There are an increasing number of websites that allow contributors to earn money from contributing content. These can generate additional exposure for users and their content while also generating revenue. Squidoo (www.squidoo.com), which is hosted by Seth Godin and friends, allows users to create a “lens,” which is essentially like an individual blog post. Squidoo touts its high page rank in Google as a way for contributors to generate traffic.
Squidoo offers revenue sharing for its participants. Because the site is ad-supported, contributors receive half of the profits generated from ad links. Savvy Squidoo users seek out top keywords and write content around those keywords to capitalize on top placement in the search engines and the ad revenue that is generated as a result of the traffic.
HubPages (www.hubpages.com) is similar to Squidoo, allowing users to generate content and enjoy ad revenue-sharing from Google Ads, Kontera, Amazon, and eBay. Another option is Associated Content (www.associatedcontent.com), which is a Yahoo!-owned company that touts itself as “the world’s largest source of community-contributed content.” Here writers get paid based on the traffic generated by articles. There is also an assignment desk where you can pick up paid assignments. Top contributors get more visibility on the site.
If you’re interested in taking on a role as expert and content contributor, look to www.about.com. This site is loaded with topics from parenting to gardening and everything in between. Content guides must apply for the exclusive position of representing a topic, and then create and acquire content for that topic, plus send emails to followers.
I’m not going to tell you that you’ll get rich from these sources, but if you’re prolific and want to give them a try, you can generate some additional income and gain some visibility, too. Here are some other sites to investigate. Each has various compensation plans ranging from advertising revenue-share to paying per post.
- helium.com
- ehow.com
- lovetoknow.com
- sponsoredreviews.com
- docstoc.com
- examiner.com
- flixya.com
- bloggerparty.com
- xomba.com
- triond.com
- blogvertise.com
- wisebread.com
- reviewme.com
- smorty.com
- payperpost.com
Along these same lines, if you’re active on Twitter, you can get sponsorship for tweets. Check out www.sponsoredtweets.com, where celebrities generate big bucks for a single tweet, and industry experts with a decent following can also get paid.
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Nice article, Stephanie. The only one I’m familiar with is HubPages. Thank you for the long list of other sites I can explore.
Ann