Friday 22 November 2013

Forum Content Writing Does Pay



The first online work I found that paid me any money was forum content writing. It did pay and as far as effort went it wasn't that far off what I do right now through Bubblews. The work isn't as easy though. It requires good creative writing skills and researching skills. I would consider going back to supplement our income, but I'm hoping to do better with the time I have.

I started with Kickstart Your Forums. They still exist but I haven't been active there in years. No complaints from me about them. I worked and I got paid for my work. There are other similar programs out there. Use Google to find them. Most of them follow a similar mode of operation.

To get started you have to sign up for the site. You will get limited access to their internal forums where you are required to make some posts before submitting your work for evaluation. This will give their administrator a chance to make sure that your written language skills meet their standards. It will also give them an idea of how well you write and how well you follow instructions. Get it right and if they have room for you, you'll have a job.

To maximize your earnings potential you'll have to create multiple pseudonyms complete with their own email addresses. As a writer I found it useful to write a brief bio for each. This will allow you to take more than one job slot on each program. My maintainable alter egos were two men and two women of different ages and distinct personalities. I found this part of the job challenging and fun. I did carry on an online argument with myself on one occasion. The object is to appear to be real people. Great exercise for creative fiction writers.

The main downside was claiming job slots. When they were announced, they were up for grabs. You snooze you lose. The problem is, I didn't know when they were coming and with a full life beside that work, I just didn't have time to keep checking for jobs. People with smartphones have a clear advantage. They can set their account up to send them an alert the moment work comes available and then get on their Internet, check it out and get first choice of the job slots. I don't have a cellphone at all and I don't think I can justify getting one so that I can excel at this. The work would have to pay for my cellphone plan with data on top of making me additional income because right now those are expenses I don't have. The result was that I ended up working a lot of leftover jobs and waiting on the sidelines for other workers to screw up, so I could take over their slot on the contract. Nice to be considered a go-to writer by administrators, but I'd like to get prime picks as well.

If you can work for more than one site and already have a smart phone, you can make a modest consistent income. Like any real job they will expect reliability or you'll be out the door.  For what it's worth: Forum content writing was at times a lot of fun.

No comments:

Post a Comment