We have added some more sites to the feed, there are a total of 25 sites that contribute to this service.

The only two sites that we want to include but cannot are elance.com and guru.com. The former has an RSS feed without proper dates (it looks like all their posts have been made in the year 1900, so they never pop up in the latest 24 hour posts - but they have promised to fix it).

The latter just does not have any RSS feed on their site, but they have promised that they are working on it.

So we’ll see. I guess 158 jobs that have been posted in the last 24 hours is quite a chunk to work through anyway.

So best of luck with finding fantastic jobs. And we am looking forward to your feedback.

I have just put together an aggregated feed of writing jobs that are offered on the big bidding and job posting sites (currently we are tracking 25 sites). Rather than having to keep track of all sites, you can view the available jobs in one convenient location.

Freelance Writing Opportunities via email or feed reader

If you prefer to receive the latest jobs offers via email, just enter your email address on the right. You will receive the newly added job offers for the last 24 hours once a day. Your details are secure, we will not share them with anyone.
You can also use any feed reader to stay up to date.

Using this service is free for any writer. However, please be aware that some of the job sites need you to be a member before you can apply or bid for jobs. We will never charge you, but are paid by some sites for referrals we send their way.

We appreciate any feedback you have for us, so we can keep improving the service. Please comment.

Where do we get the Freelance Writing Jobs from?

Most of the sites are bidding sites. But we have also included some smaller sites that offer great freelance writing opportunities. We update the jobs that are displayed every 30 minutes, so you can be sure to get the latest.

Craig’s List

Elance.com - Read my review on elance and why it just got harder to get jobs.

GetACoder.com

Getafreelancer.com

GoFreelance.com

IFreelance.com - Read my review on ifreelance.

Indeed.com

Monster.com

ODesk.com

Project4Hire.com

RentACoder.com

Scriptlance.com

Yahoo Jobs

The smaller sites:

AgaveBlue.net

AuthenticJobs.com

BloggerJobs.biz

ContractedWork.com

CoroFlot.com

FreelanceSwitch.com

JournalismJobs.com

Krop.com

ProBlogger.net

VirtualVocations.com

WritingJobRoll.com

One important site we have not been able to integrate as yet is Guru.com (see review). But we are in contact to them to make that possible as well.

I think I admit on the site somewhere that Elance.com is where I have been finding freelance writing job opportunities for the better part of my (short) career. I say “admit” because as I look around at other sites for writers, a lot of them seem to have a problem with the Elance site. In fact it was through one author’s(Sharon Hurley Hall) complaining about Elance that I found my way over to the site.

I will be the first to admit that this is one bidding site that does have its flaws, but I have to temper that with the fact that it has definitely helped me springboard into full time writing for a living.

There seems to be some confusion among writers and those who offer writers advice on the changes that Elance first put through their system (check out webwritinginfo.com). I’d like to offer my take on this subject; as usual I see a few different angles to what Elance is doing.

The Good

Well there’s one thing I certainly can’t complain about, and that is the fact that Elance has changed their pay structure so that individual writers, like myself, are on a more even footing with the big companies.

My monthly fees are half what they used to be because I can’t keep up with companies who use ten writers to produce content, and I don’t need the full allotment of bids.

The Mixed

One grey area for me is the new Premium Provider program. It used to be that you paid a fee and got a Premium membership that let you bid on certain freelance writing job opportunities.

Now Elance has changed the process so that providers have to have over 90% positive bids over a period of six months, have had to have at least two original clients in the past six months, and have to keep their membership fees updated.

The last requirement I have no problem with, nor do I have any problem with the idea behind the first requirement.

Still, I think Elance needs to do a lot of work in clarifying their feedback system and making it a little bit more fair for providers if they truly want to reflect the merit of companies (currently what any client says goes, no matter how demonstrably outrageous the claims and feedback scores).

The Bad

When it comes to finding more than two original clients each month, though, as an individual writer I take exception. Just as with the feedback, this seems to be tailored to give the writing mills an advantage over the individuals on the site. Easy enough to get new clients every week when you are willing to bid $5 for a 500 worder!

The Confusing

For reasons that are not very clear, Elance has decided to call bids “connects”. It sounds nice but still, what really is the point?

Also, the new sponsored bid program is a bit of a joke. Under his program, you can use two of your “connects” to get top placement in the bid section. Only two sponsors per posting though; I don’t really see how this idea works for anyone but Elance, who of course want providers to purchase additional connects as often as possible.

Conclusion

So the changes that Elance has made are not all bad, in fact the price change in particular is great for individual writers.

Still, Elance really has to take a look at their feedback process if they really want to be fair both to buyers and providers, and this still has not been addressed. In fact, it is a problem that may be exacerbated under the new rules.

Even though, I still use Elance to find freelance writing job opportunities.

We want to help you become familiar with writing for the Internet. Especially if you are serious about establishing a freelance writing career.

There probably is no better opportunity for freelance writers in the world than the Internet. In fact there are those who suggest that e-newspapers and e-zines will someday, perhaps very soon, replace printed materials.

That may be so, but the Internet still has a long way to go before it reaches what can truly be called a professional calibre of writing.

The more writers are interested in truly bringing value to the information that can be found on the Internet the better. That means that my focus is on those writing for the Internet with commitment and skill. I want to make sure they know how to apply it.

Right now a quick look around the Internet will demonstrate that there are a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of snake oil salesmen. In fact I think the Internet is the true Final Frontier; people can create a whole new reputation and then use that to manipulate others to their advantage in all areas, and that includes writing.

Many sites out there claim the ability to help you start a freelance writing career, but how many actually succeed? Most of the sites I have been to are really no more than arenas for aspiring writers to posture and judge; as far as practical information that leads to cash in your hand, they are pretty much useless.

With that in mind, I have made a list of some things to look for when it comes to a site that claims to help one write for the Internet.

1. Are there facts and figures?
   The problem with the Internet is that anyone can claim to be someone they are not, and it can be pretty hard to tell if a site’s claims are legitimate or not.
   One thing I look for in a site that claims to have first-hand knowledge about making a living writing are facts and figures. What kind of money does the developer make a month? Where does he or she find jobs? Writers are an elusive bunch, and that isn’t just online; there are plenty of books out there that claim to be great writing resources, but just don’t offer any solid information.
2. Are there obvious mistakes?
   One website I really enjoy is www.stevepavlina.com. He is straightforward and I have referred people to him a couple of times on this website.
   I do take what he says with a grain of salt though, and here’s why: in an article on blogging for money, he claims to make $1000 a day off of his website. He then goes on to say that he only ever does the website as a part time job; in other words, he still retains a job outside of the Internet. Now it could be that Steve loves his land job so much that he does it for the fun, but I do tend to question anyone who makes $30,000 a month but still works another job. Crazy or embellishing, take your pick.
3. Grammar and spelling.
   Every writer knows that there are going to be some mistakes when it comes to grammar and spelling in any piece, no matter how hard you check. All of us have tunnel vision when it comes to our own work, so a few mistakes here and there shouldn’t turn you off totally when it comes to a site.
   If there are constant mistakes throughout all the pages on the site, though, ones that go way beyond simple typos, the odds are pretty good that the site is not a very good resource when it comes to writing for the Internet.

Those are just a few of the things I recommend looking at when you find a potential resource about writing for the Internet. Even on sites where you find some of the flaws I listed above, you will probably be able to glean some useful bits of information. Just make sure to be careful about taking everything they say as Gospel truth!

What do online creative writing courses have to do with your freelance writing career? One of the great things about writing is that there is always more to learn, new techniques that you can apply within your pieces, and more styles that you can emulate.

Some of the biggest steps I have taken as a writer have come from reading particularly well written books; there is something within the pages that my brain recognizes as a key writing style and I will tend to incorporate that into my own writing without even really thinking about it.

Creative Writing: your biggest goal?

Creative writing is probably the number one goal for almost any writer, even those with well established reputations in other fields. I once read an editorial, for example, in which the writer confessed that although she had been in the newspaper business for twenty years, her computer and her desk were full of short stories, unfinished novels, and even poetry. That inner artist is still around, even for those who have made a living doing what I call “practical writing”.

Losing the creative juice

Although writing for websites and newspapers and so on will definitely help you pay the bills and make a little extra as well, it can suck the creative juices right out of you.

When I first started my business, my goal was to use the money I made to get the family through while I started my destined-to-be-best-selling novel about opportunities missed in life and the importance of being able to rebuild.

The problem was that as soon as I started to make money writing what other people wanted me to, I realized that it could turn into a real career (as far as problems go, not a big one to have). I soon started to concentrate my efforts on finding more jobs instead of coming up with ideas and plots.

A year and a half later, I realized that my ability to reach people on a gut level with my writing no longer came as naturally. Where I had once been able to turn a phrase that could start someone roaring with laughter, make them think, or put them on the edge of tears, now all I could think about was the maximum number of words that should be put into a sentence meant for an Internet audience.

In fact it has become so bad that I am starting to write more and more like the typical Internet writer; I even get my “there” and “their” confused from time to time.

Reawaken the right brain

Because I don’t want to lose the ability to write creatively, I decided that I would look around to see what I could do to reawaken that part of my brain. I happened to run into a local author I knew from university at a social event, and she suggested that I try taking a course on creative writing.

The university is in my city, so I went ahead and enrolled. I definitely learned some things that helped me to hone my writing skills, but I think that more importantly I was exposed to authors who were using their writing skills to create again, not just to sell.

Nothing local? Go online

Many writers don’t have the time or proximity to attend a university course on creative writing, but there are plenty of opportunities to do so on the Internet.

You can take an ongoing course, to stay in the flow with it. Thomson Education offers 18 month online creative writing courses. Or you can go for 6 weeks online creative writing courses with Gotham’s Writers Workshop.

Taking an online creative writing course is a great way to keep the interesting parts of your writing career alive without having to take too much time away from your practical writing. You may not ever write that novel you want to, but getting the creative juices flowing again is a great way to rejuvenate your commitment to your freelance writing career.

“Learn to write” might seem like kind of a superfluous section. After all, if you want to start a freelance writing career, then obviously you already know at least a bit about how to write. Still, all of us can use tips that can help us to learn to write in order to further our careers that much more.

Different writing styles are required for different writing markets, something that making a living writing for the Internet has demonstrated very clearly to me.

Writing for the Internet is not like writing for newspapers or magazines, and it is certainly not like the creative writing that most of us, as writers, hope that we will one day be able to earn money doing.

Tricks and Tips

There are different tricks and tips that need to be remembered whenever you attempt to get on your keyboard and create content that will be of interest to web surfers and therefore web developers, and the whole process can get even more involved when you throw in different web building strategies such as search engine optimization.

There are also the pitfalls such as writer’s block. I get stuck with it and appreciate any input on how you overcome writers block.

Helpful Information

In this section, we will look at different places where you can find helpful information when it comes to creating content that does well on the Internet. I am hoping that this site will become your main reference point. I have learned a lot about my own Internet writing style through the example of other writers, and I think that the broader your knowledge base and sources on this subject are, the better.

Online Creative Writing Courses

I think we will also use this section to dig up information about online creative writing courses. I have mentioned in other articles that a lot of writers seem to think that education in writing is somehow counter productive, but I strongly disagree.

There is a lot to be said for a continued desire to learn to write in a more effective manner, and there are plenty of materials out there to help you do so. In fact there are probably more online creative writing courses out there than there are practical web related ones, which is absolutely acceptable to me because I am more interested in the practical side of things.

Synthesis Through Ongoing Learning

Of course you might be gifted enough to create a synthesis between your creative writing abilities and the things you learn about writing for the Internet. In that case, you stand to gain an awful lot as long as you know where to look for opportunities and how to go about landing clients!

At the very foundation of an Internet writing business lies an understanding of keyword writing. It is one of the very first terms that I ever came across in relation to writing for the Internet; in fact I heard the word keyword long before I had heard of SEO.

Of course, just because I heard something doesn’t mean that I understood it. I did understand that it was important and that obviously these were words that were to be used in the articles I was to write, but beyond that I didn’t really have a clue as to what keyword writing was. Thanks to a couple years in the business and with the help of resource materials such as my trusty SEO for Dummies book and websites such as www.selfseo.com, I have come a long way in my understanding of keyword writing and how to go about using it effectively. While those references I mentioned will prove helpful, like many of the resources I have consulted while growing my business I found them lacking in some areas, areas that I ended up filling in myself.

Besides the obvious, what are keywords?

If you have ever gone to a search engine to look for information, you will have typed a phrase or a keyword into the query box and then received a couple thousand pages which contain those keywords. Those results are the pages that are indexed by the search engines as being relevant to the keyword or phrase. They are ranked according to secret algorithms that try to show the most relevant and useful sites first.

Here’s a pretty relevant example. Let’s say you want to make money writing online, or you are interested in starting a freelance writing career. Well, you will probably type those exact phrases into the query section of a search engine (or just click the links), and hopefully this site will appear somewhere within the top results. The reason is, my partner Alexander Kohl has carefully researched several dozen keywords that people use most often when it comes to freelance writing, and has told me I have to use them if we want to get visitors.

In fact, if you look closely at the articles on this site, you will probably notice an awful lot of keyword writing taking place. Placing the right key words or phrases within pages is very important for attracting traffic.

The trick with keywords

One of the temptations with keywords is to overuse them within an article in order to get a high ranking. This trick has been tried before, and in various forms, and it appears as though search engines have caught on. Keyword stuffing is considered black hat SEO technique, and placing keywords all over a site may even result that site being banned from the search engine index.

Of course, every time word of something like that gets out, there tends to be an overreaction. When I first started writing for a living on the Internet, many clients were calling for keyword densities of 15-20%. In other words, for every 100 words I used in a piece, the key phrase had to be used between 15 and 20 times. Obviously, this made for some ridiculously written pieces, and I hated writing them. Thankfully, when Google and the other search engines changed their algorithms, they had obviously caught on. While this kind of “stuffing” wasn’t considered to be as bad as other forms, it was bad enough to get sites ranked lower after a query was performed.

The upshot of this is that keyword writing is now much less focused on the keyword and more on the end user, the human web surfer. Web site developers are looking for writers who can fit keywords naturally into an article, press release, and so on without making it look forced, and with a reasonable density (2-5%). Again, this reinforces my golden rule of SEO and writing for the Internet: don’t write for the engines, write for people!

Keyword writing today

If you want to know the honest truth, I hate keyword writing. I don’t like having to fit a word into any article at all, particularly when I feel as though the word itself shouldn’t matter, it’s the idea of the piece that counts. If you need to use the word a certain amount of times, then you should be able to do so, and if you don’t, then you shouldn’t force it.

Still, a writing career on the Internet means that you have to be able to walk that fine line between human consumption and what the spiders can read and understand. Keyword writing will probably always be around in one form or another, and I do feel glad that it has at least progressed beyond the crazy stuffing frenzies of two years ago. Until search engines begin using human editors again (which Yahoo! still does, incidentally) it’s likely that Internet writers will have to perform at least minor word gymnastics from time to time in order to make sure clients remain satisfied.

With this site, we are trying to fill the gap I have found in different online writing resources, namely how to go about making a living writing online.

The Internet offers thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of different ways for freelance writers to make money, most of them neglected by print materials and even online freelance writing resources.

How does online writing differ from writing offline?

One huge area where a lot of work can be found is in article writing for Internet sites. If you want to get a piece of this big pie, it’s important to understand how online writing differs from writing offline for newspapers and magazines.

In this section, we will deal with the technicalities of writing online. The tips in these pages will help you to evaluate where your writing skill is at in the context of the online market, and we can help you to hone your writing skill where it might lack the sharp edge you’ll need if you want to do well.

As you start your online writing business, you’ll find that website writing differs in almost every area from writing for a magazine or a newspaper. We will highlight the differences in areas from basic writing principles such as paragraph writing (yes, you will need to know how to write a paragraph all over again!) to more technically involved concepts, such as SEO copy writing and using keyword writing to create great website content.

Various ways to make money writing online

Freelance writing on the Internet means that you will have the opportunity to write a very wide range of materials you can make money with blog writing, earn it through website content writing or newsletter article writing, and in some cases you might even find that you can use your creative online writing skills to make a buck or two.

It’s all part of the vast arena of printed material that is on the Internet, and a good understanding of how to bring words together to make up what website developers are looking for will take you a long way, financially speaking.

Traps and Tips

Our plan in this section is twofold. First, as we mention above we want to take your through the basic foundation on which you can build your success, through tips such as how to write an article that developers, audiences, and search engines will love.

When you are engaged in website content writing, though, there are also traps that you need to avoid. We are going to cover some common mistakes in the articles on these pages, including bad SEO copy writing, bad keyword writing, and above all, the importance of avoiding plagiarism.

Lots of people assume that since it’s the Internet, it doesn’t really matter, but using bad practices can cost you a lot of money, particularly if the word gets out!

It is my goal that having read the online writing tips found in this section, you can apply them in your business and have a lot more success when it comes to landing jobs both on bidding sites and beyond. Remember that one of the keys to success is not being afraid to show what you know, so once you synthesize the information in these pages don’t be afraid to throw the terms around!

Many people have at one time or another considered writing for a living. Especially anyone who has received praise for their written work.

Unfortunately for most of us, writing for a living does not necessarily mean that we will get to be as creative or prosaic as we would like to be, and this is very clear once you start looking for jobs on the Internet. In this article, we will take a look at why it is important to differentiate your writing career from your writing hobby, and how to do so.

I will starve for my art!

This is the rally cry for many a writer; they refuse to compromise their work or “demean” themselves by agreeing to write pieces which fail to meet their standards of what writing should be. In other words, they are more the type to sit down and write a poem than a 500 word piece on Condominiums in Toronto.

The good news for those types of writers is that they can indeed expect to starve for their art. For every success story in the writing world who slaved away for years before getting noticed, there are a thousand who continue to starve because they were or are just too stubborn to treat a writing career as a business instead of a hobby.

Either that, or they were stuck at non-career jobs for most of their lives, receiving manuscript after manuscript back from publishers who just are not interested in their work.

If you want to make writing your career, you are going to have to work

For most of us, writing for a living means divorcing ourselves from what we would like to write and writing what other people want us to.

My big desire is to write about sports; I love sports and I can write very good biographies on athletes, summaries of games and events, even books on rules and regulations. The problem is the sports writing market is competitive and there are many writers with better connections than myself.

I could just say I am willing to serve at restaurants until that golden opportunity comes by, but having done so I know that it is much more preferable to focus on the writing part of my career and take jobs that I have a little less interest in.

That way I make money and hone my skills, and there is always the potential to have that dream job come floating in.

Get rid of the dreamy ideal

It’s fine to love your work and to want to be successful writing for a living, but you don’t have to overdo it. Many writers, whether in their profiles on bidding sites or on their own pages, will include phrases such as “writing is my life, and nothing is more important to me” in order to show how committed they are.

Unfortunately this approach just will not work for the practical writer.

The big reason is that this kind of statement really turns off potential employers. Again, you have to remember that this is business, not a hobby any longer. A web site developer who wants content written about the best diet plans does not care if you can use hundred dollar words and thousand dollar phrases in your article; she wants to see easy to read, informative content on her subject which Internet readers will grab on to.

In order to find jobs writing on the Internet and really anywhere else, it’s important to assume that editors and web developers are already aware that inside of every writer there are hundreds of stories waiting to come out. Leave that out of your pitch, and instead focus on what you will do for them.

They have practical jobs that they need filled and are willing to pay for, and they are looking for a practical writer to do them. Writing for a living is much different than writing as a hobby, and you will find that success will come once you develop a much more hard-nosed approach to the whole business.

The legal side

You might think that writing jobs freelance is somewhat akin to your dream of becoming a famous writer; that is, someone pays you to write what you want in the way that you want it, and everyone in the world loves to read it and then you win the J.K. Rowling award for getting everyone to read.

The reality of writing jobs freelance is far different from what most of us imagine before we really get started, and this can lead to some very common temptations for shortcuts when you are writing a piece, particularly if it is for use online. Let’s take a look at some of the temptations that arise for a lot of freelancers; hopefully forewarned is forearmed and you will be able to avoid some very common mistakes.

Plagiarizing other people’s work

This is by far the most common complaint I have had from clients who have already hired writers to create content for their sites. It seems that ripping off other people’s work by copying and pasting it into your own article is very, very common among web writers.

I can understand the temptation; sometimes it is very hard to write article number ten on the big advantages of a car that runs on hydrocarbons. Still, you have to buckle down and do your own work. First of all, copy and paste is cheating another writer out of their due. Second, there are plenty of copyright watching software programs that are employed by clients, and they seem to do a fairly good job. (Copyscape is probably the most widely used application)

Now on the other side of the copyright coin is the concern that you will accidentally “plagiarize” material. You might scoff at the notion, but it is a very real possibility; with so much content on the web it’s hard to think of an original way to say something like “Britney Spears needs to take better care of her children”.

Still, the idea of copyright violation is that large portions of a piece have been copied; it seems to be okay to have a few similar lines or even paragraphs, but you need to be sure that you are writing in your own words. Here are a few pointers I have picked up:

• If something appears in more than three other articles, it’s considered common knowledge. This is more to do with academic writing which focuses on research, but it applies to everyday Internet copy writing as well.
• When in doubt, credit the source. If you find a piece that you really like, don’t be scared to say “I got this from so and so”. The idea behind copyright and plagiarism is that credit is given where it is due, to the furthering of the career of the original author.
• Copyright does not apply to pieces over a certain age. This is great if you want to write about Ye Olde Wagonne, but might not be so helpful when it comes to hybrid cars. Still, you might be able to find some really good material.

Disappearing on a Client

Some writers will find that they are very tempted to just disappear on a client. I admit this is a problem that I have had when writing jobs freelance. One way I overcome it is by asking for a deposit; I find it’s much easier to complete what I say I will if I know someone has already paid me, because it becomes more of a question of integrity than anything else.

When the temptation to jam out on a contract starts to make itself felt, you might also want to remind yourself that it is far easier to retain a client than to find a new one. In fact, I would say that is how you will gain success when writing jobs freelance.

If it wasn’t for several repeat clients I would not be making a steady and reliable income month after month. They are also almost always the clients that are willing to pay realistic prices for pieces.

Contracts for writing jobs freelance

You can also avoid these common temptations by making sure that they are in any contracts that you and your client work out. Most of the time your client, if he or she has been in web development for a while, will know to make it very clear that work found to violate copyright will not be paid for.

It’s also a good idea to set up a contract which includes some milestones, so that you have good guidelines as to where you should be from date to date. That way the job is broken down into smaller chunks. And if you fall behind you won’t be quite as tempted to just drop the whole thing.