“Free writing jobs” online silliness

There’s a bunch of “free writing jobs” being advertised online; I’ve had a number of enquiries about them from new writers over the past few weeks.

First and foremost, these are not “jobs” in any sense of the term.

Here’s my take on all of them, FWIW: unless your writing is just a hobby, don’t waste your time.

Essentially what you’re doing is providing free content for a company, which will then go and sell itself and your content for a large number of dollars.

You get nothing out of it – the “exposure” is useless for a freelance writer.

If you want exposure for your writing, and the writing gigs that this brings, then do what everyone else does who has something to sell online: get your own Web site and put all your writing on that site.

Buy your own name as a domain, it’s vital – you can make money from it too

Use YOUR OWN NAME for the domain name (URL) of your first site. With billions of Web pages online, you need to promote your own name, not another business name – you can create additional Web sites certainly, but first and foremost, buy your own name as a domain. If you’ve got a name that’s fairly common (no offense meant), you may find that the COM domain of your name’s already taken. If so, get the NET, or ORG versions.

Look on buying domain names as an investment. All the good single-word domains are long since taken (and they sell for millions of dollars), but you can still get great two and three word domains for around $9 each per year, and they’re a bargain.

Once you’ve got your site set up, create an “Articles” section of the site, and put all your writing there. You can MONETIZE this section of your site, (with Google AdSense and other advertising options) and I promise you that you’ll make much more money doing that than from any of these “free writing jobs”.

Resources

* My ebook, “Super-Fast Money-Making Web Sites For Writers: Join The Web-Publishing Bonanza”

* Read Domaining on Wikipedia, and become familiar with the term – you make make lots of money with domains, if you’re both creative and patient.

Technorati Tags: free writing jobs, jobs for writers, make money writing, writer’s Web sites, domains, domaining