Side Hustle(s), Part 1 - Writing - Some Websites Still Pay

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Hey Friends, it's a bright, sunny Sunday morning in North Carolina, and there are contractors doing very noisy work on my house. We had chimney issues (refer to the lovely picture). Maybe I will write about that in a bit, but for now, I promised y'all I was going to write about my side hustle. Obviously, part of the side hustle is writing, since I'm here on MyLot. Some of you know me from my very first content creation gig at Associated Content, which Yahoo bought and then eventually killed off, because that's what they do. Before Yahoo tore down the house, a lot of us discovered Bubblews, which seemed too good to be true, because it was. That's gone, too, and so is Niume, a stunningly beautiful website that also just couldn't afford to pay. I loved the community at Persona Paper, which was poised to pay almost as well as Bubblews (but with way more integrity) until for some reason they caught a ban from Google AdSense, which was pretty much the kiss of death. They tried SO hard to find other revenue sources, but none was as dependable. Persona Paper is actually still there, even though it isn't currently paying, and a few of us are still posting, because it's still a nice community. Also, they are totally cool with cross-posting content and promotional links, so if you would like to write posts that have affiliate links or backlinks to your own site, it is okay to do that. Fortunately, I found MyLot, which is still chugging along and even still paying, happily! In addition, I also wrote for Bukisa some years back, which theoretically paid but actually didn't (well, not yet, anyway; read on). However. what they DID do was hook me up with my OWN Google AdSense account, which I didn't really know enough to do anything with for the first few years, so the few dollars I earned with Bukisa sat there in the account, patiently waiting. I think it was about 6 bucks. I realized that Blogger was a Google platform and that my AdSense account could be linked to it, once the blog was approved to be monetized (this usually takes a couple of weeks, during which you need to post your little heart out, preferably with SEO-laden content). I now have four blogs, all linked to AdSense. The problem with Google is that they have a RIDICULOUSLY high payout threshold, at least compared to MyLot and the other writing sites that we've seen come and go. You have to earn $100 before they pay out. I'm up to $83.51 after, what, eight years? But to be fair, out of the four blogs, I only have about 200 posts, at most, so I need to get moving on those! So MyLot and Blogger are my current preferred revenue streams for writing. My two other revenue streams are not preferred, because they depend on filling assignments for clients instead of writing about whatever the heck I want, but I have made a decent amount of money from them, so you might want to try: HireWriters and UpWork (which used to be called oDesk). I've done a lot for HireWriters. I haven't done anything, technically, for Upwork, but I did a good bit back when they were oDesk. If you don't mind tight deadlines, try those - they are legit sites. The pay is so-so, but you can luck out and find clients who give you good, steady work for more money. That's it for the writing. There's still a LOT more to come, but this is already extremely long, so we'll continue later.