Can this be a full time job?

[veg25]

Hello there,

I was wondering how successful Constant Content authors are here. These are some of my questions.

What's the average most writers here makes a week/month?

What are some of the best tips to have some financial success here? I've gone through the guides and faqs, but what are some concrete tips based on experience.

If it means writing lots of articles a day or just finding the right subject matter, then let me know. Thanks.

[Celeste Stewart]

For some CC provides enough opportunities to be considered a full time source of income; for others it's one of several places to find regular work. Others still come and go, enjoying the extra income that comes their way. Making a full time income here does involve a ton of writing, so yeah, writing lots of articles is part of it. But there's more to it than churning out content. The content has to meet a customer's needs, it must pass the editorial review process, it must be priced fairly, and even then it may take a while to sell.

If you're just starting out here, try submitting a few articles on topics you enjoy writing about. Once you're comfortable with the approval process, tackle one of the public requests that interests you. You never know when a topic is going to take off, so also keep an eye on the "Recently Sold" list to see what is selling at the moment and then consider jumping on the bandwagon.

As far as averages for most writers, I don't know. I'm happy with mine and I know of writers who make far less who are equally happy with theirs. We all have different measurements, so figure out what you want and start making plans on how to reach those numbers. For example, if you want to make $300 per week here, how many articles would that take? It's impossible to know until you've had some time here to gauge your ratio of how many articles submitted translate into sales and so on. I keep a spreadsheet and it's been extremely reliable. I highly recommend keeping track and then using that data a few months down the road to create a productivity budget. If you know that one out of four articles sells right away for $30 (after the cut) and you want to earn $300 each week, then you know that you need to write 40 articles in order to sell the required ten and earn that $300. I'm just making up numbers here to give you an idea of how you can eventually predict your income and set goals to reach it.

Good luck! Welcome to CC!

[Elizabeth Ann West]

If you're looking at writing to be a full-time job, then I think C-C is just one factor. For example, I write part-time, not because I couldn't write full-time (I actually have had to turn down writing assignments to preserve my part-time status), but because I have other priorities in my life too that I can't quit. :) I like to average between $300-$500 per month, as that is extra money that helps my family. To earn that working part-time outside my home, at $8 an hour minus taxes (which I don't really pay on my money I make writing because we have such a healthy return due to my husband's military career) that would be 50-80 hours a month, or 12-20 hours a week. I do NOT put that much time into writing each month.

My suggestion is to give yourself a good 6 months to get the hang of writing for the web and other outlets. Each month, take on learning a new skill. The major ones you need are SEO, blog style writing, marketing yourself/writing a proposal, and the ins and outs of each writing outlet. Then take some time to figure out 2-3 writing outlets that work for you. For example, C-C is a slow cooker for writing, most writing here sits for 1-3 months before selling. Sites like A-C give the option of getting a small fee upfront ($3-$8 is the most I've been offered), and then you earn $1.50 per 1,000 page views. Other sites like Guru or eLance and many others require you to really put some work into marketing yourself and best once you have a portfolio here or somewhere else to link to. You have to submit proposals for work, but jobs you land can be ongoing or higher yields.

(cont'd)

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Just as an example here are some potential ways the revenue can come in:

C-C, once you have an established portfolio here, a dozen or so approved articles for sale in popular topics (check the Recently Sold Content for ideas) you COULD bring in $50-$100 in a month, depending on the prices you place on your writing. It takes 3 $25 articles per month to make $48. One $100 article selling each month is $65. Most successful writers here play with articles of varying length.

A small payer website, what I call places like Helium and Associated Content, needs a larger portfolio to generate money. Submitting 8-10 well written articles there (and be careful about selling articles there exclusively and thinking no one will notice if you try to sell them here, they will!) will probably get you upfront payments for 5-6 of them, or about $20-$50. But you have to identify "holes" of content, they won't pay upfront for father's day articles when there are already 200 articles on that subject. Then you start making money on the views. I have about 12 articles I think on A-C, and I make about $2.00 a month just on page views. You can see how this is an aggregate game here, if you just took one or two weeks a month to build this portfolio up, it can earn you a steady stream of income.

Finally, landing a job or two from a freelancer site rounds out the month. I keep usually only 2-3 regular clients at a time. On average, I probably submit 5 proposals for 1 response I get back from a client, and even then, probably only every third one is serious about the work. You have to have some experience to realize which "jobs" are bogus, or which clients are likely a waste of time to try to please. Clients will want to see your other work published on the net, and you need to be confident in setting prices for your work. I currently work for one client on SEO for about $100-$150 per week, and one client that I provide one $25 article for a monthly newsletter.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Sorry I forgot to mention, the small payer websites take TIME. I earn $2.00 a month on 12 articles, but not all are created equally. I get 1,000 page views from my first EVER piece of writing "Military Wife Tips: Keeping Any Long Distance Relationship Alive" which has been published since October 2007. Total page views on that piece are 9,500 in 20 months, so you can see it takes time for a piece to start rolling down the hill. Some don't ever, other pieces that are significantly older do not earn any page views at all.

[nickpaddy]

Just to chime in on what Elizabeth was saying about smaller paying sites. I used to write for Helium, and have around 60 articles that pull in around $2 a month all together. This is partly because I didn't write to very popular topics (I hate having another 70 articles listed with mine) and I don't regularly update them to keep the listing fresh.

I once worked it out after asking around, and it seems to make the minimum payout of $25 would involve having around 350-450 articles there, none of which can ever be sold elsewhere exclusively, and you'd have to be constantly updating and editing them to keep them profitable. That's a lot of hours for not much payout.

Contrast that with CC, where I've just been lucky enough to sell 1 article for $50. It took me an hour to write and edit, so that a pretty nice profitability ratio. I just wish I wrote a little more on here, then I wouldn't have to work elsewhere at all.

If you're looking for a full time career writing, CC is a great place to start. Even if your articles don't sell straight away, providing they are on popular topics, someone will always come and pick them up somewhere down the line.

[Antonia]

I was writing for Helium also, and the most I made was $65 in the Marketplace. However, I can never sell that article again, nor any of my articles on Helium....even the ones that aren't making a penny! I never really understood the difference between full rights and usage, and now that I do, C-C is a lot more attractive to me than what Elizabeth called "small payer websites."

I haven't sold anything on C-C yet, so I don't have anything useful to add in response to the original question. But, I'm very interested in the answers! It's encouraging and inspiring to hear from the experienced writers about what works for you and how to project income. Celeste, I love your spreadsheet idea!

[Celeste Stewart]

The beauty of using the spreadsheet is that you're calculating what you need to produce each day in order to reach your immediate goals. If one out of four articles typically sells right away for you, that doesn't mean that those other three articles are sacrificed - they will sell eventually and give you a nice bonus! Write each article fully expecting it to sell and chances are good that it will.

[BarryDavidson]

[quote="Antonia"]I was writing for Helium also, and the most I made was $65 in the Marketplace. However, I can never sell that article again, nor any of my articles on Helium....even the ones that aren't making a penny! [quote]


Antonia,

You can sell your articles which are posted on Helium, but for usage rights only. In the fine print of Heliums TOS it only states that you can't assign exclusive rights to any work posted there. I have quite a few articles there as well, and they only required a little editing in order to meet the submission guidelines here. Several of those articles have sold several times here for usage.

If you used a different name on Helium, be sure to include the name they were posted under in a note in the short summary for Ed.

[Antonia]

Barry, thanks so much for explaining I can sell Helium articles for usage only here! Very excited to know I was mistaken about that. Off to Helium to edit some articles and bring them up to C-C quality!

[Celeste Stewart]

I don't know if you can resell a Helium Marketplace article though. Don't those go to specific customers rather than Helium? I'd double check that point.

[Lysis]

You're not even supposed to market your Helium articles, so I'm told. I never got into Helium, but they've recently changed their rules about flat fee articles. I don't hear very many authors speak well of Helium. I've had an account with them for years, and never did much with it.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

About the best use I have for Helium is taking their writing idea suggestions (the marketplace article requests, the hot button issues) and turning them into exclusive C-C content. It's a great site for research into idea on WHAT to write about, but I find few articles there are remotely balanced or appropriately researched for C-C. For example, my "5 Truths About Credit Cards" article came from a marketplace request there. I didn't submit anything to that request, but the idea of flipping the classic "myths" article intrigued me. It was sold here for more than what the article would have sold there, even after C-C's cut, assuming my article was selected from the 30 others or so submitted.

There are certainly some intriguing writing topics there, but like others, I just don't have time or energy to read and rate poor writing to earn my pennies in their revenue sharing program.