Freelance Writing Opportunities on the Web

I stumbled across a website called Helium the other day and its business model intrigued me: you write articles, they are rated and then you share in the revenue that companies pay for these articles. They indicate that some of your articles can earn $20-100 and it seemed like an easy gig. So I signed up a week and a half ago and have made...3 cents!!! On four or five articles that are ranked highly. Since this was not what I expected, I did some digging and discovered that changing the Google search term a few times led me to discover many other people have a similar problem. Despite Helium's claims at giving lots of money, it appears that is possible only if you write a lot of articles (in the 100s) about very popular topics. This, of course, means that the quality of the writing is poor, as you discover the more ratings you do.

Instead, I have started looking at Associated Content and you can view my articles if you like. Nothing profound, but hopefully useful things for people and I'll see if I continue to use it. The fee structure is entirely transparent and you can write articles that you want them to buy (in which case they pay you at least $20 + page views), or you can publish faster and be paid according to how many page views you get across all of your content. The writing looks solid and their layout (aside from trying to find your own article) is easy to navigate. I've even had a few people comment positively on my articles, which warms the cockles of my heart.

I really like Associated Content's format because it allows you to tweak things: title, subtitles and include fast facts, links and other resources that make your articles more informative. They are still testing a way of letting you see in real time how many clicks you have, which is the only immediate drawback I've seen.

If anyone's looking to pick up a little extra cash, I'd recommend it. It's also a nice way to judge readership and share your expertise on something aside from just talking to people.