Writing for Dollars Review - Another Great Resource for Writers

I’m taking my first ever online class, Writing for Fun and Profit, through KSurf. A resource given in lesson one is WritingforDollars.com. What a great site! In addition to a weekly newsletter and some other cool stuff, Writing for Dollars has a guidelines database (link below) that is searchable in several ways. You can find a market by name, subject, rate of pay, etc. Some are well known, such as AARP or Good Housekeeping (what do these examples say about my age group and gender?), but many I’d never heard of. Regardless, there’s a short synopsis and an online guidelines link for each.

As I’m actually a quilter/sewer/crafter first and a writer second, I searched for quilting, sewing and craft related markets. To my most pleasant surprise, there are about two dozen matches. Some are specific to subjects about which I have no interest, such as homebuilt aircraft, but many show promise. Even the lowest paying market I found beats what I made per how-to article writing for Demand Media Studios.

As I move forward toward a new year, I’m taking stock of where I am, how far I’ve come, and where I want to be next year at this time. I spent a lot of time and energy writing for up-front pay in 2010. This was good for me on several levels, including financial. In 2011, however, rather than writing so much for up-front pay, I want to redirect my energies toward accomplishing some long-term goals that took a backseat while I indulged myself with the instant gratification of immediate money. It appears that the Writing for Dollars Guidelines Database may provide leads to more lucrative gigs to satisfy my cash flow needs without sucking me dry.