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Felicia A. Williams is a freelance writer and blogger. She spends her time raising her family and writing. In addition to being the Insurance Feature Writer at Suite 101 and freelancing wherever she can, Felicia spends her time tinkering around with her sites, Tidbits and Stuff (a site full of useless and useful information), BLULOW, (all about living green) and Visit Hudson Valley.

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Earning Passive Internet Income as a Freelance Writer

As mentioned in an earlier article, there are two flavors of internet income, active and passive. Active is spending your time writing an article for which you will get paid upon submission. Passive income, my preferred income of choice, has a long payment tail.

Active Income vs. Passive Income

I guess the best way to explain passive income is to pit it against active income. Say you write a 500-word article for the internet. You have the option of selling it as a ghost written piece to a company in need of web content, or you can keep your name attached to the article and place it either on your own site or on a web content site like Suite 101.com or Associated Content. There are plenty of content sites available on the web.

By selling your

work as a ghost written piece for web content, you can earn anywhere from $5 to $12 per article. Some sites pay less and few (very few) pay more. If you post it on a content site like Suite 101 or your own website, you will not only retain the copyright for your article (thus building your writing portfolio), but you stand to earn continued income on the article.

The income you earn depends on the article subject, how well it’s written, the site it’s posted on and how well it is optimized for search engines. The payout per month may seem small, but over time the payment will add up. The more traffic your article gets, the more income you can earn. The income from that one article will exceed an upfront active payment of $5, $10 or $12.

One of the nice things about residual or passive income from article writing is that you continue to receive payment as long as the article continues to generate traffic. The key to generating substantial income is learning how to write articles for the internet and locating the best places for your articles.

Passive Income Example

I’ll give you an example. I currently write for Suite 101.com. They require their writers to write a minimum of 10 articles over a three-month period of time (not difficult to do at all). As a result of writing for them, I’m earning a little over $100 per month, every month (not enough to retire, but this is only one small basket in my freelance writing arsenal). The amount seems to increase each month. Keep in mind, however, that the payout depends on the article topics.

I could have chosen the active income route and sold each article as a ghost written piece. However, I would have to continue to write at a feverish pace in order to continue to earn money as freelance writer. Don’t get me wrong, I still write at a feverish pace, but I write that way to build my stream of residual income. I don’t write passive income articles exclusively, but as my residual income stream increases, it will replace my need for active income articles.
To be truly successful in earning residual income from your writing, you need to become familiar with SEO (search engine optimization).

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There Are 4 Responses So Far. »

  1. Felicia, does Suite 101 pay you for traffic as well? If you have a popular article, can you make more than $1 an article? I hear some other bloggers doing well with eHow and I’m interested in learning more about your income here.

    Scott @ The Passive Dads last blog post..Tennis Can Be A Frugal Cheap Sport For Your Family.

  2. Hi Scott,

    No, Suite doesn’t pay for traffic. They just pay out a percentage of the ad revenue. I don’t know how they calculate the formula. It has something to do with traffic and Google income, I think.

    All I know is that the longer the articles are on there, the more traffic they generate and the higher the income.

    With Suite 101, I can track how many hits a particular article gets, but I cannot track how much income that translates into. When they update the daily income, they display a total income for the day. It’s not broken out by article.

    As far as eHow goes, I’ve written for them through Demand Studios at $15/article and Writers Research Group at a rate of $10/article, but I’ve never placed an article on the eHow site directly.

    I’d be interested to know how folks who write directly for eHow fare financially.

  3. Hey guys. I have written for eHow directly and as a part of Demand. I’ve made more in page view money from eHow than from any other site such as Helium or A/C. Last month, with 45 articles on the site, I made around $20.00. I’m not sure how that compares with Suite 101 since I’ve only been writing with them for a while. I’d be willing to bet from what Felicia has said, that the payouts there are even better.

    Jen Bristers last blog post..Freelance Opportunity with Demand Studios

  4. Hey Jen,

    Thanks for the info. I’d love to know how it works in the long run. It’s nice getting the up front money, and even nicer getting residual money.

    I never thought of signing up for an account with eHow outside of Demand Studios. It’s something to think about.

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