Freelancing for cash - upfront or residual?

One of the hidden truths of internet marketing (any aspect of it) is writing. And writing. And then writing some more. Unfortunately without writing tons of articles (or outsourcing them) one can get very little done. Every website needs articles. Blogs need articles and if you want to get backlinks, one of the most efficient methods nowadays employed by IMers around is article marketing. That is writing articles and submitting them to sites such as Ezinarticles.com and similar.

Besides for the obvious, meaning getting people to buy your products by clicking on the links from your article resource box, many people, the freelancers among us, use articles to make a nice income from them. They simply write and sell their articles.

Since writing articles is a major part of my own activities as well, e.g. each new blog that I sell has initial properly researched and SEO’d 10 articles on it to get the blog indexed fast and give the new owner an easier start, I figured why not use my writing skills and get into freelancing as well? I do love writing about all sorts of niches and topics, and researching is a fun and creative part of it all. So I’ve joined various freelancing sites, such as Elance.com and started to offer my services there. For the very short period of time that I’ve been there so far, I’ve got some nice projects that really got my creative juices flowing.

The only problem with these types of articles is that once you hand them over to the buyer, they are no longer yours. You can no longer publish them anywhere else. But you get paid upfront, which is great, as you can get a nice few $100s done in a week or so. However I’ve recently also heard about sites such as Suite101.com, which are basically sites where freelancers write and they retain the rights to their articles. What’s the catch? You only get paid a percentage of Adsense revenue (when visitors click on the Adsense ads that are spread all around your article). True, this might turn some people off, because the lure of fast money in the pockets is great. However, the residual income articles are yours, and you can later on re-publish them (I think Suite101 allows you to republish them after a year). Also you can get residual income from your articles for many years to come (or at least as long as the site is alive). So while the initial monetary feedback from an article posted here is pittyful to say the least, after a few months these articles can truly bypass what you would have gotten upfront from them someplace else.

I’ve only written 8 articles so far in the 2 weeks I’m at Suite101, and although it is forbidden to talk about actual amounts from this site, let’s just say that soon I’ll be ready to receive my first payoff. However, I’ve learned that prior keyword research is crucial. You can use the free Google External Keyword tool or Micro Niche Finder (which I am almost exclusively using), being the BEST tool in finding tiny niches that have high search count yet small enough competition to be able to rank high with your article.

So finally I’ve decided to go with both: writing articles for upfront payment and writing articles to be posted for residual income that will reach well into the next years.