A Fallback for Freelancers

A Fallback for Freelancers

Any freelance author will advise you that requests for writing, blogging and site-building solutions are in no way reliable, or even predictable. Unexpected spells of frenetic exertion are often interspersed by periods of "down time". Nonetheless, expenses always need to be paid. Fortunately, there are a number of fixed-fee organizations upon whom self-employed writers can rely in a crunch.

Having a syndication topping 70 million visitors, perhaps the biggest and also most famous of these "content farms" is known as Demand Media Studios (DMS), the corporation that owns AnswerBag, eHow and LiveStrong. Just like the majority of other written-content publishers, DMS first subjects potential authors to a writing test requiring approximately 400 words. The moment you are approved, you enter a shakedown phase in which you have one week to finish three posts. You pick the particular articles you’ll write from the DMS collection of over 160,000 titles. You can narrow your selection by filtering for topic, file format, and price. Let’s take a look at each:

1) Topics: you will discover sixteen principal topics including pets and weddings. Each topic is comprised of of dozens of subcategories that enable you to home in on your target articles. For instance, should you like wedding ceremonies, you'll be able to generate articles concerning brides, decorations, engagement rings, and so on. Even though many great freelance authors can write on almost any common subject, it is sensible to choose topics which mirror your experience and interests. DMS promotes a pleasant yet respectful tone of writing voice that requires a well-rounded familiarity with your topic, which encourages you to choose subjects you understand already.

2) Formats: it is possible for you to select from nearly two dozen formats, from easy lists to full-blown "topic views": well-rounded articles that look at a subject from a variety of viewpoints. No need to be concerned regarding the different formats; DMS furnishes a style guide for each. In fact, DMS has constructed a fairly respectable resource library that assists rookie writers in rapidly acquiring the sense of the assignments. Most of the formats necessitate material of 350 to 450 words in length. (Admission: I tend to write on topics that need, in my opinion, approximately 600 words. Once I was dinged for a 700 word write-up. So compact compositions are obviously favored). My personal guidance would be to try several formats and you’ll rapidly gravitate to a couple that matches your natural style.


3) Price: OK, you are not heading to Easy Street working for DMS, but assuming you have other revenue sources, the walking money you are making from DMS might be nicely helpful. Prices vary for write-ups from $3 to $40, but the majority of articles pay $15 or even $17.50. Additionally, you can be part of a revenue-share scheme through which an individual submits articles from his or her own subject matter list; this content pays to the degree it assists in generating click-through earnings for advertisers. Payday is two times every week by means of PayPal.

It is possible to cherry-pick as many as 12 content articles beforehand, but bear in mind you've only one week to finish the whole lot. I often pick just one or two; however there are always a lot of choices from which to select. Every posted write-up is edited through an excellent network of copy-editors that will on occasion return your work to you so that you can clean up any particularly egregious mess. Short of that, most editors make the small fixes for you. You're evaluated regarding grammar and also on research; it is a cumulative one-through-five rating system reported by month. Just stick with the program and you’ll quickly pick up on how to make editors happy.

In addition to freelance writers, DMS employs copy-editors, movie makers and topic professionals; earnings vary by job. Additional businesses within the content creation and distribution community include Writer's Access, Article Alley, Suite 101, and About.Com (a property of the New York Times). Should you want to generate some extra cash and can spare the time, maybe a gig with one of the content distributors would suit your needs.