It is not much of a secret how difficult it can be to earn a living as a writer. This is especially so for those who are not yet well established. While it has become even harder in the last several years for writers who pursue traditional avenues of selling their work there have also been new opportunities open up online for those who are willing to adapt and change the kind of writing they do. The rest of this piece will explain the reasons for the changes in the business of writing and ways one can use to thrive in the new market conditions. First of all many writers might be wondering why it has become more difficult recently to make a living doing what they love. It mainly comes down to basic economics of supply and demand. The supply of writers has increased. When the supply of labor in any type of industry increases it tends to devalue the work of the people working in those businesses. Secondly the demand has decreased somewhat for writers. That is due to the closing of many newspapers in recent years. Both of those trends make it harder for writers to get their work sold and get a fair price for it. Despite the bad news for traditional writers the internet offers opportunity for those who are willing to learn new skills and change the way they write. There are three main methods for writers to earn income online. The first one is to work for article mills. The pay is usually low but can offer steady work. The second method is to bid against other authors on sites that act as a middle man between employers and writers. The employers are usually webmasters or bloggers looking for cheap content. The pay is usually even lower than content mills. The last method involves a learning curve but offers higher potential for income. Basically it involves creating blogs and other content sites and earning from various sources like adsense and affiliate marketing. While it is quite different than traditionally selling articles to publishers it is the wave of the future for writers who are willing to learn online entrepreneurship skills. Aaron Ballantyne is a prolific online writer and has a website where you can find articles about writing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 9:09 am and is filed under Free Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.