by Hernani Cerqueira

Created on: June 11, 2009   Last Updated: June 20, 2009

In the past few years, we have been watching and contributing to the growth of a new paradigm in the web industry. Apparently, add revenue sharing programs are here to stay, and there's an all new marketplace in the job industry. The general idea of these programs is that if users contribute to the growth and maintenance of online communities, they should have their share in the earnings as well.

The appearance of online publishing communities created the possibility for every one of us with aspirations to a writing career to just go and try. Probably the most important point is the almost completele absence of risk. There is no financial investment at all, and we can make our own schedules, and decide how much time to dedicate to the cause. We just need to get our hands to the job and start writing. After our article is published, we just sit and wait for people to come by and read our materials. Some other skills, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or self promotion are also welcome, but our way to the top has to be constructed essentially in a merit base. Social interaction sometimes plays an important role in the process, but we just can't get there if we're not good enough.

The reason for this is simple. First of all, you need traffic to your articles. Traffic means more readers who may become regular followers of your work, and consequently more income for you and for the community founders. There are basically four levels of traffic gaining; the first is the internal traffic, since all the communities have a built in rating system, good material has more chances of rating high, and high rated pieces of work, have more chances of being viewed inside the community. Second you'll start gaining traffic from your own self promotion (if you do any), through other communities, like social bookmarking websites or blogs. Then, if readers enjoy your stuff, they will probably start making their own promotion, posting links for your material all around the web. Finally, you may be eligible to get traffic from search engines, which main criteria in presenting their results is the amount of back links to each page. It's an all win market, the interaction between users and site administrators is perfect, everyone profits from this, and everyone is interested in your growth.

There are countless possibilities for the writer wannabe. We can become a product reviewer, an opinion maker, a reporter, or just create simple how-to's, or even quizzes... The sentence "Imagination is the limit", fits perfectly here. The different communities are focused on different purposes, and we can even divide them by their selection criteria. The way as our profits are calculated vary with each community, but my experience tells me that most of them tend to share the bigger part with the users, so it's perfectly reasonable to aspire on a full time career opportunity, although not all of us we'll have that luck.

Anyway, like bloggers sometimes blog for self amusement, and people participate in online forums just for fun, the all add revenue sharing community may and should work that way. Essentially, write good stuff and have fun.

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