Let's Talk Freelance Writing Math....

In a previous post, I reviewed a site called Bubblews. This is a revenue-sharing site that pays its members a share of the revenue they generate from placing ads on the site.

Members are expected to post short little 'bubbles' that are longer than 400 characters (or around 100 words). They're also expected to read other people's bubbles, 'Like' them and leave comments on them.

A part of my review also pointed out that there are a LOT of people out there writing every day for this site and not getting paid for their efforts.

So.... let's play with some freelance writing basic math:

Case Study 1

Let's say you spend 5 hours a day for a whole month writing bubbles, reading other bubbles, liking other people's stuff and generally trying to get other people to read yours. You finally make it to the $50 payment threshold limit and click the big green 'Redeem' button. Nothing happens. You don't get paid. How odd. You've always been paid before - and so has every other bubbler you know. Why did they miss your payment this time? And so you start wondering what you've done wrong.

Now, it's estimated that there are about 100,000 users on Bubblews. If everyone accidentally gets passed over for just ONE payout each.... that's $5,000,000 that the owners aren't paying out. But you can bet the site owners are still making that same $5 million dollars in their account from the work and effort of all those other people.

Curious!!

Let's look at some different math figures...

Case Study 2

Let's say you spend lots of hours writing and connecting and liking and commenting on Bubblews. After two whole weeks of working for 5 or 6 hours a day, you finally reach the $50 minimum payout threshold.

Seriously? 50 hours work for $50 payout? That's a $1 per hour wage.

There are people on the site who take 2 or 3 weeks to reach payout. That's $0.30 cents per hour they're struggling and slaving so hard for. Seriously??

Let's compare that to picking up a writing gig at a site like Fiverr.com You accept a job paying $5 to leave comments on someone else's blog. You finish the job and you get paid. Awesome. You still have time left in the same day to pick up another gig and earn another $5. If you're quick, you might be able to do a few of these in the same day. And you ALWAYS get paid.

It's not great pay, but it's certainly higher than slave-labor rates.

Case Study 3

There's always some bright spark out there willing to put on a smug face and say "Oh, but you're totally forgetting about the residual income you can earn on Bubblews".

No.

I'm not forgetting a thing. I'm working on facts, figures and actual math. When you're doing the same, we'll talk about who's forgetting what.

Let's do some more math.

You write 10 bubbles a day at a minimum of 100 words each. That's 1,000 words you've written for the day. Then you spend hours and hours connecting to other people, liking their posts, commenting on them, all in the hopes that they MIGHT come and look at yours in return so you get paid another $0.01 cent for your 6 hours of time and effort.

I wrote 1,000 words in my Bubblews review right here on this blog (here: http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/2013/10/can-you-really-earn-money-writing-for.html) It took me around 20 minutes to write the review, but I admit it took me about 2 hours to research the site, join up, create some bubbles of my own so I knew what I was reviewing, look around, email a few other writers about their experiences and put together my notes.

I earned more in residual income from writing and posting on my own blog yesterday than I did from my time on Bubblews. AND I didn't have to go and visit multiple other blogs, leave comments, try and make lots of connections or any other pathetic time-wasting activity.

Guess what? The math says it's FAR more profitable to start a free blog on Blogger and post a few ads in the sidebar, then spend 20 minutes a WEEK publishing a post when you have time.

End of case study 3.

Case Study 4

While we're talking about residual income, let's look at the difference between hoping for a few cents per page-view from Bubblews and calling it "residual income" and how a professional, full-time freelance writer earns income every day.

Yes, I write full time for various clients who pay me for the words I write. Nice.

But I also generate a considerable amount of passive income every month without doing a thing after the initial work is completed.

Yes, I have Google Adsense ads in the side bar here on this blog. I have Donanza ads running. I have Clickbank affiliate ads running. I also have Constant Content widgets running. On other blogs, I have Amazon Affiliate ads and Commission Junction ads running as well.

And I have multiple blogs running across various niches and topics. Add the residual earnings from all those up every DAY and they add up to far more than most people working full time on Bubblews make in a MONTH.

Sure, I tried Hubpages with some success (review is here). I tried Squidoo with some success. Meh. Not impressive.

You know what really does work for residual income for a writer? Royalties. Write a book. Publish it. Get paid every time you sell a book for the next few years to come. It's not hard. Think of it as compiling 15 articles together in logical order called Chapters (or think of it as putting together 200 bubbles and a few hundred comments into some kind of order for a similar result).


So What Else Should You Write to Earn Money?

Aside from Bubblews offering writers their insane slave-labor pay rates, there are SO MANY better paying writing gigs out there that you really want to start questioning what you're doing on a slave-labor site in the first place.

Let's look at simple, easy, quick "paid to post in forums" type of jobs. There are plenty out there. The work is easy and you get paid regularly. Here are some for you:

http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/2013/10/paid-forum-posting-and-paid-blog.html
http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/2008/12/paid-forum-posting-jobs.html

What about writing articles for other people? There are lots of content mills out there paying anywhere from $2 per article up to $25 per article. That's not great, but it still pays a LOT higher than a slave-labor site like Bubblews. Think about iWriter.com or textbroker.com (international writers to textbroker.co.uk) or need-an-article.com or places like that. The pay is not great, but you'll do far better with these than you ever will with Bubblews.

How about writing articles and submitting them to a marketplace for sale? I generate a lot of sales from writing whatever I feel like and submitting them to Constant Content. Set your own prices and write what you want. Easy.

Want to take your writing to a pro level? Submit queries to editors at your favorite magazines. The pay rates are 50 to 100 times better than you'll find with online markets. And it's much easier than most people realize.

So there's our freelance writing math lesson for the day.

Any questions?