What to Offer Freelance Writers on Your Planned New Writing Site

You plan to create a new writing site, but there are already so many out there, how can you make your writing site better than other writing sites? Your goal is to have the best online writing site ever.

 

To get writers to not only flock to your site and submit many articles to your site, but to also have writers calling your site the best online writing site ever, you’re going to have to give them good reason to.

 

Research before fully embarking on your project should include:

• Studying other writing sites and their blogs and forums
• Reading reviews written by writers who are members at those sites - or who are no longer members!
• Reading the comments of visitors to those reviews

Your findings will most likely indicate that writers like different aspects of different writing sites – explaining why so many freelance writers submit their articles to more than just one site.

 

Logic dictates that you should offer freelance writers as much as you can, all on one site – on a site owned by you.

 

What makes good writers not even consider joining a new site, or make them leave that site?

• The site is only for writers who reside in a particular country
• There is a fee to join the site
• There is no payment option that the writer can use, or may have difficulty using
• It appears that some members abuse the choice of being able to vote down an article
• People may be struggling to get a Google Adsense account, and this is the only form of payment a site offers
• The site does not allow previously published materials
• The minimum length requirement of the submitted articles is quite long
• Members are not allowed to use their referral links when linking to other sites
• Members are not allowed to link to their own sites or other sites from their profile
• Spam isn’t dealt with quickly or properly
• There are no comment moderation options
• The writers name or date of article does not appear on the published articles
• There is only one way a writer can earn an income from submitting articles to a site
• Users are not also allowed to upload images to an image section, or bookmarks to a bookmark section (because these sections don’t exist on a site.)
• The earnings potential or payment structure is pathetic - and it’s obvious the owner of the site has the potential to make a huge fortune from submitted and published materials
• The site is untidy and difficult to navigate
• The pages take a long time to load
• There are hardly any FAQ, guidelines or tutorials
• Management takes more than 4 or 5 days to reply to an email
• Answered emails do not provide solutions to a problem
• Writers do not retain copyright or full rights of their articles
• It is expected that a tax form be submitted when some writers don’t even earn enough, or writers live in a country that requires tax details only after a person is earning enough
• The site publishes poor quality articles
• A writer has to earn quite a high amount before being paid
• Writers have to wait a long time to receive earned payments

Different ways that writers can earn an income from some writing sites

• Page views of their articles
• Ad revenue sharing
• Affiliate sales
• Selling their articles, with or without offering full rights
• Winning prizes
• Activity bonuses
• Voting up other articles
• Referring new users
• Referring visitors to any page of a site
• Making use of referral links and linking to their own or other sites

Can you create a site that eliminates all or most of the problems listed above, and that also offers freelance writers and those wishing to make extra income online more than just two or three different ways to make money? It may take a lot of planning and be quite expensive, but if you can do it, and can satisfy the wants and needs of every freelance writer out there, imagine how they would go mad submitting articles and promoting your site. You may just end up with the best writing site ever!

 

Original article on, and © copyright Teresa Schultz 2010

She Told Me what? She Told Me! I've joined She Told Me!

SheToldMe is a site you can join and where you can bookmark articles you have elsewhere on the Internet. So what's so great about that? We have twitter, digg, facebook, reddit, stumbleupon and numerous other sites where we can bookmark articles.

Well, does twitter, digg, facebook, reddit, and stumbleupon have ads on their site next to your posts that you can earn some extra income from? Not?

SheToldMe does.



Actually, so does Xomba and, in a way, so does RedGage (earn from pageviews of your blog posts, bookmarks (links) and videos or pictures uploaded) but I'm discussing SheToldMe now.

As per Google Adsense policies and TOS, just three Google Adsense block ads are allowed per page of content. She Told Me has three per page. Your bookmark gets a whole page to itself, and can be as short as 200 characters long (that's about 20 to 30 words.) The one Adsense ad is for She Told Me, the one closest to your title and content is yours, all yours, and then there's one beneath your content area that can belong to whoever referred you to She Told Me.

It's easy to publish content to She Told Me. If you don't yet have a Google Adsense account, get yourself one, and then sign up for She Told Me!

Go through the site and spend some time reading through all there is to know. It's pretty easy to understand the site, but just do it (read a lot) first, so that you don't make any mistakes that slow you up or get you your account banned.

You may be getting good traffic from wherever else you are bookmarking your online articles, but what's wrong with adding a few more sites to your list. You want links on many sites coming to your articles don't you? And, She Told Me is not only another place for trying to get more traffic to your articles, but is also a place that gives you the opportunity to earn some extra income from your bookmarking efforts.

Do make sure to be at least a bit active within the community - comment on and rate up other members' content. The rating button is just to the left of the title of each piece of content uploaded. You would like others to do the same for you, wouldn't you?

Now, if you can get other people to join SheToldMe too, using your referral link, the Adsense ad that appears beneath the content they upload is yours! (It contains your Adsense publisher ID.)

What are you waiting for? Don't say I didn't tell you - say "She Told Me!"



Original article on, and © copyright Teresa Schultz 2010

The signing up process at You Say Too - an Adsense Revenue Sharing site

If anyone has read the about me on this blog, they'll see that I'm keen to make money blogging - even if takes me a really long time, as I can only spend time on it inbetween doing my other work - my work, along with my boyfriend Tony, is freelance web design and writing, from home. A lot of my paid writing or Internet research jobs come from oDesk, and that's cool, as I can work for anyone in the world. Most of my web designing jobs are local, here in East London - although have designed a few sites for people in other towns of South Africa too, mostly communicating via email. Have even helped redesign a site for an International client via oDesk, but, generally, the web design section of my work at home job is for local clients. The writing is from online efforts and earning from Google Adsense, or, as said already, from getting writing jobs on oDesk.

I haven't posted any new blog posts here in a while as I have been busy exploring some online income opportunities. I think I plan to discuss many of them on this blog, or on some of my other blogs, to help others who are thinking of doing the same, or who are wanting some tips, advice, reviews, or more information on the different extra income opportunities I come across. One of these is You Say Too.

As I write this I'm still sort of in the process of signing up - I find the site incredibly slow - but these are my views so far, and obviously probably related mostly to the sign up process:

By following some simple instructions on You Say Too you can feed your Blogger blog posts to the site. Be patient with the site if you find it slow too (I've just checked and it seems my blog (this one) is now there.) - as You Say Too seems a good place to earn a little extra income from the Adsense ads on the site.

If you have a Google Adsense account, you will earn 50% of the revenue that You Say Too makes. To get your posts or blogs on You Say Too seen more, get involved in the community there, make new friends, don't go against any of the TOS (terms of service/terms and conditions/rules), and update your main blog regularly. If you don't have a blog, you can make blog posts directly on the site - of course, remember to get some links to these blog posts by leaving the links to them on social sites or social bookmarking sites - or in other articles you have elsewhere on the Internet.

Now, if you couldn't care less about making some extra income for yourself, but you do care about charities trying to help the world, and you do have a blog you post to regularly, then submit your blog to You Say Too anyway, as part of the revenue from advertising on the site will then go to the charity of your choice instead of to you. You won't even have to join Google Adsense if you don't yet have an account there, as You Say Too will handle the earnings you would have earned through their own Adsense account and will donate it to the charity of your choice. I'm hardly signed up there, so haven't yet noticed if you are able to see on your dashboard how much you have earned that is donated to a charity, but I do suspect that you would be able to check.

Of course if you're pretty much struggling along yourself, then don't feel bad to rather choose that the earnings come to you instead of to a charity - as long as when you make it big one day, through your online activities, you remember to help out those less fortunate than yourself - people, animals, causes.

I've branched off the main topic here, so back to it - the signing up process:

Put up with the slow site (if it really is slow in general and not just me - but it seems much slower than other sites I've joined) as perhaps it will improve, and, besides, I've read some good reviews on You Say Too, on other sites.

Choose a user name and password - the user name space allowance is somewhat small - I usually add teresaschultz or Teresa Schultz as my user name, but could only fit in TeresaS on You Say Too.

Add your Wordpress.com or Blogger blog: type in the URL of your blog and the RSS feed. For Blogger the feed comes up automatically after typing in the URL - well mine did.

Add a code to your blog. Simply copy the coding that comes up and add a third party html gadget to your gadgets on your Blogger (not sure what the steps are for other blogging platforms.)

I first added it as a text gadget, as this is how I usually add buttons to my blogs (like the South African blog aggregator myScoop button), but it either didn't take immediately, or didn't work at all. Everything seems fine now that I started all over again (the adding the blog step) and added a third party html gadget instead.

There also seems to be a further exposure opportunity involving possibly placing a widget or box or advert on your site, that displays other people's blog posts (but theirs will display yours too) so, sort of a swopping and helping out set up - I will be checking this out too.

So, that's it for now about yousaytoo - updates and more extra income news, tips and advice coming soon.

There are already some tips and reviews about work at home jobs on my work at home jobs site, if you'd like to check those out too.

© copyright Teresa Schultz 2010