Money for writing articles: What pay to expect

There is a lot that goes into getting top dollar for your content. We will get into that as we cover the topics listed in the bottom of this Factiod. This is phase one, the “foundation.” Promoting your content properly, no matter where it is placed, is crucial. Check out our articles on SEO if you need a bit of know-how to get going on that:

Patience is very important, after all -it’s a virtue! So are perseverance and hope. This is the other caveat to making money from producing content: You may spend 20 minutes on a 500 word article. 90 minutes if you really polish it up nice. Lets say an hour, okay? A workman worth his wage would like to see $15.00 to $20.00 for that effort. Unlike most other work, producing content may pay that, or even a lot more; but here is the rub: It is a function of page views. and these page views can come over a period of many months. Hence the required patience. Also bear in mind that most pieces will get a surge of views when first published, then will trickle off to a more steady say, 3-20 per day.

I’m building an Excel spread sheet that will help you calculate projected earnings from your article writing. It will be like the chart below, just very interactive. When it is complete, I will post it here on Factoidz.com

Most writers aren’t big mathematicians or accountants. As promised, a spread sheet that will allow you to play with the numbers I’ve fixed in this chart will be forthcoming. Here is a (conservative) scenario that could play out for those who persevere:

* for 100 hours work, that comes to about forty three cents an hour! (don’t give up your day job yet!)

But…Pretend you quit writing after ten weeks. If this body of articles continued to get 800 views per week, worth $4.00 each, then in seven years, you have received your $15.00 per hour OR per article.

Now…Pretend you persevered after 10 weeks. At this same easy 10 hours per week part-time pace, at the end of seven years you would have made: $26,350.00 for producing 3640 articles, spending 3640 hours going clackity-clack on the keyboard. At this point you’ve made $7.23 per hour, part time, working at home. Still, only about minimum wage, but…

Wait…Pretend you “retired” from writing articles (after seven years and 3,640 pieces, “quiting” would be a misnomer!) If this body of work continued to get 36,000 PV’s per week, you would receive about $180.00 per week in your retirement! Not many minimum wage jobs that pay that kind of pension, are there? If that lasted just three years, you would collect more than $26,000.00. This would make your initial effort worth over $15.00 per hour. Nothing to get real excited about, but for those of us who have to leave the house for this wage…an appealing concept.

This scenario is just the foundation. Of course some articles are going to become obsolete in a matter of a couple years and those monthly page views will come to a gradual end. But, some articles will hit the mother load, and up front or “surge” payment could be 10 to 100 times as much. Pay attention to promises of a little money for a lot of work. These are usually legitimate deals. It’s the promises of thousands of dollars for doing nothing but “buying in” to someone’s BS -that isn’t even worth a glance. In future articles, we will build on this foundation, talking about:

1. Repurposing this content to receive even more revenue for the same work.
2. Taking steps to increase page views, and therefore revenue. (C’mon, study that SEO stuff!)
3. Fringe benefits that come with publishing a good sized body of information online.
4. How to be cooperative as well as competitive, in a friendly way, with your work.
5. How to be protective of your own work, and keep the industry at large honest.
6. How to increase speed, efficiency, and quality when producing content.
7. How to select the best content (for you as an individual) to produce and capitalize on.