For those of you who are looking for additional ways to earn money by writing, I have found the following five sites to be beneficial either directly or indirectly.
HubPages is a wonderful writing community. The members are quick to praise and congratulate fellow members on well written articles and share their knowledge and experiences as well. I have been a member since my writing career began over two years ago.
In addition to the friendly members, there are a few options available for earning money. AdSense ads, HubPages Ad program, ebay and Amazon are all available to monetize your articles. My personal money-makers have been the HubPages Ad Program and Amazon links.
Helium is a site which encourages quality articles. In addition to views they have a rating system for members to rate each other's work. The rating system also encourages members to stay active, as you will not receive earnings if your rating stars fall below one.
In addition to the views and rating, they also pay an upfront fee for selected titles. I have personally had more earnings writing for selected titles than on views alone.
Helium is also a good place to find writers for your blog or website. I rated an article one day and was very impressed so I contacted the author. She did a Guest Post on my blog; it gave me great content and extra exposure for her. It was a win-win situation.
Knoji (formerly Factoidz) pays for helpful, original articles. The article must not be posted anywhere else on the web. The articles are moderated for quality and checked for duplication. They offer an activity bonus and also pay based on views. There is no article minimum, nor do you have to keep writing articles each week or month to keep earning. It is advisable to do so however, as the activity bonus does increase with more submissions.
Although Ezine Articles does not pay for articles or activity, they do encourage authors to add a Resource Box to their profile. This Resource Box allows the author to include a link to their blog or website, which in turn may lead to increased traffic and additional sales.
Triond is a site many people love to hate. It does integrate AdSense as well as earnings on views, but it also has to be taken with a grain of salt. The site itself is alright, but they do let a lot of inferior articles be published. Their distribution to additional sites allows for more views, but some of the contributors do not take pride in their work.
Personally I have not been diligent in submitting and even less diligent in reading other articles. I have a hard time getting through articles that are filled with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. My belief is no matter which site you submit to, it is important to do your best work. You never know who may be reading it, or what opportunity you may have missed because of inferior work.
The bonus with Triond is the low payment threshold; minimum of fifty cents to be paid. If you do not reach the fifty cents one month, it is carried over to the next. The more you write the quicker you'll reach your threshold. I believe it can be a good site if contributors take pride in their work and raise the bar a little higher.
The above list is based on my experience and opinion. Some have a higher payment threshold than others and it does take time to build a readership, just like any blog or website. For those of you who are curious about the sites, they are all free to join. I encourage you to try them and see what works best for you. The only way to find out is to join; you have nothing to lose.
I did alright in the beginning, but they made some changes and it is not as lucrative. I haven't submitted anything new there for quite some time. When I joined it was more for the experience and feedback than the money. I wrote this list almost one year ago, so a few things have changed in that time. My top two earners from this list are still HubPages and Helium.
I still have not worked on Triond. Do you actually do well there?
select one here...