Flashback, if you will, to the decade of the Nineties, before the internet was an integral part of our daily lives. You’re a writer, or a creative person who has a way with words, trying to make it in the cruel, dreadfully slow 8 to 5 grind and then come home to your small apartment or, perhaps, your parent’s basement and try to work on your novel or your screenplay or your anthology of poetry. This also applies to painters, photographers, sculptors and just about any other creative profession that was almost impossible to make a living in before the internet age. Things were tough. Creativity was hard to come by because life often got in the way. Yet today, thanks to site content writing, multi-talented creatives can suddenly make money with a computer and an internet connection on their own time. Below are some of the greatest things about writing web content.
Work on your own schedule.
No being stuck at an office for eight hours per day or behind a counter or doing a walking half-marathon at a local restaurant: a creative spark can be acted upon and the work part, the requirement to make money to survive, can be done more on your own schedule.
There will almost always be work.
To be more specific, to those of you who have not discovered or tackled the wonderful world of site content writing, here’s a quick and dirty explanation: the internet, as you know, is filled with content. Answers to just about anything you desire are here, through some search engine or search term combination. Well, not everything exactly, which is why there is a market for these missing answers, thoughts and opinions to be filled through content writing websites. There are also people always in need of new, fresh content—be it for their company websites, their entertainment blogs or just commentary on new, fascinating events that have occurred in the world itself (like the advent of the content writing industry). Each of these articles are priced in various ways, talented writers apply and are accepted to content websites who manage the content and their writers, and work begins. When writers complete assignments to the satisfaction of clients, then they are promptly paid, via paypal. No waiting for checks in the mail, no set salaried hours, no clocking in and out. It’s all very fresh and straight-forward. Like the internet itself.
Work from anywhere, at any time.
While the garden internet content industry is growing and evolving itself, a whole workforce of people have been created who can work on their own schedules from just about anywhere, as long as they have a computer or an internet connection. Write for a few hours in the morning, do your art during the day, go to that extension class, play with your kids or your dog, write some more in the afternoon or evening.
Keep in mind, there are rules.
Of course, you have to do the work and abide by the rules, as with any job. Sometimes the pay isn’t up to snuff or the article assignments run out, depending on which content website you are working for. When this happens, you may just have to find a part-time job the old fashioned way, at least until the content writing picks up again. But at least the internet has given that option to all the creatives out there.
E.K. is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
