If you are a freelance writer, you may be wondering how to take your career to the next level. And by that I mean, how to make more money. Sure, you may have aspirations of writing a novel, or a screenplay, or poems and short stories - I’m no different than you. However, I need something that is fun to put together and will help me make a good income while I work on my other creative writing projects. That is why I’ve adopted several internet marketing strategies that will help me earn the income I need.

As you read through my posts, you’ll notice that I have my hands dipped in several different pots. I write for clients. I write for publication. I make money on my blogs and Squidoo lenses. I am also going to be working on eBooks and a membership site. My blogs, lenses, eBooks, and membership website all fall into the category of internet marketing.

The thing is, internet marketing is a natural compliment to writing. If you’ve written things like reports, newsletters, website content, and SEO articls for your clients, you know what I mean. I bet at least some of your clients are internet marketers. I had been doing this work for several years and then finally started focusing on doing this kind of work for myself.

Here are some ideas of some internet marketing tasks you can do to help boost your income.

• Bum Marketing - Check out bummarketingmethod.com and take the free course.
• Make Squidoo lenses and promote affiliate program.
• Write and self publish your own eBook.
• Promote other people’s products on your websites or blogs (affiliate marketing)
• Visit the Warrior Forum for even more ideas.

At first, you may not make all that much money but hang in there. Over the long term, you may be able to replace your writing income with a salary that is considered residual. For example, once the website is set up and is making you money, it will continue to make you money over the long run.

It’s no secret that my income comes from a variety of sources.

• Blogging
• Writing
• Affiliate Marketing

As a writer, I’ve written several eBooks for my clients but I haven’t written any for my own business! When I write for clients, it’s nice to get that up front payment but I can’t help but wonder how much money I’ve actually missed out on by not writing an eBook for myself.

So, a fellow writer and I have decided to set a challenge to write our first eBook. I have it marked on my calendar to be finished with this eBook by February 28.

To be part of the challenge, all you need  to do is commit to writing an eBook. You can try to finish it by Febryary 28 like me or set your own date. It’s up to you. If you want to join the challenge, just reply in the comments.

A few days ago I wrote about The Niche Blogger which does a great job by Amy Bass of outlining a profitable blogging system. But maybe you’re wondering, what is Niche Blogging anyway?

Niche blogging is a little bit different than simply choosing a broad topic in a subject that you like such as “food” or “travel”. It’s something that is a little more specific. “Food” and “Travel” or two very broad subjects.

Niche topics fall under the categories of the broader topics. For example, “Travel to Germany” would be a niche in the travel category and “Southern Food” would be a niche in the food category.

I wrote a post at my Path to Success Blog explaining the concept in greater detail.

I’ve been following Amy Bass’s progress on paying of her debt at her blog, mydebtfreegoal.com. In fact, I’ve been reading the blog since it started and I know how successful she’s been. I watched her evolve from using  GPT programs to having her very own blogging empire. So when she came out with The Niche Blogger I didn’t hesitate to sign up.

As a writer, I am mostly ruled by deadlines, especially if I do work for clients or am on assignment for a magazine. I can’t rely on this kind of income - it’s far too stressful. Niche Blogging is the perfect answer to this problem. With it, I have complete control over my salary and my career with no strings attached. No deadlines. No one telling me what to write. I have complete creative control.

I wrote a review of Niche Blogger on my Path to Success blog. Check it out.

As a business owner, I’ve learned long ago that if you don’t have multiple income streams, you won’t earn a very stable living. I also understand that it can be tough to figure out which direction you want to take things.

As writers, we are faced with many possibilities. We can write for magazines, ghost write, copywrite, blog, and everything in between. Some write solely online, others do a wide range of writing. Some specialize on things like business plans, or pick a particular niche like health to write in.

It can be overwhelming.

So, I thought I’d share with you how I make money writing. The article was published on my blog today.

I signed up for The Niche Blogger pretty much when I learned about it. I’ve been following Amy Bass’s blog since she first started it. This month, she announced that she is debt free - she paid off $72,900 debt in just over a year mainly through internet marketing. Right now, it appears that  her main source of income is through her niche blogs. So I decided to give it a try.

Why I Signed Up for Niche Blogger

I already make a living online through writing for clients, publication, and through my other projects such as being the Herbal Medicine Expert at eHow.com. But I knew I needed some residual income. I’ve learned that I can’t rely on writing to make me consistent money. For example, I just moved from one coast in the US to the other - and for that time my income pretty much dried up.

What kind of insurance do I have to prevent my income from drying up? During the move - nothing. Now? I have the residual income that I’ve set up through the Niche Blogging System.

What I Love About Niche Blogger

I love how Amy really outlined exactly what to do through a series of easy to follow instructions and videos. As soon as I set up my first blog, I started making money. I realized after a time that my blog shows up on the first page of google for my targeted keywords. It’s currently somewhere in the middle of the page. It sometimes ends up in the top spot.

Each site utilizes several ways to make money. My blogs have ads from Ebay, Adsense, Contera, Chitika, eBooks, and other affiliate programs. And this is all done in a way that makes the blog enjoyable to read. Too often I see niche sites that are obviously in it for the money and that’s it.

How Do I Feel About the Purchase?

I am not a beginner so I found the first week or so of lessons to be tedious and repetitious because I already know the basics on how to start a blog. However, I was warned via the sales letter that it is designed for COMPLETE beginners. I bought it anyway.

Let me tell you - I’m glad that I did. I just noticed today that the course also has intermediate techniques, maybe even advanced techniques as time goes on. I purchased the lifetime membership so I can be patient.

I recommend it for everyone - not just beginners. The Niche Blogger is a complete system that will help you build your affiliate income in no time. I feel confident that with this program, I will reach my financial goals within a few months.

I’ve been focusing a lot lately on revenue sharing writing sites like eHow and Bukisa. These are sites where your success is essentially determined by how many reads your articles gets. eHow I believe bases their revenue on advertising but they are a bit hush hush on exactly how it’s calculated. Bukisa gives you a certain amount of money per 1000 page views.

Either way, the more traffic you get, the more money you make.

The first step to getting traffic is to  make sure you research and use keywords. The second is to take extra steps to promote your articles. Each article I write is centered around a keyword. As for promotion - I use a variety of methods but one of my favorites is through microblogging .

Microblogging sites such as twitter and plurk are essential. When you publish a new article, just write a quick update to those sites to give people the opportunity to click. This is one of the simplest social networking tools out there.

I wrote an article at my blog that gives more details on what microblogging is and how to utilize it for business.

Are you wondering how to make more money at Bukisa? I’ve only been there for a few days. I have seven articles published and my earnings have not exploded by any means. A few of the articles were originals, others were reprints. I had them on Associated Content and published them as non-exclusive.

Though I am new at Bukisa, I am no stranger to making the revenue sharing model a success. So, I thought I’d give you a few strategies that will help you increase your earnings.

• Participate in the site. Add people to your friends list. Comment on articles. This will help you get more traffic to your articles.

• Promote your articles on your blog. Whenever you have a new article published, make an announcement on your blog (if the subject of the article pertains).

• Start a Squidoo lens (or two). Once I have more articles, I am going to start a series of Squidoo lenses where I will link to my Bukisa articles.

• Article marketing. Article marketing can work very well in terms of promoting your profile. Sites like goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com can be very powerful. However, make sure you follow the rules of the site or it can get frustrating.

• Use the RSS feeds whenever you can. You can put your rss feeds on squidoo, hubpages, and on your blogs. It can help get you even more traffic to the articles!

• Announce on twitter. Do you have a twitter account? If so, tell your friends when you’ve published a new article.

• Put your profile on facebook. Share your Bukisa profile on your wall so all your facebook friends can see.

• Research the keywords. Keyword research is important because it will help you get valuable search engine traffic. I use Wordtracker’s free tool .

This is more than enough to get you started promoting your profile! And, these strategies aren’t time consuming. I research keywords for each article. Other than that, I try to work on at least one of these strategies a day.

So, December is almost over. As I get set to close my books, I realize that I am a little short of my goal this month. Okay, a lot short. So, I thought I’d brainstorm some strategies to get as much money earned by the end of December as possible.

• Affiliate marketing - I could step up my efforts to promote affiliate products on my blogs and squidoo lenses. I may even do some Bum Marketing.
• Revenue Sharing - I’ll go through my articles and see if I still have the reprint rights to some of them. If I do, I’ll post them om Bukisa .
• Squidoo Lenses - I’ll make a major effort to create a few more squidoo lenses . I like to find fun topics to share with people. I then try to find an affiliate program or two that has to do with the topic. You also earn revenue through their sharing model.
• Hubpages - Hubpages is similar to Squidoo but they are less forgiving when promoting affiliate programs. Just write an interesting article and use the capsules that they have. You can put kontera ads, google, amazon, and ebay.

Making a few hundred dollars from these tactics will require a major effort by me. But I’m willing! This, of course, would be in addition to any other work I have lined up.

Do you want to learn how to make money writing with Bukisa ? They are a good place to earn residual income from posting articles and it attracts beginners and experienced writers alike. They have a revenue sharing model so at first, it may not look like your earnings are very much. But the more articles you have and the more traffic your articles get, the more you’ll make.

What is Revenue Sharing?

As mentioned in my last post, revenue sharing is when your earnings are directly related to the amount of money it makes for the website. It is mutually beneficial because those sites may get more traffic than your own blogs or websites so even though they are pocketing part of it, your earnings may be a lot higher.

Getting Started at Bukisa

Your very first step is to signup for your free account at Bukisa.com and build up your profile. At the very least, you should upload a picture and write a short bio, even if it is only a few sentences long. However, if you spend more time on your profile that could translate to more traffic for your articles.

Make Money with Your Articles

This is the cornerstone of your success on the site. They say that the articles need to be at least 250 words long. However, 350 words or more is ideal because the search engines tend to favor articles of this length or longer.

You should integrate keyword research into your strategy. Each time you write an article, find some great keywords using tools like Wordtracker . Place the keyword in the title, the first sentence, and the last sentence and write your article as naturally as possible.

Make Money With Referrals

Yes, Bukisa does have a referral incentive program. You end up earning residual income from your referrals and also from the people they’ve referred. The percentage isn’t that big, but if you have a good number of referrals it can add up.

My Experience with Bukisa

So far, I only have two articles posted there. One article has been up for two days. The other article has only been up for one day. My earnings so far have been $.07. This isn’t much, but can you imagine if I had 100 articles in the system? Earnings increase over time as the traffic picks up, so I can see Bukisa being very lucrative as long as I stick with it.

Participate in the Site

It is important to remember that Bukisa is a social site.  Make it a part of your writing habit to go on the site for at least ten minutes a day and participate. Read other people’s articles and comments, for example. This is a simple way to participate and get the word out about your own articles.

Bukisa is one of the many revenue sharing sites out there. As far as I can see, it is one that has the most potential for earnings next to eHow.