For freelance writers, the internet has opened many incredible opportunities. Not only can you create your own blog, you can also be an author on an informational network. I have often been asked in the past about the latter and whether or not one can earn income and the reality is that I haven’t tried them. What I can say for certain is that these writing opportunities are legit, meaning you will earn income if you work at it. So the real question becomes how much can you realistically earn!

Of course the best way is to try one myself. Yesterday, I decided to dive into my own personal research on which service to try. I looked at Squidoo, HubPages, eHow, Demand Solutions, Constant-Content, Associated Content, Triond, Suite 101, Textbroker, Bukisa, FireHow, and Helium. Before you ask, yes, it did take me all day. And before you ask the next question, yes, there are more; I just handpicked some of the most popular ones (or up-and-coming sites). I obviously don’t have time to try all of them so I had to weigh the pros and cons of each. These sites range from having a few rules to needing to follow strict guidelines to meet their standards, from simply signing up to having to submit samples of work, from trusting you to write your own posts to being hand-held by an editor, from meeting quotas to having free reign on posting frequency, and from making immediate cash per submissions to earning residual income through ads.

There really was a lot to compare and contrast! As you can tell by the title to this post, I decided to try eHow. Here’s my rationale:

  • I can get started quickly. I’m pretty sure I would get approved of I had to go through a submission process but I really just want to start posting. I also don’t have to learn any tools or following any writing “templates”.
  • I can earn residuals.  I can post a bunch of articles and even if I stop writing, I can still continue earn income.
  • There are few rules. Sure, each post must be a “how to” article but that’s pretty much it. Of course, this could lead to some garbage posts on the site but I’m not worried about other authors at this point.
  • They are very high ranking. The biggest benefit is being part of a popular community so my posts get better rankings. I had to exclude anyone not in Alexa’s top 1000 (eHow is 224 as of this post).
  • I can provide you with actual statistics on my earnings. Some sites do not allow me to disclose such information.

I’m not saying eHow is the best way for freelance writers to make money. However, I decided that it is the best way for me to host this little experiment. So whether I make a few pennies or a several thousand a month, you’ll know. You’ll also know how much time and effort I put into it. I will be posting the outcomes on a regular basis; I just have to figure out what ‘regular’ means for this project. If you’re curious, feel free to stop by my eHow page (http://www.ehow.com/members/pnstlion.html) to see my activity there.

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