The Current State of Freelance Content Writing

These days, a lot of people are becoming more interested in being a freelance content writer. It's an excellent way to earn money on the internet, especially if you have some skill as a writer. Of course, it's not exactly easy to write articles or web content; you have to know a bit about grammar and spelling, not to mention SEO if you want to earn money doing it.

Nevertheless, the potential is out there to make thousands of dollars a month with nothing but freelance content writing. If you want to get to that level, you have to be able to write well, fast, and research quickly in order to get your articles written.

The way it stands, freelance content writing is one of the best ways to increase your online earnings, even if you only do it part time. You can do it in several ways: either write for pay per view (PPV) sites like Triond, Hubpages, or Helium, or work for clients directly and be paid for your writing up front.

In my experience, it is more difficult to work directly for clients, but the trade off is that you get paid more, and best of all you get paid up front. With PPV sites there's a cumulative effect in place and as a result you might not see any revenue from an article for a few months until it has earned enough views to warrant a payout.

A lot of people are earning money like this these days, myself included, but the key is to hone your skills, just as you would with any other craft. If you want to become a successful freelance writer, you have to work at it, improve your grammar and spelling, and learn how to do the required research quickly and efficiently.

Darkfire- Exerpt from Dark Trails, A Collection of Horror Short Stories

 The passage below is an excerpt from the story Darkfire, from Dark Trails: A Collection of Horror Short Stories from the Visionary Mind of Dexter Holland.

A shadow passes over me.

A Thing leaps over the desk, landing in mid stride right in front of me. He doesn’t even bother to look back. Neither does the next one, or the next.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and none of them will see me

The next one trips on the desk and lands on me.

It lashes out spastically, flailing all four limbs like a neurotic caged monkey as it struggles to get back onto its feet. It is shrieking, more in anger or frustration than pain. It finally gets up onto two feet and only now seems to notice me. It stops moving and for a moment time stops.

It stares at me with a pair of loathsome inky eyes.

I stare back.

It looks like a human, yet completely alien at the same time. Something about it seems inherently…malignant. Like a tumor this is something that should never exist.

A demon’s attempt at humanity

Every muscle sticks out, every sinew completely visible, as if its skin is paper thin. The skin itself looks rotted. It is a dark blackish blue, like a bad bruise, but all over its body. A waving black tentacle sticks out from the back of each forearm.
As it looks at me the tentacles pick up and wave in my direction, sniffing me, searching.
I feel nauseous.

All the repulsive nature of the body barely compares to the distorted expression of its face.
On one side the cheek bone sticks out through the skin, bleached white as if it had been uncovered for awhile. It is a stark contrast to the black of the skin There is no nose.
The eyes

The eyes are completely black. No pupils, no whiteness, just black balls in the sockets. Yet I can tell they are looking at me, searching me.

This thing is not an animal. I can tell it is contemplating me behind those voids of eyes. The veins in the face glow like blue fire through the skin.

 Buy the e-book on Kindle to read more, along with more short stories of dark fiction.  

Tower of Obsession- Exerpt from Dark Trails, A Collection of Horror Short Stories

 The passage below is an excerpt from the story Tower of Obsession, from Dark Trails: A Collection of Horror Short Stories from the Visionary Mind of Dexter Holland.

The suffocatingly loud crashing ceased, along with the wailing of the beasts. A quiet sense of mortality hung in the still air like the stench of feces hangs around public restrooms in France. Still I waited, in this little safe corner of the World. Eventually two of the Newcomers left, striding across the floor in the typical beast way and disappearing through the door at the edge of the Worlds. Strange noises and scents had come through that door before, scents that struck fear into my little beating heart. I scratched at my leg, working up the courage to go investigate the strange happenings that had occurred in the Room of Pleasure.

I stalked down the relatively narrow canyon that lead to the wide area. Fear gripped my heart again and I fought the urge to flee. Madness, sheer madness awaited me in that once beloved place of sanctuary. Smoke hung heavy in the air, visible in some places as it reflected the ambient light from the three Suns. The Tower of Lights and Sounds squawked and chattered, in it’s place, backed up against one of the Great Walls. There was a new scent in the air. I sniffed again to make sure. The smell of destruction, the pungent reek of unnecessary death, of teen suicide and veterinarians.

The Tower of Obsession, once standing tall, was no more. It lay splintered and dead on the floor. Dozens of broken pieces lay scattered over the floor, spreading for miles. The three remaining beasts reclined on the white mountains, their eyes red and droopy, something I had come to associate with the sharp scent of smoke that hovered in layers around the scene.

Fear gradually gave way to sadness in my heart, the sadness of beauty lost, and of things that would never be. I gingerly stepped forward and took a step onto the wreckage. Time to search for survivors. Carefully I crawled around every inch of the wreckage, using my nose for some clue as to what had happened. Testosterone laden sweat was smeared all over the brown pieces, butter on toast. I gave it a lick, then hastily licked a part of my body to get the taste out. There were no words to explain what had happened. Vainly I tried to ask, to extract from these monstrous beasts any bit of information that could explain what had happened to the proud Tower.

Buy the e-book on Kindle to read more, along with more short stories of dark fiction.  

Chamber- Exerpt from Dark Trails, A Collection of Horror Short Stories

The passage below is an excerpt from the story Chamber, from Dark Trails: A Collection of Horror Short Stories from the Visionary Mind of Dexter Holland.

“Have fun in hell.”

He let out a small grunt as he brought the axe down, just as he had each time before. I rolled deftly to my left, a breath before the razor sharp blade bit into the ground where I had been kneeling. My hand went unfalteringly for the leather-bound sword handle in the sand and I came up swinging. There was just enough space between us that the tip of my blade barely made a slice into his face. I let the momentum of the swing spin me around and this time I brought the scimitar down on the side of his neck. The steel sliced into his leathery skin with a spray of red. It was only when I heard the crack of his spinal chord giving way that I realized the crowd had fallen silent. The sword’s momentum stopped three quarters of the way through. Thick skin. His unsupported head flopped to the side, his eyes wide and lifeless. Tendons and arteries protruded from the stump, flapping wildly from the force of the blood gushing out of them. The towering man crumpled at my feet like a sack of wet bricks. I took a step back to avoid the growing red lake around his body, then raised both my hands victoriously.

As a single entity the crowd went wild. I stood gasping for breath in the center of the coliseum, hands in the air, and spun slowly. The people in the stands were cheering and jumping up and down. It looked as if they were bubbling, like a fiercely boiling pot of water. They loved me. I had quenched their thirst, and they loved me for it.

Suddenly the mob fell silent again. I heard the creak of the mammoth wooden holding doors and turned around. This time they sent two men to finish me. Would they never give me a break? I was still gasping for air as the reality of my near-demise sat fresh in my mind, but breath could wait. Out of the gate they came running. One man continued sprinting at me, sword in hand, and the other dropped to one knee. I took a battle stance, unsure of what to expect.

A whistling sound filled my ears, and before I had time to react an arrow had appeared in my stomach. I staggered back a step and coughed once. Blood ran out of my mouth and down my chin. Another arrow joined its brother. My sword slipped out of my hand and I dropped to my knees. The man running at me was getting closer, sinewy legs pumping faster than seemed possible. Behind him, the bowman stood and began running too, his bare feet kicking up fountains of sand in his wake. 

Buy the e-book on Kindle to read more, along with more short stories of dark fiction. 

Highway 109- Exerpt from Dark Trails, A Collection of Horror Short Stories

The passage below is an excerpt from the story Highway 109, from Dark Trails: A Collection of Horror Short Stories from the Visionary Mind of Dexter Holland.

Ted glanced at the illuminated dashboard clock. The bright numbers cast a greenish glow on the surrounding wood-grain inlay. 1:16. After some quick math, Ted guessed he would be arriving home shortly after two o’clock. He was hoping to get a chance to talk to his son before he went to bed. The only time he ever saw the boy these days was for a few seconds every morning when they both jumped in their separate cars to go their separate directions. That’s the reason he was in a hurry. What was today, Friday? Oh yea, his son would definitely still be up, pumping his brain full of whatever crap they showed on late night television, probably hopped up on some sort of drug as well.

This was a new discovery. Ted had found some small white pills in the pocket of a pair of his jeans two days ago, and last week the remnants of some white powder and a rolled up twenty dollar bill had been left out on the coffee table in the basement. Ted was at his wits end. As a father, he knew he had to intervene somehow, but at the same time, he knew exactly how it would play out. The boy was eighteen now, and the second he felt the urge he could simply move out and Ted would never see him again. That reason alone was why Ted hadn’t yet confronted him about the drugs. He couldn’t bear for the only person he loved to leave.

His little boy hadn’t always been like this. Over the past two years though, his attitude had steadily gotten worse and worse. Ted blamed the new kids he’d been hanging out with. Most were just your average punks; the kind of kids you labeled “bad influence” just by looking at them. They all wore black, dyed their hair black and blackened their lungs with cigarettes that they held between black-painted fingernails. The tall one was different though. The tall one actually creeped him out. That seemed such a childish thing for a forty year old man, being creeped out, but Ted couldn’t put it any other way. Ted had only met him once but there was something about the way he fixed you with that piercing glare that made you want to lock all your doors at night. And that tattoo, why the hell would anyone get such a tattoo on their throat?


Ted shivered just thinking about it. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. Maybe his son would answer this time. He pushed the resend button and held it up to his ear. Good, it was ringing. Half the time he didn’t even get service out on this lonesome road.

“Yo, you’ve reached…” Ted snapped the phone shut. Voicemail.

“Dammit,” he breathed as he dropped the phone in the cup holder at his side. A flash caught his eye and he glanced up in his rear view mirror. There was a car about fifty feet behind him, its headlights shining like twin suns through the dead night. He hadn’t seen it coming up, but on these mountain roads that wasn’t unusual. Ted returned his attention to the road in front of him, his thoughts again drifting back to the best way to confront his son. Maybe he could try counseling again. It hadn’t worked before but it couldn’t hurt to give it another shot. Dammit, Janet had always known how to talk to him. Janet could’ve…

Ted snapped back to reality as the car behind him crashed into his rear bumper. He fishtailed wildly, fighting for control at eighty miles an hour. After a few hair-raising seconds he got the Hyundai straightened out again. Furious, he hit the brakes and looked back again at the car. Its high beams were on, leaving twin translucent spots in his vision, black edged with neon blue. Suddenly the car swerved out into the other lane. Inch by inch it pulled up beside his. Ted craned his neck to get a glimpse of the nut that rear ended him. He sucked his breath in sharply. On the other side of the window a hooded skull was staring back at him. A gloved hand slowly raised a large serrated hunting knife and pressed it against the window. 

Buy the e-book on Kindle to read more, along with more short stories of dark fiction.

Freelance Writing Advice- How Much Time Should You Spend Writing

Right now my schedule is absolutely filled with writing. If I'm not doing freelance content writing work, I'm working on one of a dozen other projects, so the question stands- how much time should you actually spend writing during the day?

The answer really depends on the type of writing you are doing. For example, I started out using some bid sites like Guru and Freelancer to find most of my first clients, and as a result I was physically writing for at least five or six hours every day. I was getting paid extremely low rates ($3 for 500 words) and I had to write fast, and write a lot, if I wanted to come out with enough money at the end of the month to pay rent and buy food. Most of these clients ran content mills, so I was churning out articles for link building and such that didn't require much research.

Eventually I began to get referrals from my writing, and I was able to dictate a higher price for the time that I spent on writing. I was getting paid more per word, so I had to write fewer words in order to make ends meet. I still wrote for at least 4 hours throughout the day, but only because I'm a workaholic and wanted to get as much done as fast as possible. I mean, why not? The more money the better!

Somewhere in the middle of all this I started to write for other sources as well, some of which didn't pay much, if anything, right off the bat. I set up a freelance writing blog to track everything I was doing, and I started writing articles for sites that offered an Adshare program, like Triond. Because of this, I was spending at least 8 hours a day in front of the computer, and most of that was either writing or promoting my articles.

Right now I'm about steady at 8 hours per day. I set a schedule for the time that I need to work on projects for clients, and after that I delegate the remaining hours to work that needs to be done in other aspects. For example, if my Hubscore is falling, I'll make it a point to publish another hub. If my Adsense revenue is going down from one location, I'll write a few more articles for that site or blog and then promote what I write there.

In the end, the time you put into writing depends on what you want to get out of it. Making money online is not going to be easy for anybody. If you put the time into it, you'll start to see results. I say if you have a blog, write at least one post per day. If you use sites like Triond or Hubpages, write at least one article a day.

Andrew Handley- Freelance Writer Debonair

Hi there! My name is Andrew Handley and I've been a freelancer for several years. I'm the owner and founder of HandleyNation.com, a website dedicated to my freelance writing services along with my partner. I wanted a personal outlet to talk about some of my writing pursuits that aren't directly related to the writing business, and so I decided to set up a small blog here that would let me go off on whatever tangent I want. It's hard to express yourself when you are constantly worrying about looking professional sometimes, and my hope is that this blog will push me past those boundaries to let me get out everything that's inside.
The main theme on this blog will be how to make money as a freelance writer- yes, that means YOU! In addition to the content writing business I have several other sources of income that I work on every day, including blogs, some affiliate marketing, and websites like Triond, Helium, and Hubpages. I wrote a book on how to build an email list that is available on Amazon, and I'm in the middle of my first novel. When do I have time to work on my writing business in the middle of all this? Well, let's just say I should be sleeping right now :)

Hope to see you back here in the future!