As a work at home mom, I’m always looking for new ways to bring in money. Being a blogger for the Single Parenting, Home Schooling, and Frugal Living categories here at Families.com is one way to make a little bit of cash while doing something I love.
However, there are a lot of scams and just a lot of bad deals on the Internet. Over the past 7 years I wasted more time than I care to think about. I simply learn the lesson and move on. Then again, there are places online where people make a lot of money, or at least a decent income, and I failed miserably.
A few places I tried that didn’t work for me were:
*eHow
*BrightHub
*Factoidz
*Type-A Mom
*Helium
*Constant Content
*Writer Wrangler
*TextBroker
*Associated Content
*Triond
*ReviewStream
*Seed
*Mahalo
*WiseGEEK
There are a lot of people who make good money at these places and others, but they just didn’t click with me. Besides, between home schooling my kids, working from home, and volunteering, I needed to be more frugal with my time.
For up front payments I focus on professional book and movie reviews I do through a media company, then write articles for Demand Studios, and Families.com. However, what about residual income? Money that keeps coming in month after month even though you wrote the articles months or even years ago. This is where Suite101 comes in.
I started writing seriously for Suite101 in January 2010. I write articles I enjoy writing, as I do here at Families.com, but Suite doesn’t pay up front. Instead, their writer’s get a share of the Google Adsense revenue. It’s a bit like playing the lottery since some days nobody has clicked on an ad and other days several people have. It’s definitely not dependable income.
But, the more articles I write, the more money I make. Since I don’t focus on topics that have wide audience appeal—-like electronics and finances-—I probably don’t get as much money for my work as authors of those hot topics. Still, I can see my residual income growing as the months pass. I never stress myself out trying to amass hundreds of articles on there, though I suspect my income will grow tremendously once I cross the 100+ articles mark. Instead, I write an article here or there and post when I can. It’s my goal to reach at least 100 articles by the end of this year; right now I have 55.
For any work at home parent, it could be good to give Suite101 a shot. Fill out their application, send in some samples, and if you’re accepted, just post 10 articles every three months (which is their minimum) and in time you’ll have a residual income you can count on for years to come. These avenues give me the most money for my time, and we all need to be more frugal with our time.