I think that many people overlook these opportunities, but you might qualify and be able to make a guaranteed at least $500 a month (often more) for blogging at about.com. They have a huge list of possible topics that are always changing for you to apply for. Many of them require specific experts, but there are plenty of opportunities for at least some of you here. They base your pay on the increase and amount of traffic you get, but you're guaranteed at least $500 a month for starting out (for a year I think). There are a few people who make six figure incomes there as well. You basically run your own blog, post relevant articles, find other sites to link to, etc. It can even be your own articles (a HUGE plus for your business). You can check out the opportunity here: http://beaguide.about.com/ Hope it helps! And if someone here joins, let me know how it goes! Brian P.S. I posted this in marketing because I know that if you are able to get a spot in this, you can EASILY market your own stuff if you are good enough at it. This could be a huge opportunity for someone.
First of all, it's a heck of a lot more than blogging, and can take quite a bit of your time for that $500 (going up soon if it hasn't publicly already). So if you do it, don't let the money be the motivation... you could earn as much with one or a few articles to a decent publication each month (not hard to do). If you do happen to get through the 3 week or so training, and they actually pick you, you still can't "EASILY market your own stuff" there. If they catch you blatantly advertising for yourself, you'll be gone extremely quickly. I despise About, but won't get into the whys unless anyone is considering it and wants to discuss it privately before applying. But for what it's worth, it's a good option to build contacts, and can lead to better things when you leave. Just again, don't do it for the money... and with as quickly as they go through Guides there, use the time to take full advantage of the NY Times connection to make contacts in your industry, and learn the workings of a content site through them... it can help you out enormously later. Just use it as a learning experience, and don't count on it in the long term (they seem to like eliminating people in waves, and have been slowly moving to smaller highly-specific sites, meaning when that product, etc. is obsolete, so is the Guide - it's cheaper to start a new small site and elminate a specific outdated one, b/c they won't be paying out on a continued content accrual). Just my $.02.
mmmmh, I had some lengthy conversations with an 'about guide' from which I was left confused and irritated about the corruption level that's very much like dmoz. Some people in both camps not only fill their categories with their own sites, or sites where you wonder how they survive by giving ALL links to just one site, or cluster of sites. At the same time they block any new entries of competing sites. If I would have the time I would make sure they get fired, but I suppose it wouldn't matter, and the next guy from the same 'site cluster' would be the next editor. Useless, because of it we won't bother anymore with either dmoz or about.