Writing for Factoidz

As Samuel Johnson said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Even when writing free for academic journals, I have always expected some kind of payoff in terms of getting a good job, getting merit raises, or generating book sales. Now, in addition to my blogs, I write for five article sites, including Factoidz. It's a lot of work keeping up with all of that, but over time, I should be preparing some good passive income.

No one should expect to get rich, or even make a living entirely from writing on the Internet, although I understand some people, by sheer volume of writing, very careful selection of hot topics, and relentless marketing, come pretty close to the latter.

Factoidz accepts three kinds of article (called a factoid): how to do something, facts about something, or lists of something. It does not accept opinion pieces or promotional links to sell products or services. Basically, though, "something" can be virtually anything. Factoidz has 32 broad categories from beauty tips to job searching to hobbies to science. Each of them is further subdivided.

Factoids should be at least 400 words. For each one, you will need to select a category and subcategory, provide a title rich in key words, write a short summary good for search engine optimization (SEO), and list 10-15 key words. Don't worry if you don't know as much as you'd like about SEO; Factoidz authors have already provided plenty of information about it for you to study.

Like every similar site I have ever seen, Factoidz works as a community of writers. The best way to gain readership is to read and comment on other articles on the site. Members can also vote up each other's articles and nominate other authors as experts in various categories. Each member's profile includes the number of votes their articles have received, how many followers they have, and their expertise scores and rankings.

Factoidz has a user forum, and a list of suggested topics. Your dashboard as a member includes statistics on "your most recently published Factoids;" your most viewed Factoids today;" the number of views today, yesterday, and all time; and, of course, your earnings for the month.

Some sites will not actually pay earnings until they reach some minimum threshold. Factoidz pays (via PayPal) even as little as a dollar or two after every month. Significant earnings build slowly and require quality of writing, quantity of writing, and time elapsed since publishing your first article.

That first article, after all, will continue to pay something months or even years later. No one article will pay much in a given month, so you will need lots of articles that people want to read, each earning a little bit every month, to add up to a significant payout. In addition, the time spent reading and commenting on others' articles really increases readership, as well as providing advice and ideas for future articles.

If you are interested in writing for Factoidz, create an account here.