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6 Ways to Make Money from Articles/Content




Original content with your byline.

There are 6 basic ways to make money from your content. I will call them content articles, but they can also be videos, photos, podcasts, and artwork.

Affiliates


Writers can market affiliates on their websites or add links to their articles or posts on writing platforms or social media.

Affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as it seems, yet it can work if the product or service is relevant to the article. These products and services can be sourced through broker platforms like ClickBank or just found individually by the writer. Most products or services have an affiliate program.

Ad/Membership Revenue


Revenue-sharing platforms like NewsBreak and HubPages give writers a cut of the ad revenue; the amount depends on how many views the piece gets.

Membership revenue gives writers a cut of the money coming in from people subscribing to the platform, like Medium and Vocal. Vocal gives a certain amount per view while Medium gives according to membership engagement with each article.

Another way to earn ad revenue is to have them on your blog or website. Google Adsense is the main provider in this space, but there are also many alternatives such as PopAds, Infolinks, etc.

Donations


Writers can earn money through donations from viewers who want to support their work. These donations can come through snail mail, PayPal, Buy Me a Coffee, etc.

Subscriptions


Another way to earn is by getting readers to sign up for a paid monthly subscription. This is how writers make money on Substack. Patreon and Locals are also subscription sites, even though they are broker sites and not the platform itself.

Selling Books/Products/Services


Writers can also earn money from their articles by directly or indirectly selling books, products, or services from their websites or articles. Instead of selling an affiliate’s product, sell your own.

Writers may have a ghostwriting service on Fiverr, an eBook on Amazon, music downloads, an eBay store, a how-to class (teachable.com, etc.), or some art on Etsy.

Having many followers on different platforms and an email list will help writers get attention to new products or services they offer.

Getting Published with Byline


The final way to make money from articles is to get published through a print or online publication that pays for the exclusive or shared rights to the article. For instance, getting published by Reader’s Digest or Cracked.

The publications pay a certain amount upfront to publish the article after it is submitted to them according to their submission guidelines. They may want exclusive rights or shared. Exclusive means it can’t be syndicated anywhere else, while shared means it can be with a link back to the original source at the bottom of the article.

Conclusion


These 6 ways to make money from articles/content online have many variations for each, yet are the main ways available to writers and content creators.

Finding the strategy that works for you and being productive with the effort is vital for making these revenue streams work.

This can take months, years, or decades to figure out, so don’t get discouraged if your efforts aren’t working right away; learn from your mistakes and experiment with different strategies until you find something that works.


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