Zemandi: Getting Paid to Write

Since Demand Studio's list of article topics have grown quite boring and none of them seem to be anything that I have enough knowledge of, I have been looking for other places to write for money. I read a bit about Zemandi and decided to check it out. So far, I am not impressed. First of all, you have to request that an article topic be sent to your email, then you have to go check your email and decide if it is something you wish to write about or not. If you don't want to write the article, you have to go back to the Zemandi website to decline it, and then put in the article number. Seems like a lot of wasted time to me. You have your choice of writing content, review, or blog article. A few assignments I received in the mail were for me to write for free so that they could get an idea of what writing level I am at (isn't this why  most places just ask for articles you have already written), or they are 450+ word articles for $2.50. Really? Even though I am pretty desperate for money, I do value my time a bit more than that. Most of the articles are mundane and uninteresting things to write about on top of the no/low pay. It may be a good place for new writers to start off at and dip their toes into the writing world, but I don't know if you can generate a decent amount of money.

Have any of you worked for Zemandi? Is there potential there? Is it worth writing an article for no or low pay to get to the better paying articles? Please feel free to comment and give us your input!

My First Month of Freelance Writing

The first month's tallies are in. Here is a run down of what I made for the month. Keep in mind that I didn't get a full month's payment from textbroker because they pay on the 5th and 20th of each month, so I missed almost 10 days worth of pay that I normally would have gotten from the end of January. I hope that made sense?? For the next few months I will be posting my monthly stats of what I made, so that everyone can see how and where I am progressing with freelance writing. Some of the sites I just joined and didn't get a chance to profit from them for the entire month. For instance, Demand Studios I only joined up with for the last week of the month, so I was only paid for two articles through them. Here's the run down:

Textbroker: $185.03
Squidoo: $5.36
Demand Studio: $15.00
Sponsored Reviews: $13.00

Grand Total: $218.39

Not too bad for the first month. Like I mentioned before, I have a steady customer on textbroker now. The have been sending me orders for 5 articles a week, however, last week they doubled that and now send me 10 a week. For now, I am just doing the direct orders through textbroker and doing other articles through Demand Studios because I will make more through Demand. Textbroker is a good place to start for newbies, but I've noticed a lot of business that want to pay pennies for an article and yet expect the writer to do everything to their anal specifications. Sorry, but if you are going to be that specific about something you had better shell out a few extra bucks to make it worth my time.

My next few posts will be on the different websites that I am currently writing for. A few of them are not listed here because I didn't get paid from them yet, but I will go through each one and explain how each works.

So far, so good with freelance writing!

So, the first website I joined to try my luck at freelance writing was textbroker.com. Basically, you search through various writing offers and pick articles that you are willing to write about. You write the article and if it is accepted, you get paid! They do rate your writing performance and after only writing 2 articles, I had a rating of 4 stars, which is considered to be an "excellent writer". Somehow, though, I got dropped down to 3 stars, but I'm sure it will get back up there. The articles are usually fairly short, 300-400 words, which isn't much at all. I do have to do a little bit of research on the subjects I don't have much knowledge on, but it's not difficult at all. Last week, I was fairly busy, had some out of town doctor appointments and only worked 2 days before the first payday of the month (they pay on the 5th and the 20th). So the payment above was for only 2 days of work. Not shabby, eh?? Also, I got a regular client on my first day, which means they send me direct orders for articles. I've done about 10 articles for them so far, and they are adding me to their list of regular writers! I'm loving this so far! I still have a lot to learn about freelance writing and I know there is good money to be made, just have to do the research and find out where the big money lies, but I'm happy with this so far!