If you have a flair for writing then you could make money writing articles online. You can start off without having to invest any money yourself although, once you get started, you might move into creating a website on your own server. That's for another article however. In this article I'll talk about writing articles for Word Wolf and other sites and how you can make money doing it.
How to sign up for adsense
The first thing you'll need to do is to sign up for an adsense account. Many of the sites online that share revenue have adsense ads on the site. You will tell them your adsense ID and you then receive a share of the revenue that they make when people click on the ads on your articles. You can sign up for an adsense account without having a website yourself. Go to Google adsense to sign up.
Sign up for adsense using Word Wolf
Once you have registered with Word Wolf you will need to publish at least six articles, preferably more. We know people who have been approved with six articles but ten would be better. Make your articles at least 400-500 words. Once you have done that then apply to adsense and give them the address of your page on Word Wolf. This is the page with an address similar to http://wordwolf.com/author/yourname.html. Adsense approval can vary from a few hours to more than a week so be patient. Once you have your ID then come back to your Word Wolf account page and enter the whole of the ID (in the form pub-123456789).
Sign up for adsense using a Blogger Blog
Another way that seems to be quite successful is to make a free Blogger blog. You can do this at Blogger. Blogger blogs are very easy to set up with a good range of themes to choose from. Pick a subject that you know well and that you can write at least ten posts about.
What should I write about?
Well you should, of course, write about a subject you know about but there's more to writing articles online to make money than just writing about anything that takes your fancy! You'll need to pick subjects that people will be searching for online so that they come to your page on Word Wolf. For example, you probably arrived at this page by typing 'how to make money writing articles online' into Google! You were looking for the answer to a problem and 'hopefully' this article has answered it. This is a huge subject but the first thing to do is to think about what people need answers to. You could look at Yahoo Answers to find out what are good topics to choose.
How to use Google's keyword tool to find ideas
'How to' articles are great. Another way to find a subject that people are searching for is to use Google own Keyword Tool. I typed 'How to' into the search box and found a list including 'How to roast' and 'How to budget' . Now 'How to Roast' wouldn't be a great idea as there are a ton of websites that teach you 'how to roast' but then I put How to Roast' into the search box and came up with 'how to roast beef tenderloin', 'how to cook a pot roast' and 'how to roast a leg of lamb'. Putting 'How to budget' into the search box I came up with 'how to budget my money' and 'how to budget properly'. Just a few ideas, you'll want to find some of your own that are being searched for and that you can write an interesting article about!
Using channels in Adsense
Once you've written some articles you'll want to see which sites you're making money from! This is easy in adsense as you can use channels to track which site or which articles receives clicks. To track a site got to 'adsense setup' then 'channels' and then click on URL channels and add the site. For example to track clicks on Word Wolf enter wordwolf.com into the box. If you'd prefer to track individual articles click on 'custom channels' instead and enter the complete address of your article.
There are many other ways to make money writing articles online but I hope this short introduction has given you some things to think about to get started.
