Start Making Money For Christmas 2010: Part 1

It is the Holiday Season and everyone's budget is screaming. There are gifts to be bought and meals to be cooked. Money seems to be in the forefront of everyone's mind this holiday season. In January I vowed to try to make extra cash to pay for the holiday expenses this year so that I wouldn't have to take any out of my household budget. I managed to make enough to pay for all of the gifts that I need to get this year. There are numerous ways to make that extra cash, on and offline. So for the next few days I will be posting some of these ideas to share with you.

For today I am going to talk to you about freelance writing to make extra cash. You can write articles and get paid for it. There are sites that are known as "Content Sites" that allow anyone to post informative articles and earn for their performance. You don't have to be a pro writer, just follow their article guidelines that each site has. You can write How-To's, product or website reviews, and informative articles.

The first site that I want to talk about is eHow. eHow is a site that offers how-to articles that are posted by people just like us. You can write about how to do most anything from cooking to household repairs. The article submission template is an easy step by step process that gives you the option of adding images or videos to your article (although you are not required to). It is free to join and has an easy sign up process. They offer payout by Paypal once a minimum of $10 has been reached each month. One of the things that I like is that you don't have to remember to cash out, they do it for you. Another thing is that your articles go live once you submit it, there are no waiting periods for your articles to appear for others to see. Another is that I have found personally that their articles rank well with Google (not scientifically proven, just my opinion), which will help you get traffic to your articles and earn more. eHow offers a feature for its members to request others to write about subjects that are not covered. This is a great feature for someone who is looking for something to write about. I suggest before you sign on to submit articles, go to eHow and check the site out. For more on eHow check out these post.

My next favorite site is Associated Content (AC). It is a content site that allows you to post articles about your neighborhood events, how to's, reviews, and more. The site is easy to sign up and is free to join. As a writer with Associated Content you can submit articles and choose to either get an upfront payment with performance pay or just submit it and receive performance pay only. The difference in these options is when you choose to get an upfront payment for the article you will have a waiting period before it gets approved and viewable by others as suppose to if you choose to just get the performance pay it will be published fairly quickly. Performance pay (otherwise known as PPM) is based on page views of your content. The more page views, the higher PPM payout. It is based off of every thousand page views. When an upfront payment is selected, AC will give you the option to accept the offer or decline it. The offer can range anywhere from $1 to $20. If you have writers block or looking for a place to get started writing, check out the "Assignment Desk" ticker found on your account page. It offers subjects that AC is looking for articles on. These are usually time sensitive assignments but can help earn more page views. Again, if you are thinking of joining check out the site first and explore some of the existing articles. This way you can become familiar with the site format. To see another post I have made about Associated Content check out this post.

Now there are other writing sites out there. These are just the ones that I write for currently. As with anything, remember to read terms of service and submission guidelines on the sites before you jump in and start writing. I am in no way a pro at either site but definitely think that it is a great way to earn extra income. Do you write online for extra income? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the next installment of Start Making Money For Christmas 2010.

(Disclaimer: This is just an informative article about sites that I have used before. Neither offer compensation to me for this post or referrals made to them. See more of my disclosure statement by clicking the banner in the left sidebar)