Overview

The reasons we are in this mess will differ according to who you talk to, but everyone would agree that the economy is worse than at any other time in memory. When economies are this bad, the only items which retain value in society are the necessities. This is fine news for guys whose career is picking oranges, laying bricks, or robbing people, but not so great for those of us who trained for white collar jobs which no longer exist.

So if you’re like many people out there, you desperately need money to pay for food, shelter, your soul-crushing loans, and guns for when our society finishes devolving into an anarchic wasteland. But how do you earn it? You’re not agile enough to pick oranges, you lack the upper body strength to lay bricks, and you’re nowhere near intimidating enough to rob anyone. There are no jobs for people like you. All you have is a surplus of time and intelligence, combined with a lack of anything to do with it.

But there’s a way out. Instead of looking at online porn and/or drinking, you can instead use that time and intelligence to make a minuscule amount of money. How? You log on onto the Internet, find the most Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Company that you can lay your eyes on, and write articles for them!

Why is this Hobby Awesome?

1. Are you an opinionated A-Hole who likes to go on forums and rant? You can do the exact same thing for a Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Company and get paid for it. In fact, it’s better than a forum, because if you make an ass of yourself on a forum where everyone knows you, you have to go back the next day and repair the damage. But not out here in Articleland, because you’ll never see these people again! Ignore their comments or delete them entirely while you rake in the loot! It’s Awesome!

2. You don’t need any talent or creativity whatsoever. I mean, it helps, but lots of people who can’t write their way out of a paper bag are able to write articles for a Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Company. You don’t even need to know how to spell. Just write whatever pops into your head, throw a picture or two in there, and you’re golden. Even the picture doesn’t have to be good, because people will clap their hands at an image no matter how retarded it is!

3. You can write about the most ludicrous subjects imaginable. Nothing is so stupid that it can’t be regurgitated into a Word file and thrown onto the Internet. Do you want to write an article about a topic which has already been written about 500 times, and will tell readers a bunch of things that they already know? Knock yourself out! Do you want to take an artistic, black and white photo of your ass and write a few paragraphs about it? Go to town! You can even write an article which calls your online publishing boss ‘Cheesy’, mock their content, and openly discuss how little they pay. They’ll still print it. Why? Because they get paid when people read it, too! It’s win-win!

4. The most Awesome thing of all… Residual Income. I’m working on this piece right now on October 12th, 2009, and I’ll post it online at some point over the next couple of days. After that, I will never have to work on it again for as long as I live, and I can collect payments on it forever. There will always be a digital footprint of this article – links to it in various nooks and crannies of the Internet, and unless my work has been stolen I will get paid whether you are reading this in 3 days or 7 years from today. Posting this article online will be like winning the lottery and getting an annuity payment of 1.79 cents per year, for the rest of my life! This hobby is Cash Money!

It certainly is Cash Money! But why wouldn’t I want to tell anyone that I do this?

1. Your money per article will be ridiculously low, and you will get laughed at. Victorian factory workers made more per hour than you will. My average article, from blank page to final edition, takes 3-4 hours to write and makes around $1.20 for its first, most productive week on the web. After that, you’ll make very minor residual income. If you have a whole bunch of articles, like ninety thousand, you can see how it will add up. But there’s no way you can describe this hobby to someone, mention the money, and prevent the topic of discussion from moving to what a F’ing idiot you are. You’ll be lucky if they don’t kick your ass.

2. If you have even an ounce of creativity, you will think of all kinds of truly Awesome stuff to write about. You’ll want to write about naked ladies on webcams. You’ll want to write about decapitated heads in baskets. You’ll want to write ‘how to’ guides on how to cook up meth. And those topics are great! Nearly everyone wants to read about that sort of stuff because it is interesting. You’ll make more for those articles than you’ll ever earn for more ‘traditional’ forms of writing. But how can you write about really cool topics like that when your work will be read by your girlfriend, your 10 year old niece, and your mom? Do they need to know how to cook up meth? Will they understand that your naked lady article needed a lot of research? Of course not… those fascists! Also, what if your family and friends aren’t offended by what you write, but just think you suck? Then it gets awkward. You become that person who always wants to read their low quality poetry to everyone, then everyone has to pretend they like it.

So by all means, spread the word online about your work because you do need people to read your stuff. That’s how you will make Cash Money. You just don’t want those readers to be people you know personally.

Wow! Writing articles for Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Companies sounds great, as long as I don’t tell anyone who I know personally! How do I do it?

No hobby requires less material than Writing Articles for Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Companies. If you’re reading this, you have everything you need.

Head online and go to one of these sites…

http://www.triond.com/

http://www.bukisa.com/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/

or a host of others which are similar, pick the one whose rules of payment sounds the least sketchy, and sign up!

Warnings

Just like any worthwhile hobby, there are some potential pitfalls when Writing Articles for Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Companies. Here are some words of caution and advice that you need to keep in mind:

1. You want a Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Company. The higher end places will want you to be college educated, write articles after two weeks of research, require you to write about certain topics, and get all highbrow about the style of writing that you use. They would never, ever publish an article like this one. All that would be fine if those places paid well, but the best sites might pay something like $15 per article with no royalties, or maybe a system where you are paid per read and get two or three times the rate of what you would get paid to write here (I am on Triond). With all the effort it would take to write one article for one of the more high-end sites, I can publish five articles here and enjoy doing so a lot more.

Don’t look down your nose at me! Wal-Mart, a department store which sells cheap crap, is much more successful than any store which sells high end merchandise. When it comes to making money, I want to be a literary Wal-Mart. You should, too.

2. OK, so you’ve found a cheesy site, and you’re all ready to write that redundant article about a topic which has been covered before by about 850 other mediocre bloggers. You’re all set, right? Wrong. Make sure the payment terms make sense to you. Because the site you will work for is cheesy, they will sound shady as soon the talk turns to how much you will get paid. For example, I have no idea exactly what I’ll make per view for this article, and Triond has a fairly straightforward system. You’ll go to some other sites and read about quartiles and voting, and see phrases like, “per se”, and “writing because you love it”, mentioned a lot, and at the end of it you will have no answer to the simple question of how much an article of x length and y popularity will likely pay you. Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Companies are making money off your articles, so make sure you get as much of that money as you can!

In short, make sure the company you’re dealing with is cheesy enough to accept your work without a hassle, but not over the top cheesy (i.e., completely larcenous).

3. Get a Paypal account. A lot of places have a minimum payout amount for whatever mode of payment you choose. That is, you have to earn said amount before you are paid anything at all. That amount might be 50 cents if you have a Paypal account, and you will start seeing money in your pocket almost as soon as you start writing. That minimum amount will turn into something like $30 if you want a check, and it will take the typical starting writer about 4 months to earn that much. Besides, you can also use the Paypal account for the thing that most online account holders do – paying for weird stuff that you don’t want anyone finding out about.

4. It is also inevitable that some people will think you suck. Screw them. Just keep writing and getting paid. Maybe you actually do suck… it’s OK. You’re still getting paid at least a little bit, and you’ll get better if you don’t give up.

So that’s it. You are now ready to go online and make money to the ceiling by Writing Articles for Cheesy Online Mass Publishing Companies. Now get out there, think of some random stupid topic that the masses might want to read about, and write a half-assed article about it!

Just don’t tell anyone who you know personally.