Unfortunately the well known stereotype about writers being poor and unable to bring home the bacon is often true. Writing is easy, but writing to please others (readers), whether it be through a book about acupuncture or an informative article on elephant tranquilizers, is hard.

Nowadays traditional freelance writers often find job opportunities by sending cover letters to magazine editors, or by writing an article for a local newspaper and submitting it for review, basically by getting their names out there so that they can gain enough clout to be able to publish their works in a steady and reliable way.

There are, however, opportunities for writers who wish to work solely on the internet. Websites like Constant-Content, Bukisa, Elance, Suite101, and many others offer online writers a chance to publish their works to already established websites where they can be seen, provided the writer takes the time to make them visible. Sites like Constant Content and Suite101 offer writers the opportunity to have their articles sold for use by others, often to the highest bidder.

These websites offer a unique opportunity to those who don't know how to begin freelance writing, or don't wish to employ the traditional means, for whatever reason.

The catch for writing on online content websites is that, except in special cases and for websites that exclusively cater to freelancers, any articles that you write will need to be advertised in some way by you, the website you publish on will not do this for you. This means that social bookmarking sites like digg, stumbleupon, and reddit will become your best resource. As a result, simply publishing your articles to these websites will not instantly result in a lot of profit, they need to become indexed by search engines, they need to become popular, and most importantly: they need to get viewed.