  • Job Training Resources

If you have a passion for writing and want to turn it into a profitable career, you might want to know how to get paid to write articles. ✍️🤑

The digital age has opened up multiple opportunities for writers to monetize their skills and earn a decent income. But it’s not always clear where and how to land these writing gigs.

Some online publications offer very little for your hard work, while others don’t even pay anything at all.

We know how much time and effort it takes to craft a good piece of writing, and below, we’ll share some online platforms that will appreciate your hard work.

Let’s begin. 🙋‍♂️

📚 Table of contents :

  • Copyhackers
  • Sport Fishing Magazine
  • Narratively
  • Bella Magazine
  • Business Insider
  • Cosmopolitan UK
  • Elite Personal Finance

Get paid to write articles: 9 legit sites that pay writers

1. longreads.

Get paid to write articles for Longreads by going to their article pitch instructions page.

First on our list of websites where you can get paid to write articles is Longreads . It is a popular online platform that specializes in publishing long-form non-fiction stories.

Just spend a few minutes on it, and you’ll come across many thought-provoking, in-depth articles that go beyond traditional news formats.

👉 The type of content you can expect to find there includes:

  • Personal essays
  • Investigative pieces
  • Engaging narratives
  • Cultural commentary pieces

In other words, this is a great place to get paid to write articles, essays, and more.

If this sounds like your style, you can reach out to the editors and pitch directly. You can learn more about how to do so through the Longreads submissions guidelines page .

👍 Advantages of writing for Longreads

  • Your work will get exposed to a wide audience
  • The editorial team is supportive, and this can help enhance your writing and storytelling skills
  • The platform has a good reputation, and being associated with Longreads may help enhance your reputation as a writer

Payment for published articles on Longreads varies. For reported essays, critical essays, and columns, the rate starts at $500. For reading lists (where you curate a reading list based on a specific topic), they pay $350.

2. Copyhackers

Get paid to write articles for CopyHackers by going to their pitch page.

Copyhackers is a platform that focuses on the art and science of copywriting. It is a go-to resource for many online content creators, including copywriters , digital marketers, and entrepreneurs.

👉 The type of content you can expect to find on the platform includes:

  • Educational articles
  • Resources that focus on helping new writers learn how to craft good copy

If you’re a copy or content writer and have picked up a few tips that can help beginner or advanced writers, you can read more about how to get paid to write articles for Copyhackers through the Copyhackers pitching process guidelines .

👍 Advantages of writing for Copyhackers

  • By writing for Copyhackers, you can directly reach and engage with a community of like-minded people
  • The platform is widely recognized as one of the leaders in copywriting. Getting published here is a great way to position yourself as an expert in your field
  • Since the platform is well known and respected, being published on Copyhackers can help enhance your resume

Copyhackers pays $300 to $1,000 for accepted posts.

3. Listverse

Get paid to write articles for ListVerse by going to their pitch page.

If you’re a new writer with an interesting list to share about pretty much any topic, then Listverse might be a great option.

The platform is a great place for writers to share their knowledge or experience in various niches.

👉 The type of content you can expect to find on the platform includes information on:

  • Pop culture
  • Mystery sightings or occurrences
  • History or fact-based topics
  • Science and technology

The topics on Listverse are quite broad, so if you have any interesting lists to share, you can read the Listverse pitching guide carefully to learn how to pitch.

👍 Advantages of writing for Listverse

  • You don’t need to have an experienced writer. You just have to have a good grasp of the English language and something interesting to share
  • This can be a quicker process than writing a lengthy, detailed-oriented essay or article
  • The platform offers writers the creative freedom to explore different topics and express their unique ideas

If you submit your list and the editors like and publish it, you can expect to earn $100.

4. Sport Fishing Magazine

Sport Fishing submission guidelines page.

Sport Fishing Magazine is one of the leading publications on saltwater fishing around North America.

The publication highlights that “Sport Fishing readers are not beginners; they’re seeking to advance their knowledge, not rehash basic saltwater fishing.” This means that you have to be well-versed in topics related to saltwater fishing and also be able to offer a new or interesting perspective on popular topics in this niche .

  • Fishing techniques
  • Fishing gear
  • Marine Electronics
  • Conservation

If you’re very knowledgeable about any of these topics, this might be a good website to reach out to.

👍 Advantages of writing for Sport Fishing Magazine

  • If this is a niche you’re interested in specializing in, Sport Fishing Magazine is a great website to get published on because it has a devoted readership of passionate fishing enthusiasts
  • Contributing to this website allows you to associate your name with a well-established and respected publication in the industry.
  • If you plan to specialize in outdoor, adventure, or fishing-related content, having an article of yours published in Sport Fishing Magazine can help enhance your portfolio

According to the Sport Fishing Magazine contributor guidelines , you can expect to earn at least $750 for print features. For digital features, they pay at least $200 for a 1,000-word piece.

5. Narratively

Narratively pitch page for article submissions.

Narratively is a great platform that focuses on character-driven storytelling.

The platform allows you to pitch both story ideas and completed stories that align with their brand.

  • Long-form articles
  • Multimedia content

So, if you want to get paid to write articles, essays, short stories, and other interesting pieces that capture the human experience, this can be a great opportunity for you. Read Narratively’s pitching guidelines carefully to learn how to pitch.

👍 Advantages of writing for Narratively

  • The platform places a huge emphasis on personal stories. So, if you’re a good storyteller with a unique experience you’ve had that you’re eager to share with the world, Narratively might be the perfect place for you
  • They cover a broad range of topics , including relationships, travel, culture, science, and much more. It also encourages inclusivity. So, regardless of where in the world you may be, as long as you’re a good storyteller, this is a great opportunity
  • The platform has an engaged readership. So, if you manage to publish your article on the site, you can connect with a great community

According to Who Pays Writers , an online platform that shows which publications pay freelance writers and how much they pay them, Narratively paid a writer $0.20 in 2019, and another writer $0.12 in 2021. While the rate may vary, the platform hasn’t paid writers less than $0.12 per word from 2018. This works out to at least $120 per 1,000 words.

6. Bella Magazine

Get paid to write stories by submitting a pitch on the Bella submission page.

One of the best things about being an online writer is that you can write for many publications worldwide, regardless of where you’re based. And that’s the case with Bella Magazine, a UK-based woman’s lifestyle magazine.

The platform only wants true stories, so this might be a great opportunity if you have an interesting experience to share.

👉 The type of content you can expect to find on the platform includes topics on:

  • Relationships
  • General lifestyle-related content

This versatility in topics makes it an excellent choice for different types of writers. To pitch, all you need to do is send the editorial team an outline of your story idea. You can check out Bella Magazine’s contributor guidelines for more details on how to get paid to write articles for Bella Magazine .

👍 Advantages of writing for Bella Magazine

  • It is a well-established magazine with a good reputation for quality content. Getting published on the platform will allow you to associate your name with a publication with high-quality writing
  • The platform aims to empower women by providing inspirational and informative content. Writing for this magazine allows you to positively impact other people’s lives and possibly connect with like-minded people who also value personal growth and well-being
  • The magazine covers a wide range of topics. So, no matter your niche, you have a good chance of finding a topic you’re comfortable writing on

If the editorial team like your story, you can earn up to £1,000, and as of writing this article, this amounts to $1,310.86 (USD).

7. Business Insider

Business Insider example of where you can get paid to write articles.

If you want to get paid to write articles and establish your expertise in the business niche, this is the publication you’ll want to work with.

Business Insider is a well-known digital media company that publishes in-depth and often thought-provoking articles on business-related topics. It also has multiple international editions, offering a global perspective on the latest news in the business landscape.

  • Lifestyle news

The audience is generally professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, and readers interested in business. So, if you’re knowledgeable on these topics and you think you can offer these people something valuable to read, you can check out Business Insider’s writer guidelines for more details on how to pitch.

👍 Advantages of writing for Business Insider :

  • They have a large and diverse audience, so your work can reach a broad audience
  • The platform has a great reputation. Getting published on the platform allows you to align yourself with a trusted brand
  • Many industry leaders follow the platform. Getting published here gives you the chance for your work to be noticed by some of them, and perhaps even make work-related connections

According to Who Pays Writers , payment on the platform has varied over the past few years. From 2022 alone, writers have earned anything from $0.10 to $0.41 per word, which amounts to $100 to $410 per 1,000 words.

8. Cosmopolitan UK

Cosmo UK article pitch submission page.

Cosmopolitan (aka Cosmo) is a popular women’s magazine that covers different female-related topics. The magazine has branches in different parts of the world. However, right now, we’re focusing on their UK edition.

👉 The type of content you can expect to find in the magazine includes topics about:

Cosmo caters to a diverse readership of women, so if you think you can add something special to the magazine, you can check out Cosmo UK contributor guidelines for more information on how to get paid to write stories for Cosmo UK .

👍 Advantages of writing for Cosmopolitan UK

  • It’s a well-established publication, so you’ll align yourself with a reputable brand
  • It has a large and engaged audience, so your writing can reach many people
  • The magazine covers different topics, so you can explore different areas of interest and pitch an idea you actually like

According to Who Pays Writers , Cosmo UK paid a writer $0.09 per word in 2019, so you can expect to earn at least $90 per 1,000 words if you pitch to the publication.

9. Elite Personal Finance

Get paid to write articles for ElitePersonalFinance by going to their pitch page.

Another place where you can get paid to write articles is Elite Personal Finance .

Elite Personal Finance is an online platform that focuses on providing financial tips and strategies for their readers.

👉 The type of content you can expect to find on the website includes:

  • Guides on choosing the right personal and business credit card
  • Tips on improving your credit score
  • How to make money online
  • Investing tips
  • How to save money

If you’re comfortable with any of these topics, you can check out Elite Personal Finance’s writer guidelines to learn more about how to pitch.

👍 Advantages of writing for Elite Personal Finance

  • If you plan to specialize in the finance niche, this is a great opportunity to earn good money while getting published on a credible site
  • The website covers all different types of finance-related topics. So, you can choose whichever topic you’re most comfortable with

If your article gets selected for publication, you can expect to earn $300.

Get paid to write articles today ✍️

There you have it – legit sites where you can get paid to write articles. From established platforms, like CosmopolitanUK and Business Insider , to more niche communities , like Sport Fishing Magazine . The above list shows that you can earn good money from writing, regardless of your area of practice.

When you pitch your ideas, remember that writing articles is not only about earning money. It is also about sharing your expertise, connecting with readers, and maybe even making an impact.

Also, remember to read through the guidelines properly to ensure that you give yourself the best chance of getting published. All the best!

✍️🤑 If you want to learn more about how to make money from your writing, then check out our guides on how to start a blog on Facebook and make money and four ways to start a blog for free and make money.

Khanyi Molomo

You made my day with this write up. I was seriously thinking of adventuring in blogging and here I got the right ingredients to kick off. Thanks a bunch.

thank you so much i am freelancer story or articles writer you give me a brilliant way to Earn from online way God Bless you

Thank you so much

Thank you so much Khanyi. This was very informative. Keep up the good work!

I’m sterting the journey right now.

Best of luck on your journey, Monwabisi! 🙂

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How to Get Paid to Write Articles from Home: A Beginner's Guide to Freelance Writing

how to make money publishing articles

How to Get Paid to Write Articles

Table of Contents

How Do You Get Paid to Write Articles as a Freelancer? Finding Your Niche Building a Solid Portfolio: The #1 Step for Novice Freelance Writers An overview of platforms that pay for writing articles WhitePress® Medium's Partner Program Earning money writing on HubPages Finding work on Upwork Becoming a Vocal+ member Pitching your articles: all you need to know Exploring freelance marketplaces to make money writing Pros of freelance marketplaces Cons of freelance marketplaces How to get paid for creative writing? How to build a writing career and get paid? Frequently Asked Questions How much can I earn as a freelance writer? What websites pay for writing articles? Do I get paid just for submitting articles?

How Do You Get Paid to Write Articles as a Freelancer?

Starting your writing career is like starting a small business. You’re selling your skills by crafting texts to clients who need content in various formats – blog posts, guest posts , articles, SEO content, newsletters, whitepapers, social media content, and more.

The road to becoming a professional writer you’ll face many challenges, like establishing your credibility, marketing your services to a broader audience, or managing your workload and finances. However, if you’re hardworking, the benefits are definitely worth it. Flexible working hours and the freedom to work from anywhere are just some of the benefits freelance writers can enjoy.

Finding Your Niche

Now that you know you want to get paid to write, you’ll need to decide what you’ll actually be writing about. While it’s possible to be a successful generalist writer, finding a niche can give you a competitive edge and make your career easier to develop.

Specializing in a specific subject or industry means you can charge more for your projects, but you’ll have to show your in-depth knowledge first. If you pursued education in a specific field, it might be a good start, but make sure to choose a niche that you’re really passionate about – whether it’s tech, travel, finance, health, or any other. This choice can influence your journey on how to get paid to write articles.

You should also determine what type of content you’ll be writing. This can include blog writing, technical writing, copywriting , creating social media content, etc.

Building a Solid Portfolio: The #1 Step for Novice Freelance Writers

To show your potential clients what you’re capable of and get paid to write, you’ll need a portfolio. The portfolio is a tangible way to show your talent and skills, especially if you don't have previous writing experience.

As a novice, you don’t need already written texts to include in your portfolio – you can start out by writing sample texts that align with the kind of work you want to be hired for. For example, if you’re passionate about technology, you could include some sample blog post samples on relevant tech topics.

If you have published work, you can include it in your portfolio. This will give you more credibility, and allow you to include how well the article did SEO-wise. Bear in mind that while in most cases you should be allowed to include any published and publicly available texts in your portfolio, some NDAs and contracts may prohibit you from disclosing your involvement in a project even after publication. Take a careful look at any agreements signed before adding published work to your portfolio to avoid potential legal issues.

An overview of platforms that pay for writing articles

Many novice writers have no clue where to start looking for jobs. Thankfully, there are plenty of online platforms that offer to pay writers for their work that cater to a range of niches. Let’s go over some of the most noteworthy ones you can explore:

  • WhitePress®

WhitePress® is a  content marketing platform that offers opportunities for aspiring writers to  become successful copywriters . The platform connects brands with online article publishers and offers to write high-quality, SEO-optimized feature articles that boost online visibility in search engine results.

WhitePress® works with over 1100 experienced copywriters that create unique content at competitive prices. If you feel like you’re an expert writer in your field and are looking for career opportunities, contact us!

Medium’s Partner Program

Medium is a popular online publishing platform, first created as a convenient way to publish texts longer than Twitter’s 280-character limit. Anyone can create a free account and start publishing – if you feel like running your own blog, Medium is a great place to start. After gaining at least 100 followers, you can apply to join the Partner Program.

Once you’re part of the Partner Program, you can start earning money from writing. You can put feature stories behind a paywall that will require viewers to pay a fee before being able to view the content. Members of the program are also paid for writing each month, based on their viewers’ engagement and reading time. Additionally, if you manage to convert a viewer into a paying Medium member, you’ll get 50% of their membership fee.

Earning money writing on HubPages

HubPages allows freelance writers to earn money by creating high-quality content and including various ads or affiliate links. Members of HubPages’ earnings program can earn a share of the ad revenue generated by their articles, including money earned from display ads and cost-per-click (CPC) ads. Once your earnings reach a certain threshold, you can pay out your money through PayPal. Make sure to read the submission guidelines.

Finding work on Upwork

Upwork is a  leading freelancing platform where writers and other professionals can offer their services to clients from all over the world. Tens of thousands of job offers for freelance writers are posted on Upwork every week – but the competition is high, so don’t hesitate to contact a potential client. Bear in mind that platforms like Upwork take a percentage of your earnings as their fee, and additional rules may apply.

Becoming a Vocal+ member

Vocal is a platform that allows writers to share their personal stories and perspectives with a wide audience, with simple-to-use monetization options for its Vocal+ program members. Writers can choose from a wide range of categories and topics to write under, including science, music, health, fiction, technology, and more.

To get paid on Vocal , you’ll need to become a  Vocal+ member. Members get paid based on the number of views their compelling and distinctive stories receive, and readers can also send direct tips to authors if they appreciate their work. Vocal also regularly hosts challenges where creators can submit their work and the best writers win significant cash prizes.

Running a personal blog in general can open doors to many monetization opportunities, including sponsored content and affiliate marketing . Companies often pay a handsome amount for product or service reviews and features in blog posts – but you’ll need to build a substantial audience first. This could take some time, but with consistent high-quality content, it’s definitely achievable. Before publishing, consult the submission guidelines of Vocal.

Pitching your articles: all you need to know

Crafting a compelling pitch to sell your articles to publishers is a  difficult skill to master, but one that can make the difference between rejection or a profitable gig. Pitching involves proposing your article idea to a publication and convincing them it’s worth publishing – here’s how to do it step-by-step:

1. Finding the right publisher

There are many ways you can find a publisher for your texts. Literary agents are the easiest way to the world of traditional publishing, but you can also look for publishers yourself on websites like Poets & Writers or the Writer’s Market that provide directories of literary magazines, small presses, and other publishers.

Online groups and forums are also great places to find early writing jobs as a freelance writer. You’ll also get a chance to meet other writers, share experiences, and make valuable connections.

2. Understand your target

Before writing your pitch, study your publication target carefully. Get a feel for their tone, style, and type of content they usually publish. Consider what topics they cover, who is their target audience, and which parts could be improved in their current content. A pitch that shows a clear understanding of your publisher’s field is much more likely to be accepted.

3. Grab the reader’s attention

Your pitch should start with an engaging headline that immediately grabs their attention. You can use an interesting and relevant fact, a compelling question, or a bold statement. The goal here is to pique their curiosity from the get go and make them want to read on – most pitches don’t get reviewed past reading the title and headline.

4. Present your content as a solution

First, clearly outline the problem that the publisher is experiencing – this allows you to show empathy and understanding, and also sets the stage for you to introduce your solution. Explain how your work can solve the problem you’ve just described. Be specific and focus on benefits, and try to illustrate how you can create value and make their life easier.

5. Provide proof

Back up your claims with evidence. Proof adds credibility to your pitch and helps build trust with potential clients. This could include relevant previous texts you’ve worked on and their SEO performance, testimonials, or case studies.

6. Keep it short and simple

Don’t overwhelm your potential client with too much information. Keep the language simple, clear, and persuasive. Every word should ideally serve a purpose in moving your audience towards the action you want them to take (in this case, to publish your texts).

Don't be disheartened if you don't receive a response immediately. Editors often receive hundreds of pitches a day. After a week or so, send a polite follow-up email. Persistence can often pay off.

Remember to continually refine and improve your pitch based on feedback and results . The best pitches are typically the result of lots of testing and iteration.

Exploring freelance marketplaces to make money writing

Freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr are online platforms where businesses and individuals post job listings for freelancers, covering a wide range of job categories, including writing and translation.

While these platforms can be competitive, they offer tons of opportunities for beginners to gain experience, build their portfolio, and start earning money from writing. They provide an excellent starting point, but don’t limit yourself to these platforms alone. Once you’ve built a solid portfolio, you can approach higher-paying clients directly and make money from writing.

Freelancers sign up and create a profile, outlining their skills, experience, and rates, while clients post freelance writing gigs they need help with. Depending on the platform, freelancers either bid on projects or create gigs that clients can directly order. Clients then review the proposals of freelancers and select one or more for their projects. Upon completion and acceptance of the work, the platform processes the payment from the client to the freelancers – typically taking a commission as its fee.

Pros of freelance marketplaces

  • Access to a wide range of clients: these platforms provide freelancers access to a wide range of clients from all over the world. This can open up opportunities that may not have been available locally or through traditional job searching.
  • Flexible work arrangement: freelancers have the freedom to choose when and where they work. They can select the projects they want to work on, allowing them to balance their workload and maintain a work-life balance.
  • Payment security: Many freelance marketplaces feature secure payment systems that hold client funds in escrow until the job is complete.
  • Potential for growth: High-quality work brings positive reviews and ratings, which can boost your reputation on the platform and lead to more job opportunities.

Cons of freelance marketplaces

  • High competition: freelance marketplaces are highly competitive, with freelancers from all around the world vying for the same projects. This can be especially harsh for beginners who are trying to establish themselves, making it challenging to get selected by a client.
  • Race to the bottom-pricing: this competition often leads to lowering rates as freelancers try to underbid each other to win projects. This can drive prices down and make it harder to earn a sustainable income from writing.
  • Platform fees: most freelance platforms charge a commission on earnings. Depending on the platform and the pricing structure, this fee can take a significant chunk out of the freelancer’s income.
  • Inconsistent work: the availability of work can fluctuate, leading to periods of feast-or-famine. This is further accelerated by  ChatGPT and other AI-powered writing tools that are a much cheaper alternative to many clients than hiring a writer.

How to get paid for creative writing?

Getting paid for creative writing – such as writing poetry or fiction –  can be challenging, but definitely not impossible. It requires patience, dedication, and persistence in searching for opportunities.

Many literary magazines and journals accept submissions of poetry, short stories, personal essays, and other types of creative writing. They usually pay a fee per poem or per word/page for short stories. Many organizations also host writing contests, which often come with cash prizes and are great opportunities to get your name out in the world.

Platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing allow writers to self-publish their work and earn a percentage of the sales. While the writer’s cut typically isn’t more than 60%, it’s a great way to start until you find a publisher that’ll offer you a better deal.

You can also try crowdfunding – platforms like Patreon allow writers to get paid directly by their fans, often in exchange for access to exclusive content, early access to their work, and other perks. If you’re an experienced writer, you can also try to host writing workshops or classes, teaching others about creative writing.

How to build a writing career and get paid?

Creating a full-time career as freelancer and making money by writing is a gradual process that requires long-term strategizing for success. Before anything else, make sure your writing skills are up to par – engage in courses or workshops, read online resources, and write regularly to practice your craft. This can lead you to make money from writing online.

Having a niche or two where you’re particularly knowledgeable can set you apart from other writers. This can be anything from tech and science to fashion and lifestyle – being a specialist often allows you to charge higher rates as well.

Start a blog or website to showcase your work and writing style. Regularly update the blog with posts related to your target audience. This is a great way to get paid to write articles online as you can also share your thoughts on industry trends to better establish yourself as a thought leader in the field.

Creating a portfolio that shows your best work is incredibly important. This can be on your own website or on platforms like Contently . Make sure your portfolio is easily accessible and showcases a variety of work, especially pieces that have been published by reputable outlets.

Once you have a solid portfolio, you can start pitching to publications you follow. Tailor each pitch to the publisher’s style and audience. Remember that rejection is part of the process, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t get a response right away. In the end, persistence is key to earning money by writing.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much can i earn as a freelance writer.

Your potential earnings as a freelance writer can vary greatly based on your experience and expertise, the specific niche you’re writing for, and your location. Some writers make a modest side income, while others earn six-figure incomes. It’s important to research and understand the market rates for your niche to price your services accordingly.

What websites pay for writing articles?

There are numerous websites that pay for writing articles – you can try these ones first:

Do I get paid just for submitting articles?

It depends. If you’re working with a freelancing platform, you will get paid the agreed upon amount after your work is received and approved. You might have to correct your text before it’s accepted by the client.

Some publications pay to write articles they only choose to publish or use, but some also feature “kill fees” – a smaller fee paid if your article is not published for some reason, despite being initially accepted.

Finally, blogging platforms that allow creators to earn money usually pay you based on views and reader engagement – simply publishing articles that nobody will read won’t earn you any money.

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How to make money blogging: the complete free guide

  • Kristin Addis
  • 20 min read

Get started by: Creating a blog →  | Getting a domain →

How to make money blogging with family blog showing products for picnic

Making money blogging sounds like a dream. Not only do you get to work independently and skip the 9-to-5, but you can also blog from anywhere in the world about the topics of your choice. While it involves hard work, even beginners can achieve this with the right strategy.

You’ll need to create a blog , of course, in order to become a part of the blogosphere. After that, you’ll need to grow your audience. Whether you want a side hustle or a career, this comprehensive guide will walk you through actionable steps on how to start a blog , build your readership and grow your blog. Then, you’ll learn about using the robust tools that can help you learn how to make money blogging, turning your website traffic into money and potentially starting a business online.

Ready to make money with a blog? Get started on your blog with Wix .

How much money can you make blogging?

Before we dive into the steps to make money blogging, let’s talk about how much you can actually earn.

How much money can you make when blogging as a beginner ? Finance blog Millennial Money reports that after just two years of building traffic and subscribers to this type of a website, bloggers can make upwards of $100,000 annually. Within the first year, bloggers can make $500-$2,000 per month.

Let’s look at a few examples from this study of successful bloggers :

chart of successful bloggers making money, including monthly income and sources

As you can see, you can earn a wide income range as a blogger. But aside from the numbers, remember these important takeaways before you begin:

You can make money blogging even if you're not a professional writer.

It’s possible to use more than one strategy to bring in revenue with your blog.

Successful bloggers make money using many of the same strategies.

Let’s break these ideas down and identify these strategies.

How to make money blogging in 10 steps

Follow these 10 actionable steps to hone in on your craft and monetize your blogging efforts:

Choose a profitable niche

Scale your blog content

Build a reputation

Promote and grow

Advertise within your blog

Offer paid subscriptions

Sell merchandise

Become an affiliate

Write sponsored content

Provide consulting services

How to make money blogging, part 1: build your online presence

Before you start making money, you’ll need to consider making a website , starting a blog and growing your audience. Think of it this way: More traffic to your blog can equal more money.

For that reason, earning money begins with choosing a strategic blogging niche and spreading the word about your blog. Here’s how to do it:

01. Choose a profitable niche

If you’re just starting a blog, you're probably asking yourself— What should I write about?

Before you dive into writing, you’ll need to select a niche. Pick one overarching theme in a particular field for your blog to attract a targeted group of fans.

Start with your passions when selecting your niche—after all, you’ll dedicate lots of time and effort to this subject. But if you seriously want to make money blogging, you also need to think about what subjects people will want to read about, and if those subjects are financially viable.

Look at Cup of Jo , for example, a daily women’s lifestyle site that explores topics like food, culture, style, travel, relationships and parenting. Founded in 2007, the popular blog “receives over 4 million monthly page views and almost 1 million monthly unique visitors,” according to the site. By narrowing in on a specific niche and providing relevant and relatable content to the right audience, founder Joanna Goddard has cultivated a strong community and deeply engaged readership.

With that in mind, ask yourself these three questions when choosing a blog niche :

What are my interests?

Who is my audience?

Which topics are profitable? (Learn more about how to make money as a food blogger )

Question 1: What are my interests?

You’ll want to write about a topic you’re passionate and knowledgeable about to sustain your blogging efforts for the long term.

Consider your level of professional experience as well. If you have no prior connections to your blogging niche, you’ll find it harder to establish yourself as a credible source in that industry.

On the other hand, if you have work experience, educational background or connections in a particular field, you can write blog posts about those subjects and build trust among your readership. Take a look at these blog ideas —they'll jumpstart your imagination.

Fashion blog template example

Question 2: Who is my audience?

Readers will flock to blogs that provide in-demand information and insight. After you’ve decided on your niche, think about which readers you may attract, the problems they face and the solutions they seek. This way, you can create and monetize a blog that provides this group the answers they need.

Question 3: Which topics are profitable?

While you can blog about nearly anything, some blog niches can earn more money than others. To anticipate whether you can make money blogging with a particular niche, consider the sales opportunities in that subject area. For instance, a cooking blog could promote affiliate links in an article about the top kitchen appliances or sell ad space to culinary brands. A digital marketing blog could sell e-books or offer consulting services.

Types of blogs that make money

Several types of blogs can be profitable if you know how to manage them strategically but here are the most common:

Business and marketing blogs

Finance blog

Health blogs

Fashion blogs

DIY and crafts blogs

Nutrition and food blogs

Lifestyle blogs

Travel blogs: How to make money as a travel blogger

Whichever niche you choose for your blog, think about how you’ll monetize it from the beginning and set income goals to build a strong foundation.

If you’re still stuck on what niche to focus on, these blog examples can help provide guidance.

02. Scale your blog content

Now that you’ve selected your blog niche, it’s time to start creating content. As you begin, keep in mind that the research and planning behind your articles can influence your blog’s financial success just as much as the writing itself.

On top of that, you’ll want to upload new content consistently and frequently without compromising on quality. Here’s what you should know as you start creating and scaling your content:

Choose the right blog topics

Just as you selected a strategic blog niche, you’ll also want to choose strategic topics to write about. The best topics must accomplish two things:

They address the needs of your target audience and offer them a thoughtful, actionable solution.

They target keywords with high search volumes—a number that indicates how many people look up a given word or topic during a selected time frame (typically one month). The higher the keyword volume, the more historic interest in that topic. When your articles provide a thorough answer to people’s search queries, the more likely it will organically rank on search engines—which, in turn, will bring people to your site.

Don’t overlook the importance of writing headlines , either. The catchier your blog titles , the more likely people will click to read the content.

Tip: Use a handy title generator tool to craft effective headlines that grab readers’ attention.

blog topic ideas for making money

Post blog content consistently

To get more site visitors, you’ll need to post fresh content frequently. Based on the size and needs of your blog, the frequency of posting may vary. HubSpot recommends one to four posts per week, but some larger companies may post an article daily, or in some cases multiple times a day.

On top of that, you’ll want to stay consistent in your publishing cadence. Don’t release a huge batch of articles one week, only to publish nothing the following week. Instead, create an editorial calendar and plan a consistent publishing schedule ahead of time.

example of blog publishing schedule calendar

Distribute the workload

As you consider how to make money blogging, remember that while you’re building your online presence, you’re also sharpening your entrepreneurial skills. You’ll soon find it hard to create upwards of three posts per week while also managing your business. Still, don’t let that slow you down. Consider getting extra help as you launch your blog so that you can scale your content quickly. You can do this by:

Outsourcing some content to freelancers

Letting other bloggers publish articles on your site (a great free option for you that also gives publicity to the guest contributor).

Whichever option you choose, structure your workload to focus on business strategy as well as writing.

Ready to get blogging? Get started with Wix .

03. Build a reputation

Once you’ve created a large amount of strategic content, establish yourself as an authority in your field as the next step toward making money blogging. These tips will help guide you:

Try guest blogging

Start by expanding your online presence, particularly in the blogosphere . You can reach out to online publications in your niche and pitch ideas for guest posts. Remember to send a link to your blog alongside your pitch as evidence of your experience in the field.

To find guest blogging opportunities, browse your favorite publications to see if they publish content by outside contributors. Here is a list of 101 guest posting publications and sites that might be worth reaching out to. Some include:

Smashing Magazine

CopyBlogger

Entrepreneur.com

New York Times Op-Ed Section

Business Insider

Forbes Opinion Section

Alternatively, if you follow any bloggers in your niche, you can search for their name online and see where they’re getting published. That will point you toward sites that accept guest content.

From there, you can pitch an idea to a writer or editor over email or via LinkedIn. If you already have a relationship with them on Twitter, you can also pitch them ideas there. Professionals in the online publishing world commonly use these social media platforms.

Don’t be discouraged if a publication doesn’t accept your pitch right away. Rejections are commonplace even for seasoned professionals in the publishing world. Your pitches will be accepted as you improve your outreach efforts. Besides, the more content you have published, the more you’ll build up your reputation—and the more likely a publication will want to publish you in the future.

If you’re lucky, some publications may offer you payment for your contributed content—a great start to making money blogging. That said, even if guest posting doesn't compensate you financially, it’s still valuable. In return, you get to network with others in your field, grow your readership and establish your expertise and authority. With enough experience, you could eventually land your own guest column.

Guest blogging also provides backlinks to your own blog—an important search engine optimization (SEO) signal. Read this article for more tips on SEO for bloggers .

Collaborate with experts

You can also work closely with other experts in your field to establish credibility, gain exposure and build an audience.

Reach out to professionals within your blogging niche—for example, a successful guest writer you follow or the editor of your favorite publication. Ask if you can conduct an interview with them, either as a guest post or for publication on your own blog. While this may seem like a bold request, people in this position often happily give interviews since it also increases their exposure.

Likewise, you can cross-promote other bloggers in your industry. Give their articles a shoutout on your social media posts and blog, and engage with them on Twitter. They’ll likely start reading your content to return the favor.

04. Promote and grow

The more people read your blog, the more easily you can earn an income from it. For that reason, growing your website traffic is an important stepping stone for making money from your blog.

Before we dive into how to promote your blog , keep in mind that you must continually market your work. You should promote your site alongside all other steps, from the very moment you publish your blog. Even as your readership grows, marketing your site will be just as crucial to its success as the blogging process itself.

Spread the word and build your popularity with the following tactics:

Optimize for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for your website’s visibility on search engines like Google. If you want people to find your blog, create content that ranks on the first page of organic search results for relevant queries. For example, if you’re creating a baking blog, you’ll want to appear in the top results for queries such as “birthday cake recipes” and “carrot cake recipes.”

To do this, you should not only strive to create the most informative blog posts on the web, but you should also optimize these posts by using strategic long tail keywords—a specific type of keyword that targets your precise audience.

While this might sound intimidating, beginner bloggers can easily learn how to find these keywords, especially with the help of certain keyword research tools. These types of blogging tools—which includes Google Keyword Planner , SEMrush , Ahrefs (pictured below) and more—point you directly to the terms you should include.

If you’re completely new to SEO and keyword research, it’s worthwhile to set aside some time to take a quick online SEO course, many of which are available for free. Wix’s SEO Learning Hub is a great place to start.

You can also take a look at this blog post checklist to make sure you’ve covered all the SEO basics, from keyword research to image optimization.

Create a blog newsletter

Another way to increase blog traffic —and make money as a result—is by making an email newsletter to promote your content. This will ensure that people who find your blog will come back to read future posts.

But how do you get people to subscribe to your newsletter in the first place? Use these ideas:

Create lead magnets: People will likely sign up if they receive something valuable in exchange. Commonly known as “freebies,” lead magnets are just incentives that you offer in exchange for a subscription. Your offers might include a free e-book or guide, a complementary slide deck or online course, or a coupon code for your online store.

Use opt-in forms: Opt-in boxes typically take the form of pop-ups or slide-ins asking readers to subscribe. Because they’re hard to ignore, they tend to grab the attention of site visitors more so than static text. You might choose to create an opt-in form that directly tells visitors to subscribe to your emails. Another route is to make opt-in online forms that highlight your lead magnets and ask visitors to enter their email addresses in exchange for the free reward.

Build an email list: A dedicated email list allows you to tap directly into readers’ inboxes and share your most relevant content. Once you’ve secured your list, nurture your relationship with your readers. Avoid spamming or over-sending. Instead, choose a dedicated day and time that you send out your newsletter, so readers can rely on it.

blog newsletter example

Build a social media strategy

Not promoting your blog articles on social media can be a major blogging mistake . Social media marketing, like SEO, is a great free way to gain exposure.

Not only should you share a link to your blog on your personal channels, but you should also consider creating separate dedicated social media accounts for your blog. Try creating a Facebook business page so that you can promote your blog on Facebook , as well as dedicated business accounts on Instagram and YouTube.

Once you do this, create content to accompany your articles to grow your audience. One option is to lead with microblogging . For example, make Instagram and Pinterest posts (see how to use Pinterest for blogging ) that feature images or infographics, and then link back to your blog articles within the posts. Likewise, you can repurpose your blog content as YouTube videos or shorts, or TikTok or Instagram reels and then include a link to the relevant article beneath each video.

Learn more about blogging vs instagram or blogging vs Youtube  in our guide.

social post from blog article to make money

Get creative: start a podcast or webinar

Expand your reach even further with different types of creative content formats. Post informative how-to videos on your site, and share your insights by starting a podcast or hosting a webinar. The more varieties of content you create to promote yourself as an expert in your field, the more likely people will discover your blog.

While you should initially offer this content for free to build your audience and drive traffic to your blog, you can eventually start charging to create an additional source of revenue. Keep this in mind as you plan how to make money from your blog.

How to make money blogging, part 2: Monetize your content

Once you have a strong content strategy and a growing online presence, you’ll probably wonder how to monetize a blog.

To start making money with your blog, you’ll want to use tools to enhance your website, as well as resources like company partnerships and affiliate programs. Here are some ideas:

Online courses and workshops

Add affiliate marketing links

Books and E-books

Speaking gigs

Consulting services

Freelance services

how to make money blogging list

Now that you’ve set your blog up for success, here’s how to earn a profit using the methods above:

05. Advertise within your blog

One way to make money blogging is to add Google AdSense ads to your blog posts —and generate income as a result.

What, exactly, is Google AdSense ? The program allows you to place ad spaces on your site. Google then fills those spaces with relevant advertisements for your blog and site visitors. You, in turn, earn money when users view or click those ads.

According to Wordstream , if you take the average CPCs (cost per click) across all different types of businesses and keywords in the US, the overall average CPC in Google Ads is between $1 and $2.

blog showing open ad space for making money

This popular and lucrative advertising program allows bloggers to turn their website traffic into money. Through the advertising network you have the freedom to choose your preferred ad sizes, shapes and placement, allowing you to optimize for clicks while maintaining a non-intrusive browsing experience for visitors.

If you decide to go this route, boost your earnings with the following tricks:

Create high-quality content: Even if you just want to make money with your blog, you should always prioritize your content quality. Strong content attracts traffic. And when you get traffic, your blog becomes a beneficial space for advertisers.

Find lucrative keywords: As you research keywords for your blog posts, keep an eye out for transactional terms that might interest advertisers. These include keywords that could potentially result in a sale, like “Best DSLR cameras” or “How to take professional photos.”

Choose ad style and size: Consider how ads will look or contrast with your blog’s color scheme or background. Tools like Social Stream are a great option for customizing your ads’ design.

A/B test your ad placement: When it comes to making money using ads, not all ad space is equal. The same ad can perform differently depending on its location—for instance, at the top, at the bottom, or on the side of a page. Conduct A/B tests to figure out which ad spaces get clicked on most, and use the results to inform your ad placement moving forward.

You can also add an ads.txt file to your blog . While Google AdSense is the biggest provider, using ads.txt gives you the flexibility of connecting with ad providers other than Google.

You can explore other blog monetization tools like Mediavine , Amazon Display Ads or AdThrive to name a few.

06. Offer paid subscriptions

You can also get paid to blog through deciding to create and sell subscriptions online , allowing loyal readers to buy access to exclusive content.

Of course, some of your content should remain free—after all, readers will want to explore your blog before deciding whether to buy. But you can supplement the freebies with in-depth posts that offer exclusive insights subscribers would pay for.

To pique your readers’ interest, give them a preview of each exclusive post, and then ask them to subscribe to continue reading.

A similar, but slightly different, approach is to offer paid memberships to your site. You can reward members with a variety of perks, including access to webinars, downloadable resources and free blog content.

blog subscription plans

07. Sell merchandise, e-books and more

Another revenue-creating option is selling products directly through your blog. To do this, you can open an online store and sell items related to your blog niche or personal brand.

Keep in mind that you don’t just have to sell physical products. Many bloggers opt to sell digital goods as well.

Here are some options to get brainstorming for the kinds of items you can sell:

Online courses/Vlog

Webinars and virtual events or meet ups

T-shirts, stickers and merchandise with your blog logo

Handmade crafts and other goods

If you started a fitness blog , for example, you might sell branded sports equipment. If you've started a travel blog , on the other hand, you might try selling digital travel guides for download.

Take a look at Minimalist Baker , for example, a personal blog turned online shop and foodie haven for many. Founded in 2012 by Dana Shultz, the blog's foundation is based on the criteria of 10 ingredients or less, one bowl and 30 minutes (or less) to prepare. Shultz authored a successful book, Minimalist Baker’s Everyday Cooking, with a large online community, has over 2 million followers on Instagram and a full-scale merchandise line selling baking mixes, kitchen essentials, pantry items and even photography and lighting equipment. It’s an excellent example of a blog making money by providing value through merchandising, as well as online recipes and workshops.

08. Become an affiliate

Remember when we looked at how much money bloggers actually earn? Their expense reports show us that nearly all top bloggers use affiliate marketing as part of their monetization strategy. And for good reason: affiliate marketing is a relatively easy source of passive income.

Affiliate marketing essentially means that you make money blogging by promoting other people’s products. This involves adding affiliate links to various products or services within your posts, throughout your site or across your social media accounts. When your site visitors click on those links and make a purchase, you’ll earn a commission from the sale.

To find brands to partner with as an affiliate, do your market research and browse the web for affiliate marketing programs that can connect you with different products or companies. Some of the most popular programs include:

CJ Affiliate : Connect with widely recognized brands and earn commissions by promoting their products.

ShareASale : Build profitable partnerships with brands across a variety of sectors.

Amazon Associates : Promote products sold on Amazon and earn up to 10% in associate commissions.

Clickbank : Explore a range of ecommerce tools, a global affiliate marketplace, and gain access to support and education.

Affiliate marketing is an effective strategy for both professional and personal blogs , so take the time to try out a few different platforms to find what works best for you.

09. Write sponsored content

As your blog grows, companies may approach you with sponsorship opportunities. The company will compensate you for each post you create that advertises their products to your audience. Often, these gigs come with extra perks, like free products from the company for you to review.

These posts tend to take the form of product reviews or other demonstrations of how you use a company’s products or services. A good practice is to recommend products you truly believe in so that you retain your readers’ trust. In addition, look for partnerships that enable you to create a series of sponsored posts across an extended period of time. This ensures a recurring source of revenue.

To find these opportunities, you don’t need to wait around for companies to find you. Reach out to the top organizations in your field and inquire about sponsorship options. Be sure to explain why the brand would benefit from the collaboration. For instance, tell them about your number of monthly visitors and what they stand to gain from reaching your audience.

10. Provide consulting services

Another way to make money blogging involves harnessing all the knowledge you’ve gained as a professional blogger. Using your blog as a portfolio , offer your own expertise as a service and promote yourself as a coach or consultant.

Depending on your field, you can either work with individuals or act as a consultant (see how to start a consulting blog ) for companies. Many types of blogs, from marketing to nutrition and interior design , are a natural stepping stone to a full-fledged consulting business. For instance, you might build on your blogging experience to become a digital marketing consultant or a food coach.

To start, offer services to individual clients and entice them with special packages and discounts. You can also branch out into group services, such as conferences and public speaking events, webinars and online courses. If people find that your blog offers genuinely valuable insights, they’ll likely pay for advice that’s tailored to their needs.

How long does it take to make money blogging?

The amount of time it takes to start making money blogging varies depending on a number of factors, including the niche you're in, the quality of your content, and your marketing efforts. That said, it takes an average of 20 months to start making money with a blog. However, there are many bloggers who start making money much sooner, and some who never make any money at all.

Here are some of the factors that can affect how long it takes to start making money blogging:

The niche you're in. Some niches are more competitive than others, and it may take longer to start making money in a competitive niche. Niches including fashion, finance and travel already have many established blogs, which makes it difficult to stand out from the crowd. If you're interested in a competitive niche, you'll need to create incredible content and be more active in promoting your blog to get noticed. It can sometimes be easier to get paid to blog with a less competitive niche for this reason.

The quality of your content. If you're writing good content, you're more likely to monetize your blog. This is because people will want to read your posts and stay on your blog. Your content should be well-written, informative and engaging, as well as relevant to your audience's interests. If you're not sure if your content meets those criteria, ask for feedback from friends, family or other bloggers.

Your marketing efforts. Actively promoting your blog and driving traffic to it is a great way to make money from it. There are many different ways to promote your blog, such as social media, email marketing and guest blogging. You should also make sure your blog is easy to find on search engines. This means using relevant keywords in your blog posts and optimizing your website for SEO.

Earning a living by creating a blog

Writing a blog isn’t just a hobby; it can also be a way to make money, generate a profit and live on your own terms. As you’ve seen, you can turn your website traffic into cash in a variety of ways. Follow these tips to grow your audience, build your reputation and make your content profitable. With a combination of quality content, business smarts and professional monetization tools, you’ll be well on your way to earning revenue from your blog.

To get started, use blog templates and then check out the how to monetize a blog part of our Blogging online course .

Tip: Before you start creating your blog, see our guide on how much does it cost to start a blog  to estimate your expected expenses.

Reasons to start a blog beyond income

Here are some reasons to start a blog:

Share your thoughts and ideas with the world. If you have something to say, a blog is a great way to get it out there. You can write about anything that interests you, from your personal experiences to your professional expertise.

Connect with others who share your interests. Blogging can help you connect with people from all over the world who share your interests. You can build relationships with other bloggers, readers and potential collaborators.

Learn new things. The process of writing and researching for your blog can help you learn new things about yourself and the world around you. You can also learn from other bloggers by reading their posts and engaging in discussions.

Make money. While it's not easy to make money from blogging, it's possible. There are a number of ways to monetize your blog, such as through advertising, affiliate marketing, and selling products or services.

Build your brand. If you have a business or want to establish yourself as an expert in your field, blogging can be a great way to build your brand. By consistently sharing high-quality content, you can attract an audience and establish yourself as a thought leader.

Have a creative outlet. Blogging can be a great way to express your creativity and share your unique perspective with the world. You can experiment with different writing styles and formats, and use multimedia to enhance your posts.

Make a difference. If you're passionate about a particular cause, blogging can be a powerful way to raise awareness and make a difference in the world. You can use your blog to educate others, advocate for change and inspire others to take action.

Can you still make money from blogging in 2024?

While some might say blogging's golden age is over, blogging is still profitable and a viable way to make money. The key lies in adapting to the new landscape. 

The good news is that blogging remains a powerful tool for building an audience and establishing expertise. As Wix's Blog Growth and SEO Outreach Specialist, Ophyr Hanan points out, " Blogging adds value to existing and potential users by providing them with authoritative, trustworthy information that will help them throughout their user journey and engagement with your products/services." People still consume content online, and quality blogs can attract dedicated readers. Monetization options from blogging haven't disappeared - they've just evolved beyond simply slapping banner ads everywhere.

That said, competition is fierce, so standing out requires a laser-focused niche, top-notch content and active audience engagement.  Relying solely on search engine traffic isn't enough. Social media promotion, email marketing and community building are all crucial to help you build your presence online. You should also explore multiple income streams to make sure you haven't put all your eggs in one basket.

Here are some key tips to making money from blogging this year:

Find your niche and become an authority. Deep knowledge and valuable insights in a specific area attract loyal readers.

Focus on quality content. Well-researched, engaging and informative writing builds trust and keeps readers coming back.

Embrace multiple monetization strategies. Experiment with different options and find what works for your audience and niche.

Build your community. Foster engagement through comments, social media and email lists.

Stay adaptable and keep learning. The digital landscape evolves, so be prepared to adjust your strategies accordingly.

How to make money blogging FAQ

How do beginner bloggers make money.

Generally either through affiliate marketing or display advertising. Closely followed by sponsored posts. These are often considered the easiest and fastest ways to make money from a blog as a beginner.

Do bloggers make much money?

How do bloggers get paid, how do i choose a profitable niche for my blog, what is a blog, how hard its it to make money as a blogger, can i make money from a blog in just 6 months, related posts.

How to write a blog post: a step-by-step guide

21 of the best blog examples in 2024 that'll inspire your blogging journey

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Writers who make over $10,000 a month self-publishing on Amazon share 4 tips on how to get started with no experience

  • Writers are making good money self-publishing through Amazon Kindle — without having decades of experience in the publishing world.
  • Successful authors who make upward $10,000 a month share their most important tips for making money, like publishing books in a series in rapid succession.
  • They also advise temporarily dropping the price of a book or books to 99 cents, and then advertising it on book promotion websites such as AuthorsXP or BookSniffer.

Insider Today

Have you always wanted to write a book? If so, you probably figured it would be a labor of love, something that would earn very little, or you might even have to pay to get it published.

While that certainly used to be true for most non-household name authors, it isn't true anymore.

These days, many people are making a good living, up to $10,000 a month or even more, as independent authors publishing their books on Amazon, even though they aren't famous and don't have decades of experience in the publishing world.

The key is to write books that people enjoy reading, publish them quickly in a series, and apply a little smart marketing so that readers will be able to find them.

Here's some advice from some authors who've done it themselves.

1. The more books you write, the more books you'll sell

This absurdly simple concept is behind the highly popular Facebook group 20Booksto50k, begun by indie author Michael Anderle, author and co-author of multiple book series and now CEO of LMBPN Publishing which publishes both his books and those of other authors.

The idea came about when Anderle was writing the third book of his first series, the Kurtherian Gambit vampire thriller series in Mexico. He'd published the first two as Amazon Kindle books and as Kindle Unlimited books (free to those with a Kindle Unlimited membership), a popular choice among indie authors. Amazon invites indie authors to publish Kindle books for free, and keeps 30 percent of the sale price, paying the author the other 70 percent. 

At the time, those first two books were earning him between $7 and $12 a day, Anderle explained in a video interview at the 2019 London Book Fair. Some authors might have been disheartened, but he had learned that he and his wife could sell their Texas home, buy a condo in Mexico, and retire there on $50,000 a year. "If I could hit 20 books," he said, "I could hit $50,000 a year and then we could retire early."

In fact, he did much better than that. He published his first book in the Kurtherian Gambit series in November 2015, and by the time he published the fifth book in that series in January 2016, he was making five figures per month, he said. "By the twelfth and thirteenth month, I was doing six figures per month." 

Publishing books in a series in rapid succession is key to financial success, Anderle tells Business Insider. "Fans of the series push the latest book up into the top of the charts and that, in turn, causes potential readers to notice the latest book and then go look for book one in the series and start there."

A similar approach works for non-fiction books, said  Sally Miller , a former business analyst and project manager and now stay-at-home mom and coach who has published 15 books about how to make money in various ways, such as Airbnb, podcasting, blogging, and--yes--as an author. Miller now makes between $6,000 and $8,000 a month from royalties, and that number should continue to grow as she publishes more books.

Read more:   Small investors with no background in finance or real estate are making up to $29,000 a month in run-down properties. Here are 4 tips for those looking to do the same.

2. A little marketing goes a long way

"It takes a solid marketing plan to make all the pieces fit together, and it's more than one thing that has made me somewhat successful," said Tracy Fredrychowski, author of five books in the Amish/Christian fiction category .

Fredrychowski has a marketing company but she also found widespread readership for her blog and short stories about Amish lifestyles and values in Western Pennsylvania, where she lives.

Related stories

When readers asked if her stories were available in book form, Fredrychowski published them as a book with a vanity publisher — and wound up selling less than 100 copies.

Because of her marketing background, she knew she could do better on her own, and she began self-publishing on Kindle. Five books into her series, she's making around $4,000 a month, and with three more books coming out in 2021, she said she's on track to double those earnings in 2021.

"I'm on the cusp of being able to hand over the reins of my digital marketing company to write full-time," she said.

To market her books, Miller has a professionally designed website and a professional looking newsletter that she sends to the 8,000 readers who have signed up for it. "I offer a freebie," she explains. "If somebody signs up for my email list, I give them a free book to put them on the journey, and then in the back of that book they can find my other books."

When it comes to advertising, successful indie authors recommend one very effective tactic. Temporarily drop the price of a book or books to 99 cents, and then advertise it on book promotion websites such as AuthorsXP or BookSniffer, which send out lists of 99-cent book specials to tens of thousands of voracious readers.

Fredrychowski also uses that sale time to run ads on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. "Normally, I don't pay more than $25 to $75 for an ad," she said. The promotion usually pays for itself. "Even though I've dropped my price to 99 cents for those days, my book sales are jacked up because I promoted that sale for five days in five different places."

3. Write a book people want to read

All the marketing in the world won't help you if you don't write compelling books that readers enjoy and want to read more of.

If you're writing how-to books, make sure they clearly and concisely teach the reader whatever he or she needs to learn, in a straightforward and readable way. If you're writing fiction, "you need to engage your reader immediately," Anderle said. "If a reader isn't engaged with your story in the first 3,000 words, figure out why. Because it's too easy for them to drop a book and move on."

He recommends having at least six or seven people read the first 3,000 words of your book and then give it one of three ratings: "I want to read more," "I'm noncommittal," or "It's not working for me."

Beyond that, he said, if you're working in genre fiction (such as romance or fantasy), learn the rules and tropes of that particular genre or you'll leave readers unsatisfied. "For example the romance trope requires a happily-ever-after. If it does not have that, it is not a romance." Anderle recommends using the TV Trope wiki to find tropes for the genre you're writing in.

It's also important to have your book cover professionally designed and have your text professionally edited, he said.

"Solid covers can be had for around $100 to $200 or even less, if you look around," he said. "The cost of editing can vary depending on where you look as well.  There are companies and resources around the world that can deliver good quality at a reasonable price." 

You need all these things for a successful series, he adds. "The cover sells the book. The story sells the next book in the series. If your read-through rate is less than 63% from book one to book two, or less than 86% from book two to book three, there are problems. Figure out what they are and fix them."

Read more:   This couple paid off $114,000 of debt in less than 2 years — then saved up $431,000. Here are the side hustles they started and how much money they made from each one.

4. Be patient

Those who've done it warn that it can take time to find the right formula and momentum, that not every book will be a success, and that if your goal is to make a living from your books, it can take perseverance — and many, many hours spent writing — to get there.

"Don't assume that it's too late to get into this game," Anderle said. "Success may happen fast, but it might not. Be prepared to learn, to grow, to be patient and figure out how to enjoy the trip."

6 Awesome Ways to Make Money by Writing Articles

Whether you’re a skillful freelance writer or a beginner with no experience, anyone can make money from writing articles. It is a trendy job today, and people do it full-time or occasionally. You can do it either for your own blog or write articles for money for another website. Here are six great ideas on how to monetize writing.

How to make money by writing articles

Why You Should Try Writing for Money

Writing online for money is so popular today because it allows people to have a flexible lifestyle and still earn a living. Here are the biggest benefits of such a job:

  • It is easy to find a job, as there is always demand for writers, mainly, from online businesses who need to constantly update content on their websites.
  • It pays well. Salaries depend on the niche and author’s skills. Thus, finance, cryptocurrency, travel, digital marketing and education might be the most profitable niches in 2022.
  • It doesn’t require academic qualifications to start off. There are plenty of courses and books on the internet and in stores that can teach you writing from scratch.  
  • There is always a variety of topics to escape exhausting routine and educate yourself along the way.
  • You can work from anywhere in the world and even travel in the meantime.
  • No need to spend time commuting from home to work and vice versa.
  • Depending on the country, you can enjoy tax advantages as an independent contractor or self-employed individual.

Best Ideas to Make Money by Writing Articles

To get paid to write articles, you’ll need to start from somewhere, gain skills and knowledge, build a customer base and reputation and be able to earn more with time. What are the options for writing articles for money ?

1. Writing for Your Blog

Setting up your own blog is a long-term strategy, and you won’t make money writing articles instantly. And writing itself won’t bring income unless you monetize the website with affiliate marketing and sponsored posts or by selling your own product.

On the flip side, once the blog features enough materials, it will keep generating money without much effort on your part. 

How much can you earn? Travelpayouts partner, Clive Muir, has been able to generate over $20,000 in sales in the tours and activities niche with his website caminodelrey.es . Clive is a reputable writer, but beginners can also generate some income. Usually, it takes around one year to start earning $1,000 – $1,500 per month. For instance, Two Scots Abroad started in 2018 and managed to get over $10,000 followers in just a year. 

To ensure a good start, choose a reputable blogging platform, pick a profitable niche, select a catchy domain name that people could easily memorize, and start creating content. Then, it’s important to optimize the website along the way to improve its discoverability for both users and search engines and monetize the content with affiliate marketing. For example, with Travelpayouts partnership platform you can earn with the travel affiliate programs of more than 100 brands from different niches, such as flights, hotels, tours and activities, and many others. 

Join the Travelpayouts Partnership Platform

Access exclusive tools and the best travel partner programs, including flights, hotels, car rental, insurance, tours and activities, all in one place.

To make sure that you can earn easier and faster in the field of affiliate marketing, Travelpayouts shares tips on how to make your project cool and earn money from it. For example, on the Travelpayouts Academy website, you will find free webinars and courses for beginners and advanced content creators. Watch the lesson from the “Travelpayouts 101” course right now to see how you can work with affiliate links on your website.

Getting Paid to Write

To monetize writing skills faster, consider taking a freelance job or preparing a sponsored post. Below, you’ll learn how to find freelance platforms, blogs looking for authors or advertisers to partner with. 

2. Freelance Platforms

You can find ways to make money writing online with freelance platforms. These are marketplaces where you can create a profile and find clients. Most platforms allow you to build a portfolio and gather feedback from customers. Another advantage is the secure payment process. On the flip side, freelance platforms charge fees to authors, clients or both of them. So, it’s important to check terms and conditions. 

Where can you find a job?

  • iWriter offers various types of content and topics to make money writing online. It’s possible to start from $1.40 per 150 words and earn up to $80 per 500 words. However, you should make no less than $20 a week to be paid. Otherwise, your money will burn.

iWriter pricing

  • FlexJobs features all kinds of freelance jobs, accessible only with a subscription (from $6.95 per month).
  • Blogging Pro offers free access to employers but doesn’t verify them on the other hand. Salaries vary a lot. On average, you can get from $30 to $50 per hour as a content writer. 

3. Blogs Looking for Writers

Another option to get paid to write articles is by collaborating directly with websites looking for authors. These are usually big platforms with a large community that publish new posts on a daily basis.

For example, Backpacker magazine accepts articles about hiking, backpacking, interesting personalities, and destinations. It offers $0.40 – over $1.00 per word. Great Escape Publishing requests travel-related posts and content that teaches people how to make money writing articles about travel, blogging, photography, etc. You can earn from $50 up to $200 per post.

These are just a couple of examples, as the internet abounds in blogs looking for authors . 

4. Article Writing Services

Unlike freelance platforms, article-writing services act as a mediator and have more control over projects. Your pay will be much lower than if you worked directly with a client, but it is also guaranteed, even if there has been a problem with a client. And you’ll be likely to have a stable work-flow, as big services are more credible in customers’ eyes than freelancers.

Writer Access

WriterAccess welcomes writers, editors, content strategists and translators, and finds them a task with the help of artificial intelligence. You’ll get 70% of the earnings, with $2.8–$7 pay rate for word and two payouts per month.

To join the community, you’ll need to build a profile and pass a proficiency test. There is also an extensive library of images, videos and templates to help authors deliver top-notch materials.

Textbroker homepage

Textbroker is another great service, offering from 0.7 cents to 5 cents per word. You can write on your own or team up with other authors for a bigger project. To start working, you’ll need to submit a sample post, get rated and then be able to choose projects based on your rating. Note that Textbroker accepts authors from the United States only. 

5. Sponsored Posts

You can monetize writing skills and promote your own blog simultaneously by creating sponsored posts for other brands: articles, offers, announcements, lists, videos, infographics, and more.

In return, the company will pay cash or reward you with gift cards, free product samples, etc. Generally, you can get $150-$800 per sponsored piece of content when cooperating with the services such as Cooperatize or PayPerPost .

If you want to estimate price by yourself, you can use the following formula :

Formula

If you don’t get any sponsored deals yet, it’s important to start networking with other bloggers and brands. If you already do so, be sure to improve your outreach strategy to land better deals and earn more.

6. Writing Contests

Taking part in a writing contest is another great way to get paid to write articles at home. It’s not the most widespread method of making money but still, it’s worth a try. Such contests usually cover a certain genre or topic – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. Authors of the most relevant and appealing content get prizes. 

For example, you can take part in the Travel Writing Contest from Nowhere Magazine and get the opportunity to win $1,000. Look through the whole list of valid writing contests to choose the event that matches your skills and interests.

how to make money publishing articles

How to Create Perfect Content

It’s finally time to start making money with writing.

Don’t hesitate to make money on writing. The trick is just to choose the start gaining skills. If you’re a rookie, why not start a blog of your own and practice until you have a good level of expertise or register with article-writing services.

More experienced authors can easily apply for a higher rate with such services or build a profile on freelance platforms and work directly with clients. 

Alexandra Belski

How to Monetize a Blog (13 Profitable Ways)

how to monetize a blog

Starting and monetizing a blog has never been easier than it is today.

Not too long ago, creating a website would’ve cost you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. Monetizing a website was just as difficult. PayPal was in its infancy, Stripe didn’t exist and email marketing was nowhere near as flexible as it is now.

Today however you can start, maintain, and monetize a blog on WordPress with just a few hundred dollars (this can vary based on what you need to do). But just because it’s easier to make money with your blog today, doesn’t mean that most bloggers do.

According to ConvertKit’s 2017 state of blogging report , pro bloggers reported an average profit of $138,064 the past year, while amateur bloggers (who made up 86% of those surveyed) made only $9,497.

This is terrible, especially when you consider that most bloggers start a blog so they can be their own boss and quit their dull 8-to-5 job.

Why did you start your blog?

So how do you go from being an amateur blogger to one of the pros hitting six figures every year?

Well, you need a solid marketing plan, this includes content, a profitable niche , and a great monetization strategy.

You also need to need to do some quick math.

When Should You Start to Monetize Your Blog?

There’s no concrete number out there for how much traffic or how large an email list should be to make money from your blog because that all depends on what you sell and how you sell it.

(Suggested reading: How Much Is My Website Worth? and 77 Proven Tactics to Drive Traffic to Your Website ).

However, having two things straightened out first will help you a lot:

  • Get steady traffic : You don’t need tens of thousands of visitors but at least a thousand visitors a month means you’re doing something right.
  • Grow your email list : Again you don’t have to aim for anything crazy here. We’ll show you examples of people who had a small list but still used it to their advantage.

Now these two things matter, but primarily, monetizing your blog efficiently is all about the numbers.

For example, if you need to make $6,000 from your blog, you can:

  • Sell a $200 product (say a course) to 30 people.
  • Sell a $600 course to 10 people.
  • Become an affiliate partner with brands offering recurring commissions (hit the $6000 mark at your own pace).
  • Or even charge $6,000 for consulting with a client.

Monetization is math, not magic.

This doesn’t mean that the key to monetization is simply increasing the prices of what you sell. Rather it means that you should choose a monetization strategy that aligns with where your blog is right now or where you want it to be in the future.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can monetize a blog and make money online whether you get thousands of page views a month or you’re just starting out.

We’re going to show some solid strategies other bloggers have used to generate revenue from their own blogs in diverse niches and teach you how to do the same with your own blog.

1. Become a Freelance Blogger in Your Niche

One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a freelance writer for more prominent blogs in your niche.

Think about it, you probably started your blog because you have experience/knowledge in that area, so why not use that to your advantage?

Businesses are looking for people that can create content to fuel their marketing so who better to create that content than someone that has knowledge in that niche.

Freelance blogger Bamidele Onibalusi used his blog, Writers in Charge, to show his content marketing chops while also growing his audience. He now makes a full-time income blogging for other businesses.

According to data from Glassdoor, the average freelancer in the United States makes about $40k a year. Keep in mind that this figure is influenced by your experience level and the niche you write in.

Here’s a breakdown of how much you can earn in different niches according to the Editorial Freelance Association :

What average freelancer makes by niche

You might not be able to charge these rates when you begin, but as you gain more experience and credibility your rates go up. Be careful not to charge too low in the beginning though.

Charging $10 for an article might seem like an easy way to start getting clients, but in truth it can chase quality clients aways as your skills are called into question, not to mention charging so little can drain your motivation to continue.

Since we’re on the subject of pricing, it’s better to charge your clients on a per project basis rather than on an hourly rate since it can be hard to determine how long it’ll take you to complete a task, especially when you’re just starting out as a freelancer.

Charging a fee based on the project itself means you get rewarded for finishing quicker and your clients know how much they’ll pay from the onset.

According to WriteWorldwide , here’s how much you can charge per project in your first year as a freelance writer, without accounting for your niche or previous writing experience.

How much to charge for writing

The best part about freelance writing is that you don’t need a lot of traffic on your blog to start making money, all businesses really care about it that you can write great content.

Jorden Roper , for example, made $5,000 in her fourth month of being a freelance writer and Jennifer Gregory pulls in about six figures a year from her freelance writing business.

As a freelance blogger, your job is to create written content that attracts visitors to a business’s website so some of these visitors can convert into customers for the business.

According to Content marketing institute’s 2019 report , marketers are set to spend more money on content creation and 50% of the marketers surveyed expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2019.

B2B increased spending on content creation

If there are businesses making money in your niche and so as long as these businesses are creating content then you can bet they need writers.

Notice that I mentioned that the business has to be making money. One of the worst mistakes you can make as a freelance blogger is picking a niche where businesses can’t afford to pay you.

For example, writing about art might be your idea of fun and you might have extensive knowledge of it, but how many blogs can pay you regularly to write about that?

The path to profitability as a freelance blogger is finding the right market to position yourself in.

A quick way to test whether there’s money to be made in your niche is to find at least ten writers that cover the niche you want to write in. You can do this by simply making a search on LinkedIn with the keywords for your niche.

For example, when I search for individuals with the exact title of “freelance personal finance writer” on LinkedIn I get about 42 results. You could also do it without quotes for a more broad search which will generate even more results.

Freelance personal finance writer search on LinkedIn

This is an easy way to validate your niche.

We’ve already established that you don’t need a lot of traffic to make money as a freelance writer but that doesn’t mean people will just find your blog and hire you.

You have to go out and promote your service.

When you’ve created writing samples on your blog and maybe guest posts on other blogs, you can start reaching out to businesses you want to write for.

You can also use freelance marketplaces like Upwork, SEOclerks and Fiverr. But while there are a few freelance writers that make a lot of money, like Danny Marguiles who made over $100k a year on Upwork, the majority of freelancer writers on these platforms make very little money.

To avoid the race for the bottom that is freelance marketplaces, you’ll have to do most of the outreach yourself.

How to Find Blogs to Write For

The best way to find businesses or blogs in your niche to write for is to simply make a Google search for keywords related to that niche and see what comes up.

Because clearly, the blogs that show up in the first few pages of Google are investing a lot in content marketing.

For example, if I was looking for blogs to write for in the fitness niche, making a simple search term like “Fitness blog” shows me this:

Fitness blog Google search

You can also search for terms related to your niche specifically, for example, in the case of fitness something like “Workout plans”:

Workout plans Google search

Now all you have to do is contact the blog owners and pitch them your freelance writing service.

Take Advantage of Your Own Site

Besides searching for new writing gigs, you should also take advantage of your own site, you’re a writer after all.

Use inbound marketing and SEO to drive people to your site where you can then offer them your writing and blogging services.

Freelance writer, Maddy Osman does this on her freelancing site, The Blogsmith .

Maddy Osman freelance writing prices

2. Sell Ebooks to Your Audience

Selling ebooks is one of the most popular ways bloggers choose to monetize their blogs. It’s perfect because it’s relatively easy to create and is usually priced adequately enough that most visitors can buy.

But ebooks do more than let bloggers monetize their blogs quickly. As a blogger selling an ebook can be the fastest way to test if people are interested in what you’re covering enough to pay for it.

Ebooks are also a low-risk way for your website visitors to judge the value you can bring before buying more expensive products.

Contrary to popular belief you don’t need a lot of traffic on your blog to make money with your books. For example, David Oudiette converted the knowledge he’d gained building landing pages into a 252 page $39 ebook.

He didn’t have a lot of traffic on his blog as all he did at the time was consulting, but David was able to generate over $13,000 in revenue from his ebook.

The landing page cookbook ebook

Here’s what David had to do to sell that many books:

  • He asked his blog subscribers about their landing page, gave them free tips and then pointed them to his book.
  • He answered questions and gave feedback about landing pages on Quora and Reddit, then pitched his book as an additional source of information.
  • David also added the book on Product Hunt.
  • Even more impressively, David cold emailed businesses and gave them free feedback on their landing page, he then answered replies and linked to his book.

So David didn’t have a lot of traffic but he did do a lot of work.

There’s also Taylor Pearson who sold over 5,000 books in four weeks and in 2015 had made over $60k from just that book. Taylor had just 700 email subscribers at the time.

Taylor credits the success of his book to a few things:

  • Getting fans of his blog to become beta readers during the writing stage.
  • Creating a Facebook group to communicate his book’s progress with core readers (Read: How to create a Facebook page ).
  • Sending the book to everyone on the Facebook group so they could leave an honest review on Amazon.
  • Keeping everyone on his list informed about the book’s progress which makes them more involved and likely to buy later on.
  • Synchronizing social media messages during and after launch.
  • Sending a personalized email about his book to every one of his Gmail contacts.
  • Doing a giveaway to promote the book.

The book ended up a bestseller on the Amazon small business section and the rest is history.

The End of Jobs ebook

What’s great about both of these examples is that they show that with the right marketing and a good book, you don’t need that many subscribers and you certainly don’t have to be an expert writer.

None of these authors published and hoped, instead, they did a lot of work for their books to take off.

Where to Sell Your Ebook

You can then choose to sell your ebook directly on your blog or through platforms like Gumroad or Podia .

Selling your ebook on your own site can be advantageous, as you get to keep 100% of the profits. For example, Harsh Agrawal of ShoutMeLoud has an entire section of his site dedicated entirely towards his different ebooks.

ShoutMeLoud ebooks

You can easily create something like this with the Easy Digital Downloads WordPress plugin.

If you choose to publish your ebook as an Amazon Kindle then you can only keep 70% of the profits but it comes with the added advantage that the more books you sell the more exposure you can get which leads to even more sales.

Selling ebooks aren’t restricted to a particular niche either. There are ebooks on blogging, photography, fitness and anything you can think of.

For example, if you had a blog that taught gardening you can sell an ebook that taught your audience in more detail how to grow their own gardens or a particular plant.

You can even repurpose some of the content you’ve already written on your blog and then add more detail and context.

How to Make the Book

If you don’t have the time or skill to write a book yourself you can hire ghostwriters to do it for you.

You can find ghostwriters on LinkedIn, Scripted , Upwork and even Fiverr . Keep in mind that, like anything, you get what you pay for. More experience ghostwriters will charge you more than beginners.

You can also create your book cover yourself with tools like Canva, Photoshop, and Snappa or you can pay for a service like 99designs and let a professional do it for you.

3. Create and Sell Online Courses

Another way to monetize your blog is by selling online courses. What holds most bloggers back from creating their own course is that they think you need to be some sort of expert to teach a course.

But this isn’t true, all you need to really teach a course is to know more than the people you’re teaching and to be able to present this information in a way that people will get value from.

Ramit Sethi of IWT makes millions from the courses he creates not because he’s a certified financial planner but because he helps people eliminate problems in their lives.

Finance course

You don’t need to be a certified chef to create a course that teaches people how to cook. If you can cook better than most people and create your course material in a way that can truly teach people how to cook then there’s nothing holding you back from creating your course.

More people are taking online courses than ever before, the e-learning industry is expected to grow to about $325 billion by 2025.

You also don’t need to be an influencer like Ramit Sethi to make a decent income from your courses.

There are people like Joseph Michael who made $40k as a newbie teaching writers how to use the popular writing software Scrivener.

Scrivener course

Joseph didn’t have thousands of visitors or a gigantic email list. He sold his course by reaching out to influencers and promoting his course on webinars he spoke on.

How to Come up with Course Ideas

If you already have an audience then you simply need to identify a problem that a lot of them share that you can solve.

Ways to Identify Pain Points Your Audience Needs Solved:

  • Send a survey: The fastest way to know what problems people in your audience have is to ask them. You can do this by sending a simple survey through email.

Here’s an example of Ramit Sethi doing just this in one of his emails just before the New year:

Email survey

  • Read blog comments: Your comment section can be a treasure trove of ideas if you pay attention to them. And if you don’t have that many comments on your blog you can read comments from other blogs in your niche.

Blog comment

If you don’t have an audience, however, then you can come up with course ideas by brainstorming a list of things you do better than most people.

Here are a few questions to help you figure this out:

  • What do your friends compliment you on?
  • What do people come to you for advice for?
  • What does everyone around you complain about, but you seem to have no problem with?
  • What have you learned from your past job?
  • What can you do better than most people you know?

For Joseph, he knew how to use Scrivener which most people found to be too complex. In your case, it may be playing an instrument or dressing. As long as you can do it better than most people you can teach it to them.

Hosting Your Courses

You can choose to host your courses on WordPress with LMS hosting for WordPress , in which case you’d keep most of the profit from your course but you’d have to set up everything on your own or hire a developer to help you with it .

There are also third-party platforms you can host your courses on. These platforms either charge a monthly fee or a percentage of sales and in exchange, you get a more professional platform to host your course on.

WordPress Extension for Your Courses

  • WP Courseware

Third Party Platforms to Host Your Courses On

4. start a coaching/consulting business.

Sometimes people want more detailed and personalized instructions than a book or course can provide them and so they turn to one on one coaching (or consulting depending on the type of services you offer).

Coaching or consulting is a monetization strategy that most blog owners who’ve found success in selling books and courses turn to when they want to create an additional revenue stream.

It’s not just for established bloggers however, consulting can also be your monetization strategy from the start.

Coaching like most of the monetization strategy we’ve already covered banks on you being able to use your skills and experience to help people solve problems in their lives.

Brennan Dunn for example, helps businesses sell more with marketing automation and charges about $9k for a consultation and Nagina Abdullah makes over 100k a year coaching with clients that want to lose weight.

Here’s a snapshot of Nagina’s earning throughout the year:

Consulting revenue

If you’re already generating revenue with books and courses, consider offering one on one consultations to people in your audience.

And if you’re just getting started, the low volume nature of consulting means that you can start to generate revenue without much traffic.

With consulting it’s not just about how much traffic you generate, it’s more about getting the right kind of traffic, i.e people that need your services and can afford to pay you.

That means writing targeted blog posts on topics your type of clients care about, it means speaking on podcast your audience listens to and going to events where they gather so they know about you.

5. Offer a Paid Membership Plan

Businesses with subscription models are becoming increasingly popular, so much so that some people have started calling it the Subscription economy.

Everything from Netflix, web hosting providers and membership sites are part of the subscription economy.

Subscription economy

A membership site is a gated section of your online business where members subscribe either monthly or annually to receive exclusive benefits.

The people in your community share a common interest and the benefits they pay for can include exclusive articles, advice, reports, webinars, in-person meetups and just being around like-minded people.

Membership sites not only allow you to reach more people, but it also gives everyone a sense of community and belonging.

One thing I love about membership sites is that everyone’s part of a group whether they realize it or not.

That means that if you have an interest in something the world is so big and the internet so connected that you can find other people just like you.

For example, Ryan Levesque loved Orchids and knew how to grow them so he created Orchids made easy where he offers his members exclusive content and provides them a platform where they can meet and learn from other Orchid lovers.

Ryan’s members pay $9.95 every month and since he has 1,800 members that put his revenue at a cool $18k a month.

Club

Even better, based on how much you charge for your membership you might not need that much traffic.

Will Hamilton of Fuzzy yellow balls teaches tennis players how to up their game and he once had 600 members paying him $25 every month. That’s over $15,000 a month from just 600 people and this was back in 2010.

You can create a membership site for almost anything as long as the people you’re targeting have money and are dedicated.

For example, tennis players put in hours of practice to be good so they’re committed and they also spend money on tennis gear, so they have money to spend.

Another great example is golfers. Golfers are willing to put in the effort to improve their skill and they also spend money on equipment.

Which is probably why Sean Ogle of Breaking Eighty was able to get 150 members to join his golf membership within 8 months of starting his blog. Breaking Eighty members pay between $250 to $500 annually.

If you have an audience that’s dedicated and already spend money to improve then creating a membership site might be the most profitable thing you can do. You can easily start making thousands of dollars with only a few hundred members.

When it comes to creating and managing your membership site, you can use WordPress plugins or third-party platforms.

Managing Memberships Sites on WordPress

  • Memberpress
  • Ultimate Membership Pro

Managing Membership Sites with Third-Party Tools

  • Uscreen : If you have mainly video content.
  • Wild Apricot

6. Make Money with Display Advertising (Banner Ads)

There’s a lot of hate on display ads in the blogosphere. Most people talk about how it’s a bad monetization strategy because you can’t make anything decent with it.

In most cases, they would be right, but there’s a reason display ads are still popular despite all the bad press they get.

The reason is that they work and are the fastest, even if not the most profitable way to start monetizing a website.

In fact, some bloggers start with display ads until they can find more profitable monetization strategies. For some people, those first few dollars give them enough motivation to continue with the blog.

For example, Alborz Fallah of Car Expert started out monetizing his website when a friend bugged him to put display ads from Google Adsense on his blog. The ads allowed Alborz to go from making nothing on his blog to earning a steady $200 a day while he kept his full-time job.

Suggested reading: 22 Best AdSense Alternatives to Consider for Your Website in 2019 .

Alborz later started working directly with car manufacturers that paid as much as $30,000 for sponsorship deals. All of this wouldn’t have been possible if that friend hadn’t convinced him to monetize his blog with Adsense first.

Alborz isn’t the only one that’s found success with display ads either, so has entrepreneur Jon Dykstra from Fat Stacks .

Here’s a snapshot of Jon’s Adsense earnings in 30 days .

Revenue from display ads

Not bad for a poor monetization strategy right?

Jon says the secret to his Adsense success is optimal ad placements , generating a lot of traffic on the numerous sites he owns and picking niches where display ads work.

A great free WordPress plugin you can use to optimize your ad placements is Ad Inserter . With it, you can easily A/B test your Ads to see which perform better and it even allows you to customize how and where your Ads appear on your website.

For example, if you want an ad to show in your article, but only after the first two paragraphs of content, you can easily do that.

With ads, you don’t need a product of your own to sell but you do need traffic and the more of it you can generate the better you perform.

It might take some time for ads to start working for you as you begin to grow your blog and improve your content marketing but eventually, you’ll get there.

Ads don’t even have to be permanent, it can just be a temporary way to make money with your blog until you can find better a way to monetize it.

But we are living in the age of ad-blockers and they are affecting your income in a negative way.

7. Become an Affiliate Marketer

You can’t have an article about monetizing a blog without mentioning affiliate marketing . It’s one of the most common ways bloggers make money online .

In fact, affiliate marketing powers a lot of the web, approximately 15 percent of the digital media industry’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing and in the U.S affiliate marketing drives as many e-commerce orders as email.

With affiliate marketing, you promote the products of other businesses and get a commission for every sale you help bring in.

Affiliate marketers work the same way as most salespeople. They help promote and sell a company’s product and get a commission when someone buys.

Here’s a visual breakdown of how it works:

How affiliate marketing works

It’s really that simple, say for example your commission is $5 for every sale, and you get 200 people to buy that product, you would’ve have made $1000.

What attracts people to affiliate marketing is that you can just piggyback on a great product and sell that to your audience.

With Affiliate Marketing You Only Need Three Things

  • A niche (This seems to be popping up a lot doesn’t it? 😉).
  • An affiliate product.
  • And an audience to promote the product to.

You build your audience by writing about topics related to your niche and once you have an audience, you can find products from affiliate networks like:

  • Rakuten Marketing
  • Amazon affiliate (make sure to check out the AAWP WordPress plugin )
  • eBay Partner Network
  • Clickbank affiliate

We also have an affiliate program here at Kinsta. Kinsta’s affiliate program comes with 10% recurring lifetime commissions and many bloggers are already earning a lot of passive income through it.

You can also check what affiliate products other blogs in your niche are promoting, and reach out to those businesses yourself.

One thing to keep in mind when monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing is that you should be focused on providing value to your readers and not just pitching products so you can make a sale.

Case in point, the best affiliate marketers don’t even come across as affiliate marketers.

Take, for example, Ryan Robinson who makes tens of thousands of dollars in affiliate earnings every month through his blog.

Affiliate earnings

Ryan creates a lot of valuable content for his readers and pitching products he likes and uses feel like a natural part of that.

Since more and more businesses now have affiliate programs you can start promoting products no matter what niche you’re in.

8. Generate Revenue with Sponsored Posts/Reviews

Making money with sponsored post and reviews is one of the least common ways of monetizing a blog, probably because you’ll need to have a lot of traffic and credibility to pull it off.

With sponsored posts and reviews, a blogger will charge a company a fee to write about their product on the blog and give their opinion of it. The product gets exposed to the blogger’s audience and the brand gets more exposure and new customers.

When you think about influencer marketing, your mind quickly pulls up images of the influencers you know on Instagram and Youtube.

But writing sponsored posts on your blog is influencer marketing and it’s exploding right now. More than 63% of businesses who already use influencer marketing, plan to increase their spending this year.

Influencer marketing has already experienced tremendous growth and is expected to have a market size of about $6.5 billion in 2019.

Influencer marketing growth

When featuring a product on your blog make sure to give your honest feedback about it because it’s not worth losing the trust of your readers for a few bucks.

For example, Michelle Gardner of Making sense of cents, who charges around $5,000 per sponsored post and makes $10,000 to $20,000 a month from sponsored posts writes mainly on products and services she uses herself. That way she can ensure that the people in her audience will love it too.

Here’s a comment from a product she reviewed on her blog that shows what I mean by this:

High quality review engagement

As I’ve mentioned before, the only downside to sponsored posts is that you need a to have a solid online presence before you can get companies to pay you anything substantial.

Companies need to know that paying for a sponsored post will lead to sales to make it worth the investment. So sponsored posts may not be the best monetization system for beginners but are great for more established bloggers.

If your blog is already generating traffic you can start reaching out to businesses in your niche whose products or services you already use and offer to write a sponsored post or review.

For example, if you write about technology you can do sponsored reviews for companies that make smart doorbells, laptops, cameras, etc.

Alexis Schroeder of Fit Financials writes about fitness and personal finance so when she started generating enough traffic she reached out to companies in personal finance and fitness space.

Alexis charges around $750 to $1500 per post and makes an average of $3000 per month from them alone.

9. Sell Physical Products to Your Audience

Another way you can monetize your blog is by selling products directly to your audience. Some bloggers even move from selling just a few items to launching full-fledged ecommerce websites alongside the blog.

The popular e-commerce store Beardbrand , for example, started out as a blog where founder Eric Bandholz wrote about beard grooming before he started selling the beard grooming products Beardbrand is known for today.

Eric turned his beard blog into a business that’s been featured on the New York Times, Inc, Shark Tank and now makes more than $100k a month .

Beardbrand

Eric isn’t the only one to discover that selling products to your audience is an excellent way to monetize your blog.

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal makes about $375,000 a year selling merchandise related to the comic he draws on his blog.

Both Eric and Matthew can monetize their blogs this way because they had built a dedicated community that truly wanted what they offered.

If you’ve already built up an audience, one of the most profitable way to monetize it, is to sell products directly to these people.

They already trust you and since you cater to them you probably know more about them than most manufacturers and retailers.

Shari Lott started Spearmint Baby as a blog for mothers and as she grew her online presence she began to learn more about what her audience of mothers wanted.

Shari launched Spearmint LOVE, an ecommerce store that sold baby clothes and in less than five years grew it into a business that made $1.5M in 2016 .

Baby clothes ecommerce site

If you already have an audience, then start paying attention to the problems that they have and see if you can sell something that’ll help them solve it.

10. Sell Digital Products to Your Audience

Sometimes the best way to solve the problems your audience have isn’t with a physical product but with software and digital downloads.

Clay Collins got the idea for Leadpages through his blog where he wrote about optimizing landing pages. When Clay started giving away landing page templates for free he found out that people wanted more from it.

They wanted to customize it, integrate it with their tools and even to carry out split tests and so he created Leadpages. A business that now has $38 million in funding and generates $25 million a year .

If you have other skills, beyond just blogging and creating ebooks, don’t let them go to waste. If you know how to code you can create software or WordPress plugins and then sell them to your existing audience.

Even if you don’t know how to code, you can always hire a developer. Omar Zenhom of Webinar Ninja built the first version of his product with developers he hired from Freelancer.

You can even sell digital products like templates, themes, and even audio recordings to your audience if that will help them solve a problem they have.

For example, Relaxing White Noise sells audio tracks that help their listeners relax and fall asleep. The Luxe Lens sells Lightroom and Photoshop templates to photographers. Camera gear website Shotkit sells Lightroom to earn a commission.

The Luxe Lens

You can even sell printables like Jennifer of lifeismessyandbrilliant who sells digital planners and stickers on her blog.

11. Launch a Virtual Summit in Your Niche

If you keep up with internet trends, then you’ve probably heard or have even attended virtual summits before.

Keep in mind that virtual summits or web conferences are different from webinars.

The main distinction is that virtual summits are a lot more interactive and engaging. They’re essentially conferences you can attend online with a host, Q&A sessions and multiple speakers covering a specific topic.

Now while the virtual summits themselves are usually free to attend, you can only access them for a limited time period. The organizer makes most of their revenue from selling an “all-access pass” that allows attendees to go over the conference material anytime they want.

Tom Morkers who runs the $100k Launch School summit made more than $20,000 from selling all access passes after one summit.

$100k Launch School summit

Hosts of virtual summits also make money by selling related products such as membership plans and courses on the topic after the summit is over.

The part about virtual summits that makes them a great monetization strategy even for newbies is that you don’t need to be a well-known blogger to host one. Mostly because you’re pulling credibility by interviewing other influencers in your space.

Jon Schumacher for example only had about 2,000 email subscribers when he launched his Webinar Mastery Summit .

The summit not only resulted in close to $26,000 in sales after just 10 days, but it also added 2,854 subscribers to his email list.

Virtual summits exist for almost any niche you can think of. For example, in publishing, there’s the Best Seller Summit that teaches how to write and publish a best selling book.

And Membership Site Summit teaches entrepreneurs how to launch and grow a successful membership site.

If you’ve already built up an audience even if it’s not large, you can create a virtual summit by partnering with influencers in your space.

The best way I know to find influencers you can connect with on any niche is to use a tool like Buzzsumo .

All you’d have to do would be to go to the Buzzsumo home page and type in your niche keyword.

For example, if I wanted to hold a virtual summit on book publishing, I’d type in book publishing in the search box.

Enter keyword in Buzzsumo

Then make sure to click on the influencers tab:

Buzzsumo influencers

You can then filter by follower count, reply ratio and whatever criteria matter to you.

When you’ve found the influencers in your niche it might be tempting to reach out to them immediately and ask them to speak at your summit but that rarely works.

Instead, you want to build a relationship with them slowly before you make any kind of ask. Start by following them on Twitter, then read, comment and make guests posts on their blog. In other words, you want to deliver value before making an ask.

12. Accept Donations on Your Blog

You can also monetize your blog by making it possible for your audience to make donations. This works particularly well if you’re a nonprofit .

You can accept donations with WordPress plugins like Give, Charitable, and PayPal Donations .

Here’s how the Charitable donation plugin looks on the Uganda Water Project campaign page:

Uganda Water Project

Now while accepting donations are the norm for non-profits they can also be used to monetize blogs that aren’t non-profits.

You might be a little skeptical about how well donations can work for a blog, so was I until I started reading about bloggers like Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex who makes $2493 every month from just 410 fans on Patreon. Keep in mind that Scott only blogs part-time and still has a day job.

Patreon

There are also bloggers like Tim Urban of Wait But Why who makes over $12k per month on Patreon alone.

This doesn’t mean that any blog can make money with donations though.

It took most of the bloggers I mentioned quite a bit of time to start getting substantial income from donations.

That’s because you need to have a really dedicated audience to make donations work for your blog and that requires giving a lot of valuable content for free first.

For example, Tim Urban spends between 40 – 80 hours writing and researching to create one of his blog posts, some of which are longer than the ebooks people sell.

That’s a lot of work that goes into creating something he’s giving away for free.

His audience realizes this and loves Tim’s work so much that they support him with donations. Tim wouldn’t have been able to get donations if he just churned out 100 words listicles every week.

How to Accept Donations on Your Blog:

So far I’ve pointed out examples of people accepting donations with the Patreon platform or using WordPress donation plugins .

But which should you use? That depends on what matters most to you.

Accepting donations on Patreon can be more expensive because they take a 5% fee on your incoming revenue and you also have to pay another 5% in transaction fees.

In return, you have a platform that’ll handle all the chargebacks and declined payments. Plus it’s easy to accept donations and manage your donors with minimal effort. Patreon even has a WordPress plugin to help you make money from your blog’s content.

If you choose to use WordPress plugins, on the other hand, you’ll pay fewer fees but you’ll have to do most of the set up on your own. You’ll also have to handle the transaction errors and create a way to manage donors on your own.

So essentially, if you want to get started as quickly as possible and don’t mind paying extra for an already built platform, Patreon is a great option. If you don’t mind setting up donations on your own and managing donors yourself, then WordPress plugins are perfect for you.

13. Start a Podcast

Podcasting is exploding right now. According to Paid Insights , as of April 2019, there are over 700,000 active podcasts and over 29 million episodes.

More people are beginning to listen to podcasts all over the world. Here’s the percentage of the population that now listen to podcasts around the globe:

The State of Podcasting

If you already have a blog, including a podcast can be a really smart way to get more traffic by piggybacking off the growth of podcasts.

Podcasts are great especially when you’re a newcomer because most of the established blogs in your niche have more written content than you do.

But how many of them have a podcast?

Podcasts are what allowed John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire to go from making $69,879 in revenue in 2012 to $1,545,090 in 2018.

Entrepreneur on Fire podcast

Podcasts are doing so well that even popular bloggers like Noah Kagan and Darren Rowse now have podcasts alongside their regular blog content.

Podcasts don’t just help you get your name out there and generate more traffic for your blog. It can also be another source of revenue for your blog.

With a large enough audience, you can start selling sponsorship slots on your podcast to businesses that want to reach the people in your audience.

Andrew Warner from Mixergy generates additional revenue by offering companies a chance to reach his audience of entrepreneurs through his podcast.

Here are two of his sponsors for an interview he did with the founder of Codementor:

Podcast sponsors

Where to Host your Podcast?

To get started with podcasting you’ll need a place to host your audio files much like how your website is hosted.

A media host is a company that allows you to store your audio files so they can be streamed and downloaded by listeners.

A few media hosts for podcasts include:

  • and Transistor

There are also WordPress plugins that can help you manage and even host your podcasts like Seriously Simple Podcasting , Smart Podcast Player and Simple Podcast Press .

What You Need to Start a Podcast

Most people overestimate what they need to start a podcast and so never begin, but if you already have a computer you’ll need just a few more things to get started, such as:

  • A microphone : You can get one for as little as $10 on Amazon.
  • A headphone : You probably have this already.
  • Audio editing software : There are free options like GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity (Windows).
  • Podcast hosting : You can get plans as low as $12 a month.
  • A Skype or Zoom account: If you plan to do interviews on your show.

That’s it, you can now start creating episodes for the world to listen to.

While it’s easier than ever to start a blog, most bloggers, as the ConvertKit study shows, have trouble monetizing it. Blogging alone doesn’t generate revenue unless you can find a monetization strategy that works for your blog.

And as most of the examples have proved, you don’t need that much traffic or leads to start generating income from your blog. And while your niche does matter, it’s not the most important factor that determines if you’ll succeed.

We’ve seen people make money with tennis, beards, golf, baby clothes, cars, and even orchids.

What you do need is an understanding of the numbers needed to make your monetization strategy successful and the determination to work hard to promote what you have to offer.

Reading this is the first step, we hope you now have the strategies and tools to start making money with your blog.

Have any other great tips on how to make money from a blog? If so, share them below.

how to make money publishing articles

Brian has a huge passion for WordPress, has been using it for over a decade, and even develops a couple of premium plugins. Brian enjoys blogging, movies, and hiking. Connect with Brian on Twitter .

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Great man! It is damn good. Thank you very much, Brian Jackson.

Can you suggest me the best plugins for inbound marketing and social media marketing?

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Thanks Anmol! Glad you liked it.

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Thanks so much, I always learn something new from these tutorials!

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Another excellent piece Brian!

My immediate draw to blogging was for the interest of possibly monetizing a few for side cash. I went the typical “easy” way and thought that social media content would be the core driver of traffic to my websites. It wasn’t until a complete and epic failure after the launch of my first WordPress site did I realize this would be more difficult than I previously thought. I owned up to it and devoted to doing things the right way. It has been a gut-wrenching year for my humble side business but I have learned one thing, blog about everything lol. WordPress has a steep learning curve but after you fully grasp its capabilities, it’s like have magic in a Linux container :). Great content doesn’t come easy, and even then getting real traffic is even harder. The ONLY way to bring traffic is epic SEO and lots of writing. I have enjoyed your blogs so much that I have a new found respect for writing in general and the power it holds in the way we communicate. I found a complete new passion I was unaware of and hopefully with your help, I can become the blogger I want to be.

Keep up the great work! You really don’t know the impact you bring to the WordPress community, even us smaller guys can absorb and implement your teachings that could return profound results.

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I can feel the passion in your words. I’m curious to know how’s your blog doing now?

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The advantage of this is that you can make quite a bit of money selling your website, it just depends on the quality of it. When there are opportunities to make money why not utilize it. Great insight..keep sharing!!

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Nice blog! really useful for a new blogger. Thank you for sharing.

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Thank you for your very honest article. I am a few months into launching my blog and it’s taken me a full 3 months to really ‘click’ with what I should be doing marketing, writing and SEO wise. I’ve still got a long way to go but am very determined to get there.I will definitely take on board the points you have made in this article and try to apply them. Many thanks.

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Nicely explained everything!

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Great inspiring content. Thank you!

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Hey, Brian what an engaging and appealing content you have shared with us. The blog plays a key role to drive traffic n your website. Thanks for sharing the article.

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This is my first time of seeing and reading this kind of helping and well understandable content.

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Kinsta Team, First of all thanks for sharing this blogging information. Happy to have come across your blog, and we personally now refer many of your blogs as part of digital marketing learning; otherwise earlier we used to refer ahrefs, singlegrain, distilled and etc.,

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Wow! This is really useful. Thanks.

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Thank you for putting the ideas together for us!

My blog gets about 10K page views a month, which is of course not at all a lot.

I earn about $7 a month from google ad banners and $36-42 a month from CODEC sponsored content widget (WordPress)

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Maybe I reached this post a little bit late but no matters when you wake up then morning. What I can say about this article is absolutely awesome with great helping hands to the blogger community. What better someone can write on the same topic near to perfection.

Thanks for sharing great tips for bloggers.

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Really great information. This article has given me hope as a newbie blogger. Thank you!

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Very good blog,thank so much for your effort in writing the posts.

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Say hello to the latest billionaire, thank you Kinsta for this properly articulated lecture.

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Thank you for your very honest article. I must say that I have read at least many articles and this one is indeed the best amongst all.

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It’s so refreshing to find an article that is packed with so much value and is also a straightforward read.

Huge thanks to the author.

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Thanks for sharing great tips for bloggers

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Thank you SO much for sharing these great tips! I am trying to monetize my blog but finding it quite difficult to get views. I have worked hard on all my SEO points and they are all green. I thought this would make a difference quickly but I guess I was wrong lol. This post has helped me to realize that I need to be patient, promote and be consistent with uploading lots of content. Thanks for sharing!

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Fantastic breakdown! I’ve tried a few of these strategies myself, but your post really sheds light on some unique monetization avenues. Thanks for the inspiration!

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Freelance Magazine Writing: 10 Tips For Beginner Journalists

how to make money publishing articles

Are you interested in freelance magazine writing? Here are 10 trade secrets to help you get your name in the byline.

By nichola meyer.

best writing course, the writers college

1. How do I submit my first magazine article?

As a beginner in the field of freelance magazine writing, you have two main options.

“On spec”: The first method is to write the article, and then e-mail the piece with a cover letter to the features editor of a magazine. You can find his or her details on the masthead page in a magazine where the staff members are listed.

When you send a completed article, it’s known as “submitting on speculation” (or “on spec”). This method works well if you’re a novice writer and need a foot in the door with a magazine.

The editor can immediately assess the quality of your writing and if it will fit with the style and tone of the magazine.

Remember, you will need to study the magazine carefully before you even start writing. Requesting the magazine style guide from the features editor is another way to tune in to the type of reader the magazine is targeting.

“Querying or pitching”: The other option is to pitch your idea straight to the features editor in a query letter, and see if the editor is interested in your proposed article.

If the features editor likes your idea and gives you the go-ahead to write the article, then you simply need to deliver the piece to deadline . This method works well if you’ve written for the magazine before, and the editor trusts that you will produce what you have promised in your query letter.

2. What makes for a good magazine journalist? 

Surprisingly, good journalism is not just about fine writing skills. Editors emphasise these five key habits of their star journalists:

1.    Their writing captures the unique tone, style and content of the magazine – and fits with the needs of the target reader. 2.    They can stick to deadlines. 3.    Their facts are accurate; their research is sound and thorough. 4.    Their work is not “shoddy” – meaning that spelling, grammar and punctuation are correct, and sentences are carefully crafted. 5.    They behave professionally, from their well-written cover letter to their invoice.

3. How much money can I make in freelance magazine writing?

Regardless of how many years you’ve worked in the industry, your income as a freelancer depends entirely on how hard you’re willing to work, how well you can write, the thoroughness of your research and your general professionalism when dealing with the publishing houses.

Rates vary depending on the country and the magazine’s circulation. Best is to find out the rate by phoning the magazine and speaking to the features editor. Here are some rough guidelines.

Most often you are paid per word. The recommended going rate for beginner journalists is 60 c per word in New Zealand and Australia (70 p per word in the UK, and R2.00 upwards per word in South Africa). Specialist writers can get double that amount per word. Per month:

Considering that most features are 1500 words in length (2200 words at most), do your sums to work out your income per article. And then, remember, you’d still need to pay up to 25 % tax on that income.

Seasoned journalists write about 13 pieces per month (this can include columns, advertorials and other business writing).

4. When do I get paid for articles?

Some publishing houses pay upon publication, i.e. the month-end following when your article appeared in the magazine. But what few know is that magazines work 6 to 12 months in advance, so the fee for the piece you sell today could only appear in your bank account a year later!

A few publishing houses pay upon acceptance of your piece, which means roughly one month after acceptance.

A course that teaches freelance magazine and webzine writing

5. How do I get paid for articles?

As a freelance journalist, you are in charge of your own “small business”. You are responsible for invoicing the publishing houses.

The features editor will let you know when you need to e-mail your invoice – either upon acceptance, or upon publication of your article to the accounts department.  You are usually paid by electronic transfer directly into your bank account.

6. How much scope is there for work in freelance magazine writing?

There are hundreds of publications and speciality publications looking for freelance contributions. Apart from shelves loaded with consumer magazines, there are trade magazines and inflight magazines that offer outlets for freelancers, although they may pay slightly less per word.

Furthermore, we have thousands of reputable webzines and paying blogs online. Many of these publications don’t pay for writing, but for those that do, you generally get paid a flat fee for a 300- to 500-word article.

7. How do I get commissioned to write an article?

Once an editor knows you and likes your work, it won’t be long before you receive your first commission.

What is a commission? It’s when the editor asks you to write a piece on a particular topic, and gives you a brief to follow. You need to follow the specifications in the brief – and deliver to deadline. It’s easier to work this way, rather than go through the more work-intensive process of querying or writing on spec, but you first need to build a good relationship with the editor.

8. What skills are essential for success in freelance magazine writing?

Apart from the essential skills already mentioned under question 2 above, you will also need:

  • Networking ability (just like in any business!). The more editors you know – the more commissions you’re likely to land.
  • Integrity: plagiarism and faulty research are likely to spell the end of your career
  • Determination: One magazine’s “No” can be another’s “Yes”. Keep trying, keep writing.

A course that teaches writing skills similar to freelance magazine writing

9. What happens if a magazine doesn’t want to publish one of my articles?

This can happen to the best of writers! The magazine may have recently published something on the topic you’ve covered, or the article simply doesn’t fit the style of the magazine. In those cases (and you can politely ask a features editor why they’ve declined to buy your piece), you can send it on to another magazine for possible publication.

However, sometimes articles are simply not up to standard. In that case, you need to rewrite and edit, before you can try selling it again.

10. What legal rights and support do I have as a writer?

As the writer, you retain copyright over your piece, as long as you don’t sign away “All Rights” in a contract with the publisher. This means that a magazine has no legal right to re-sell your piece in any form or format, without paying you again for the re-sale. Every country has writers’ guilds or groups of writers that can support you. All freelancers are highly advised to join one of these guilds, not just for invaluable advice, but also ongoing support from other journalists.

About the Author

Nichola Meyer, Principal of NZ Writers' College

Nichola Meyer has been the principal of The Writers College ( SA Writers College , NZ Writers College and UK Writers College ) for the past 15 years.

With a background in lecturing at secondary and tertiary colleges, she taught magazine journalism for several years. She was also a journalist specialising in parenting and women’s issues for several magazines, including O, The Oprah Magazine , Femina, Child Magazine and Baby & Me .

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Research Voyage

Research Tips and Infromation

12 Easy Hacks to Earn Money by Publishing a Research Paper

Make money out of Research Paper

Introduction

Many researchers have one question in their mind, and that is how to monetize the research paper that they have published. Frankly speaking, once the research paper gets published in conferences or journals, it becomes public property. Any researcher can use the same setup for further investigations unlike patents, where the author or the institution has complete rights over the work.

However, there are certain tricks (which are legal and ethical) one can use and earn money directly or otherwise get incentivised for the work carried out through further support in research or travel grant etc.

A research scholar can make money by publishing a research paper either in conference or journal provided his work is of highest quality. The author can earn money directly or indirectly by taking smart steps . The following steps elaborate the process of making money by research paper.

Here are the list of proven techniques for making money by writing research paper.

1. Prepare a Replica of the Experimental setup / Software Testbed and Sell it

experimental setup

Whenever you conduct research there is a possibility that; you build a hardware system; make a chip design; or write a software tool to run the experiments. There are several researchers who are working on similar projects or want to take your idea forward and may be in need of such testbeds or tools. In such a situation share your research paper on social media and you can ask the readers to contact you in case they are in need of such testbed or hardware. You can charge those researchers for the same as you are saving their time and effort needed to prepare the testbed.

You can visit my article on How to Make Money from Your Research Paper Experimental Equipment? for further details on making descent earning from your research equipments.

2. Sell the Dataset

Sell Data Set

If you are doing research where you may be creating a data set of your own. For example, you may be working on fruit quality analysis using image processing and you might have created data sets consisting of fruit images of various cultivars and qualities.

In the paper, you can add a statement saying to contact the authors for the datasets. Other researchers can use your data set and may pay you or they can cite your paper in the literature review. Each citation will help you in increasing the h-index and i-10 index.

There are few websites, where you can list your data sets . These sites will pay you as per the demand of the data sets.

You can visit my article on Research Data Sets as a Revenue Stream: How to License Your Way to Success . This article will give you an in-depth insight into effective monetization from the data sets used for your research work.

3. Make your Dataset Available on your Website

If you own a website, then you can create a blog post and explain the dataset that you have created and its applications in various domains. Explain your research paper as a case study, and provide a link to your research paper. Put affiliate links or Google Adsense on that page so that the visitors of the page may make purchases through ads or affiliate links. You will get a commission for every purchase made.

how to make money publishing articles

4. Get paid for Invited Article

Many times you may receive mail requesting the invited article on the topic in which you have published the research paper. Such journals will pay you for the articles. They call it an honorarium. The key element here is that this money is paid because the journal specifically wants a paper from you as an author – presumably, because they expect the work to be prestigious or highly cited.

5. Apply for Patents

Patent

Everyone who wants to use your concept must pay you if you file it as a patent. However, your organization or the university where you are working may not allow you to take full credit. You may need to negotiate regarding ownership and the profit-sharing model with your university. While applying for patent please verify that your published work is less than one year old or else you can not apply for patent.

You can visit my article on Patent Monetization Made Easy: How to Unlock the Value of Your Intellectual Property . This article will guide you through the monetization opportunities from your research work.

6. Apply for Research Grants for Further Continuation of Work

how to make money publishing articles

Good publications make you a stronger candidate when applying for grants . It also helps you in securing a job; if you do not have one. While applying for grant, highlight the work carried out so far along with results. There are several components in research grants which satiate your financial requirements for furthering your research.

Visit my blog post on

Research Grants Uncovered: A Step-by-Step Guide to Funding Your Research Projects

Research Grants for Independent Researchers: A Complete Guide

These above posts will guide you in applying for research grants.

7. Get Institute/University Grants

how to make money publishing articles

The institute or the University where you are working will sometime support your work and award cash or support your experimental setup/software expenses and registration fees. Sometimes you may get a travel grant if the paper is published at the conference.

8. Create Youtube content on the Tool Technology Learnt

how to make money publishing articles

Youtube is one of the promising media through which one can earn a good amount of money provided the quality of the content is too good.

Just ponder on the following points while creating youtube video:

  • Determine your audience: Before you start creating content, think about who you are trying to reach with your research. This will help you tailor your content to be more engaging and relevant to your audience.
  • Choose a format : There are many different ways you can present your research on YouTube. Some options might include a traditional talk show format, a documentary style, or a more creative and interactive format. Choose a format that best suits your research and your audience.
  • Plan your content : Once you have a format in mind, plan out the content for your videos. This might include an outline of the key points you want to cover, any visual aids or demonstrations you will use, and any other elements that will help make your content more engaging.
  • Record and edit your videos: Once you have a plan in place, start recording and editing your videos. Make sure to use clear, concise language and to explain your research in a way that is easy for your audience to understand.
  • Promote your content: Once your videos are ready, promote them on social media and other platforms to get them in front of as many people as possible. Consider collaborating with other researchers or influencers to help spread the word about your content.

By following these steps, you can create engaging and informative YouTube content about your research that will help you reach a wider audience and share your findings with others.

9. Travel Grants from Govt/ Funding Agencies

You can apply to government funding agencies such as AICTE/UGC(In India) for travel grants. The travel grant in these organizations is open throughout the year.

Consider the following points while applying for these organizations:

  • Understand the eligibility requirements: Before applying, make sure you understand the eligibility requirements for the grant. This may include factors such as your location, citizenship, or area of study.
  • Follow the application guidelines: Carefully read the application guidelines and follow them to the letter. Make sure to provide all of the information and documentation that is required, and to submit your application by the deadline.
  • Clearly articulate your purpose: In your application, make sure to clearly articulate the purpose of your travel and how it will benefit your research or project. Be specific and provide concrete examples of how the grant will help you to achieve your goals.
  • Outline your budget: In your application, provide a detailed budget outlining the costs of your travel, including transportation, accommodation, and any other expenses. Be realistic and justify your budget in your application.
  • Review and proofread: Before submitting your application, review it carefully to ensure that it is free of errors and that all of the information is accurate and complete. Consider having someone else review your application as well.

By following these tips, you can increase your chances of being selected for a travel grant from a government agency. Good luck with your application.

10. Give a Talk on the Concerned Topic as an Invited Session and Get Paid

how to make money publishing articles

You can prepare a detailed presentation on the core area of your work. For example, if your work is the identification and classification of pathological issues related to pomegranates by using image processing then prepare a detailed presentation on ” Image Processing techniques for fruit database”.

Many workshops/ conferences invite or call for sessions related to core domains of your field. They pay an honorarium for the same. Keep track of such workshops and conferences and apply for the same.

Please visit my article on 12 Proven Tips to Make an Effective Research Presentation as an Invited Speaker . This article gives you tips for making effective research presentation.

11. Conduct Online Paid Webinars on the Topic

how to make money publishing articles

Many research scholars are searching for resources relating to hardware/ software or any research-related tools for their research. You can organize paid webinars for such students and can easily earn money.

12. Collaborate with the Industry

how to make money publishing articles

Collaborating with industry could be another way for earning money. Contact the which are related to the work you have carried out. The industry may help you in setting up the research centre at your institution, attending workshops and seminars etc. Collaborate with the company for transferring technology or add them as co-author for getting sponsorship.

Make sure that the following points are addressed for your letter of collboration:

  • Clearly state the research question or problem that you have addressed in your paper, and explain how the collaboration will create a win-win situation.
  • Outline your research work, including the methods and techniques that you have used, and explain how the proposed collaboration will enhance or strengthen your research further.
  • Discuss any relevant experience or expertise that you or your team have in the field you have written, and how this will contribute to the success of the collaboration.
  • Provide details about the support that you need from the collaborating industry, and explain how these will be used to advance the research.
  • Be specific about the roles and responsibilities of each party in the collaboration, and outline any expectations or agreements that will need to be made.

Finally, remember to proofread your letter carefully to ensure that it is well-written and free of errors. This will help to convey a professional and competent image and increase the chances of a successful collaboration.

Researchers can earn money through their publications in a number of ways. For example, they may receive funding from grants or other sources to support their research, and the results of their work may be published in academic journals or other outlets that pay for the content they publish.

In some cases, researchers may also be able to earn royalties if their work is used or cited by other researchers or incorporated into commercial products or services. Additionally, researchers may be able to earn money by giving talks or presentations at conferences or other events, or by consulting for organizations that are interested in their expertise.

However, it is important to note that earning money through research publication is not always guaranteed, and many researchers may not earn significant amounts of money from their work.

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How To Make Money Self-Publishing On Amazon: A Simple Guide

The Internet is a wild place. And as the years go by, it seems to get crazier and crazier. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). But just because the Internet can sometimes be complicated, that doesn’t have to stop you from living your dream. There are a ton of awesome ways to make money online.

How To Make Money Self-Publishing On Amazon: A Simple Guide

Have you always thought about starting some kind of online thing to make money—but you just weren’t sure where to start? Should you drop ship T-shirts? Start a website? Or maybe an online consulting business? Or … buy and sell rare Beanie Babies? (Hey, that’s not a bad idea.)

Our simple guide to make money self-publishing on Amazon will teach you the three main steps:

  • Writing a book
  • Publishing it 
  • Marketing it

We think Amazon publishing is one of the best ways to make money online in 2023.

Passive vs. Active Income

First, let’s talk about money . (Who doesn’t like talking about that?) 

The beauty of starting an online business with Amazon is that it can bring in passive income vs. active income. What’s the difference, you ask? Good question. 

Active income is the kind you have to work a 9-to-5 job to earn. You’re trading your time for a paycheck. And it usually ends up being a grind that gets older faster than that Gouda cheese you accidentally left on the counter last night. With active income, you have to actively work to earn it. 

On the other hand, let’s talk about our best friend— passive income . It’s the kind you can earn while you’re laying out on the beach working on your tan. You earn it through assets that generate wealth for you no matter what you’re doing. Even while you sleep! 

You can earn passive income through things like dividend stocks, real estate investments, online businesses or digital products or courses.

This is where Amazon’s publishing empire comes in. Amazon kindle publishing is a legit way publishers can cash in on their work by selling ebooks. And it’s a lot easier to do than you might think. 

Let’s look at what Amazon has built for people like you—and how you can make money online in 2023.

how to make money publishing articles

KDP Stands for “Cold Hard Cash” (Well, Not Technically)

There’s a little something called KDP we think you need to know about. KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing and it’s Amazon’s self-publishing platform for independent publishers. Maybe you’re thinking of writing something, or maybe you’ve already written three books and are just trying to figure out what to do with them so they don’t keep collecting dust on your computer. 

We think Amazon’s KDP program for self-publishing is one of the best parts about the Internet. Sure, there are some reasons why self-publishing is bad . However, many independent writers are leveraging the power of this platform to spread their work far and wide and make a living. Publishing on Amazon is free and you can earn up to 70% royalties on your book sales. You can also reach a global audience of millions of potential customers. This is why we believe this is the best side hustle for Amazon .

Gone are the days when you had to beg for an agent to graciously take you on. And then wait years for the agent to find a big-name publishing house to get your work out. And then wait even longer while the publishing house inspected every comma and word in your manuscript to see if it would be appropriate for readers. No thanks.

Thankfully, Amazon’s KDP has given people a way better solution. Just publish your book— your way! But before you can publish, you have to have a book.

Something to Sell

We’re not gonna lie to you. You will need something to sell. A book, since we’re talking about publishing. But don’t sweat this part. You don’t need to write the next War and Peace novel ( 1,225 pages! ) to be successful with online publishing. It doesn’t even need to be fiction.

You can write your memoirs or a cookbook of unique recipes that are different from anything you’ve seen out there now. Or maybe there’s a really interesting family story about a relative who lived an incredible life during World War II—turn it into a book!  

The sky’s the limit. You just need to find some kind of niche. This way you're targeting a smaller and more specific audience. 

Bigger is not better in this case—and by bigger we mean broader . Just one example to explain what we mean. Let’s say you wrote a cookbook titled, 30 Amazing Recipes! Okay, cool. Amazing is a great word, but what are the recipes focused on? Crockpot stuff? Desserts? Tips on how to grill steak? Potential customers won’t know. And your book would be competing against some of the top books in the market that are most popular and probably celebrity-backed. 

Instead, think of something like 5 Ways to Slow Cook Shrimp that Will Blow Your Friends’ Minds! Maybe that’s not the best title, but it’s what we came up with on the fly. You get the point…

Narrow down your focus if you want to earn money writing books . Here's why. This will set you up for success and help you reach a specific audience. It will also help a lot when it comes to putting together a marketing plan.  

Now you have your book. What next?

Publish It!

Amazon has made it super easy for authors to publish their work as an ebook (or you can also offer it hardcopy). You can do it in about five minutes if you have all the files ready. (We also put together a longer guide on how to publish your book on Amazon . But for now, we’ll give a brief overview.)

First, create a KDP account and follow the steps to fill out all your information and payment details. This account will be your main dashboard to upload your book, set the list price and handle all the other details.

Next, you’ll create your Kindle eBook and Amazon walks you through three sections: Details, Content and Pricing.

You should plan to have some of these things ready for the publishing process:

  • Author name and bio
  • Book title and description
  • Language your book is written in
  • If your book is a series

Then you’ll have the opportunity to pick your categories and keywords. This will help your book be found by the readers interested in your genre. 

Once you go through these steps, you can upload your manuscript and preview how it will look. 

Congratulations! You’re now a published author—no query letters to agents necessary.

how to make money publishing articles

Get the Word Out

The final step is to market your Amazon book . For some publishers, this is the fun part. Telling people about your new book. (If you’re on the shy side, this might be the worst part.) 

Marketing can involve:

  • Buying ads through Facebook and Google to reach a wider audience 
  • Posting about your book on social media and launching campaigns
  • Working with social media influencers to spread the word
  • Starting a weekly newsletter to build an audience and grow your list of potential customers
  • Being interviewed on podcasts to talk about your book 

Amazon also gives you tools to run promotions, analyze your metrics and see how your book is performing. You can use those to see how well your marketing is doing. Success on Amazon is all about standing out from the crowd. 

So, you’ve got your book, you published it and now you’re marketing it like a pro. Awesome! Time to write the next one… Or maybe take a little break (or a nap) and enjoy the fruits of your labor. In the next section, we’re going to take a deeper look at how tasty those fruits can be—in other words, the results and sales of your eBooks.

Real-life Example

Complete Dog Training For Beginners

So far, we’ve looked at a basic, beginner’s guide to making money through Amazon publishing. Now let’s look at a real-life example from a student of our Amazon publishing course. They did it as a total beginner, just like you. 

Brianna Ramirez published a book titled, “ Complete Dog Training for Beginners: Raise the Perfect Puppy in 30 Days! ”]

Brianna’s book is ranked #11 in the Dog Care & Health books category and #39 in the Dog Breeds category.

Kindlepreneur

Now let’s estimate how much she is making. Using this great free tool called Kindlepreneur , we can estimate she’s selling about three books per day. We know the book is being sold at around $20 per book, so she’s bringing in a 70% royalty on $60 a day. This is a profit of $42 a day—or about $1,300 a month. And remember, this is just from one book. 

Are you starting to see what’s possible? Imagine if you had $1,300 coming in every month in passive income. And then imagine if you wrote another book, or another 3 books. It’s not hard to see how this can add up fast.

Brianna started just like you—with no experience writing a book. Just a lot of motivation and hard work to get going. She took our course and got these results. You can do the same!

This is just one example of how awesome KDP is. There are many more everyday people who have taken the Audiobook Income Academy and seen great results. (Our reviews over at Trustpilot show how many have been helped with this self-publishing material.)

If you haven’t started online publishing yet, what are you waiting for? Seriously. The best time to start an online publishing business is now. With the right education, you can build a thriving Amazon business without having to get a Master’s Degree in Business & Marketing. 

Our practical (and free) workshop will show you step-by-step how to make money online with Amazon publishing. We’ll walk you through the four steps to making passive income on Amazon that anyone can do. 

By joining our course, you’ll also be part of a group of other self-publishers who are working toward the same goal—financial freedom.

‍ Sign up for our free workshop and get started on building your dream life now. 

Royalties calculator

FREE WEBINAR

Self-Publishing FAQ: How Many Book Reviews Can I Actually Expect?

Watch CBS News

Trump was found guilty in his "hush money" trial. Here's what to know about the verdict and the case.

By Graham Kates

Updated on: May 31, 2024 / 11:57 AM EDT / CBS News

Former President Donald Trump was found guilty  of 34 counts of falsifying business records by a jury in New York on Thursday, marking the end of a historic trial stemming from a "hush money" payment made to an adult film star before the 2016 election.

The trial lasted roughly six weeks, and the jury spent two days deliberating before returning a verdict. Trump denounced the decision as "rigged" and vowed to fight the conviction. His sentencing is scheduled for July 11.

Here are the basics of the charges, what happened during the trial and what comes next:

What were the charges?

Former President Donald Trump sits at the defense table with his defense team in a Manhattan court on April 4, 2023, in New York City, his first appearance after being charged with 34 felonies.

Trump was indicted on March 30, 2023, and charged with 34 state counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony in New York.

What was the verdict?

Trump was found guilty on all charges on May 30, 2024. The jury returned a unanimous verdict in the Manhattan courtroom where the trial unfolded for six weeks.

What was needed for the jury to convict?

Justice Juan Merchan instructed jurors before they began deliberations that in order to find Trump guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree, they needed to unanimously conclude not only that he caused records to be falsified, but that he "conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means."

There were a few types of "unlawful means" that the jury heard evidence about, including: falsification of other business records, violations of campaign finance laws and violations of tax tax laws.

What exactly did prosecutors say Trump did?

Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office said Trump met with former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and ex-fixer Michael Cohen in his Trump Tower in August 2015, and that the trio hatched a conspiracy to identify, purchase and squash stories that might harm Trump's reputation and presidential campaign. 

Just days before the 2016 election, Cohen paid $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels , who claimed she had sex with Trump in 2006. She agreed to keep her story under wraps in exchange for the money.

After Trump became president, Cohen was paid $35,000 a month for a year in a series of checks, most of which were signed by Trump. Prosecutors said the checks and associated business records were illegally portrayed as payments to Cohen for his legal work, when in fact they were intended to reimburse him for the Daniels deal, among other things.

What did Trump's lawyers say?

Defense attorney Emil Bove cross-examines David Pecker during former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York on Friday, April 26, 2024.

Trump's lawyers said the arrangement with Pecker and the National Enquirer was not atypical for political campaigns, which often try to influence media narratives about candidates. They said non-disclosure agreements like the one Cohen struck with Daniels are common, too.

As for the checks to Cohen, Trump's lawyers noted that Cohen's title at the time was "personal attorney to the president," and he actually was being paid for ongoing legal work. They said Cohen and Trump had a verbal retainer agreement, but not a signed one.

How about Trump himself?

Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied all wrongdoing. He accused Bragg, a Democrat, of pursuing the case for political gain. Trump has called the case a "con job" and said the charges were "rigged" after the verdict came down.

Who were the key players?

Trump, Cohen and Pecker got top billing during the trial. Pecker was called to the stand by prosecutors first, and described the August 2015 Trump Tower meeting , as well as years of communications with Cohen and Trump about the scheme.

His testimony corroborated key moments relayed by Cohen, whose credibility the defense repeatedly sought throughout to undermine. Pecker's time on the stand was the lead-in to weeks worth of testimony from 18 others before Cohen, their final witness. Prosecutors sought to use those weeks to back up Cohen's story with corroborating evidence.

During the first day of their deliberations, the jury asked to hear portions of Pecker and Cohen's testimony related to the Trump Tower meeting.

What did Cohen say?

Cohen said Trump received regular updates on efforts to cover up salacious stories about him when he ran for president in 2016, and personally signed off on the scheme to falsify records related to them.

Cohen recounted three instances when he, Pecker and the editor of the National Enquirer worked to secure the rights to stories with salacious claims about Trump.

The jury heard a secret recording Cohen made of a conversation with Trump, in which Trump appeared comfortable with the purchase of a story told by another woman, named Karen McDougal.

"So, what do we got to pay for this? 150?" Trump can be heard saying on the tape.

Not long after the Enquirer paid for McDougal's story, Daniels' story hit the market. Her attorney approached the Enquirer about selling the rights one day after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape in October 2016. On the recording, Trump was heard saying he could "grab [women] by the p****" and "make them do anything." The tape posed a major threat to his electoral prospects.

Cohen recounted intense negotiations in which everyone involved — Trump, Cohen, Daniels, her attorney and the Enquirer editor — were aware that Daniels' claim of a sexual encounter with Trump might have dire consequences for his campaign.

Cohen wired Daniels' attorney $130,000 of his own money on Oct. 28, 2016. 

During his testimony, Cohen described how working for Trump for a decade was an "amazing" experience that turned sour after the "hush money" payment to Daniels became public in 2018.

He testified that he believed he was subject to a "pressure campaign" by Trump and his allies after the FBI raided his home and office that year, leading to a pair of guilty pleas to federal charges.

Under scathing cross-examination from defense attorney Todd Blanche, Cohen acknowledged that he's since made a living by loudly criticizing Trump.

He admitted wanting to see Trump imprisoned, and saying as much on his podcast.

Cohen also acknowledged lying under oath on multiple occasions, and, in a shocking moment, admitted for the first time to having stolen tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization.

What did Daniels say on the stand?

Stormy Daniels testifies at former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York on May 7, 2024.

Daniels wasn't part of the scheme to influence the election. She never worked for Trump and had no involvement in any of the crimes alleged in the case. 

Still, her story of sex with Trump in 2006 was the catalyst that sparked a series of events leading to this unprecedented criminal trial. Prosecutors said she was called to the stand because Blanche denied they ever had sex in his opening statement, an assertion they believed they had to rebut.

Daniels said she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada, and later was invited by Trump's bodyguard to a dinner with the famed businessman. She said they met up at a hotel suite she described in elaborate detail, right down to the tiles, and she was expecting to go to dinner when instead they began talking about business.

Daniels said Trump showed a keen interest in her industry, and seemed to value her insights. After some two hours of talking, with no dinner in sight, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. She recalled being surprised when she emerged to see that Trump had undressed down to a T-shirt and boxers. She described the sex that followed as, on her part, reluctant.

This part of her testimony caused the defense to demand a mistrial, a motion that was denied.

Daniels then described interacting with Trump frequently over the next year or so — including briefly meeting with him at Trump Tower — because he promised to advocate for her to get a spot on his reality television competition. When he told her it wouldn't happen, they stopped communicating.

Later, through a representative, she began shopping her story, seeking to sell the rights to it. When Trump's presidential candidacy gained steam in 2016, those efforts also became heated. They reached a fever in October of that year, when the "Access Hollywood" outtake surfaced.

Daniels said she realized her story was potentially more valuable, because it could be bad for his campaign. Cohen testified to frantic efforts to purchase it.

What comes next?

Trump's conviction kickstarts the sentencing portion of the case. Merchan, the judge, set a date of July 11 for Trump's sentencing hearing. He asked the defense to submit any motions they plan to request no later than June 13, and said prosecutors must respond by June 27. 

Falsification of business records carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each charge, but Merchan has broad leeway when determining the punishment. Some experts expect Merchan to use other options, like fines, probation or home confinement. But others say he could order Trump to serve some time behind bars. 

  • Donald Trump

Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at [email protected] or [email protected]

More from CBS News

Congressional Republicans stick by Trump after conviction

Trump lawyer eager to move forward with appeal of New York conviction

What it was like in the courtroom as Trump's guilty verdict was read

Biden campaign warns: "Convicted felon or not," Trump could still be president

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Trump guilty in ny trial: can he still run for president or vote as a convicted felon.

  • Legal Issues

Former President Donald Trump exits the courtroom May 30, 2024, at the conclusion of his falsified business records trial in New York. (AP)

Former President Donald Trump exits the courtroom May 30, 2024, at the conclusion of his falsified business records trial in New York. (AP)

Louis Jacobson

In a landmark moment in U.S. political and legal history, a Manhattan jury on May 30 found former President Donald Trump guilty of multiple felony counts.

A unanimous jury in the Manhattan case concluded that Trump was guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged scheme to cover up a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. 

Trump, who was president from January 2017 to January 2021, has been the presumptive  Republican nominee against the incumbent Democratic president, Joe Biden. It’s unclear how the 34-count conviction could affect the presidential race. But, no matter what happens, Trump is still allowed to run for president.

Sentencing is to come July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is slated to be formally nominated as the party’s presidential candidate.

The Manhattan case is the first of four Trump trials. Because of legal delays in two federal cases on documents and election interference and a Georgia election interference case, it may end up being the only trial to reach a jury verdict before November’s election. Trump is expected to appeal his conviction.

The jury deliberated for about 10 hours over two days. 

In brief remarks at the courthouse following the verdict, Trump repeated his view that the process was "rigged" and promised to "fight to the end." He has regularly described the prosecution as politically motivated and complained that it was being held in New York City, a jurisdiction that overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020.

Here’s what we know about what could happen next.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 11 in the Manhattan courthouse and will be overseen by Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial. 

Trump is all but certain to appeal if he is convicted. The appeal process would probably extend beyond Election Day. 

Trump has 30 days to state in writing that he will appeal. He would have months more to file his actual appeal, said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, criminal defense attorney and former executive chief of the trial division and chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District attorney’s office. Once the appeal is filed, it would still take additional months before the appeals court hears oral arguments and potentially months more before the court renders a decision. 

It would not be unusual for the process to take a year or more, experts said.

An analysis by Norman L. Eisen, who was a counsel for Donald Trump’s first impeachment and trial, calculated that during Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s first year in office, his team alone filed 166 felony counts for falsifying business records against 34 people or companies. Eisen found that approximately 1 in 10 cases in which the most serious charge was falsifying business records in the first degree resulted in some term of imprisonment. But he cautioned that other charges may have tipped the scales toward incarceration in some of those prior sentences.

Merchan’s potential decision on sentencing in the Manhattan case is anyone’s guess. Working in Trump’s favor is that he doesn’t have prior convictions and the charges are a low-level nonviolent felony, legal experts said. Working against Trump is that he has been held in contempt multiple times for breaching a gag order.

The Secret Service, which handles former presidents’ security, has been planning for the possibility of Trump’s incarceration for gag order violations or a postconviction sentence, The New York Times , CBS and ABC have reported.

"For all settings around the world, the U.S. Secret Service studies locations and develops comprehensive and layered protective models that incorporate state of the art technology, protective intelligence and advanced security tactics to safeguard those we protect," Special Agent Joe Routh told PolitiFact before the verdict. "In order to maintain operational security, we do not comment on specific protective operations."

Because Trump was convicted on state charges, Biden cannot pardon him. The president can pardon only for federal charges, Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul could possibly pardon Trump, Kalt added, but that likelihood is considered low because she is a Democrat.

Meanwhile, Trump couldn’t pardon himself if he regains the presidency for the same reason that Biden can’t. (It’s also unclear at best whether a president could pardon themselves for a federal crime, legal experts said .)

Yes . The U.S. Constitution upholds the principle that voters decide who should represent them, and its qualifications are limited to natural-born citizenship, age (35 by Inauguration Day) and residency in the United States (14 years).

Convicted felons have run for president in the past. Lyndon LaRouche was convicted in 1988 of tax and mail fraud conspiracy and ran for president multiple times between 1976 and 2004. Eugene Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for an anti-war speech, then ran for president under the Socialist Party banner from a federal prison in Alabama in 1920. 

That’s unlikely . 

Trump is a registered voter in Palm Beach County, Florida. The Florida Department of State website states that "a felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted." 

New York law passed a law in 2021 that restores voting rights for people convicted of felonies upon their release from prison. Voters don’t lose their right to vote unless they are in prison serving a sentence for a felony conviction. People whose prison sentences are stayed pending appeal do not lose their voting rights. 

It’s unlikely that the other criminal cases will go to trial before Election Day.

The federal election interference case has been paused because of Trump’s claims of presidential immunity . The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on that case by early July.

The Supreme Court’s decision would not affect the New York case because much of the alleged conduct occurred before Trump was president.

The trial for the federal classified documents was set to start in Florida in May. But the judge postponed the date amid legal motions that she has yet to rule on. She has not set a new date.

In Georgia, an appeals court agreed May 8 to review a lower court ruling that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue to prosecute Trump. That decision makes it less likely the case will reach trial before November.

PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman contributed to this article.

RELATED : Read all of PolitiFact’s coverage on Donald Trump indictment

Our Sources

Politico,  It’s not just guilty or not guilty. Here are all the possible outcomes of the Trump trial. May 27, 2024

The New York Times,  Trump’s trial has entered its final stages. Here’s what comes next . May 28, 2024

The New York Times, Could Trump go to prison? If he does, the Secret Service goes, too, April 23, 2024

Norman Eisen, What sentencing could look like if Trump is found guilty (New York Times op-ed), April 18, 2024

NPR, The 3 ways Trump’s hush money trial could end, as jury deliberations begin soon , May 27, 2024

CBS, What happens if Trump is convicted in New York? No one can really say , May 28, 2024

The Associated Press, Georgia appeals court agrees to review ruling allowing Fani Willis to stay on Trump election case , May 8, 2024

ABC, Secret Service prepares for if Trump is jailed for contempt in hush money case , April 23, 2024

PolitiFact, The Supreme Court will decide Donald Trump’s immunity case. Here are the arguments. April 22, 2024

Email interview with Joe Routh, Secret Service special agent, May 28, 2024

Email interview with Jerry H. Goldfeder, senior counsel at the law firm Cozen O'Connor, May 28, 2024

Email interview with Karen Friedman Agnifilo, criminal defense attorney and former executive chief of the trial division and chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, May 28, 2024

Email interview with Matthew J. Galluzzo, former Manhattan prosecutor now in private practice May 28, 2024

Email interview with Bill Otis, former head of the Appellate Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and Special Counsel to George H. W. Bush, May 28, 2024

Email interview with Neama Rahmani, former prosecutor who later co-founded the firm West Coast Trial Lawyers. May 28, 2024

Email interview with Melissa D. Redmon, University of Georgia school of law professor, May 28, 2024

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

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Jury in Trump’s Trial Rehears Testimony and Judge’s Instructions

The jurors’ requests included specific testimony from David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, and Michael D. Cohen, Donald J. Trump’s former fixer.

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Former President Donald J. Trump, in a yellow tie and dark suit, walks past a line of security officers.

By Matthew Haag

  • May 30, 2024

On the second day of deliberations in the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, the jury revisited words uttered earlier in the courtroom, then retreated again behind closed doors to continue their work.

The 12 jurors heard on Thursday morning a rereading of testimony from the seven-week trial by two key witnesses as well as a portion of the judge’s lengthy instructions as they continued to consider his legal fate.

The jury asked for the reprise in two notes delivered to Justice Juan M. Merchan a day earlier after discussing the case among themselves for a few hours, then continued those conversations on Thursday as they labored to decide the first criminal trial of an American president.

Mr. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the coverup of a $130,000 hush-money payment that was made to a porn star in the days leading to the 2016 election.

The jurors have heard weeks of salacious testimony and accusations of a fraud on voters. It was unclear what exactly their inquiries revealed about what was happening in the room where they are deliberating , which is off a small hallway in the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.

Nor did the requests signal how much longer they would take to issue a verdict in what is most likely the only one of four criminal cases against him that will go to trial before Election Day.

But the reason that the jurors might have wanted to hear excerpts from the 55-page jury instructions again seems evident: New York law does not explicitly allow them to have written copies . A 1987 court decision reaffirmed that rule.

That court found that “the distribution of written instructions to the jury is not expressly authorized by law, and error in such submissions cannot be deemed harmless,” meaning that providing the instructions would result in a conviction being overturned.

Judge Merchan read about two dozen pages out loud again on Thursday, specifically reciting the section on inferences they could make from testimony and evidence. He offered an example: If the sidewalk is wet in the morning, he told them, you may infer it rained overnight.

The testimony that Mr. Trump’s jurors requested to hear were from key witnesses called by prosecutors — the first and last witnesses to testify for them — and the two who spent the most time on the stand.

They were David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, who revealed private conversations with Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who was the prosecution’s star witness.

Mr. Pecker, who took the stand first, provided testimony over several days that laid the foundation for the prosecution. The bookend of the prosecution’s case was Mr. Cohen, who told the jury about one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump about burying unflattering stories about him through hush deals.

Both spoke about working during Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to suppress damaging headlines about Mr. Trump while promoting negative stories about his political rivals. Prosecutors described the effort as a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the election, all hidden from public view.

At the heart of that effort as well as the criminal case was the $130,000 hush-money payment made by Mr. Cohen to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who said she had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006. She testified about that encounter, which Mr. Trump has always denied.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business records stemming from Mr. Trump’s reimbursement to Mr. Cohen, saying he disguised the repayment as ordinary legal expenses.

In two days of deliberations, the jurors have sent three requests to Judge Merchan. On Thursday, they asked for headphones to listen to evidence on a court-provided computer.

The requests made by the jury did make clear they wanted to hear key testimony again on events that prosecutors have argued were central to the conspiracy to influence Mr. Trump’s campaign. Specifically, they wanted to know more about an August 2015 meeting on the 26th Floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan.

It was there, according to prosecutors, that the conspiracy was hatched. Mr. Trump had announced his candidacy a few months earlier in the tower’s lobby.

At Mr. Cohen’s request, Mr. Pecker testified, he traveled to the gilded Fifth Avenue tower, where Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump asked him how his magazines could help Mr. Trump’s campaign. They had a lengthy symbiotic relationship dating back to when Mr. Trump hosted the popular reality television show “The Apprentice.”

But now, Mr. Pecker said, Mr. Trump wanted his help to make him president of the United States. Mr. Pecker agreed to assist. On the stand, Mr. Cohen corroborated his account.

“That if we can place positive stories about Mr. Trump, that would be beneficial,” Mr. Cohen said on the stand. “That if we could place negative stories about some of the other candidates, that would also be beneficial.”

Nearly a year later, Mr. Pecker and his publication heard about a former Playboy model who had a story to sell about a 10-month affair with Mr. Trump starting in 2006. Jurors asked to hear Mr. Pecker’s testimony again about a call with Mr. Trump about the woman, Karen McDougal.

Mr. Pecker had been giving a presentation at a meeting of investors in June 2016 involving the tabloid’s parent company, American Media Inc., when he was interrupted by a phone call from Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker said that he stepped away to talk to Mr. Trump, who suggested that he knew Ms. McDougal.

“Karen is a nice girl,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Pecker. “What do you think I should do?” Mr. Pecker said he answered that Mr. Trump should buy Ms. McDougal’s story.

A.M.I. later paid her $150,000.

The payment was structured to appear as a legitimate business deal, Mr. Pecker testified, and to avoid violating campaign finance law. But the company later admitted doing just that in a 2018 nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.

Mr. Pecker said The Enquirer had no intention of printing Ms. McDougal’s account of an affair.

Matthew Haag writes about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades. More about Matthew Haag

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

Guilty Verdict : Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts  of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his bid for the White House in 2016, making him the first American president to be declared a felon .

Next Steps: The judge in the case set Trump’s sentencing for July 11, and Trump already indicated that he plans to appeal. Here’s what else may happen .

Reactions: Trump’s conviction reverberated quickly across the country. Here’s what Trump , voters , New Yorkers , Republicans  and the White House  had to say.

Making the Case: Over six weeks and the testimony of 20 witnesses, the Manhattan district attorney’s office wove a sprawling story  of election interference and falsified business records.

Legal Luck Runs Out: The four criminal cases that threatened Trump’s freedom had been stumbling along, pleasing his advisers. Then his good fortune expired .

Connecting the Dots: As rumors circulated of Trump’s reported infidelity, two accounts of women  being paid to stay silent about their encounters became central to his indictment.

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The last words: What each side said in closing arguments for Trump's New York trial

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Former President Donald Trump leaves Manhattan Criminal Court at the end of the day's proceedings during his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments in New York City on Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump leaves Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City at the end of the day's proceedings Tuesday during his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NEW YORK — Lawyers gave their final arguments Tuesday in their effort to convict or acquit former President Donald Trump of 34 felony counts of falsified business records as the historic trial pushes closer to an end.

A 12-person jury, which has listened to 22 witnesses and over six hours of arguments, is set to begin deliberating Wednesday. It could be hours or days or weeks before they have a decision. A unanimous jury is needed to either convict or acquit Trump.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump with attorney Todd Blanche speaks to the media during his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments, at Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday in New York City.

The 3 ways Trump's hush money trial could end, as jury deliberations begin soon

Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, frequently called the trial “election interference” for preventing him from campaigning for president, falsely claiming a partisan conspiracy against him.

On Tuesday, Trump was joined in court by more family members than usual. Children Donald Jr., Eric and Tiffany were present in the courtroom, as well as son-in-law Michael Boulos and daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair Lara Trump.

As Trump lawyer Todd Blanche was beginning his closing arguments, the Biden-Harris campaign held an event outside the courthouse in Manhattan featuring actor Robert De Niro and U.S. Capitol police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone.

Trump gets by with a little help from his friends during New York hush money trial

Trump gets by with a little help from his friends during New York hush money trial

Prosecutors allege that Trump knew about a settlement negotiation with adult film actor Stormy Daniels to keep her allegations of an affair out of the press ahead of the 2016 election and that Trump directed his former “fixer” Michael Cohen to make a settlement payment of $130,000 to her. Prosecutors argue that the falsified business records, in part labeled as "legal retainers," are a paper trail for Cohen.

Trump has long argued he was only paying his lawyer.

The defense gave closing arguments first, focusing on Michael Cohen

As is New York law, Trump’s defense gave the first set of closing arguments, which lasted over two hours. Blanche focused on the credibility issues surrounding Cohen.

Here are four highlights from his summary of their defense:

1. Who didn't testify

The defense spent time pointing out potential witnesses the jury did not hear from — specifically Allen Weisselberg, Don Jr. or Eric Trump, who were Trump Organization executives at the time; Dylan Howard, a former editor of the National Enquirer; Gina Rodriguez, who managed Daniels; or Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller.

2. The documents

Blanche argues Trump’s sons signed two checks that constitute some of the felony counts. And he also told the jury that Cohen was the one who generated the 11 invoices that make up 11 of the felony counts on Trump.

He maintained that the allegedly false retainer was a legitimate retainer of services — especially because Cohen billed himself as Trump’s personal lawyer.

“You shouldn’t think the word ‘retainer’ differentiates from the reason for the payment — it's just a single word,” Blanche said.

3. Cohen's credibility

Blanche attempted to cast doubt on various conversations Cohen recalled having with Trump, including at the White House, allegedly about the deal to silence Daniels. But the defense also argued that Cohen lied on the stand, answering questions one way to the prosecution but a different way with the defense.

“Cohen lied to you,” Blanche claimed repeatedly to hammer the point home to the jurors at various stages of his speech.

Michael Cohen, Trump's ex-fixer, testifies about hush money payment to Stormy Daniels

Michael Cohen, Trump's ex-fixer, testifies about hush money payment to Stormy Daniels

He also spent time casting doubt on the secret recording Cohen made of a conversation with Trump that allegedly confirms knowledge of the payment and settlement to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

4. Election influence

Blanche reiterated one of the points he made in openings: It doesn’t matter if there was a conspiracy to try to affect the election. “Every campaign is a conspiracy to promote a candidacy,” Blanche said.

It is commonplace, Blanche said, for celebrities and candidates to work with media organizations, such as tabloids, to promote themselves and their campaigns.

Away from his New York trial, Donald Trump's campaign rallies are business as usual

Away from his New York trial, Donald Trump's campaign rallies are business as usual

Blanche argued that it “makes no sense” that Trump, Cohen and former publisher David Pecker genuinely believed they could influence the 2016 election through the use of the National Enquirer tabloid.

“There is nothing wrong with President Trump wanting to get positive news stories,” said Blanche. But he added: ”The idea that sophisticated people believed positive stories in the National Enquirer could influence the election is preposterous.“

Blanche said the reach of the tabloid was far below what would have ever been needed to swing the election.

The prosecution pushes back

Prosecutors spent six hours walking the jury through every part of their case and refuting claims made by the defense. Prosecutor Josh Steinglass walked the jury through all their evidence: of the 2006 sexual encounter described by Daniels, saying that Cohen knew what happened in that hotel room “and that goes to motive.” Steinglass told the jury of Daniels' testimony: “That is the display the defendant didn’t want the public to see.”

Here are four highlights from their closing arguments:

1. The 1 minute and 36 second phone call 

Steinglass took out his own phone, set the timer and reenacted a call that was at the center of Cohen’s cross and direct examination two weeks ago. Cohen testified that in a phone call, he had both spoken with Trump’s bodyguard about a harassing teen and separately with Trump about the payment to Daniels. Trump’s lawyers aimed to discredit Cohen’s memory of that conversation — arguing that it would be hard to broach both subjects in that short time.

Starting with, “Hey, Keith, how’s it going?” Steinglass went through a simulated phone call where he discussed the issue of a teenage prankster who had been harassing Cohen, and then said, “Can I talk to the boss?” Then Steinglass simulated a brief conversation about taking care of “that thing,” and a little small talk.

“And all that took 49 seconds,” about half the time of the call in question, Steinglass said, adding that this was just one of 20 calls Cohen had.

2. The validity of witnesses

Steinglass told the jury that in order to acquit Trump, they would have to disregard several witnesses’ testimony — not just Cohen's — including that of former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, and other pieces of evidence like handwritten notes on bank statements that detailed the math of how the payments would be made.

Ex-National Enquirer publisher says he pledged to be Trump's 'eyes and ears'

Ex-National Enquirer publisher says he pledged to be Trump's 'eyes and ears'

Steinglass referenced various witnesses who came to testify, including current and former employees of Trump’s business and administration. He also referred to the witnesses who work for companies that published Trump’s books about his business philosophy.

Rereading paragraphs from the books, Steinglass doubled down on Trump’s “frugality” and reminded the jury of Pecker’s testimony, where Trump was also described as frugal.

2. Trump's business practices

Steinglass once again went through the specific checks and invoices in question and how Deborah Tarasoff, the accounts payable supervisor at the Trump Organization, packaged them together to send to Trump even after he went to the White House.

Prosecutors pushed that even the chief financial officer, Weisselberg, could only approve invoices up to $10,000.

“Despite his frugality, and attention to detail, the defendant didn't ask any questions, 'cause he already knew the answers,” Steinglass argued, asking the jury to not believe the “bogus narrative that the defendant was too busy” while at the White House to notice the large sums of money was being spent.

There were two documents that showed handwritten notes from Trump’s chief financial officer and his comptroller that clearly lay out the reimbursement scheme: 130 times two, to cover taxes, plus another expense, plus a bonus, for a total of $420,000. Steinglass said, “They are the smoking guns.”

“They completely blow out of the water the defense claim that these were for legal work,” he said, adding, “I am almost speechless that they are still trying to make this argument that this was for legal retainer.”

3. Election concerns

Steinglass focused on the concerns he said Trump had about how the story of the alleged affair with an adult film star could hurt his 2016 presidential run. He argued that Trump himself told Pecker and Cohen to handle quashing negative media — specifically allegations from women about Trump in the leadup to 2016.

The prosecutor said that it all started at that August 2015 meeting in Trump Tower with the National Enquirer publisher, Pecker. Steinglass said: “Once money starts changing hands, that’s a federal election law violation.”

Adult film star Stormy Daniels testifies against Trump in New York trial

Adult film star Stormy Daniels testifies against Trump in New York trial

He doubled down that Trump’s concern was not his family, but the election, and the deal with the tabloid shows that was the motivation for a settlement 10 years after the alleged encounter.

“This is buying a story that you do not intend to print, so that no one else can print it,” Steinglass said, referencing Blanche’s argument that tabloids often purchase stories and then choose not to run them.

Tying this to the Daniels payment, Steinglass reminded jurors of the timing — how the deal to have Daniels sign a nondisclosure agreement came after the Access Hollywood tape became public.

“Stormy Daniels was a walking and talking reminder that the defendant was not only words,” Steinglass said.

NPR's Andrea Bernstein contributed to this report.

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