Get Paid to Write Online » get paid to write

The Get Paid To Write Mega Link Love Fest 2010

Sharon Hurley Hall — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:46:59 +0000

Would you believe it’s been nearly three years since my last writing link love fest? Nor could I, but the evidence is there. This is something I always plan to do more often, but I never seem to get around to it. The posts listed here are posts I’ve shared (or starred) in Google Reader, and on Twitter, Facebook and Buzz. I hope you enjoy them. To make it a bit easier, I’ve broken them down into categories.

Happy reading!

The Get Paid To Write Mega Link Love Fest 2010 was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

Tips for Wooing Your Writing Gig Prospects

Dana Prince — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:18:36 +0000

Improve Your Marketing Success

I’ve advocated marketing to help the writing clients find you as much as possible. By marketing and helping clients find you, you can make more money and reduce your competition instead of focusing all your energy on banging on the same doors as dozens of other freelance writers who saw a gig listed on a job board. For those that have started that marketing campaign to help clients find them, here are some tips to help you get people to query as well as to successfully court those new prospects once they make first contact.

Website Design

There are lots of ways to get traffic to your business website. But when you get traffic to your site, what’s there? Beyond a professional-looking website or blog, make sure your pages correspond to the types of keywords you’re trying to attract traffic for. Analyse your traffic reports regularly to investigate how people arrive on various pages. Does the content on their entry page deliver what they’re searching for and display your skills in the best light possible? Anticipate your visitor’s wants and needs on that page in terms of content, navigation, and links that can help them delve deeper for the best user experience possible.

Contact Page

Instead of hoping prospects will dig for your e-mail address, provide a contact page. Most website templates have this feature built in and it saves you from having to publish your address on the site, which leaves you vulnerable to spammers.

Initial Response

When someone touches base, I often use a new client questionnaire that I’ve developed to help me with their initial project. It also helps them see that I am professional in my approach of trying to find out how to best help them. The questionnaire should help you understand the scope of the project for quoting and researching purposes as well as help minimise crossed signals and rewrite requests. Questions on your questionnaire can relate to target audience, call to action, SEO keywords, and more. Another thing I like about the questionnaire is that it gives me an opportunity to indicate my terms. My questionnaire has a blurb about my payment terms, details about copyright, and info about my revision policy. It helps set expectations up front.

Next Steps

If the prospect doesn’t make the next steps clear, don’t be afraid to ask. I give people time to absorb the info included in my quote and if I am interested in hearing back from them but don’t hear back within 2-3 days I do a follow up to find out if I can provide further info to help them make a buying decision.

Additional Tips:

Try to anticipate potential questions when laying out your website and answer those questions. List samples, list your specialties, and demonstrate your expertise. If you do, chances are that by the time people contact you, they’ve already decided you’re someone they’re seriously considering hiring and this can shorten the pre-sales process as well as save you time during client courtship.
Don’t be afraid to decline potential business. Just because someone approaches you doesn’t mean they are the best client for you. In some cases it takes an attempt to help you both decide if the relationship is symbiotic but if something doesn’t sit well, trust your instinct and decline.
If you’re not peckish due to a workload famine when you get a new query, price on the high end of your price list. I have two sets of pricing and if I don’t need the work, I price at the high end. I have nothing to lose and they’re already interested in me so it doesn’t hurt to try to boost earnings. Plus, while I don’t generally deal with hagglers, quoting high gives you wiggle room….if you want to wiggle.
Make a questionnaire template and save each completed one. I have some clients who’ve given really valuable info in their questionnaire that I come back to later in the relationship and in some cases, that detail can help me adapt to their tone and style. I also save my initial quote so that I’m consistent with them if they come back later.
If you are quoting during a famine, don’t pigeonhole yourself into a certain price point permanently. To help prevent this either in feast or in famine mode, I typically put a disclaimer on initial quotes or on my questionnaire that states I review pricing every six months. That way, I’m not locked into the initial quoted pricing forever and clients (hopefully) won’t be indignant pricing goes up later on (after proving my worth).

Do you have any tips for courtship with a new client? Please share!

(photo: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa)

Tips for Wooing Your Writing Gig Prospects was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

Finding Writing Jobs Offline – Your Next Assignment May Be Right Next Door

GuestWriter — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:55:45 +0000

Recently, Dana Prince wrote a couple of helpful posts (5 Ways to Fill a Freelance Writing Schedule Gap and Five Ways to Get Writing Jobs Fast) about finding work online when you experience a slump. These posts got me thinking about the many places you can look offline for leads to writing assignments.

Friends and Family

Reach out to everyone you know and let them know what you are doing and that you are available. Create a compelling sound bite, not just “I am a freelance writer, looking for work.” Many people have no idea what that means. Tell them “I help businesses communicate with their customers.” Or “I write articles that allow consumers to make educated choices.” Make it real with specific examples and then mention that you happen to be taking on new clients this month. Once I was able to articulate what I do in a manner that my friends and family understood, I quickly received leads for a plumber, an ophthalmologist, and an inspection company. In today’s world, nearly everyone knows somebody looking for assistance with web content.

Professional Organizations

I joined my local Toastmasters club to help me overcome my natural tendency to hide in my home and speak only through my keyboard. Twice a month I meet with professionals in a variety of fields at all levels from solopreneurs to small business owners to executives at international corporations. Not only am I networking, but I am also gaining speaking experience that helps with my marketing pitches. If you do not want to pursue public speaking, there are many other organizations – not just professional ones, but also service and charitable groups. You may even find an organization which needs a writer’s services for newsletters and blogs. Just be sure to have your sound bite prepared when someone asks, “What do you do?”

Small Business Owners

Talk to the business professionals with whom you interact in the course of your day. The local pizza shop, your pediatrician, your accountant – all of these are potential customers. Let them know what you do (remember that sound bite?) and then shift to questioning mode. What are they doing to promote their business online? What are their challenges? Do they understand the possibilities for using online tools to drive their bricks and mortar businesses? Let them know if they have any questions about the internet or online marketing, you are the person they can call for reliable information.

Colleges and Universities

Check the bulletin boards at local schools and bookstores and consider marketing your research and editing skills to students. I am careful about accepting assignments that challenge my ethics – for example, I will not write someone’s term papers. However I do get a great deal of satisfaction from proofreading a student’s paper and helping her take it from good to great. I can see over time how my edits have improved her first drafts. You can also advertise to write resumes and grants. Perhaps you will connect with a professor seeking a collaborator to help write a book.

Sometimes the competition is overwhelming online when it feels like we are all striving for the same jobs. I hope these ideas have you thinking about places in your own neighborhood to market your services. Stepping away from the computer and introducing yourself and your skills to the people in your offline world may be just what you need to find the client that catapults your career to the next level.

Tammi Kibler provides a complete array of ghostwriting, copywriting and blogging services to businesses looking to increase the effectiveness of their web presence. (Photo credit)

Finding Writing Jobs Offline – Your Next Assignment May Be Right Next Door was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

Writer Earnings: The Woes and Joys of Currency Exchanges

Dana Prince — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:34:23 +0000

Do Fluctuating Exchange Rates Impact Your Writing Business?

Do currency exchanges and the exchange rate impact your writing career and livelihood?

When writers who don’t live in the USA (or who do but write for international clients) get together and talk writing rates, exchange rates are a discussion that often comes up.

Back in the day…(LOL – 2006) when I started freelance writing, I think the US dollar was close to near $1.46 to my Canadian dollar and the British Pound was somewhere near $2.45 per Canadian dollar. It was nice to get $146.00 or $245.00 per $100 or £100 when the exchange rate happened (I especially liked the £ exchange!). Some days the difference worked so well in my favour that it felt like invoice payments had bonuses thrown in!

But, over the years, things have fluctuated and I’ve lost money on more than one occasion — especially lately. Sterling, at the time I write today, is somewhere around $1.52 CAD and the US dollar is around par. The Canadian and US Dollar like to spar it out every once in a while and in terms of running a business, it can feel a bit like playing the stock market!

Any writer who writes for affiliate marketers might actually write about the ability to make money on the foreign exchange market. An entire internet marketing business model is built around the idea of buying and selling at the right time in order to turn a profit. But when this is your livelihood, it’s not always possible to make certain you profit. Can you protect yourself?

Here are some currency-related writing business tips:

(and I’d love any additional suggestions from experienced writers, too!)

Grin and bear it. If you aren’t operating at bottom of the barrel prices (which you shouldn’t be), you can withstand a little bit of fluctuation. After all, sometimes it works in your favour.
Leave the money be. At times, the fluctuation is temporary. Leaving your money in your account, awaiting rebound, before withdrawing to your own currency might be an option. This isn’t an option if you are living hand to mouth, of course. And, it may get worse before it gets better so do your best to try to follow finances enough to have an idea of how things are expected to go.
Change your billing currency. I’ve been advised recently that I might want to switch to billing my clients in Canadian funds as my dollar is expected to continue to climb. But it’s not so simple. That’s telling my US customers that I’m about to charge them more money and this might not be looked at favourably by them at zero notice. Besides, things could change again and I don’t want to switch to and fro and have my clients see dealing with me as flighty. They need to be able to plan for their finances, too, and I don’t want to be difficult to do business with.
Quote new business in a currency that suits you based on the most favourable scenario. If a particular currency type is favourable when you quote new business, pick it. This might not always work and could work against you if the new client wants to do business on an ongoing basis, though, so decide carefully.
Notify your customers of an upcoming price increase. You can’t just grin and bear it if the currency you typically bill in plummets and is not your local currency. I have, in the past, approached client contracts under the understanding that pricing is reviewed every five months and increases are implemented at the six month. That way, customers have 30 days to get ready for a new price and if you skip increases at times, they feel like they’re getting value. You won’t always keep customers after an increase but if you prove yourself valuable, they might be willing to budge. And, if you’re doing marketing and self-promotion, hopefully you aren’t relying too heavily on one client’s business.
Open several accounts. There are ways to manage currency through foreign accounts and through merchant services that could help lower service charges and premiums (such as with PayPal, who takes a percentage of the currency exchange each time you transfer your money to another currency). If currency exchange is becoming a problem for you, do some research to find creative solutions and payment processors that may be able to help.

Currency can be tricky. Companies such as PayPal also charge service fees from specific countries so currency exchange can be an additional expense and has to be taken into account when quoting.

Sharon and I discussed this issue today and joked that writers need to be financial analysts because of the fact that many of us need to keep currency exchange in mind when quoting and be aware that exchange rates could vary between the time you quote and the time you get paid. You need to try to account for potential impact on your business’s bottom line as it fluctuates. Managing your finances carefully and ensuring you charge enough to turn a profit (despite fluctuating profit margins) will help, as will keeping an eye on the market.

(photo: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/boroda003)

Writer Earnings: The Woes and Joys of Currency Exchanges was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

How To Earn Your First Dollar As A Freelance Writer

Sharon Hurley Hall — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:55:55 +0000

So you’ve decided that you want to get paid to write online — where do you start? More specifically, how do freelance writers move from empty coffers to money in the bank? There are lots of ways to approach this and get that all important first pay cheque — here are some of the methods that have worked for me.

Use your contacts

When you get started, let people know that you are available for writing work. This is not just about creating a web presence but about using the contacts you already have who might have something to offer you. In my case, one of my first freelance writing jobs came from a former student who didn’t yet have the confidence to write a story about a charity event he was spearheading. That paid me around $25 — not much, but boy did it feel sweet!

Network

Networking is your best friend as a new freelance writer. It’s up to you how you do it. I hooked up with potential clients (passed on by other writers) through blogging. Those writers could see my writing style and because we had communicated they felt confident in recommending me for jobs that required similar skills. Other places to find those first jobs and make those contacts include social media sites, business networking sites and forums. Promotion is essential for new writers.

Apply for everything

Sometimes getting paid to write is a numbers game — the more bids, queries and applications you send out, the more likely it is that someone will pay you for your writing. As a new freelancer I didn’t have money to spend so I signed up for the free levels on several bidding sites and submitted as many bids as I was allowed to. Although I didn’t eventually get many jobs through those sites I made contacts who later became clients.

Just ask

Okay, I don’t know how realistic this is but I was lucky enough to hook up with someone who believed in giving new writers a chance (and I’ve since tried to pay it forward). There is no harm in asking someone to give you a try but you only get one chance to make a good impression so you really have to give it your best shot. That first piece must be polished to within an inch of its life before you submit it.
That’s pretty much it — you need a lot of persistence to get that first job. Every job after that will be much easier to obtain.

Even if you have no experience and no clips it doesn’t have to be a problem. You just have to do a bit more legwork. Learn about web content writing and search engine optimisation. Search the bidding sites for jobs that attract you and look at examples of excellent web content writing. Then write and post similar articles on your blog. That will give you examples to show off and the confidence to know that you are a writer and you will soon get paid.

As you can see there’s a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work involved in getting that first pay cheque. I know other writers have strategies they used to get their first commission – care to share?

(See my Freelance Writing Questions and Making It as a Freelance Writer series for more tips on getting started.)

How To Earn Your First Dollar As A Freelance Writer was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

5 Ways to Fill a Freelance Writing Schedule Gap

Dana Prince — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:07:14 +0000

Let me start this post by saying I’m lucky enough right now to not have any writing schedule gaps. It’s not always easy to fill your time with writing gigs but when it’s a feast, it’s often mayhem. I tore myself away from a busy schedule (‘cuz I’m nice like that) to write to you today with suggestions for how to fill the time when you have gaps in your freelance writing schedule.

1. Marketing

The best way to ensure you’re feasting rather than scraping by is to keep marketing. Don’t wait until things are dead slow to do it, if at all possible. When you do have a lag or opening in your schedule, spend extra time on marketing yourself and you won’t likely be seeing too many droughts in the future. Always plan to market but pump up your marketing efforts when you have available cycles.

2. Passive Writing Income

There are some writers who pay their mortgage each month with a cheque from one of the revenue share programs. The great thing about these sites is that one article could earn you income indefinitely. When you have time to spare, take the time to write for sites like: eHow, HubPages, Askables, InfoBarrel, Bukisa, and others and you could afford to take time off more often because you could earn 3 or 4 figures monthly from a small amount of effort. (Note: It often takes time to build these up so it’s not realistic to expect huge success with them over night). If you don’t want to share your income in a rev share program, develop your own content sites or blogs. After all, people are often paying YOU to do this so why not do it for yourself and reap the rewards of residual income?

3. Job Hunting

Cruise job boards like Deb Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs or Clint Osterholz’s Tuesday column with high-paying writing gigs to keep your eye out for future gigs. Want to write in a certain market? Send out some queries. Want to be on top of job postings? Set some Google Alerts to send you job links when new gigs get posted.

4. Networking

Networking is invaluable when you’re a freelance web writer. Networking with other writers can help you improve your skills and stay up to date on market conditions, tools, and trends. Networking with your existing and past customers can also bring about new gigs and referrals. Network by hopping onto social media tools, checking out online webinars and chats, or by touching base through e-mail or phone.

5. Chillaxing

When was the last time you took a day off? Regular working Joes and Janes have no idea how many hours freelancers actually put in. Most of us work every day and many of us put in more than ten hours a day. If you’re fresh out of writing work, give yourself a chance to relax. Maybe work a bit on that fiction novel you’ve been working on / planning / thinking about or spend some time with your family watching a movie with a smorgasbord of snacks and NO pressure to get back to the computer.

What do you do when you have a break in your freelance writing schedule?

(photo: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/jan-willem)

5 Ways to Fill a Freelance Writing Schedule Gap was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

Successful Subbing – Ten Tips for Outsourcing Your Writing Work

Dana Prince — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:24:40 +0000

Working with other writers is productive if managed correctly.

For most busy freelance writers, there will come a time when you might consider getting some help juggling your writing workload. Things come up, volumes get heavy, and there may be a time when you just don’t have the expertise to write on a particular subject. Know someone who does? Want to find someone who can help you? Sub-contracting writing work out on occasion could help you tremendously. It could also go horribly wrong (I’ve witnessed public arguments between writers who have tried to work together) so be careful!

I have writing friends that sub for me and friends that I sub for. At one point I had a writing team of over a dozen people across four countries. These days I have just a few trusted team members and this model works for me because I can service clients without having to write on anything and everything and I don’t have to turn work away too often because I can usually turn to a team member who has room in their schedule for an extra project when I’m slammed.

The reason I scaled back from a team of twelve to just a handful of trusted writers was that with that many people, it became an administrative nightmare for me. The writing work I was subbing was at bulk rates so it just wasn’t profitable enough for the number of problems I was encountering. If someone forgot to bill me and billed me later it would throw my billing into a state of confusion. If a client didn’t pay quickly, I had to answer to people who were waiting to be paid. If someone didn’t turn work in, it’d fall on me. Managing several people made it really time-consuming and I’m afraid it got to where it wasn’t very profitable. If there were quality or plagiarism issues (which I did have to deal with on occasion), it put my business and my reputation in jeopardy. There were times I lost money and I once lost a client due to something a team member did. But, it wasn’t all bad. It was a definitely learning experience. I reorganized and created a model that worked much better for me and for my customers.

Here are some tips from my experience and from scenarios I’ve witnessed with other writing teams that could help you, should you decide to get help managing your writing workload:

Check the samples of the person you plan to sub to. Just because you’re writing friends from a blog or forum doesn’t mean their writing style will suit your needs.
Allow a time buffer in case they turn the work in late or it requires extensive revisions.
Make sure there’s enough money in the project to pay someone fairly and compensate you fairly for the time and effort it will take you to process the order.
Invest in a Copyscape Premium account. For just a nickel per search, you can protect your client and your reputation by checking the work for plagiarism instances before you hand it over to your client.
Try someone out on a low profile project with a long deadline in case it doesn’t work out.
Thoroughly check the work before turning it in until you know you have formed a partnership with a writer who needs little to no checking.
Solidify all terms of the subcontracting agreement up front. Consider writing up an agreement with your terms such as work format, payment time lines, your anti-poaching policy, etcetera. Get the other writer to agree to your terms before trying them out on a project.
Google the person you are planning to sub to. Read up on their online reputation and check their samples. You can learn a lot about someone’s professionalism and work ethic by Googling them.
Be really careful about constructive criticism with someone “working” for you. Writing talent is a very subjective thing! Feelings can get hurt and you don’t want to create an online vendetta. (I haven’t had this problem but have seen it happen with others and it can get ugly).
If it looks like it will be too labour-intense to facilitate a project and you really don’t have the time or the expertise to do it well, consider just forwarding your client to the writer directly. You may arrange a finder’s fee with the writer or simply gift the referral to them out of the goodness of your heart.

If you have any tips to add from your subcontracting experiences, please share! (And if you’re thinking about subbing out writing work, read Sharon’s 2008 post about How to Work with Other Writers, too.)

Successful Subbing – Ten Tips for Outsourcing Your Writing Work was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.

Paid To Blog Opportunity

GuestWriter — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:35:53 +0000

This paid to blog opportunity came in by email from Mary Ward (contact details below). I’m posting it here in case you’re interested – Sharon

I Will Pay You To Let Me Post To Your Blog

What I am looking for is bloggers with fairly established blogs who are willing to post a guest post article for pay. In other words, I will pay you to be a guest blogger on your blog.

This is basically how it works:

I will provide you with a professionally-authored guest post article of about 400-500 words. This will be an exclusive article that has not been posted anywhere else, and will not be in the future–a fair value all on its own–as long as your blog meets minimum criteria. I will pay you $10 USD via PayPal for the posting.
Minimum criteria are as follows: your blog must have a Google PageRank of 3 or higher, or PR 2 if you can show 9 months or more of regular archives and posting. OR your blog has 200 or more subscribers, as shown on the site via a Feedburner or Aweber widget (note that if you have the subscribers, your PageRank doesn’t matter and could be lower).
You must agree that you will not remove the post after payment is made, andthat you will leave the bio line and link, with the anchor text as provided, intact.
Email me when the post is up with a link, and I will process the payment via PayPal to the address you provide. This normally only takes a day or two, perhaps a few if over a weekend, and should not be any longer than one week (in the VERY rare circumstance).

I have a wide range of topics and this is an ongoing project, so do feel free to contact me. I have articles on topics such as health and beauty, green living, seniors, returning to school and online education, health careers, fitness, diet, nutrition, animals and pets, and many more. If I don’t have anything that suits you right now chances are I will in the near future, or can often work a piece in the next round that is tailored to your blog/topic.

Please feel free to contact me even if you are unsure if your blog qualifies, or if I have a topic for you–I’m happy to consider all inquiries.

Interested bloggers should contact Mary at pdposts(at)gmail(dot)com (please replace at and dot with approp.symbols . Please include a link to your blog.

Limit is one piece per blog, but if you have more than one blog that qualifies I will gladly place on each blog. This is an ongoing gig and new articles become available each month.

Disclosure: I have not been paid for this post – Sharon

Content Rich Review

Sharon Hurley Hall — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:54:25 +0000

I was first asked to review Content Rich: Writing Your Way To Wealth On The Web by Jon Wuebben some time ago and for one reason and another I have only just got around to it. I got quite a surprise when I opened the file because while I was expecting a short ebook, this is a full-fledged book with 294 pages of useful information about writing for the web.

The Content

Now you might wonder whether you really need 18 chapters to explain SEO web copywriting. As an experienced writer I found that there was a lot of information I already knew, especially in the first five chapters which cover the basics. However, new writers would probably find this section very useful.

The second section, which has six chapters, gives a guide to different types of capital SEO copywriting. These include writing general site copy, article marketing, press releases, blogs and wiki’s, pay per click, landing page and banner ad writing and writing e-mails and newsletters. Section 3 gives examples of writing for different organisations, provides case studies and deals with outsourcing.

Navigating Through The Book

To tell the truth, I found the book a bit of a lengthy read but that’s not to say that it’s not useful. My preferred way of navigating through the content was to go to the takeaway points at the end of each chapter and see whether I needed to revisit the chapter for more information. I will be keeping the book for future reference, because it covers a couple of markets that I haven’t yet tackled and I think it will provide a useful starting point for entering those new areas.

To Buy Or Not To Buy?

Should you buy this book? I think it has a lot to offer new writers and has decent information on alternative markets for existing writers. However it’s not as easy to read as other writing books I have reviewed. That said, at either $10 or $19.99 (depending on whether you pay the sale price or the full price) it’s a small investment in your writing career and is good value for money, because you are sure to get a handful of tips that you can use to improve your writing career.

Get it here:

Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web – Amazon.com

Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web – Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords: Publish for free, keep 85%

GuestWriter — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:29:25 +0000

In some ways, the title of this post says it all. With that said, there is so much more to know about Smashwords, the place on the internet to publish your ebooks. I discovered Smashwords last spring and so far, nearly 1500 people have downloaded my ebooks. I’ve not made enough to retire, but having 1500 people read my work does not break my heart one bit.

I’ve written several posts on my site about Smashwords. In this particular guest post, I’d like to focus on the pay structure and what you can likely expect.

First, you need to know that it is absolutely free to sign up with Smashwords. There are no hidden fees whatsoever and you can upload as many books as you care to. The owner of the site is Mark Coker and he has built a site based on transparency and a keen sense of what is important to authors.

The pay structure is brutally simple: Go ahead and keep 85% of the net proceeds of every sale, every time. From the Terms of Service:

“Net proceeds” shall mean sales price paid and received less payment processing fees, affiliate fees, retailer discounts, costs due to erroneous or fraudulent transactions, credit card charge-backs and associated fees.

There ya go. It really is that easy. Better yet, you get to set the price for your ebook. You can offer your work for free, you can set a hard price or (and I love this) you can allow folks who download your ebook to choose their own price!

Your royalties are paid quarterly, within 40 days of quarter end. Payment threshold is $10 if you use Paypal, $25 if you choose a paper check.

A word about rights. The Terms of Service is very clear on this matter that holds so much importance for authors:

The Author hereby grants and assigns to Smashwords the nonexclusive worldwide right to digitally publish, distribute, market and sell (“Publish”), and to license others to do so, the work identified on the front page of your submission (the “Work”). Since the terms of agreement with Smashwords, herein, is non-exclusive, the Author or Publisher is free to Publish, license, market and sell their work elsewhere so long as the Author or Publisher is not violating someone else’s agreement or violating any laws.

That’s pretty liberal and definitely favors the author.

One of the things I really like about Smashwords is the straightforward approach a very tough market. They let you know to set realistic expectations in terms of sales. Just like in the “real” world, the number of sales is a direct reflection of your marketing efforts. Speaking of marketing efforts, there is a marketing guide full of great information to help you laser focus your efforts for the best results.

I hope this little primer on Smashwords has been helpful. I’m happy to try and answer any questions you may have.

George Angus (formerly Tumblemoose) writes for a living; He resides in Alaska with his beautiful daughter, Madeline Skye.

Smashwords: Publish for free, keep 85% was originally published on Get Paid to Write Online, copyright 2005-2010, owned by Sharon Hurley Hall. If you are not reading this in an RSS reader, please contact Sharon.