Are you a stay at home mom or stay at home dad who would like to earn extra income from home? Something that you can do in the small bursts of time between childcare duties?
If you would like to earn extra income from home, then one way to do this is with article writing. There are several well run websites online that offer writers money for writing articles. Income is earned on these sites in different manners, and it is not like winning the lottery, but you can bring in a steady income that will help pay the bills and over time create a full-time salary for yourself.
I am not talking about a fly by night or get rich quick scheme. Writing articles on-line takes work, and time, but it does not cost you anything, and you will earn money from doing it.
The sites that I am going to discuss in this article are all highly regarded sites with well established income history's.
Helium: This article is being written on Helium which is purely an article site. Helium offers you several ways to earn money, but the easiest way is the upfront payments. Upfront payments are paid for the first 5 articles on any topic. Helium lists thousands of topics to choose from or you can offer your own titles to write on. Once approved, you can write to your own topics. If you are the first author to write for any title, you will earn an extra dollar for that article. Once your article is published, you will also earn money for page views. Helium only requires that articles meet their terms of service and that are a minimum of 400 words. Articles pay between $.50 to $2.50 depending on how many articles you have already published on the site.
Associated Content: Associated Content is another article site that will pay you per article, and per page view. Associated Content lists titles or you can offer your own. On Associated Content, you have a choice whether you want to get an upfront payment or not. It takes about a week for your article to be approved for upfront payment, and the payments range from $2.00 to $20.00, but are most often closer to the lower end of the range.
Gather: Gather is more of a social networking site that allows you to publish articles (posts), pictures (photos), and comments. On Gather, you can earn Gather points which will translate into gift cards to various companies. You share your articles with your friends on the site and off the site, and earn points by ratings and page views.
Hubpages: Hubpages is more than an article site. The articles are called Hubs and you can make them as long or short as you want, although it is recommended to make them at least 800 words. Hubs are very tightly focused articles written on just about any topic. Money is earned by revenue from Adsense, Amazon, and Ebay. You do need at minimum to have an Adsense account to earn money from Hubpages.
Squidoo: On Squidoo, your articles are called lenses. The name comes from the idea that a lens is also a tightly focused niche article. Squidoo is a revenue sharing site like Helium, but it pays the authors (lensmasters) dependent on your lens-rank, and from sales on each lens. Lens-rank payouts are paid from a pool of money collected from ads all over the site. Each lens also can have sections that include Amazon, Ebay, or Cafe Press items for sale. If a reader purchases one of these, you earn a commission. On Squidoo, you are not required to have accounts with any other site. Squidoo will process these sales through their accounts.
Most stay at home parents do not have a lot of concentrated time to work. That is what makes writing articles such a great idea for earning income. You can write them a little bit at a time, and write about what you already know. That can be anything from parenting, to household hints, to hobbies or interests of yours. If you are a collector, you can write about your collection, and what got you started. If you a golfer, you can write about your favorite golf course.
And we are not talking about literary articles here. Your articles can be factual, but also can be casual or humorous. So why not earn a few more dollars than you are right now. What can it hurt?