NinerNiner a strange one

Have you heard of NinerNiner.com? It's one strange little site.

Apparently, writers can sign up to the site and earn money for making posts to a series of blogs that NinerNiner runs. The problem? The pay per post is awful. For 200-or-so words, you can earn a payment of 50 cents. Yes, 50 cents.

And that's for a high-paying blog. NinerNiner also pays 10 cents for posts on some blogs.

I suppose this is good if you're angling to get a chicken sandwich off the dollar menu at McDonald's: Just two 50-cent posts and one 10-cent post to cover the tax! But if you want to make a living as a freelance writer? It's probably best to pass on NinerNiner.

By the way, I've poked through some of the company's blogs. You truly do get what you pay for. The quality of the content is amazingly bad on most of the blogs.

Hoping to add another blog to my list

Earlier this week I completed the second phase of a tryout for a new career blog being launched later this month. I made it past the first hurdle: The editors behind the blog liked my submission package. The second phase involved me writing two sample blog posts -- which I get paid for. The editors will then select four of a final eight writers to contribute regularly to the blog.

It's a bit of a jumping-through-hoops process, but the work should be easy. And if I do get the job, it'll be one more steady bit of income.

Granted, the income's fairly small. But it's worth it for the amount of work required. It will also mean that I'll have six blogs that I write for that pay me by the post.

This is the only way to go with blogs, by the way. (Well, a flat monthly rate is fine, too.) Don't ever think you're going to make money from blogs that pay you according to how many people visit or click on ads. You'll be lucky to make a dollar every month with this kind of payment schedule.

I'll keep everyone posted as to what happens with this career blog. I'm proud of the two sample posts I wrote. Now it's in the hands of the editors.