Hey, thanks for replying to this thread - which bumped it, and then motivated me to advertise my services at places other than DP. About DP, I came here from Elance, and honestly I have found this a better place. At Elance, the established profiles with near 5/5 ratings get the most jobs - and with their team of writers they can compete on price too. I have seen even experienced hands offering to work at $1 per 100 words, rates which I too have to think twice about. It has been noted by others too that it is difficult to break into Elance, and my experience has borne that out. Nonetheless, I will still try to work there and build a profile . Till now, I have found only two clients on DP who pay me $2 or close to it (per 100 words). But with the amount of research needed to write about the Mayan History ( just for example), I can hardly write more than 400-500 words an hour. That makes it worse than jobs that pay far less, but do not require that much research ( or seo jobs where you have to churn copy which is repeated in many ways). But I still look forward to working with such clients because I like Mayans and writing better quality articles. But I definitely want to write such articles for $3-5 per. Hanging out at DP has taught me so much about how things work, and how the internet actually runs, that I would recommend anyone with an interest in working online to hang out at the BST section. If you can write well, you do not have to over-promote yourself to make a living - but ambition is always good, in which there are threads like this to guide one.
Just my opinion, I think Reputation and pricing are best points to make popular writer here. Really good info