As long as you’re willing to do the work, it’s definitely possible to get paid to write – and earn good money – even if you’re starting out with no experience and no credentials. So, if you dream of working from home as a freelance writer, please ignore the naysayers because there are plenty of websites that will pay you to write for them.  The absence of a string of fancy letters after your name (you know, a degree) and your lack of experience doesn’t matter one bit if you can show the right kind of client that you can write!

ATTENTION: Before I go any further…This article is intended for beginners – people who are starting out like I did, with no experience, no credentials, and no contacts. If you’re already an experienced freelance writer who’s making decent money, then this is NOT the article for you, okay? Alright. Moving on.

How much can you get paid to write online?

I’m not going to lie – if you’re brand new to this, odds are your writing could use some major improvement – having the expectation to simply write and get paid instantly may not be realistic. If this is your situation, begin by starting a personal blog – publish content regularly to improve your skills. Practice make perfect, after all.

Once you get good enough, I recommend you apply for some lower-paid gigs in the hopes of getting paid something while you practice, even if it’s not much. Look at it as getting paid to learn, kind of like a low-wage internship.

On the other hand, if you’re already a decent writer, you’ll have an easier time landing intermediate-wage gigs.

And if your writing rocks, then the sky’s the limit – you can get paid to write about anything, within reason!

Whatever you do, don’t go into this believing the “gurus” who claim everyone can start out making big bucks right from the very beginning. The fact of the matter is that clients aren’t stupid and they won’t pay good money for writing that’s not up to their standards. This is why brand new freelance writers who have no experience typically have to start at the bottom, honing their skills on low-paying gigs until their writing improves enough to command higher pay.

In summary, start low, improve your skills, then gradually work your way up to the higher paying jobs you’ve been wanting all along.

Okay, now that THAT’s out of the way, here’s the mother of all lists of websites that will pay you to write for them:

1. Upwork is a freelancing platform that grew out of the merger of oDesk and Elance- it’s now one of the most popular freelancing sites out there.  Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll see jobs where you can write articles and earn money.

This is my top pick for brand new freelance writers trying to build a career from scratch because there are tons of jobs to choose from, and you’re able to create an extremely detailed profile that helps you shine to the max. But don’t be lazy when creating your profile – if you don’t take the time to fill it out completely, Upwork will reject your application to join their site. Done right, your Upwork profile should take at least a full day to complete properly, and potentially even longer.

There’s no cost to set up your profile, but once you start working, Upwork will take a percentage of your earnings as compensation for allowing you to use their platform. This platform incentivizes long-term working relationships because Upwork’s compensation fee decreases as your lifetime billings with a any particular client go up.

Upwork’s “Connects” are credits you can use to apply for jobs. It will cost you between 1 and 6 Connects per job application. The number of Connects required per application is based on how much Upwork expects you to earn from that job, combined with what they call “marketplace demand”.

New users get a one-time free allotment of 20 Connects. After that, you’ll have to buy them for 15 cents each, and the minimum purchase required is 10 Connects (which will cost you a total of $1.50).

Another key point to be aware of is that Connects expire 1 year after purchase. So only buy what you need in the near future.

*The above info for Connects can change at any time so please see the Upwork website for the most up-to-date info possible.

If you’re worried that you don’t have enough experience or lack the right credentials to get a freelance writing job on Upwork, don’t be. I had zero paid writing experience and zero credentials when I got started on their site, yet I was still able to land paying gigs as a total beginner, and increase my rates fast. Read about about my recipe for Upwork success in my best-selling book, Turn Your Computer Into a Money Machine. (I know, the title is rather bold, but I literally felt like I’d turned mine into a money machine after finding success with my methods, and the tactics I wrote about are still relevant today.) Anyhow, give it a read if you’d like to know how I did it.

While Upwork has been very good to me, helping me to get my own freelance SEO writing biz off the ground back when I was first starting out, I get asked a lot about what other options are out there. To this day, I always tell people to try Upwork first. But if you have time to manage a profile on multiple freelancing sites – on more than one website that pays you to write – then by all means cast a wider net for jobs and try some of these too.

Types of websites that pay you to write (and/or list freelance writing jobs)

I’ve divided the websites where you can get paid to write online into four main categories: freelancing platforms, article writing services, job boards, and websites that will hire writers directly. Read the summaries below to figure out which ones are best suited for you.

i) Freelancing platforms are a more controlled environment that tends to have more clients willing to give writing newbies a chance. For this reason, even if you’re not quite the absolute best freelance writer, websites like these are my first choice if you want to earn some money while improving your writing, negotiating, and client-management skills. Their rules typically require you to get paid through their site – asking a client to pay you offsite via something such as PayPal will be against their terms of service and could get you banned. The nice thing about these is that prior to applying for a job – unlike job listing search engines – you can snoop a bit on the client’s profile and see what other freelancers have said about them. You can cherry pick only those clients who have a track record of being fair to other freelancers, not to mention paying them on time. Additionally, if you do good work, the client can leave you a glowing review. You can then leverage these reviews to help you land even more jobs with new clients in future.