A few months ago, I got an email from a guy who wanted to know if I was interested in a paid writing opportunity that involved PC games. The message didn’t seem like spam, so I replied back asking for more information. This culminated into me being among the first writers signed up for a website called Brighthub.com.
Bright Hub wants to be the About.com of science and technology information. The site is loaded with content on topics like computer hardware and software, video games, education, health, and more. As of this writing, the featured articles on the site’s front page are on topics like PHP scripting, a comparison between Facebook and MySpace, and a review of the new Lego Indiana Jones PC game.
For every article or review that I write, Bright Hub pays be ten dollars. Yes, $10. It’s a flat rate and much better than anything else I’ve ever found. By comparison, I have written over 2,000 reviews for Epinions.com, but the majority of them end up making me less than one dollar even after a number of years. I have, however, had a few Epinions reviews net me hundreds of dollars each, but those were mainly in the Electronics category for big ticket items like HDTV’s and surround sound stereo systems. The average pay on Associated Content, where I’ve written a couple dozen articles, is between four and five dollars.
When you submit an article or review to Bright Hub, it must first go through an approval process before it is posted to the site. Each category, or channel, has editors who handle this task. When you submit something new, you can see exactly who the individual editor will be. One thing that has always irked me about Associated Content is that you don’t know who is giving the final approval on your work, plus they tend to take a week or more to get back to you. On Bright Hub, most of my work gets posted within a day or two, and sometimes within a matter of hours.
So how do you get to be a writer on Bright Hub? Just go to Brighthub.com and look for the link at the bottom of the page that says ‘Become a Writer’. This will lead you to an online application where you provide your personal info, plus links to your blog or website. It is highly recommended that you attach a file with some examples of your writing.
Writing articles and reviews is the way to make the most money on Bright Hub, though they do also pay extra for getting outside links back to your work, plus they do revenue sharing based on your total number of page views. I wrote 17 articles in July and 18 in August, and have so far cleared over $360. That’s money in the bank, all for telling people what I think about stuff. How cool is that?
