Make money from online surveys in South Africa

I didn't expect it, but I've had a lot of responses to my post on Online Surveys and whether or not they are a viable way of making money. To recap, I came up with 3 conclusions:

1.Free online surveys are a waste of time
2.If you live in the states, you won't get rich
3.If you live in South Africa, it's easy to make money taking surveys.

That is, if you're prepared to spend the time taking surveys online. You also have to be prepared to take the leap of faith and cough up $30 or whatever to get started. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and this is definitely true if you want to make money taking online surveys.

Personally, I use the original and best Paid Surveys Online. I make between $30-$50 a day and spend about an hour and a half taking surveys online. I generally do it in my down time, when I don't feel like working. It's not a princely sum, but you could make a lot more if you feel like sitting and taking surveys all day.

The nice thing about Paid Surveys Online is that you can do 3 of their other projects as well. If you live in the states you can get paid to drive, or get paid to hand out promotional products. Anywhere else you can do the "get paid to read emails" thing. I did this for a while, and it made me a few bucks but I try to focus on writing articles as much as I can.

My final verdict: If you live in South Africa or any other country with a weak currency, you'd be CRAZY not to sign up for the online surveys from Paid Surveys Online. It's an hour a day and you can make good money doing it.

Writing SEO Articles that Make Money

SEO articles can go for anything from $2 to $25 each or more, but most of us seem to find ourselves working on the bottom end of this scale. Like any other industry, web content writing has vast earnings disparity. So what makes some article writers well paid, and others not?

Well, for starters, experience is worth a lot more in this industry than a qualification (although this helps). The best way to land a well paying writing project on GetAFreelancer or another writing site is to have relevant experience writing the type of articles the client needs. Here are 5 tips on how to be well paid for your writing:

1. Generalize
If someone offers you rectal cancer articles, do them. The next time a medical articles writing project comes up, you can bid high and claim relevant experience


2. Fewer clients, less money
Stick to 2 or 3 clients, and write articles for them for a few months. Good references will get you a long way


3. Focus on Quality
The better your web content and SEO articles are, the more you can charge people for them. The only way to increase your price is slowly


4. Promote Yourself
Tell people what you do, network, make business cards, start a blog - do whatever it takes to tell the world about your writing abilities.


5. Don't Sell Yourself Short
If you know your SEO articles are worth $10 each, don't bid lower than this. There will always be more projects going from clients who appreciate a highly skilled writer.

Web 2.0 - What does this mean for writers?

Web 2.0 is a term that you might have seen bandied about the place, but not a lot of people really know what this phenomenon is. It's not a new secret type of internet that's better, faster and free that you haven't been invited to. In fact, it's no one thing.

To summarize Web 2.0 in one sentence I would say this: It is a change in the way publishers and browsers use the internet. This has all been made possible by PHP and SQL. PHP is a database platform, and SQL is the language you use to get info out of a PHP database. This allows for fantastic new web design concepts, and allows you to do many different operations on one page.

Take my blog, WriteNonsense for example. You see one page, but actually it is many pages stored in a PHP database. When you click on one of my post links, SQL fetches what you asked for. Ever been on Facebook? What you see there is a perfect example of Web 2.0 design and technology. It's simple, fast and easy for anyone to use, and you don't have to know any tech stuff to enjoy the new features we find all over the place.

The major difference that Web 2.0 has brought about is that the internet is now being used as a platform. Google Docs allows you to edit documents and spreadsheets, and save them, online. This is a little clumsy, but it heralds a whole new era. Imagine a few years down the line when everything we do is online, accessible from anywhere else in the world.

What does this mean for writers? Well, it means that we have to up our game. Web content is becoming more important, but also smaller. There is a greater search emphasis on links now than anything else and while that might swing back, we need to stay ahead. I suggest you go and Google "Web 2.0 design" and see what is cutting edge out there. The types of SEO articles that will be required soon will be vastly different from what we write now.

This is just a random thought, but I think we are going to see some remarkable changes in the way people use text to attract traffic. This will be because of the massive overflow of text documents that will now become available on the internet as a result of Web 2.0 applications and practices.

web 2.0

Write SEO Articles Without Sounding Like a Salesman

Writing SEO articles can become a little repetitive, and it is easy to lapse into a pattern of using the same phrases over and over again. Here are a few tips to keep your SEO articles interesting for both you you and your readers.

Write SEO Articles like you are speaking

I can't say this enough: write your SEO articles as if you are speaking to someone. Imagine that you are working for the company you are writing for, and speaking to a potential customer. Instead of using cliche sales phrases, be 'honest' about the product you are selling. Tell them in detail what it could do for them, and why it is good value.

Use Keywords Constructively

Before you start your SEO article, think of a few good ways to use your keywords. Make the sentence in each paragraph that contains your keyword interesting and informative. Your reader found this page because of your keyword, so make your SEO articles as relevant to your keywords as possible.

Be Specific

Don't waffle. The main thing that sets $3 SEO articles apart from $10 ones is their ability to inform the reader. Any 3rd language English speaker can sound like an infomercial for 500 words. You can do better, so write SEO articles as if you are an expert on the product you are selling. Describe it in detail, giving different price options and color schemes, etc. You can easily fill up 500 words on a single product if you give enough detail.

Remember: the higher the quality of your SEO articles, the more money you can charge your clients for them. Because we are in a bulk business increasing your per article rate by $1 or $2 can drastically increase your income.

Seo Articles

Writing Competition - Win Free Link

My previously mentioned Free Link Writing Competition is now on! Write me an article on just about anything you like, and submit it to me via email as a .doc attachment (no other attachment types will be opened).


Writing Competition Prizes:

First Prize: A banner link for one week on WriteNonsense, thereafter converting into a permanent link AND your article featured in the post after the close of the competition AND a neat little GIF saying you won the prize!
2nd Prize: A permanent link in my "Author's Resources" box and a 2nd prize GIF
3rd Prize: A reciprocal link and a 3rd prize GIF


Article Submission Guidelines:

There is no strict guideline as to content. Write about anything you like. Tell me a story, make a point, make me believe something. If you make me laugh, that'll go a long way. There are a few rules to keep the whole thing relevant and fair. Here they are:

Rules:

• Competition closes on Sunday 19th August, midnight GMT+2 (Paris Time)
  
• Articles to be between 400-600 words.
  
• No outbound links in articles
• No self-promotion or deliberate product advertising (you can mention products though)
  
• No websites will be linked to! Only blog owners need apply.
• To qualify your blog must have at least SOME relevance to writing, freelance writing, SEO, SEO articles, blogs and blogging etc.
• The 3rd prize winner will get a link as soon as I verify that a link to WriteNonsense is active
  
• All winners will have links to their submissions on their own pages published in the post announcing the end of the competition, in addition to other prizes.
• Articles, winning and non-winning, will not be used for any purposes other than this competition, and all rights will remain with the author.
  

Tell your friends about my competition - I want to see how many entries I can get!

Writing Competitions at Technorati

Write for Money at Helium

For those of you who haven't tried writing for Helium, I would definitely suggest you give it a bash. This site is different from a lot of freelance writing sites, in that you write articles that they want to publish, and they pay you for them!

All you have to do to get started is pick your categories and subcategories, and start writing. When you article is approved your account will be credited - simple as that. It's also a place where you can read articles on just about anything, so if you want to look something up, this is the place.

It's good to see a new generation of paid article sites coming up, and I really hope this one does well. It's about time people started making good money for writing about things they care about. Forget about those sites that pay you 50c per post, the best way to make money writing articles without going out and finding clients is on Helium.

Related Technorati Tags

15 Minute SEO Articles

We’re in a bulk business people, so the buzzword here is speed. I’m not advocating sacrificing the quality of your work to churn them out, but you need to be able to write at least 10 SEO articles in about half as many hours to make it worth your while. This is not difficult, and here’s the method I use for turning out high quality articles that my clients pay good money for.

1. Do your research

If you have the URL of the client’s site and the site is up, go to it and go straight to their “About Us” page. Scan this and find their ‘hook’ – the thing they say about themselves that makes them different. Scan through the products they have, services they offer, brands they deal in etc. If you don’t have the client’s site, find a similar site and learn about the industry. Learn as much as you can in 5 minutes.

2. Don’t type so fast

It’s great to be able to type 80wpm, but if you want to finish your SEO article in 10 minutes after researching it, you only need to manage 50wpm (If it’s a standard 500 word article). Typing at a slower constant speed gives your mind time to come up with the start of the next sentence as you are typing.

Remember, you make mistakes when you type faster, and correcting them takes time and interrupts your train of thought. When you get to the last sentence of a paragraph, start thinking how you will use the keywords you have been given in the next paragraph.

3. Speak when you type

At the risk of sounding insane to your family and neighbors, speaking when I type helps me to keep my SEO articles conversational. 500 Words is a lot of text in website terms, and you have to make it feel like less when it’s read. Pretending like you’re speaking to someone helps you to write quickly about the topic while at the same time keeping it from sounding like too much of a sales pitch.

There you have it – 15 Minute SEO articles! This is the way I write SEO articles, and I must say it definitely helps with time management. (Although I tend to go a little slower because I find the 15-minute burns a bit taxing) If you stick to a disciplined schedule you can crank them out without lowering the quality of your work – and this means you will have a larger number of high quality articles to sell.

SEO Articles

Online Paid Surveys - Can I make money here?

The whole "get paid to take surveys" thing has been around for a while, but it's one of those easy money things that has never really been discredited. To better facilitate you all as aspiring writers, and the wider community of people who make money online, I thought I'd have a look at one or two of these offers to see if there are any worth their salt.

What struck me as strange was that a lot of the online surveys require you to pay them money before they start sending you surveys. So I went looking for a free one. This was not an easy task, but I eventually came across GlobalTestMarket. I joined up, and they get you to answer a bunch of questions about yourself before they start sending you surveys to complete. For completing surveys you get "market points", which apparently convert to cash at 5 market points per US cent. I haven't received any surveys yet, but I'm not holding my breath to make millions out of this one.

I eventually gave up on that and took the plunge, signing up for the best non-free one I could find. I At first I thought it was a bit of a rip, but then I remembered that just that morning a friend had paid over twice this amount to sign up to an extras casting agency, who did not guarantee any work. The one I joined, Paid Surveys Online, promises you at least 3 surveys a day at $10 per survey. You can do more, but this is what they say you will definitely get.

So how "easy" is the money? Well, it's not free, but it's as close as it gets. Income potential isn't huge if you live in the United States, the UK or Canada, but it's a good way to make extra money for an hour's work every day. I did some numbers, and if you want to make money taking surveys then you need to move to sunny South Africa, or India or any country that has a weak currency vs. the US dollar.

If you spend a few hours taking surveys for the Paid Survey Program and you live in one of these countries, you can actually make a viable income by doing only surveys! I spend an hour a day taking surveys, no more, and I make more in that hour than I make in two hours of writing!

So my verdict is: if you want to answer the odd survey and get a little check after a few months, join up with Global Test Market. But if you want to really make money taking surveys and earn a viable income from it, then join Paid Surveys Online.

At $10 a survey you are guaranteed to make back the signup cost in the first day, even if you only do the minimum number of surveys. Here's a tip: if you try to leave the front page, it offers you a special $10 off coupon!

Related Discussions

Freelance Writing Site Review

I was recommended to a freelance writing site today that has totally blown my mind. Writer Lance is very much along the same lines as the much-more-famous GetAFreelancer but it is far broader in its scope of media.

Where GAF focuses on web content, ebooks, web developing and technical work, this is primarily a place for writers. The writing jobs on this site are mostly web content, but there is a lot of print media work available as well. What makes this site cool is that a lot of the writing work looks quite fun. There are a lot of humour pieces, jokes, poetry projects, writing competitions and such and such.

I know I focus mainly on SEO writing jobs, but this site has something for just about every kind of writer. I would say that if writing fast, easy web content for easy money is your thing, go to GetAFreelancer. If you want to write slightly more labour-intensive pieces that are a bit more gratifying, I would definitely suggest looking for writing jobs at WriterLance.

Freelance Writing Resources

Proofreading Work Available

I have a project that I have put up on GetAFreelancer that I would like to invite my readers to bid on.

It is a philosophy eBook, around 32,000, that needs editing for style. It is a project that should not take a long time, and I would like someone who knows something about philosophy and not just an editing wizard. The project can be viewed here and payment can be arranged through GetAFreelancer or Moneybookers for South African bidders (this will let you get your money faster).

The full details of the project are available on GetAFreelancer, and you can view these after you have created an account (which is free). Anyone who works on this project will get a mention in the book, which is not something you usually get when you do freelance writing work.

I encourage you all to have a look and see if it's up your alley!

Freelance Work