Making Money with Writing.

A few years ago, I took on a freelance job writing for Demand Media Studios, a supplier of original articles for knowledge bank type websites like eHow.com and Ask.com,  (and thus contributing to the rest of the travel, etiquette and advice drivel that's on the internet.) I'm even embarrassed to say that I wrote those pieces because it's far from quality writing and haven't done a thing to share my work, but here's a picture of an article title and my by-line:

Want to know why most of these types of link-bait, how-to articles sound the same? Because all of the writers use the internet for research. And the pay kinda sucked at $7.50 - $15 per article accepted by the editors (and published). If you were really good, really fast at typing, and never had any revisions that were needed, then you may eek out $15/hr to earn $30K for the year. But a more realistic average is somewhere around $10/hr.  The 3-5 hours a day that I was spending stressing about my articles wasn't worth the check at the end of the week. Instead, I pushed for a promotion at work - and got it. Now, I make enough that it's hard to justify taking on the small writing gigs, writing stuff I just didn't enjoy writing.

And here's a big reality - sometimes, a writer will spend years writing (and revising, and re-writing) for no pay. And when one does get published and paid, it's going to be very very little at first. That's why most writers when they were starting out, had day jobs to pay the bills.