Christine B.

On occasion I agree to coach a fellow writer and nudge them into the right direction, whether writing a novel or trying to break into the freelance market. The most common question is the obvious “where do I start?”. I’m going to state the obvious here, but the best starting point is really a blog. Don’t just start a blog that describes every minute of your mildly interesting existence, but rather a blog covering a topic in a niche you, as a writer, want to break into.

Two reasons:

1: Exposure, you make a name for yourself.

2: Clips, your chances are slim to none to get an assignment without writing samples.

A relatively new trend is the “paid to blog” phenomenon. Bloggers can still implement ads into their pages (e.g. google adsense), but they can actually be paid for writing a review about a website or product. This can really add up financially if your site is new and does not receive a lot of traffic yet, considering the pay off from programs like adsense depends on getting enough visitors to your site.

I edit/host a few different blogs myself, and I just recently started using PayPerPost.

The pay per blog post is not bad, you get to choose what you write about and the only relative disadvantage so far is that there is a 2 post maximum per day. There are days where I wish I could take 3-5 opportunities, which would also make the incentive more worthwhile. However, it is nonetheless a great place to start, especially for writers at the beginning of their career.