Do you need to make online cash? A lot of people feel the need to make money online and if you are someone who wants to earn extra money from home in your spare time or on a full-time basis to help pay the bills, freelance writing should be at the top of your list of things to learn how to do.

There are a lot of ways to make money from home, and I’m not referring to stuffing envelopes, doing paid online surveys or trying to make money mystery shopping. Nor am I going to recommend any kind of “earn money at home” job that is nothing but a scam. If you want or need to earn money from home, you need to understand that there are scammers on the internet just waiting to take your money with bogus offers of how to earn money fast and easy. Beware of at-home jobs that are nothing but a ripoff!

Learning how to become a freelance writer is not rocket science. You don’t need a college degree, a high school diploma or even the best typing skills. If you can read and write in English, you can earn money from home fulfilling any number of freelance writing jobs online or offline to earn extra money at home on your computer. I make money typing at home on my computer keyboard as a writer, and if I can earn money at home writing, so can you.

How to Become a Freelance Writer For Beginners

There are a lot of stay-at-home moms making money hand over fist as freelance writers online and offline who started off as beginners, writing in their spare time while taking care of their children at home. Men and women of all ages are finding that freelance writing is an excellent job opportunity to make money from home, and parents who are working part-time or full-time outside the home but want to stay home with their kids can easily learn how to make money at home as work-at-home moms or dads.

How much money you can earn as a freelance writer depends on you and how much time and effort you are willing to put into starting and building your freelance writing business, to the point where writing and earning money from home becomes second nature to you. You don’t need special equipment or a fancy home office either. If you have a chair to sit on, a table or desk for your computer and some kind of Internet connection, you can become an online freelance writer starting today with no previous experience or special qualifications.

You may be wondering, how do I become a freelance writer if I don’t know how or where to begin? All you need to start freelance writing is a helpful guide that provides the step-by-step instructions to becoming a successful freelance writer, written by knowledgeable and experienced writers who work from home as freelance writers and know what they are talking about. Who better to get advice about freelancing from than people who are actually earning money themselves as freelance writers?

In the 65-page freelance writing guide ebook called “Freelance Superstar”, beginner and intermediate freelance writers are provided easy-to-understand tips and instructions on how to become a freelance writing superstar, such as:

• How to start a freelancing career

• How much money freelance writers can make

• Review list of 24 online writing gig job sites

• Ways to get high-paying clients

• Difference between regular writing and SEO writing

• Difference between content writing and copywriting

• How to improve your writing skills

• How to get repeat business and clients

• How to get paid as a freelancer

And that’s just for starters! Bonus items available for a limited time are:

1. Email templates you can use to solicit clients
2. Process map for your freelance career
3. Gorgeous “Portfolio” WordPress themes
4. Step-by-step blogging video tutorials

Authors Gobala Krishnan and Monika Mundell have both been earning a cool full-time income from freelance writing for years, and through their freelance writing guide you too can discover exactly how to become a well-paid, successful freelance writing superstar in your own right. Do you want to be a freelance writer? What are you waiting for?

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Do you want to become a freelance writer and get paid to write online or offline as a well paid writer? Do you know what freelance writing is and how much money you can make as a freelancer? Do you want to quit your job and work from home writing freelance articles, perhaps as a newspaper or magazine writer, and get paid to write?

Maybe you are a stay-at-home mom or you lost your job in the recession and want to know how to become a freelance writer and work for yourself without the stress and worry of where the next paycheck will come from. Well then, you should seriously consider the fact that freelance writing is an excellent job opportunity you or anyone else can do in the comfort of your own home!

What is freelance writing? Wikipedia defines a freelancer or freelance writer as a self-employed person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any particular employer. There are many different types of freelance writing gigs and jobs available where companies and individuals seek to hire freelance writers who know how to produce great content on the web or print copy, such as newspapers and magazines.

Freelance Writing Business

How much do freelance writers make? Some freelance writers make six figures a year, more than $100,000 per year, and while the idea of making a six figure income as a freelancer sounds really good, not everyone will get paid that kind of money. As a freelance writer, I’m sometimes asked “how much do you make as a freelance writer?”, but as a rule I never discuss money or how much I get paid as a freelancer.

Some writers disclose their freelance earnings, and based on some polls I’ve seen about money made doing freelance work, some get paid more than others as should be expected. Freelance writing jobs offer many ways to make money with your own freelance business online or offline, getting paid good money to write with or without an online website or blog, such as writing for magazines or newspapers.

Tip: Magazine writing pays very well, and copywriting pays REALLY well! Before you can start getting paid as a magazine writer or any type of writer, you have to know how to become a writer without any special qualifications or degree whatsoever. If you have writing experience and expertise, all the better, but being a freelance writer does not require any experience in writing. You can read and write in English, right?

The best part is, becoming a writer and getting paid to write is not hard! Anyone with a good grasp of the English language can become a professional writer and get paid good money for their writing skills and abilities. You are never too old to become a writer, so if you are an empty-nester or getting up in age, now would be a great time to start your own freelance writing business and start getting paid to write.

Freelance Writing Guide

If you are ready to start your own freelance writing career and get paid as a writer, you should know that there is a lot of information and misinformation about freelance writing on the web. However, I can personally vouch for this brand new freelance writing guide by Monika Mundell and Gobala Krishnan, who have collaborated in writing this joint venture (JV) guide to freelance writing.

New beginner writers always have a lot of questions about how to become a freelance writer, including setting your freelance writing rates (how much you should charge); finding your niche or topics to write about; branding your business and using business social networking or social media sites to build your brand; ways to find freelance writing gigs; managing your business and health as a writer, just to name a few.

After carefully reading and following the step-by-step instructions in this guide titled How to Quit Your Job and Make a Living From Freelance Writing, beginner freelance writers and more-experienced writers will learn everything they need to know about freelance writing, how to become a freelance writer and ways to get paid more money for the freelance work writers write for clients.

If you want your freelance business to be a successful money-making business, writers must treat their freelance writing business as a business rather than as a hobby. Monika and Gobala do a great job of explaining that if you want to build a business as a freelance writer, where you get paid enough money to quit your job and become a full-time writer online or offline, it requires strong work ethics and great time management amongst other things.

Some of my favorite things included in the guide is a list of 24 freelance writing job sites online to get paid to write as a freelancer; how much money you can expect to be paid as a freelance writer; tips and advice on maintaining good health and posture as a writer, and the pros and cons of each job bidding site. Like I’ve said, there is a lot of misinformation on the internet about freelance writing, but if you are serious about becoming a freelance writer and want to start getting paid to write, you must get Monika and Gobala’s freelance writing guide and ignore people telling you that you can’t make money as a freelance writer. Yes you can!

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I’ve been tagged with the 7 Things Meme by Todd Morris from Success With Todd, so I thought I’d participate in this meme since I forgot to do the 25 Random Things Meme that circulated Facebook pages not too long ago that I was also tagged with.

The 7 Things Meme Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

Okay, here goes. 7 things about me you may not know, or maybe don’t care to know.

1. The first record I ever owned was Mony Mony by Tommy James & The Shondells. I’m aging myself here, since the record was a Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single of the hit song. For the “last day of school party” in the 7th grade, my image of being a “cool kid” took a serious hit when students were told to bring in their favorite record to play during the party, and Mony Mony was the only record I owned at that time.

2. I’m a music fanatic, and I watch every season of American Idol, once the judges choose their Top list of finalists. I can’t stand watching/listening to the audition shows of people who truly suck at singing, and whose family or friends aren’t honest enough to tell potential contestants they suck, so they don’t embarrass themselves in front of millions of American Idol Fans. For the current American Idol Season 8, Adam Lambert is by far my favorite performer, and I predict the winner of American Idol this season will be a guy.

3. I’ve been on a Baby Shower Gifts shopping rampage lately, since my daughter’s baby shower is scheduled for next month. Checking out baby cribs was the first order of business to check off the baby needs checklist, and we were happy to find a gently-used crib in near perfect condition at a second-hand baby store. I don’t have any trouble coming up with baby gift ideas for my granddaughter that is due in May, and you can bet that having me as a grandma will undoubtedly mean she’ll be spoiled rotten.

4. I spend a lot of time at my computer at home and at work, which is likely the cause of my occasional severe lower back pain and symptoms of Carpal Tunnel, along with a recurring ganglion cyst “Bible bump” on my right hand which may require surgery to remove. Working in the Dental Field for almost twenty years now, as a Registered Dental Assistant (RDA) and Office Manager, I’ve spent many hours working on patients in the dental chair and lifting dental equipment and supplies that were/are too heavy to lift one-handed and now I’m paying for it in more ways than one.

5. My desire to quit my full-time Dental job and get paid to blog as a full-time blogger hasn’t changed, so I’ve been working hard to create more blogs that will help me reach my goal to make money from home and “retire” from my current job. While there is niche money to be made from a niche blog like Telling It Like It Is, I get frustrated when I read “you must have a niche” from bloggers who don’t follow their own “niche or no niche” advice and actually have a no niche blog themselves.

6. Speaking of money, the economy (such as it is) has created a lot of interest in setting goals and becoming smart with how we save or spend our money. Managing debt and saving money continues to be one of the top New Year’s resolutions for many people including me, who are trying to learn how to be frugal because of the economic recession, job layoffs, bank closings and home foreclosures. Even though my job is secure, my husband has been looking at ways to make a few extra dollars just in case he were to get laid off, and he’s been talking about starting a small home based business right alongside me.

7. I do all of my shopping online, except for grocery shopping, and I can’t remember the last time I bought a card or gift for anyone by actually walking into a brick-and-mortar store. Since my daughter announced she was pregnant a few months ago, I’ve been buying baby clothes online (and other cheap baby stuff) and hiding them at a friends house so my daughter’s curiosity won’t get the best of her and she finds the baby stroller that comes with an attached infant car seat that she’s been drooling over. I guess there is going to be a lot of drooling going on soon, and not just from my daughter.

Whew, I’ve completed the 7 Things Meme and my right hand and arm doesn’t even hurt. Yeah me!

Okay, here are the 7 people I’m going to tag with this meme, and hopefully they’ll all play along.

1. Rob from 2Dolphins
2. Rudy from the Rudy Amid Blog
3. RT from the Philippines blog
4. Periapex from Life’s Context
5. Cath from Cath Lawson
6. Jeff Nickles from My Super-ChargedLife
7. Reggie from Fragile Heart

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Content theft, scrapers, sploggers, copyright infringement and plagiarism. Just a few words to describe what many of us bloggers and writers have found to be the bane of our existence on the internet. While we work hard to create valuable and informative content for our subscribed readers and/or search engine readers, many of us are also dealing with idiots who choose to steal our posts, images and/or comments, posting stolen content on their own websites and blogs as if it were their own without our permission.

Not only that, but many of these low-life dogs have the nerve to put text ads, banner ads and Google AdSense around OUR content in order to earn revenue from stolen content, since they’re too stupid or lazy to create their own post content themselves.

The main problem of dealing with internet scrapers, copyright infringement and content theft is that search engines can index the scraped/stolen content before our own original content, resulting in higher PageRank in search engine results, more page views and ad revenue than our original post. Not only that, but our sites can be Google slapped as punishment for duplicate content even though the freaking originating post came from our site, not the scraper’s site.

I’ve dealt with content theft issues head on before, and while Google lays out the steps necessary to fight against content thieves, I sometimes wonder if Google cares about us little guys and gals (or big shot bloggers for that matter), or if websites owned and hosted in countries like China are ever going to be Google slapped to the point where a well-deserved reckoning occurs against those who are knowingly and willingly guilty of content theft.

If you’ve ever discovered stolen content from your blog outranking your original content in the SERP’s, you understand the harm that comes to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts to get your posts ranked on the first page of Google search results with your keywords of choice.

Just like many of you, I’ve done numerous searches for information on how to prevent, fight, stop, and protect my blog against content theft, and have taken the required steps to contact the guilty S.O.B’s directly, as well as notify Google and other search engines any time I discover my post(s) have been stolen.

Add to that the time it takes to track down the website owners host with whoishostingthis.com and who-hosts.com, filing complaints with any and all revenue generating affiliates found within the site, as well as social media sites the thieves are found to participate in, and the whole debacle quickly becomes a full-time job leaving you no time to create new posts.

In my opinion, one of the most insidious forms of copyright infringement and content theft is by so-called aggregator sites and translation sites, who steal full posts, images and even comments without the copyright owner’s permission. Elanso.com is just one of the most recent websites I’ve spent time fighting against content theft, which continues to steal my posts without my permission or consent.

Emails sent to China’s Elanso.com contact person, Andy Qian, asking/demanding that my content be removed from the site have of course been ignored and I’ve received no response from Andy or anyone else associated with Elanso. Perhaps if I were to email Elanso’s Andy Qian in several different languages all at once, maybe he could use his own translation service to translate the repetitious DMCA notices he’d be receiving. Not that it would do any good whatsoever, but it’s an interesting idea of how to deal with content theft taking place outside the U.S.

Oh sure, I notified Google of the infringements by fax on February 5th, including 5 links to offending stolen posts on Elanso, along with my own 5 matching original links showing the copyrighted posts belong to me. Included in the fax to Google was a link showing Elanso has stolen ALL of my posts, not just 5.

After a few days, I received notice that the 5 offending links were removed from Google search engine results. Close, but no cigar. What about the other 300 or more Telling It Like It Is posts displayed under Elanso’s Telling It Like It Is profile page that was mentioned in the fax, along with the url link providing proof? Huh Google?

Elanso’s “reliable translation” site displays ALL 300+ of my posts, links and images without my consent or permission, but in order for Google to take action and Google bitch-slap Elanso.com for copyright infringement, I’m required to jump through hoops and take the time to send Google each and every one of the 300+ offending links found on Elanso.com along with my 300+ links showing my posts are the originals.

I can’t even imagine how time-consuming it would be for bloggers with thousands of blog posts to submit each and every offending link vs. my few hundred blog posts, which is likely why some bloggers choose to ignore the copyright infringements.

Some bloggers are of the opinion that we shouldn’t get too stressed about blog scrapers stealing content from our blogs through full RSS feeds, and that “the more popular your blog gets, the more you will get scraped and the more you will realize that it just isn’t worth wasting your time with these people”. Sorry, but I don’t buy it.

Just because Google has the ability to determine where the original article came from due to inbound links and from the authority of a website, sometimes Google gets duplicate content wrong and I’m not willing to stand by and do nothing while some sleaze ball gets away with stealing my blog posts without so much as a fight, nor do I want Google to make the mistake of thinking Telling It Like It Is is the content thief.

If anything is ever going to happen that actually stops content theft, scrapers, sploggers, copyright infringement and plagiarism in its tracks, it will have to come from Google big-shots taking us bloggers and website owners seriously, that we want swift action taken to stop the growing problem of content theft on the internet, and guilty content thieves to be de-indexed and penalized to such a degree that maybe, just maybe, these losers would get a real job rather than being low-life thieves.

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If you’ve been seeing the Google warning message “Visiting this site may harm your computer”, you are not alone. Google officials have apologized for a glitch that blocked people from using the search engine for a short time on Saturday and warned that websites they wished to visit might harm their computers. Well, doesn’t that just beat all?!

A company official at Google said “each and every search result” from between 9:30 a.m. and 10:25 a.m. ET “likely resulted’ in the message, “This site may harm your computer.” I noticed the problem while creating the “Why Him Why Her” article, as I looked through my archived posts for my article discussing the difference between men and women, only to find the message “visiting this site may harm your computer”!

Vice-president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, writing in a Google blog, blamed the problem on human error. Mayer said Google flags search results with the warning if the site is known to install malicious software “in the background or otherwise surreptitiously.”

The message “visiting this site may harm your computer” popped up even for well-known, trusted sites because of an error in a list of web addresses compiled by a non-profit group that works with Google to protect users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. “This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users,” Mayer said.

The warning also told internet users to click on a link to get more information on malware, a term for malicious software such as computer viruses and spy ware. In essence, Google caused a worldwide internet blacklist, making every website including Telling It Like It Is to appear to be harmful and dangerous.

Well, thanks a lot Google! You about gave me a heart attack wondering if this site had been hacked or something. Whoever caused the “human error” should get a serious tongue lashing at the very least, and he/she should be very happy that I’m not the boss at Google because they’d be without a job right now.

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I mentioned recently that Telling It Like It Is would be getting a new theme and new host. Well, this is it! What do you think? This new theme is called Silver Light, and I like the clean, simple, content-oriented look, rather than having a site loaded with cutsey images in the header etc. There is still some tweaking to the theme and sidebar going on, so please “pardon our mess” while everything is put into its proper place.

I know I mentioned before that I planned on using the Visionary Magazine Theme, but due to my lack of knowledge and/or inexperience with coding, I decided to stay clear of anything remotely complicated that would require a great deal of time spent on editing and coding.

Creating and having quality content for visitors and  subscribed readers is by far the most important thing to me, and I believe this new theme focuses on content quite well.

On a side note, I’ve received quite a few emails from regular visitors and subscribers asking what social networking sites I frequent so they can “friend” me and chat on a more personal basis than just in the comment section.

Here’s a list of where I can be found online.

• Twitter

• Facebook

• MySpace

• StumbleUpon

What do you think of this new theme?

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