I stumbled into online freelance writing while wasting time in a coffee shop surfing when I should have been editing my dissertation. I saw an ad to write a few quick book review blurbs on Amazon for $50. Since I needed some spare cash (who doesn’t?), I figured I’d try. But that required an Elance account, which required me to figure out what Elance was, which required me to see that people were getting paid to do some relatively simple writing tasks for relatively more money than I’d ever been paid to write before.

A few bids and a few hours later, I was about $500 richer.

So here I am, still on the cusp of finishing my dissertation, but also on the cusp of a second career as a paid writer. So far, I’ve only been using freelance as supplemental income, but with the adjunct market for next semester looking grim, it may be primary soon.

Thus, the blog. Why not start relating some experiences, tips, and even questions for what I now know is a huge community of full time and part time freelancers?

And no fault if I want a little self-promotion along the way.

But I’ll start with a useful tip: one of the best things I’ve discovered about a lot of online freelancing are groups that do subcontracting or that exploit other sites’ ad revenue programs. A number of places do this for eHow.com, I’ve found. My current favorite is Demand Studios which pays $15 for every article you write through them to post on eHow’s site. What’s amazing about this setup is how little they actually require from their writers. I’m not saying I do a bad job, but you can suggest almost any topic, write what amounts to 400 words, and get paid reliably. I’ve been messing with it on and off for about 3 months now, and I’ve made about $1000 for basically writing single-draft “how to” pieces when I have a spare minute or two…and I mean literally only a minute or two. I’m essentially being paid for afterthoughts.

Check it out.