Explosive demand for website content has created a thriving market in articles of every length, topic, and skill level. And unlike pre-Internet journalism, you don't need to shop articles around to buyers individually or query every newspaper and small business in your area. Online marketplaces have taken the strain out of finding clients and selling off prewritten articles.

They've also made article-writing into a potentially full-time job. Writing for a site like Demand Studios pays an average of $15 an hour, not a princely sum, but more than you'll get for working at Barnes & Noble. Writing for private clients pays even more if you're willing to do the work to get them. Very few writers actually make their living from writing for Demand Studios, but that's a function of other demands on their time and writerly boredom, not a lack of work.

In this section, I list sites where you can sell articles that require more skills and content than basic SEO writing, but less skill and far less networking than professional copywriting and freelance writing. This slice of the market is welcoming to beginners.

A note: The distinctions I make between writing types are artificial. "Web writing" is really any kind of writing done for the web, from a $2 article to a $2,000 white paper. "SEO writing" is any writing done to improve a page's search engine appeal, whether the work is done by a highly paid professional or a sweatshop worker making a quarter of a cent per word. I redefined these terms on this site to make a distinction between three segments of the writing market:

• Supercheap, undemanding writing that's often churned out in batches for the sole purpose of baiting search engines and filling article directories
• Content creation for websites and private clients who want articles to have content and be written with some skill
• Professional-level writing that just happens to be written for the web

If you go elsewhere, you'll see these terms used differently, or not used at all.

Web writing job sites