When I started writing I did so for free. I had my stories published in tiny little magazines, e-zines, and journals just for the joy of seeing it out there. I was a teenager and didn’t need the money. Now a days it’s a little different…
In essence I am still writing for free. I have no idea if any of my blog posts or internet articles will reach their intended audience. It’s always a complete gamble what will “sell.” I don’t write about topics that rev people up to buy things so it’s always somewhat of a bleak prospect.
Now a days magazines and e-zines are a bit passe but there are plenty of new platforms to write whatever you want and I have a few hacks that may help you be more successful at that. The first is write what you want to write- don’t pay any heed to all this “branding” nonsense that says you HAVE to write in only one category. It can be helpful but if you’re as ADD as I am let’s face it that’s setting up your beautiful mind for failure.
Copyright infringement takes on a whole different character when it comes to internet articles. It’s bad enough to be copied but it’s really bad to be plagiarized on the internet because search engines want “original content.” Your traffic will take a hit (and therefore your potential for profit) will decrease whenever someone does this. If you have an alert system telling you where it’s been copy and pasted you can ask for that person to take it down, you can even legally threaten them, but in my own experience this usually doesn’t do a damn thing. Most of these are copy and pasted onto forums and weird hobbled together sites. They know you’re not going to go through with suing them. So what are you to do? I periodically rewrite the same articles over. That way it stays up, it stays relevant, and it stays original. Better still the search engines like articles that are periodically updated so this is a double win for you even though it’s more work in the long run.
Secondly there is nothing wrong with writing different versions of the same article and submitting them to multiple platforms. Each platform will run things a little differently and you never know if you’ll hit your intended audience with just one. If you wrote something for HubPages try submitting a different version to Medium or post a third version to your monetized blog. It’s a bit like diversifying your stocks. But really it’s the art of “content creation” which rewards quantity as much as quality.