It’s not get-rich-pay, but it’s not horrible for a couple of paragraphs. And you don’t need to be an ad copy writer to do it. Just give descriptions of apartments. Thorough instructions are included.

Any of you who have the time might want to knock out a few for some extra change. It’s nothing huge but it is a chance at some easy extra money–and every job you get through sites like this is an audition of some sort.

http://writeraccess.com

Of course these means that you will be up against a good bit of competition. I’ll teach you one competition-beating strategy–the “simple” one–at the end of this blog post. Later this week, I’ll tell you how to start freelance writing using “power strategies” for these two sites.

Right now, let’s take a look at these two freelance writing sites.

Writing Online with TextBroker.com

Textbroker is one of the oldest, most well-known freelance writing sites around. They are a powerhouse in the online content writing industry. As such, they attract many clients–and many writers.

(I’ve used Textbroker both as a writer and as a client; I’ll give more of the client perspective later this week in a Textbroker review.)

There are two main ways to make money writing for Textbroker: grabbing an open assignment, and getting direct orders. Open assignments are the easiest to get when you first start out, but direct assignments pay better.

Open Assignments in Textbroker

Textbroker typically has a number of open assignments in 21 different categories. And it’s a good bet that at least two or three of these categories will be subjects in whcih you have an interest.

Any time you visit the site, there will usually be at least a few open assignments. Sometimes there are dozens–sometimes only two or three.

If you see one you like, you do have to be quick to grab it, though. Textbroker is a popular site and there are plenty of other writers looking for work.

How the Textbroker Rating System Affects Your Assignments

The downside? Textbroker’s 5-star rating system typically starts new users at 2-3 stars. Most of the better-paying assignments are at 4-5 stars. When you first start writing here, you can expect to make $5 or $6 on most of your top-paying assignments. There will also be those that offer even less!

But you can make more money writing here if you put in a little effort. You don’t even need to raise your star rating in order to make more money writing. I’ll talk more about direct assignments and bumping up your star rating later this week.

How to Start Your Day with Textbroker

Finally, Textbroker can be a great “engine starter” to help you get going every day. My girlfriend used to grab a Textbroker assignment every morning and write it to get her day started. The assignments didn’t pay as well as our “real” clients pay us, of course. But starting with these assignments helped kick-start her writing brain, and at the end of the month, we had extra money for gas and electricity.

If you’re just starting out writing for money online, getting paid anything for what you write can seem like a treat (and trust me, it never gets old…). But you don’t have to settle for $5 an article, either. I’ll talk about that later this week.

Writing for Writer Access

Writer Access has an entirely different look and feel to it than Textbroker. The biggest advantage of Writer Access over Textbroker is that you can start out getting paid more for your articles.

The downside is that there are fewer available assignments here. If you want to get good jobs at Writer Access, I recommend checking the site 2-3 times a day. If you have enough time on your hands, go ahead and check it every hour! That may seem like a lot, but it’s all part of putting yourself out there.

Getting in Good on Writer Access

Like Textbroker, Writer Access has open writing assignments that you can grab as soon as you see them. It also has a feature known as the “Casting Call,” where you basically audition to be on a client’s “Love List” of writers they will turn to when they need a project done.

Being on a Love List doesn’t guarantee you the work, but it does put you in the running. If you are diligent and attentive, they can really make your month. I have a close friend who supported his wife and son for two months on nothing but Love List assignments, and I seriously doubt he’s the only one who’s done so.

How Writer Access Rates Writers

Writer Access assigns its writers a rating from 1 to 5, just like Textbroker. You can actually start out with a higher rating here than at other places; I come on-board with 4 stars. You’ll need to pass at least one test (the system is different than it was when I first came on), and it really helps if you have a blog or other regular published writing that you can show them (I still think I could’ve come on at 5 stars if I had more work published under my own name…).

Which Site is Better?

These two sites are better at different things for different reasons. At the end of the day, they are both valuable sites to join, especially if you’re just starting out on your writing journey.

Each one provides opportunities not just to make money writing online content, but to build the kinds of writer-client relationships that are at the core of any long-term content writing business.

The Simple Strategy for Freelance Writing Websites

There are a lot of subtleties and moving parts to making money writing content on sites like Textbroker, Writer Access, etc. I’ll go into those subtleties in my next couple of posts.

Right now, I’ll leave you with a good simple beginner’s strategy for finding writing work on these sites:

The best way to find freelance writing work on Textbroker and Writer Access is simply to check in early and check in often. These to sites have gotten extremely popular with writers over the past couple of months.

The Double Edge of Popularity

In a way, this is actually a very good thing. It shows that these sites pay their writers on a regular basis, and generally pay a reasonable rate for beginners. More experienced writers can also make a respectable rate at both sites as well (although it takes a little more elbow grease to do this on Textbroker).

On the downside, it means that many other writers are grabbing up assignments as well–often very quickly. But the competition isn’t so bad that finding writing work here is impossible. Far from it.

Building Relationships and Getting Consistent Writing Work

Once you have completed a handful of open assignments, you have a better chance of developing customer-client relationships. Customer-client relationships are a lot easier to build when you a) write good content and b) have a complete write profile set up. That’s something I’ll go into a little later this week.

So that is the “simple” strategy for both TextBroker and Writer Access: check the available assignments at least two or three times every day. Pick an assignment that sounds like something you will enjoy–or at least, won’t find too boring (some days have better pickings than others).

You may not have access to the most fun assignments at first. Go ahead and take on anything you feel reasonably competent at–even if it doesn’t sound exciting. You’ll got to the good stuff soon enough.

Then, your best bet right now is to complete each assignment as well as you can, as quickly as you can.

“Power Strategies” to Make Money Writing Articles Online

I’ll post later this week about how to drastically improve your chances to make a living writing online with Textbroker and Writer Access. There are strategies specific to help clients find you; these same strategies will also help you consistently get enjoyable assignments that pay well.

These bringers of bad tidings are often the same affiliate marketers and “IM gurus” that will tell you Adsense is dead, or that the Internet marketing niche is not a good one to get into…

I’ve also had plenty of clients who cared about keyword percentage only because they didn’t want Google to think their pages were spammy. It’s a legitimate concern in itself–but often a misinformed one. These clients typically like to keep their density below 3%.

The Other Side of the Keyword Density Coin

Then I have other clients who’ve experimented on their own and found out what percentage works best. 90% of the time, these business owners and SEO directs want to start at 3%.

The truth is, the “best” keyword density varies with each market–and often with each keyword. All you have to do is check the first page of Google for many terms (CTRL+F in Google Chrome will give you the quickest answer), and you’ll see that keyword density is not by any means dead.

(Do this enough times and you’ll see that the pages listed on Page 1 of Google may have wildly varying keyword percentages. This is sometimes true, and just goes to show that the number of times you work a key phrase into your content, is just one of many  on-page SEO factors.)

Checking the first page of Google isn’t the only way to figure out what density is best for your keyword; it’s just the first step. Proper research takes a little while. And while it’s not most exciting research you’ll ever do, it will make the rest of your project or campaign much easier.

How You Can Deal with a Difficult Client?

Of course you’re going to run in to clients who don’t care how much expertise you claim to have–they want what they want because they’re scared of Google’s SPAM-stamp. And who can blame them? Google is a scary beast, and they have to be able to call the shots in their own business. Of course, they should probably listen to people who know better…

Any which way about it, it’s a frustrating situation. It sucks to have someone hire you–then tell you you won’t be allowed to do your job to the fullest. And if things don’t work out, you can bet they’ll blame you before they blame themselves?

But this situation doesn’t have to be a disaster. Even when your hands are to some degree tied by your client, you can still provide good on-page SEO. Even if you have control over nothing but the content, you still have several other on-page SEO tools & tricks at your disposal

How to Save Your Client’s Content–In Spite of Your Client

Times like this are when you should make double-sure to use keyworded subheads on the page. I try for at least three, as long as the content allows for it. Put your main keyword in one or two of them, and a good secondary keyword or two in a couple if at all possible.

If you can work with the designer or webmaster, make sure he or she will put these subheads in H2, H3, etc. instead of just in bold print (which you should also do at least once for your primary and secondary keywords). This will get a little more mileage out of each keyword occurance.

Speaking of designers and webmasters, they can come in pretty handy in this step. They are usually responsible for ensuring all images have search engine optimized titles and alt text. They are also most likely the ones in charge of putting your client’s keywords in the URL, keyword meta-tag, and title tag. Make sure that they do.

(“Aha!” someone’s going to say. “But Google doesn’t care about this tag anymore!” Well, they say they don’t. And while it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference with them, the keyword meta-tag is definitely worth paying attention to when it comes to Yahoo/Bing.)

The Final Steps to On-Page SEO Content & Copy

You probably already know that you should have your main keyword in your headline, in the first sentence or two, and somewhere close to the end, as well. And most people will understand you when you say it can be useful to throw the main keyword into the article a couple of times.

But you can also enhance your main key phrase by throwing in a couple of strong secondary ones, and pumping them up to roughly the same keyword density.

Finally, don’t forget to link out! That is, when it’s possible. Sometimes it won’t be.

Many webmasters and business owners are still afraid of “giving away link juice” by lining to an outside site. And when you’re talking about a business’s home page, lead-gen, or direct mail-style sales page, off-site links are rarely appropriate.

But many pages can benefit from a well-placed Wikipedia link. Believe it or not, Google really likes to see you sharing the wealth. The Big G generally tends to have more trust in sites that link out towards non-commercial, high-trust sites like Wikipedia and Google Knol.

(As you probably already know, it’s a good idea to turn your keyword into the anchor text for this link, when at all possible.)

On-Page SEO is Still Possible–Even when Your Client Builds a Fence Around You

If you follow all of the steps above, you should have pretty darn good on-page SEO for the content or copy that you write. In fact, all the steps I mentioned above, will often outdo a page that only has keyword density working for it.

All the same, though, it’s always great when you can take a screenshot of your client’s competition, that shows the competitor’s (better-ranking) page with keywords highlighted (our good friend Google Chrome again).

If that still doesn’t help, then hopefully this article will.