Replacing Lost Income With Online Writing Opportunities

If you have a career which ebbs and flows with the economy, you know the stress of layoffs and cutbacks.  Perhaps, however, you find yourself facing pay cuts, furlough days, and layoffs in a career which you once thought to be recession proof.  Either way, it's no fun, and figuring out how to make your finances work in such circumstances seems overwhelming. 

There are lots of ways people have supplemented their incomes through the years.  My Dad, an architect, experienced the tides of construction work over the years, and in the meantime, Mom filled in the gaps when she could.  Avon, Tupperware, arts and crafts, and even a worm farm, were found to be interesting opportunities for adding to the household budget.  Eventually, as the youngest entered school, it was substitute teaching, and eventually, a full-time position.

In more recent years, online income has become a realistic opportunity for the at home parent, or for the part-time, or under employed individual.  However, there is a wariness of such income, as there have been all kinds of work-at-home scams through the years, and it is tough to discern which opportunities are real, and which are not worth your attention.

It's nice if that supplementary source of income is something enjoyable, even therapeutic.  I once thought I'd supplement my family's income by doing a side delivery job for the local newspaper.  Ad inserts took me an entire day, and I didn't finish my route, had to finish the next day.  My feet hurt, my kids were cranky after a day of being babysat, and the pay barely covered the cost of the pizza I ordered to feed my fussy family that night.  Not my cup of tea, that's for sure.  In comparison, my first year of hubbing has been easy on my feet, and has not led to upset kids and an unfed family! 

If you're new to the idea of online income through writing, there will be a lot to learn.  I had my own blog at the time I stumbled across HubPages, and my initial articles posted were more in line with something you'd find at my blog.  Though not quite as personal in nature, nevertheless, those early attempts were not very productive.  The great thing, though, is that HubPages is a venue which allows you to update your articles, and which provides lots of support for those who want to learn. 

Don't expect to dive in and make a fortune, but approach your experience with a teachable attitude.

Writing online is full of learning as I go.  There have been lots of tidbits of information along the way, and lots of trial and error.  I can't say that I have it nailed down.  My first six months of hubbing didn't produce much income, to speak of, at all.  My Amazon payouts by the end of my sixth month had totaled about $40.  My Adsense funds were about the same, reaching enough for payout at the end of nearly eight months.  However, it was in the latter half of the year that there was significant and regular improvement in earnings, with a great big bump upward for the holidays, followed by a drop off in the post holiday time frame.  Still, there is a continued progress.

As I've studied forum posts at HubPages, and other articles, I've learned about other places to write. I've tried a couple of these, and found that some don't come as easily as others. If you are looking at beginning to fill in gaps in your income with an online freelance approach, try different things, by all means, but concentrate most on those areas that seem to work well for you. If you diversify a lot at the outset of your experience, it's possible you won't get any one area figured out well, nor will you see much success.

As an example, I read various hubs which mentioned a site called "Squidoo". I tinkered briefly, but really didn't like the format. Some people do wonderfully with that site. For me, though, it made more sense to concentrate on what I could do well. Later, at the end of my first year of hubbing, I learned about Helium, and managed to earn around $100 my first month. There are huge differences in the purposes and formats of different write-to-earn sites, and how these work for one person will be different than for another.  There are also big differences in the time frame it will take to earn, and in the future earning potential for your work. 

If you need to replace lost income now, there aren't going to be immediate results from any of these venues, especially if you are starting out. However, if you invest a little bit of your spare time, you can examine for yourself what works, and you can concentrate on these areas. With our household having navigated several paycuts the last few years, my HubPages writing is verging on being sufficient to compensate for the most recent downturn, one which was not particularly anticipated a year ago. With the trends shown in many of the success stories featured from HubPages homepage, the potential over several years is that this will allow for regaining even more of the lost ground in wage changes.

My own perspective is that it is worthwhile to build knowledge gradually, not trying to know it all instantly, but rather, to concentrate on a few small elements of writing, whether at HubPages, or at any other online publishing site. Glean insight from those who are experienced, and who are willing to give helpful input. Be a learner!