Magazines and other periodicals pay people to write articles but thanks to the internet, anyone can get paid to write articles and I’m going to show you 5 exciting ways to do just that.

Now whether it’s passion for writing or you just want to make some money, you’ll find that these all work very well and you can get paid handsomely in most cases for your work.

1Start a blog

Blogs are a great start for anyone trying to get paid for their writing. With blogs, you can be as personal as you want, and it doesn’t matter whether you use good grammar or you talk about your pet hamster.

To make money with blogging, there are lots of options that range from selling advertising space to participating in Google’s Adsense program.

Personally, I prefer promoting affiliate programs as the commissions are much bigger than Adsense and the earnings are more predictable.

So lets say that you were talking about your pet hamster and you wrote a review about the new hamster habitat you bought for him that gives him more space to move around. You can then look for the website you bought the habitat from and join their affiliate program. This way when other hamster lovers find your page, you have a chance of earning a commission if they do purchase a hamster habitat after reading your review.

And you can do this throughout your blog with the articles that you write.

Blogs are very easy to start as well. There are lots of free services that would allow you to set up a blog in about 5 minutes.

Blogger.com and WordPress.com are two very popular blogging services you can try. However, these services can sometimes have their limitations and I prefer to purchase a domain which will only cost me $10.00 per year and host my own blog. This way, I have more control over what I can do and my blog is subject to my rules.

2Write for Adsense Income

Google has a program called Adsense where their advertisers can pay for placement on other people’s websites or pages. You can apply for an account and get paid for placing ads on your website or blog’s pages.

You may be reading this and probably not have a website or blog where you can post your articles. That’s ok, you can always start one easily or you have another option – write articles for a website like Hubpages.com where they share 50% of their Adsense earnings with you. Just sign up for a free account, write some articles then apply for a Google Adsense account though Hubpages.

The way Adsense works is that you can place ads on your article pages and when people visit your articles and click on the ads, you’ll get paid about half of what the advertiser is paying Google. This can range from a few cents to a few dollars per click so you’ll need lots of visitors or lots of articles to make some substantial earnings.

I don’t really use Adsense on my blogs or websites but I have been earning a check from Google every month writing articles for Hubpages.com.

3Write for Revenue Sharing Websites

There are some sites that have a revenue sharing program in place to encourage participation. When you write and submit articles to these sites, you can earn a percentage of the earnings from your efforts and some even let you keep 100% of whatever you earn from your articles.

I’ve already mentioned, Hubpages which uses the Adsense program from Google. They also will let you share earnings from Amazon and eBay products if you place those in your articles as well. In addition to these revenue sharing modules you can also promote affiliate programs within your articles and earn even more money.

This is how I earn a good chunk of change every month using Hubpages with both their revenue sharing program and my affiliate program promotions.

Here are a few other sites you can write articles for that will pay you on revenue share.

• Xomba – Shares 50% of Google Adsense ad revenue with users.
• Bukisa
• Triond
• Associated Content
• Squidoo – Similar to Hubpages.com
• Suite101 – Shares Google Adsense and other advertiser revenue.
• Ehow – Great if you can write How-to articles.

Revenue sharing sites are a great way to get paid for your articles. To maximize your earnings many also have a referral program in place so that when you refer your friends, you’ll be in a position to earn depending on their activity.

4Become a paid content provider

There are many bloggers and website owners that need articles to put on their websites. Many just don’t have the time or expertise to write their own articles. You can create a win-win situation by offering your services to write content for a fee and get paid per article or batch of articles.

One way to get started is to sign up for websites such as IWriter.com and look for article writing jobs. There is even a chance that if you do a very good job for a client, you can be hired exclusively to write for them. This is a great way to earn a side income writing articles.

Another option is to offer your services on forums where website owners hang out. Marketing forums, blogger forums and webmaster related forums are great for getting exposure. Make sure you have your message in your signature or a link to a web page where they can learn more about your article writing services.

5Promote Your Websites with Articles

This is what I call writing for the ‘bigger picture’. In all of the above options, your writing serves as the building blocks for another person’s business (unless you started your blog with a domain and hosting).

You can put your hard work to a more profitable use by writing articles to build your own business. It will pay off more in the long run and for many, many years to come.

The way I use article writing is I would first start out by building an affiliate website where I’d sell hamster cages for example. I would write hamster related articles on my website to attract this audience of hamster owners. I would also write articles that I would submit to other websites with a link back to my hamster site.

These articles are part of the bigger picture of helping to grow my business as they provide a number of benefits to my website. If I use a revenue sharing website, then I can achieve double benefits at the same time.

Here is an outline of how my articles can earn me money by using them to promote my websites.

1. I can write articles to get backlinks. A backlink is a link that points back to your website from another. These are helpful in that the more you have, the better your website is positioned in the search engines for a particular keyword. As a result, it will increase my chances of making sales on my website because I’ll have more people visiting when they type a query related to my website into the search engines.
2. I can also write articles to get visitors to my website. Even if my website isn’t showing up well in search engines like Google or Yahoo, which will likely be the case when you first set it up, you can still get visitors by writing articles that rank well. You’ll get visitors to these articles and in turn people will follow the links and find your website. This is how I got my first set of visitors to this website when I had first set it up. You can then make sales when people come to your website by linking to affiliate programs.

Getting paid for writing articles and submitting them to revenue sharing sites or writing for others may be great but nothing beats profiting from your own hard work.

If you’d like to explore this option then I’d recommend that you check out Wealthy Affiliate, a website that offers great structured training on building web businesses.

The site is free to join and you can learn more awesome stuff about writing to get paid.