A very easy way for writers living in rural areas to increase their monthly income is to act as a local correspondent for different social media content websites. Social media content sites, like Patch.com, Examiner.com, and SkyWord.com, hire writers to report on local events.
Writing for these sites (and similar news sites) usually pay on the low side — about $15 to $50 per 500 word article; however, a writer can increase his/her income with incentives that these sites offer. For instance, Examiner.com may pay you more based on traffic that you bring to your columns or how many times visitors click on advertisements.
What are the guidelines?
The hot topics for these sites include: general interest articles, local happenings, personals, celebrity interviews, accounts of fires, railroad wrecks, robberies, murders, suicides, court affairs, business failures, damage by storms to property, sickness, death, funeral ceremonies — or any anything that has a particle of news in it.
These blog posts need not be long; from 300 to 500 words is about the average length, but of course, word length increases according to your story’s importance.
I am at present writing for two social media content sites, as well as three news websites that my county newspapers run as part of their newspaper print coverage. Besides my other literary work, and my work in the office during the day, I find that writing for these local news outlets, online and offline, helps pay the bills at the end of the month.
Conclusion
Besides writing for websites that hire writers to report local news, you can still find thriving local, county and state newspapers that outsource work to writers to write short columns of interest. Social media content sites, such as the ones I mentioned above, are less stringent on what they post, whereas, editors of local newspapers will critique your work, leave out what is not important, and revise the rest if it does not meet the newspaper’s house style or its editorial standards.
