Making Money Online – Researching Your First Freelance Article

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If you’re like I was when I first started freelance writing, then you probably are wondering where they heck do you find information to write about the varying topics that can arise as a freelance writer! Unless you are already a subject matter expert on a given topic from your education, day job, or hobbies, then there are going to be more articles than not which require you to conduct research. Since the library has become so 1990′s (and would take away 1-3 hours of good writing time), we all have a need to be able to conduct basic-to-intermediate research where we are going to be doing our freelance writing. I start all of my research for articles now-adays in one of two places: 1 – Wikipedia, and 2- Scour.com.

Wikipedia as a Starting Point

Now, there are about as many opinions about Wikipedia as there are about what the President should do to fix the economy! They range from it being a great on-line resource, to it being the instrument of the devil! (Well maybe not that bad). Anyway, Wikipedia is the largest, free, online, multi-lingual encyclopedia project in the worlds. It contains over 12 million articles written by volunteers on all matter of topics. Many critics of the resource do not like that the material is posted and vetted through peer-review and consensus vice pre-published vetting. Regardless, Wikipedia is one of the best places you can start for basic research on a freelance topic that you are not familiar with. Many freelance publishing sites will not permit you to use Wikipedia as a primary resource, but nothing prevents you from using it for basic topic education and a starting point to find other topic resources!

Scour – Consolidated Google, MSN, and Yahoo Search

So you may be like, what the heck is Scour? Well, in early 2008, Scour launched as what’s called a “Metasearch Engine.” Their website acts just like an independent Google, Yahoo, or MSN search does, except that you get to see the results from all three search engines while conducting research. This was enough for me to start using the tool for my article research. Since, however, I like to take advantage of any passive income stream that I can, Scour also pays you to do your searching through the engine. The rate’s not high (it equals about $25 per 6-8 weeks if you are doing heavy searching), but its still better than the $0 USD the major search engines pay you to use their service! To sign up for a Scour account, you can go here.

Making Money Online – Writing Your First Freelance Article

After you have finished researching for your article, its time to start developing your outline for your work. If you missed our previous post on Writing Your First Freelance Article, then you can view it here.

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