Best Freelance Writing Gigs Online TextBroker, PeoplePerHour, More

You already know how enamored we are of sites like Fiverr and Upwork for finding freelance writing gigs. And you know that it’s possible to earn a living from these sites – they’re truly valid ways to make a full time income from home. But if you’re just looking for a little extra spending money, there are other sites out there that may be of interest to you. Some of the best freelance writing gigs can be found at sites where you’d least expect them. Here are a few of the best places to find writing  jobs online. Amazon mTurk (Mechanical Turk) This site is owned by Amazon, and is a crowdsourcing platform. Web developers and others post â€Å"HITs,† or Human Intelligence Tasks, and freelancers complete those HITs. All payments are received through Amazon Payments, and can be credited to your Amazon account or deposited to your bank account. You’re certainly not going to find enough HITs on mTurk to quit your day job. But if you’re looking for a way to make extra money while you watch television, it’s a good place to start. You can sort jobs by highest pay first, and can often find yourself writing a few paragraphs for a $10 payout. It’s not great pay, but it’s certainly enough to buy a gallon of milk. The good thing about Mechanical Turk is that it’s an awesome place to find long term clients. The requesters are usually working on bigger projects, like websites or research papers, and you can contact them directly as you see fit. I’ve landed a few high-paying jobs through requesters on the site, with minimal effort. Textbroker I’ve written about Textbroker before, and I’ll state again that it’s got its pros and cons. To become a writer on Textbroker, you’ve got to submit an application, and that application involves writing a 250 article. Now, if you’ve ever written an article, you know that 250 words is not a lot of room to flaunt your talent. I had a lot of trouble completing this to my full ability. Once your article is submitted, it will be rated by the admin at Textbroker and assigned a star rating. Most new writers are assigned a 3 or 4 star rating; the rating determines your pay and what you’re eligible to write. Textbroker assignments, in my experience, just aren’t very interesting. There are a lot of very humdrum topics that requesters want writers for, but the pay is decent, and it’s a good place to land a gig every now and then. BloggingPro Job Board BloggingPro Job Board is a nice little resource if you’re looking for a quick gig or for a place to include backlinks to your own site. Most of the jobs posted on this site are short term, but there are a few which state the need to find a long term contributor. Regardless, the Job Board itself is very easy to use and quite nicely organized. The site owner curates job postings from across the web, includes a description of the job within her post, and provides a link to the application. You’ll need to do a lot of prospecting with this site, though. Some jobs include applications, but others require that you submit a query to the editor. The site works similarly to a board like Monster, in that the jobs are compiled in one place but you need to do a majority of the work. Craigslist Again, this article is focused on freelance writing gigs. And while you probably won’t have too much luck finding a full time, remote, work from home writing job on Craigslist (New York Times won’t advertise here, for example), you can find quite a few writing gigs for some extra money. Craigslist is also a great place to advertise your services. You can place an ad to let people know that you’re available to help edit their resume, to format their English paper or to provide web content for their business. I recommend that you include a link to your online portfolio within your ad, to increase your chances of getting hired. As always, be careful for the Craigslist scammers. Use your intuition, and if a buyer insists on meeting, please do so in a public place. Social Media Alright, so it’s not a traditional place to find freelance writing gigs, but social media is quickly becoming so. Sites like Facebook include groups for writers which often post writing gigs. And venues like LinkedIn will offer great hiring and networking opportunities for writers. Why not start your own business page on either of these sites? Share your page at every opportunity, and let people know about the services you offer. It’s free, and setting up your page is very self explanatory. Share your page with your friends and family, and ask that they share it, too. Be aware that advertising your services on writing groups can get you flagged for spam. Make sure that you introduce yourself as a part of a conversation. As tempting as it may be to just post a link to your page on every message board, people tend to generally dislike that. PeoplePerHour PeoplePerHour is another site where you can make quite a bit of money, but it’s good for smaller gigs, too. Writers post small jobs called â€Å"hourlies† and buyers will search for the writers. It requires very little time invested on your part. I posted an hourlie on PPH about five months ago, and I am still getting invitations from the site, despite the fact that I’ve never really invested too much time in my profile. At least once per week, a buyer finds my profile and requests that I place a bid on a job. Placing a bid is little more than submitting an application, but the fact that I am receiving these invitations shows me that the site is active, and that buyers are willing to pay my rates for projects. There are tons of other places online to find freelance writing gigs, but these will give you a good start. If you’re just beginning, don’t be afraid to take one or two lower paying jobs as practice. You’ll get the higher paying jobs soon enough. Have fun finding the platform you like best, and enjoy your extra cash.