Another freelance site I mentioned joining earlier on was Demand Studios. I applied and was fortunate to be accepted on the same day.

I began writing immediately, and was pleasantly surprised to have my first articles approved within a few days. I was even more pleasantly surprised to receive my first payment just a few days later. Although I'm still not entirely clear when the cutoff date is for payments, they do process them quickly.

The articles are quick and easy to write and I still enjoy them. While the pay is not high, it's not bad either for the effort or time involved. I also really like that it's work I can do here and there and am not obligated to produce a certain amount within a certain time. I also like being able to choose my own topics.

Although I hate to be in competition with more writers to grab the best topics :) I highly recommend Demand Studios for any freelancer wanting some extra work to fill in the gaps between other gigs, or who wants to just make a little extra money.

You can check out my Demand Studios articles, which appear on eHow, by clicking here.

A while back I posted about being a feature writer for Xomba.com. At the time, I had just submitted my first article and was waiting to see how things went.

My first feature article, European Travel On A Budget, is now posted on the website, and as promised, I promptly received payment when it was posted on the website.

I haven't made a whole lot of regular submissions to Xomba, but I have enjoyed submitting what they call Xomblurbs, which are similar to a blog post or a brief description of an interesting news item, website or other unique item on the net. On those type of posts, as well as article submissions, Xomba pays by splitting Adsense revenue 50/50.

To be honest, I haven't focused much on keywords or promotion of my Xomblurbs, but I have still earned a small amount of adsense revenue. I've also had some traffic arrive at this blog from Xomba. Because the Xomblurbs are so short, easy and fun, I would recommend trying them out, especially since you can use them to promote articles on other sites, as long as they are truly interesting. They're also an easy "warm-up" when you're not in the mood for writing, but really need to do it anyway, or a simple thing to do at the end of the day when your brain has decided it's quitting time.

I don't think Xomba is yet a place to include as part of your regular income, but it is another good place to release some creative energy and earn a little coffee money (or soda money in my case).

You can check it out at www.xomba.com

Demand Studios has been hiring freelance writers for a while now. I applied some time last year, but never heard back. I decided to apply again the other day and was accepted right away (I'll be posting tips on updating your resume and how to get an employers attention very soon.).

As a freelance writing job, this is a pretty decent one. The pay isn't high, but the work is easy and you can choose from a whole lot of topics. You can also submit up to 10 articles at a time, meaning the potential to make $100-$150 in an afternoon of intense writing is there. (Depending on how fast you can write, and how well you know the subjects you choose.)

The application process is simple and painless. Once approved, Demand Studios assigns a site that you will write for, and right now it seems that eHow is the most assigned one. I got assigned to write articles for eHow at a rate of $15 per article. (I understand that some people are starting out at $10. I think it helps if you already have an eHow profile with at least a few good articles under your belt.)

After logging in, you simply find the list of assignments and choose which ones you want to write. As a freelance writer, this is an ideal job. I love being able to choose what I write. And, as I said earlier, they provide a template of "steps' for your article, so it's super-easy to write. I can crank out an article in about 20 minutes if I'm already familiar with the topic. This means I could write all 10 articles in an afternoon if I wanted, and a week or two later have $150 for my effort.

While there are lots of high paying freelance writing jobs out there, and no need to write for $15 an article if you can land those gigs, I still recommend Demand Studios for the flexibility -- Write when you want and choose what you want to write about.

I like to think that I'm fairly competent when it comes to technology and the internet. I try to keep up with the latest and greatest, but I have to admit that I've never quite grasped the concept of sites like Hubpages and Squidoo. As a result, I didn't sign up for either of them, even when "everyone else was doing it."

Now, everything I read about promotion, such as promoting your freelance writing, promoting your online articles and even promoting your blog, suggests sites like Hubpages. So one evening I decided to sign up and see if I could "get" the concept, and if it would prove to be a valuable tool.

To be honest, the jury's still out. If my tracking is working, I'm not getting a lot of hits on my single submission there. Although I'm sure I need to submit many more to get an accurate picture. I've gained a few "fans," although I have no idea how, and it is fun to watch the score of the article go up.

I suppose to get more "fans" and therefore more hits, I need to go around and become a fan of lots of other people, then we all click on each others stuff to get more hits. -- Is that really the concept?

Like I said, the jury's still out. I want my writing, even if it's something silly or just promotional, to be of some value, and not get clicks just for "fans" helping each other out.

If I'm misunderstanding the concept, someone please set me straight.

I'll probably mess around with my Hubpages account a little bit to see what happens, but I still don't see this as the great opportunity that it's promoted as.

My personal recommendation would be to spend your time on either paid jobs or other sites for your "fun" work. I could be wrong though. I'll update as I experiment some more.

I saw the ads for PrintnPost over at Craigslist, and ignored them because it was yet another revenue sharing site, and frankly I'd rather just get paid. Then I ran across a series of positive posts about them on a freelance writer's forum (sorry, I can't remember which one), and decided to sign up and see what it was all about.

The amount of information on the site about the service is definitely lacking. The front page is geared toward hiring freelance writers, not promoting the content. I had a lot of questions that I couldn't find any answers to. But I signed up and posted two articles, one promoting this blog and another on getting a deal at Amazon. (Get 5% off at Amaon.com anytime. Even without a coupon, promotion code or sale.)

I submitted the Amazon article to Digg.com, and didn't do any promotion of the other article. I'm pleased to report that the Amazon article received several hundred hits in about 8 hours and I received a small amount of Adsense revenue right away.

The disappointing part, however, is that since that first eight hours, the article has only had a couple dozen hits and no additional Adsense revenue. Now this could be on my part (maybe I need better/different keywords, better SEO, etc.) or maybe PrintnPost isn't doing as popular on the search engines as I hoped and those hits came from Digg. I'll have to try several more articles to find out for sure.

In the end, based on this small experience, I would recommend trying out PrintnPost for those times between regular paying jobs, or when you have something you want to write about, but no client to buy it.

One big advantage of PrintnPost, even for freelance writers, is that you can use referral links. For example, I included several Amazon.com referral links in my article. So they do offer you another way to make money writing beyond the shared Adsense revenue.

I'm going to add a few more articles this week and see what happens. I'll be sure and share the results with you.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the paid blogging opportunities being offered by Today.com. Allena over at About.com checked it out and had this to say -click to see her post-.

The pay is low, but with all the buzz I decided to check it out for myself.

You have to apply for an account, and the application says that it could take up to 30 days to receive a response. I applied for a blog on Arizona travel and had a positive response within a few hours. I went ahead and started my blog with two posts and am waiting to see what happens.

Some things I am curious about are:

- How much marketing they do for you, and how much you must do yourself
- How the editing process works. Although my posts showed up immediately on the public blog, my account showed one post being in the editing review process for payment.
- Can you make any money on page views? Only Today.com can place ads, so you are relying strictly on page views. In the little bit of experience I've had with that they haven't paid much.

I'd been thinking about starting an Arizona travel blog for a while now, so it's really no great loss if it doesn't work out. I'll be sure to post updates as it goes along. You can see the blog at arizonatravel.today.com. You can visit Today.com/apply if you want to try it out for yourself, or you can wait and see what happens with my little experiment.

If anyone has experience with Today.com, I'd love to hear from you!

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I learned about Xomba when I replied to an online ad for feature writers. They hired me to write several feature articles for their front page each month (my first article should show up in June). I signed up for an account, but didn't take the time to really explore the site since I already had plenty of writing work to keep me busy.

Yesterday I decided to check it out. I'm not sure about the potential for earning on regular articles, but I sure am enjoying their Xomblurb feature. Basically, you post a short paragraph entry about a cool website or article, similar to a blog post. It's fun and quick and easy. It'll take a while to see if it pays anything, but I think it's worth finding out.

You can check it out at Xomba.com.

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eHow is a pay-per-click, user generated content site. The pay depends not only on the number of hits on your article, but also on ratings and Adsense revenues.

I signed up for eHow in January, wrote one article and then forgot about it. A few months later I got a surprise payment of about $12. Granted, $12 isn't much, but on the other hand, if you're in between jobs or just have some information to share, eHow isn't a bad site to do it at. The process for posting articles is so simple that a fast writer can complete an entire article in about 15 minutes. The program walks you through an introductory paragraph, then you write each step of the how-to.

I've added a few more articles on eHow and plan to keep on doing so in my "spare" time. It's not a living, that's for sure, but it will be a nice little extra pocket money every now and then, and I find the articles fun and easy to write.

JournalismJobs.com is a great resource for all freelance writers, even non-journalists. In addition to permanent, regular positions, the site lists freelance jobs, internships, fellowships and contests. On the main page, scroll down slightly and look on the left-hand side for the box that says "opportunities." That's where you'll find the link to freelance jobs.

I've found several great one-time jobs from here.

I learned about Constant Content several months ago, but haven't tried it out yet. It is free to sign up. You post articles for sale, they do the advertising, and webmasters purchase articles. Authors don't pay anything unless they sell an article, then Constant Content keeps a percentage of the sale.

I'm normally a little leery of this type of site, but a freelancer I know has been doing fairly well there. Three things that might be helping it to work is that there's not a glut of poor quality writing, all articles are reviewed for quality before being posted for sale on the site, and webmasters can request content on specific topics. One recent request is for articles for an online Christian magazine, that pays $100-$130 per article.

I signed up and am going to give it a try. I won't put a whole lot of time into it, as I'd rather write articles that I know will be published, but it may be a good outlet for those articles I'd love to write but don't have a client waiting for them.

Check it out! Constant Content