I am a professional blogger and writer, so pay me in cash. Pay me by Paypal, wire transfer, direct credit or even e-cheque, as long as I get paid for my work. Why do I feel the need to say this? Because I applied for a blogging job today. The ad stated that it was a paid blogging job. I spent some time crafting a suitable letter, emailed it off and waited for a reply. When it arrived, it turned out that the ‘compensation’ they were offering was simply ad revenue share.

The ad asked for high quality bloggers. I’ve been blogging for a few years now and have racked up a lot of well written posts on a lot of topics, so I think I qualify. But that’s exactly why I expect to get paid for my work. What they want me to do is to spend hours, days and weeks creating a good blog for someone else’s site on the off chance that their marketing methods will drive lots of traffic to the site. Sorry guys, been there, done that, got the hole in my bank balance to prove it, so I won’t be taking up your underwhelming offer.

I have nothing against making money from blog advertising, but I don’t need to go to another site to do that. Somewhere out there are about four blogs making me a pittance from the measly page views they garner despite the site owners’ promises of promotion and traffic, so I’m not going down that road again. On this blog, where I have put in the time to develop it and nurture it, I make money from advertising – and I don’t have to share it with anyone.

Ad Revenue Share Is NOT A Paid Blogging Job is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

4 Guidelines for Setting Blog Posting Rates is the latest in a series of quality articles from Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial. I’m not just saying that because she interviewed me recently. In fact, this article answers what everyone who’s hoping to get paid to blog wants to know. What do most people charge for paid blog posts. Yuwanda gives a range of pay scales, which match my own experience of the paid to blog market. How do the rates Yuwanda mentions compare with your experience?

Setting Blog Posting Rates is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

Someone asked me the other day about ghost blogging. She wanted to know about what it was and how to get started in it. Here are my answers. Ghost blogging is like ghostwriting. While ghostwriting is writing where you get no credit or byline, ghost blogging is blogging where you get no credit or byline. It’s work for hire, just as any other ghostwriting job.

Where do you find ghost blogging jobs?

I find these in the same places that I find other ghostwriting jobs. I go to the Freelance Writing Gigs site as my first port of call. I also get updates from the Writer’s Bridge and from a number of other sites that offer blogging jobs, one of the best being Problogger’s job board (most of these are bylined jobs, but a few may not be). There’s also Craigslist, where you need to weed out the ones that are worth bothering with. Finally, I set up a Google Alert for ‘blogger wanted’ and see what it brings. This gives me a long list of jobs to choose from. Of course, because I am a ghostwriter, clients often ask me about writing blog posts for them, so I get a lot of work through referrals.

How do you prepare for ghost blogging?

The best preparation is to have a blog – or several blogs – of your own. This proves that you know how to blog. If you know the ins and outs of WordPress and other blogging systems, then that helps too. And you need to have some expertise in the topic that the client wants or be willing to learn.

I also find that guest blogging is good preparation, because it forces you to think about writing for other audiences, which you have to do when you ghost blog. I’ve blogged on a number of sites and these have helped me to further develop my blogging skills and to meet new readers. I also use these for my portfolio so that I have a range of published posts to show to potential clients.

How much does ghost blogging pay?

That’s a how long is a piece of string question. Pay rates range from a couple of cents a word to a respectable rate. Variables that affect the rate include:

• whether it is bundled with other writing services
• the client’s budget
• the ghost blogger’s experience

Some people only want short posts that take 10-15 minutes to write, so if they offer me $10, I might accept it. On the other hand, I would want more for a researched and well thought out post. My policy is to ask for what I want but to know what I’m prepared to accept. What I’m prepared to accept might depend on how busy I am and how the rate compares with the rates for other work.

Can you use your ghost blogging posts on your resume?

No, it’s work for hire. I tend to describe the gigs in general terms, like: ‘Here’s a list of topics I’ve blogged about.’ However, ghost blogging is confidential so I can’t put links to the posts in my resume.

Is it weird to blog for someone else?

I approach it like any other writing job, but it’s fun, because I don’t have to think too much about keywords and I do have to make it an enjoyable read. I love blogging, and ghost blogging gives me the chance to blog about topics that I might not blog about on my own blogs. As a born again blogger, this really appeals to me, and making money from it is the icing on the cake. If you want to make money from blogging, then this is certainly an option to consider.

Technorati Tags: blogging,ghostwriting,get paid to blog

I, Ghost Blogger is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

A few months ago, I set myself the task of increasing my income from blogging. When I was in school, my teachers used to criticize my writing for being too concise. So although I have since learned to write in a variety of styles and to a variety of lengths, blogging is the perfect job for me, as I need to be able to write concisely and clearly.

As part of my efforts I made contact with a few sites that were looking for regular guest posters. These included PiggyBankPie, Writing White Papers and Daily Writing Tips. PiggyBankPie in particular had a unique approach to using bloggers. Founder PatBiz saw the site as a launch pad for getting paid blogging and writing work for the site’s contributors.

Yesterday the first of these opportunities came to fruition. I received my first commission: a post on blog carnivals for Mixed Market Arts. It just goes to show that you can get paid for doing something you love and you can get paid to blog.

One Thing Leads To Another is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

As you know, I’ve been doing reviews of paid to blog programs. However, sometimes you just want the lowdown on what you get paid and how much you have to write. That’s what I’ve provided in my guest post on PiggyBankPie. It’s called: Ten Paid To Blog Programs At A Glance.

Paid To Blog Programs Roundup is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

I’ve been blogging for PayU2Blog for some time now and this is the biggie. The payouts are at the low end – $5 a post – but the work is regular and plentiful, and no blogger could ask for more. When I started blogging with PayU2Blog, I got all my opps by email once a week and I had about a week to do them. Now, there’s a more sophisticated system. Opportunities are generally added to your online account once or twice a week and the information includes a deadline date.

One of the features that sets PayU2Blog apart from the rest is that most opportunities are approved on the spot. You type in the link, hit submit and bingo – that counts as a completed post. If there is a problem with completion (sometimes the system doesn’t recognise perfectly good links) then a manual review will pick them up. I have been paid for every single post I have done for PayU2Blog and it adds up to quite a bit.

This is another blogger friendly company. Display a logo on your blog and you can be entered into a $100 prize draw. This isn’t pie in the sky – I won the draw once and got $100 for doing absolutely nothing. There’s a forum where bloggers can meet and chat and there’s a messaging system in your account panel so that you can send messages if you need to. The guys at PayU2Blog always respond within a short time.

There’s not much more to say about PayU2Blog except that signup is easy and that they accept most indexed blogs. I get as many opps for my Blogger blogs as for my hosted ones. In fact, I usually get upwards of 10 opps a week and have made hundreds with this company. If you’re looking for regular blogging income, then PayU2Blog is certainly worth considering.

PayU2Blog Review is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

The Linky Love Army is a blogger friendly paid to blog army. Forgive me for sounding like I’ve got the rose tinted specs on, but I am impressed with the way they work with bloggers. Ok, they’ve got an improbable name, which is probably why most people call them the LLA, but the name comes out of the wedge blogging concept. The idea is that when bloggers review products and services, they also link to other bloggers who have done the same and those bloggers benefit from more traffic. In the LLA, being at the thin end of the wedge is a good thing, because you’ll get more blogs linking to you.

That aside, it works like many other paid to blog companies. You login to the bloggers’ interface, which is very plain. Click on ‘view missions’ and you will see which blogging jobs are available. Click on ‘view’ next to each mission to see what links you need to include (mostly, there are three different links, one to another blog, and two to a company) and how much you will earn. Write your post at the specified length, submit the URL using the link at the bottom of the mission details and you’re done.

What you earn depends on their assessment of your blog. I have several blogs with them and for my last mission, pay ranged between $5.50 and $10 for posts on the same topic. As with other paid to blog companies, each post must be unique.

What I like about the LLA is:

• they are quick to approve your blogs and they explain the reasons for rejection in a nice way. Adding blogs is very easy and you can input relevant keywords so that you get missions that suit your blog
• they pay fast – I did two missions on Friday and was paid on Saturday
• they respond to emails – I asked about not getting missions, got a nice reply and found four new missions when I logged in
• they have a referral program for blogger signups and posts
• they keep coming up with new ways for bloggers to earn money
• they are blogger friendly – I know I said it before, but it’s worth repeating

The Army speak doesn’t do much for me, but that’s only a personal niggle. Apart from that, I have found the LLA to be a great company to deal with – and they’re not even paying me to say that.

Get Paid To Blog With The Linky Love Army is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

I signed up with Sponsored Reviews a long time ago but it’s been so long that I thought I should see how it works again before looking at this paid to blog company. So I logged into my account and added this blog to it. I don’t know if I’ll accept any reviews but I wanted to test the process.

The Offer

Sponsored Reviews pays you for reviews of at least 50 words with at least one link to the advertiser. These must be live for at least 30 days. You must disclose the sponsorship unless the advertiser forbids it, though how you do that is up to you.

Adding Your Blog

Once you have signed up with the site, which doesn’t take long, adding your blog is a two step process. First, you add your URL, ticking to show that your blog meets the requirements. It must be a live blog, with at least 10 substantial posts and must not be a community blog. It must also have a 3 to 1 ratio of non paid to paid content.

Next, you can put your blog in a category. There are several categories, but some people might find it difficult to pigeonhole their blog. I put this blog in the Business category, as my blog is more about the business of writing than creative writing. You can add a title, description and keywords, press enter and your blog is added. Each blog gets its own public page which lists the ranking, description and review price.

Setting A Price

The price you can charge for reviews depends on your link popularity (according to Yahoo search, and your Technorati and Alexa ranking). This blog ranks 3 out of a possible five. The suggested price is in a range set by Sponsored Reviews. In this case, they suggest anywhere from $20 to $100, though for well known and high ranking blogs, this figure could go as high as $1,000, according to them. Sponsored Reviews takes 35 per cent of the asking price, so you need to set review prices carefully. That said, I earned $9.75 for the first review I did, at a time when others were paying $5.

The Dashboard

Logging in takes you to a dashboard which shows you jobs waiting for you to approve and those in progress, gives reports on the jobs you have bid for, provides tutorials (useful for new bloggers), articles and messages and has a feed from the Sponsored Review blog. It’s just as well I logged in for this review, because that’s how I found out that you can now get email notifications of suitable opportunities. You just enable it in the ‘My Account’ tab and add the categories you want to be notified about.

The next tab after your home page takes you to the ‘find advertisers’ interface. You can search for opportunities via the search box, click on a tag, or just browse the lists of the latest opportunities. The lists contain a word count, a link to more information about the opportunity and a pay range. This varies considerably. On one opportunity I saw the advertiser wanted to pay $10 for a 300 word review. Since I can get $5 for a 60 word post with other companies, this didn’t seem like a great deal. However, there are others that will make any blogger happy.

Choosing A Blogging Opportunity

Clicking on an opportunity title gives you more information, including the website and the type of review wanted. There may be requirements about the tone and the advertiser may also ask for specific links. Finally, there’s a description of the resource you will be reviewing. On the right, there’s a column where you can set a bid between the minimum and maximum. There’s also a drop down box which lists your blogs and the maximum you can bid on each blog. Then you submit your bid to the advertiser and wait for approval.

This is the part I like least, because you can’t tell how long it will take for an advertiser to look at your bid. I have had three bids accepted and several more rejected, but it took weeks and in one case months to find out about the rejections.Once your bid has been accepted you have a week to write the review.

Getting Paid

I can’t recall any problems with payment. I completed the reviews and was paid with no problems within 14 days of completing the reviews. Payment is by Paypal. You can see your review history and payment details in a sub menu of the ‘My Account’ tab.

Sponsored Reviews has lots of opportunities and you can earn a decent amount even on a newish blog. I like the fact that you get to choose your opportunities, and doing this review has reminded me that I should visit the site more often. It’s also worth reading their blog, as there are some great resources there for bloggers. An affiliate program is also in the works, which will mean more chances for bloggers to earn.

Get Paid To Blog With Sponsored Reviews is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

Smorty is another paid to blog site. It works much like the others. You sign up, which is pretty easy, submit a blog and wait for it to be approved. The approval process is pretty quick. When I first signed up with Smorty it took just over two weeks to get a blog approved. When I added my latest blog it took about a week.

To qualify for Smorty you must have a blog that’s more than three months old and indexed by Google and Yahoo. The blog must be active and not have too many duplicate posts. If a blog is rejected you can resubmit it if you fix the problems. With Smorty, you can add as many blogs as you like.

Once you’re signed up, you login on the home page. When you login, you need to click a little button that says that you’re a blogger rather than an advertiser. I find it a minor annoyance, but I guess it only takes a second. Once in, there’s a very tidy green and black dashboard with panels for your posting record, your earnings, pending tasks and new opportunities. I have to say I love this interface. It is easy to see all the important information at a glance, unlike the dashboards of some of the other blog advertising companies.

Smorty emails you notifications of pending tasks, but the email doesn’t not mean that you automatically get that task. Instead, they notify everyone who fits the bill and you get to login and take one of the opportunities. There are usually lots available, so if you’re quick you could really clean up. Just click on the ‘accept’ link to take a task and then you have three days to complete it. After that it expires and you can’t get it back.

Each post must be between 150 and 400 words long and must contain only one outbound link. Once you have written a post you get paid quickly. Advertisers have five days to dispute the post but this hasn’t happened to me yet. Smorty advises you to write your own opinion, but warns that negative opinions are more likely to be disputed. For my first post, I got paid within a week, which is much quicker than most other companies.

Smorty also has an affiliate program for encouraging people to advertise on blogs, though I haven’t joined that yet. (Update: I joined in November 2007).

Overall, I give Smorty a thumbs up. I think most bloggers will find it easy to use and the number of opportunities available seems to be increasing. It’s another good way to blog for money.

Thumbs Up For Smorty is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.

I admit it. I’m a stats freak , so I was only to happy to install Clicky on this blog so I could see how many people would visit a new freelance writing blog. I have been stunned by the results and I would like to thank the more than 3,500 people who visited Get Paid To Write Online during August 2007. Here are some more stats for those who like those things.

Visitors in August spent nearly five days on my blog and did nearly 7,000 different things. Some people zipped in and looked at a couple of pages, while others spent more than half an hour browsing around the site.

About a third of you found my content through StumbleUpon, so thanks to all those who thought the content was worth stumbling. Of those who searched for my site and found it, most of you used the following phrases, in descending order:

• get paid to write
• paid to write
• get paid to write online
• get paid online
• get paid to blog

In addition to the home page, popular pages with visitors included:

How To Pick A Publisher, a guest post from Suzanne James
Get Paid To Freelance, a pointer to another writer’s article on freelance earnings
How Have You Promoted Your Writing Today, which explains itself
Big Payouts With PPP, one of my paid to blog review posts

More than two thirds of you visited from the US, with a substantial number from Canada and the UK, but I’d also like to say hi to those who visited from the Dominican Republic, Austria, Poland, Lithuania and Egypt. Those who sent traffic my way included BlogCatalog, Writing Thoughts, the Authority Blogger Forum and Communati (thanks, everyone) and I’ve now got double the number of subscribers at the end of the month than I had at the start. I found all of this out through Clicky, which has become something of an addiction.

I am incredibly happy with how the site is going. Thanks for reading, commenting and subscribing. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see more of, or less of. I’m looking forward to talking with you more as the site grows.

Get Paid To Write August Stats is a post from Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall.