Every now and then, I need to give my income a little boost to pay for those extra things in life. You know what they are! Car repairs, higher than usual credit card bills, etc. When this happens, I’m stubbornly determined to NOT take on clients because I find the work to cause me too much stress.

So what do I do? Well, right now I’m in one of those “income boosting” phases so I thought I’d share with you what my approach is.

Associated Content. I don’t even think I wrote for them in 2008 and if I did, it was only for one or two articles. I’ve just started up again and so much has changed,  I feel like a complete beginner and am just starting to get the hang of it. My biggest piece of advice is to just get started. You’ll get a feel for what they want in terms of content and what they pay well for.

Textbroker. I just started writing for them last night. I signed up a few days ago and was initially turned off by the low pay. But, the articles are easy to write and I need to bring in income. I thought it was worth a try. So far, all five of the articles I’ve written have been accepted but I need to wait for the editorial team to review them and rate them before I can submit more. Too bad, I was actually having fun.

Mini-sites. I just learned of a Google Slap where websites and blogs that affiliate links will experience a lowered page rank. Ouch. So anyway, my new affiliate marketing policy is to put up a mini-site with a review of the product or service for everything I want to promote. The site will also include informative articles. In total, I plan on each site having ten pages of content.

Article marketing. You ever hear of Bum Marketing? Well, I’m doing that as part of the “mini-site” plan. Instead of  putting the affiliate URL in the resource box, I’m putting the mini-site URL. This will help drive traffic to the mini site and looks more helpful than an off-putting sales letter.

Visit job boards. I also regularly visit the Problogger job board, the one at Freelance Writng Jobs, and peruse the listings at Rentacoder. I know, some of these will mean that I take on clients. But oh well. Sometimes I just need to, you know? And anyway, I’m rather picky now. I doubt very highly that I’ll justify taking on clients unless the pay were very, very good.

Helium. Should I or shouldn’t I? I honestly don’t know. The rating and writing star system is a little annoying. You need to have rating stars in order to get residual earnings. You need to have writing stars to earn a (small, very small) per article rate. I pop in off and on, but so far I’ve made $5 with no writing stars so I am not sure it’s worth it. The jury’s out. It’s up to you.

Making  Submissions and Writing Queries. Okay, so editors are clients too. But I don’t mind the process if the pay is good enough. With web writing, it’s harder to get paid what your time is worth, even if you have experience. So - I’m starting to have fun again and submitting to magazines and publications I enjoy reading.

And that’s it. A fairly simple plan which will, when paired with my other ongoing work (namely eHow), will make me a lot more money these next few months. And the nice part is, more than half of this income will have residual earnings potential.

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