How to Make Money Writing for Revenue Sharing Sites
You’re a freelance writer, so it only servers to reason that you want to make some money doing what you love to do.
In a previous article, I talked about how you can start your very own freelance writing career, and one of the items I mentioned was that of revenue sharing sites.
For some people, writing for revenue sharing websites can actually be a lucrative proposition, but like anything else, you have to have determination if you want to make it work for you.
Personally, I’ve usually put more emphasis on being diversified. You may choose to be more focused. I don’t think either approach is wrong or right; it just depends on what your goals are.
Writing for revenue sharing sites can generate some supplemental income for you, and it also has the potential to become a full-time earning. It all comes back to how hard you’re willing to work.
What is a Revenue Sharing Site?
Just in case we have readers out there that don’t know what a revenue sharing site is, it’s a site that allows you to contribute articles and earn money from them.
As the name suggests, the revenue is shared between the service provider and the content creator.
The percentage is often in favor of the writer, and – in my experience – can vary from about 50% to 80%.
Generally speaking, you have to create original content, which means you can’t just re-use articles you’ve written elsewhere. You should also abide by their terms of service, whatever they may be.
With that out of the way, I’d like to give you several tips on how to make money writing for revenue sharing sites.
Write for One Site
As writers, we sometimes overestimate how much we can crank out in one sitting.
For some, a good day might be 3,000 words. For others, it may be more like 300 words.
I don’t usually suffer from writer’s block myself unless I’m absolutely burned out, but if I’m at that point, I should probably be taking a break to do something else.
But I digress. If you’re going to pursue the revenue sharing route, I think it’s important to narrow your focus and go after one site. When Squidoo was still around (it got amalgamated by HubPages a while ago), I was creating content for both Squidoo and InfoBarrel.
However, my primary focus was always InfoBarrel, and, incidentally, I never earned a cent from Squidoo or HubPages. Meanwhile, I did see some good returns on my InfoBarrel articles.
It seems to me that focus is important, not just because it allows you to build a reputation on one platform, but because your earning potential also increases as you grow your archive of content in a single place.
Just because you can write for multiple sites doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Be careful not to get overzealous and spread yourself too thin.
Contribute Regularly
If you really want to make a go of it, I would recommend writing and submitting at least one new article per week on whatever revenue sharing site you are writing for.
This keeps you top-of-mind amongst community members who will be checking out your stuff and giving you feedback on your articles.
You will also want to try creating content in various categories, as you never know what might stick.
If you want to be systematic about it, try submitting five to 10 articles in every category, and see what works best for you. The numbers should be pretty telling.
In my opinion, it’s better to be consistent than it is to be overly ambitious. It’s easier to show up every week than it is to submit one article here, 10 there, 0 here, 2 there, and so on. This has a way of turning into 0 here, 0 there, 0 here, 0 there…
Distribute and Promote Your Content
Revenue sharing websites are designed to be profitable for both the service provider as well as the content creator. Contributors are typically encouraged to get involved in the community too (which means more comments, shares, interaction, revenue, etc.).
However, this does not negate the need to distribute and promote your content. You should still put in the effort to get as many eyeballs on your articles as you possibly can.
The more traffic you can drive, the better, because you will also earn more as a result.
Take advantage of whatever social sharing buttons the site offers you, and get your new articles out there on a variety of platforms. Don’t be afraid to re-share your old articles either, as one share is rarely if ever enough to get your content viewed by all of your followers or everyone who might be interested.
This is where having a content distribution strategy, an engaged social following, and an email list can really help, as you can drive more traffic to your articles by pointing your followers to them.
Additional Tips
Now that we’ve covered the basics, I’d like to go a little more rapid-fire.
Here are several more tips for you to take advantage of:
- Create a social media swipe file. Pre-craft your tweets and social messages and save them in a document for later. Create multiple messages for every article. This way, you can easily share your articles at any time without having to reinvent the wheel every time.
- Take advantage of social automation tools. Personally, I like to use HootSuite. You can schedule your posts and create a queue of messages that will automatically go out at different times (you can also pick exact times if you prefer). You’ll become a real powerhouse if you use an automation tool in conjunction with a swipe file.
- Abide by the terms of service. Though I have never been banned by a revenue sharing website, I have had my earning privileges revoked in the past due to “unverified clicks” on ads. If you hope to increase your opportunities over the long haul, learn from my mistakes and don’t do anything uncalled for.
Final Thoughts
I have enough work on my plate today that I don’t really rely on additional income coming in from revenue sharing sites. In fact, I never made enough for it to be “supplemental income”. It was basically just a nice bonus.
However, it would still be nice if I had a little bit extra coming in from the 70 some odd articles I wrote for InfoBarrel.
Regardless, whatever your goals are, you can accomplish them. But make no mistake; it will take work!
Writing for revenue sharing sites is a lot of fun, but if you want it to be a profitable venture for you, your determination will be tested.
Best of luck!
