Earn Money Writing about Your Microsoft Office Skills    

The website OfficeUsers.org seems  to be looking for freelance writers. According to their “Becoming an OFFICEUSERS.ORG Columnist”  page, their basic minimum payment is $20.00 an article. In addition to the minimum payment they pay royalties. The royalties are paid over a three month period of time calculated based on page views. The higher the page views, the higher the royalty (not to exceed the original price paid for the article). So, in essence, one can conceivably get paid 4 times for the same article.

Granting Non Exclusive Rights

As the author, you retain the rights to the article. However, you do grant OfficeUsers and Bits on the Wire, Inc. non exclusive rights to publish your work “in any medium or format.” Since the rights granted are not exclusive, you can take your article and publish it elsewhere. The only caveat is that you must agree not to publish it within 120 of submitting the work to OfficeUsers.org.

How OfficeUsers Pays

They pay via PayPal on or around the 15th of the month after article publication. The website is silent regarding whether or not they accept international writers. I sent an email inquiring and have yet to receive a response. In signing up for the site, I was not asked for a social security number or W-9. Additionally, there is a Sponsorship Inquiry page on their site that indicates they work with readers, buyers, developers and administrators worldwide. All of these clues would lead me to believe they would accept international writers, however, we won’t know until I hear back from them or an international writer submits work (and comes back to let us know the outcome).

Article Publication

The articles are not automatically published. They are held for review. Once approved, the author receives an email notification of the base fee and that the article is scheduled to be published. The author will receive an additional email advising when the article will be/is published.

Everyday MSOffice Knowledge

Just about everybody in the online community has used a Microsoft Office product. If you have particular knowledge or discovered a neat feature, you can share your knowledge and newly gained expertise by writing an article and sending it to OfficeUsers.org. However, do your homework first. Take a look at what has been published on their site and what has not. Be sure to take notice of the writing style to increase the likelihood of your work being accepted.

I think this is an interesting writing opportunity. If anyone has any experience with them, please let us know how it’s working out.