Praying for Transference of Knowledge Through Osmosis | Introduce Yourself | Writing Forum

Somehow I ended up at the recent Blog post "Reader Question: Moving Beyond Penny Per Word Writing Gigs" by Jennifer Mattern, which I read and decided to stop by and see what other wonderful ideas are floating around.  I haven't been doing the penny-per-word method as long as the reader who submitted the inquiry but I do understand how she feels.

In January of this year, after being unemployed for a number of months and no prospective employment opportunity on the horizon I decided to stretch my writing legs and see what I could drum up.  Starting off at several writing for residual income sites at first, and even with quite a few hits on my articles I'm still waiting for the residual income to start.  I also started to submit answers to questions at a Q&A site and later started doing microjobs at a major site as well.  I wasn't getting rich but I was making money which helped a lot.  While going through the questions submitted by readers I came across one asking for ideas on how to make money online.  One of the other members responded with the web address of one of the penny-per-word sites claiming they had made more money there than any other site they had tried, several others agreed.     It looked like a legitimate site so I gave it a shot and was soon writing for them as well for about the penny-per-word rate.  

My biggest problem with the penny-per-word sites is most of the offerings are we want x number of words, these specific phrases or words to use and this, this and this as well.  Some are so bad they demand an article of 400 words and want 10 key phrases of 5 or 6 words each used in that article 4 or 5 times.  This would mean 300 words of your 400 word article are all key phrase words and your job is to string them all together so that they make sense. 

My real joy in writing is more on the creative side, rather than writing as a content provider or SEO articles to order. I have had several poems, a short story and numerous articles on a variety of subjects published in non-paying markets. Articles submitted to the penny-per-word sites and writing opportunities at the microjob site have all been accepted and paid for.  

 I think I really need to find one genre to really concentrate on, instead of trying to write everything.  I'm looking forward to learning some new things here as well as sharing in the triumphs of the fellow members.