How much money will you make at Constant Content?

Exactly how much money can I make selling articles at Constant Content? If you’ve been unable to get a straight answer to this question, you may be understandably reluctant to invest time and energy into submitting articles to Constant Content.

In this post, I’ll show you how writers just like you are making good money on Constant Content–anywhere from $300 to $3000 per month. I’ll explain exactly how you can calculate your projected sales and earnings before you invest any time. I’ll also go over the specific strategies you should use to start selling articles quickly.

photo: Tama Leaver

Why do some writers make $3000 per month and others only $300?

Constant Content is one of the highest-paying online markets for content writers. However, not everyone makes the same amount of money. Here’s why:

• Prices are set by individual authors
  Unlike other content markets such as Demand Studios, you set your own prices at Constant Content. You might sell an article for $50 and your friend might sell a similar article for $25.
• Sales within a particular niche fluctuate depending on the needs of customers
  One week a customer might come along and snap up 50 articles on gardening. The next week someone might be buying lots of dating articles. If you happened to have articles in your portfolio that match those customer’s needs, you’d sell a lot. But it’s impossible to predict exactly when an article will sell because customers’ needs change all the time.
• Articles are written on speculation
  Writing “on spec” means that sales are not guaranteed. This scares some writers as they worry that their hard work will go to waste.

As you can see, there are a lot of variables involved at Constant Content. This might give the false impression that earnings are unpredictable or uncontrollable. Wrong! It’s hard to predict the sale of an individual article–but it’s not hard at all to predict how many articles you’ll sell or how much you’ll earn per month.

How much I earn at Constant Content

My income at Constant Content varies quite a bit depending on how much I want to earn. The last 14 articles I sold (over a 2 week period) earned a total of $1050. Constant Content takes 35%, so my earnings were $682.50. My total writing time (including researching and submitting) was about 22 hours. My hourly wage for that batch of articles, therefore, was just over $30. I consider this a fair wage for a freelance writer and try to keep my earnings consistent with this amount. My per article average was $75, with a low of $15 and a high of $170.

Why did I only write for 22 hours in a two-week period? Because I had income from other sources and I didn’t want to spend any more time writing at CC. I was happy with that amount of money. However, if I’d wanted to, I could have worked a 40-hour work week. In theory, this would have earned me about quadruple the amount of money.

Most of the articles I sold were private requests, meaning that a customer specifically requested a certain article. You may be wondering if you can expect to sell as much if you don’t have any private clients. Absolutely! It may take you a few weeks to get there, because you’ll need to build up your portfolio. I was making about the same amount per hour before I started doing so many private requests. The only difference was that I tended to write more articles but spend less time on each one. For example, I’d spend 2 hours writing 3 articles to sell for $30 each, rather than one article to sell for $90.

How much money are other writers earning?

Several writers at Constant Content are making a full-time income, and many others are bringing in $300-$500 a month as supplemental income. Don’t take my word for it, though. The CC forums are open to the public, so you can read through these forum discussions to get an idea of how well people are doing. You’ll also get a sense of the supportive and welcoming community at Constant Content.

Forum discussions:

• Full time or part time?
• What is your CC “Eureka” moment?
• Full Timers
• Can this be a full time job?

Statistical evidence from Constant Content

The admins at Constant Content have done some research to help writers calculate how much they can earn. Here are some of the key points.

1. “Each submission that you have accepted to the site represents roughly $20…”

This means that if you take the total amount of money earned by CC writers and divide it by the total number of submissions on the site, the result is $20. Obviously, this is an average, so individual writers might have different results. I decided to test out the formula to see how my numbers stacked up against the average. I took my total lifetime earnings and divided the number by my total number of submissions. Amazingly, my result is right on par with the average–I come out at $21 per submission! This is very exciting because it means that every time you sit down to write an article, you are adding $20 to your total lifetime earnings–whether or not that specific article sells.

2. “…and each license sold represents $30.”

3. “Accepted articles on the site have a statistical average of selling 70% of the time. If you submit five or more articles you have a 97% chance of making at least one sale!”

Here’s how the admins explained these figures:

“We took the total licenses sold and divided it by the total articles submitted and the result was that you can expect to sell licenses equaling 87% of the articles in your catalog (ie: if you have 20 articles you will be likely to sell 17 licenses, made up of more than one sale of some articles and no sales for others). Another striking piece of information that started to emerge is that 30% of our writers license sales equal 100% or more (up to 500%) of their total submitted articles, and that stat took on an upward trend if you isolated for writers who had more than one sale, the amount of writers that have sold licenses equaling 100% or more of their catalogue jumped to 50%.”

Again, I decided to test out this formula. I divided my sales by my submissions and discovered that my submissions-to-sales percentage is 69%. This means that for every 10 articles I write, I can expect to sell around 7 of them. (This doesn’t mean that the other three won’t sell eventually; the more you write, the more articles you sell.)

You can read the entire discussion (complete with charts!) at How to Sell More Articles and How to Sell More Articles Part II.

How I calculate my projected sales and earnings

The first step towards setting accurate financial goals at CC is to create a tracking system. I use a spreadsheet. Every time I sell an article, I add it to my spreadsheet. I use formulas to automatically calculate how many days the article took to sell, the hourly price, and the per word price.

If your eyes just glazed over, don’t worry. You don’t need to know a single thing about creating spreadsheets or formulas. Just download the Constant Content Earnings Tracker at the end of this post. It includes a blank spreadsheet with instructions. I’ve already set everything up for you so all you need to do is enter information. It’s very easy, I promise!

How does this spreadsheet help me calculate my projected earnings? When I started writing at Constant Content, I wrote articles consistently for about three months, using the spreadsheet to track all my submissions and sales. At the end of three months, I sat down to analyze my earnings so far. I used the information to predict what my future earnings would be. For example, knowing my submissions-to-sales ratio, I was able to figure out how many articles I needed to write in order to hit my sales goal. Knowing my average hourly wage, I was able to figure out how many hours I needed to write to hit my earnings goal.

I’ve explained exactly how to calculate your projected sales and earnings in the free Constant Content Earnings Tracker at the end of this post, so make sure you download it.

7 strategies to more sales at Constant Content

1. Bigger portfolio=more sales.

If you only have ten articles in your portfolio, interested buyers will have less chance of finding something that matches their needs. If you have 200+ articles in your portfolio, what do you think the chances are? Pretty good.

2. Hungry markets=more sales.

You can write about anything you want, but if your goal is to start selling quickly, write content that solves a specific problem or meets a need. There is a hungry market for content like this. Articles that help readers save money, save time, solve a relationship problem, learn how to accomplish a task, or master a skill, will typically sell faster than movie reviews or news content.

3. Consistent submissions=more sales.

The more articles you submit per day, the more times your name appears on the emails that are sent to CC customers announcing recent articles. Even if customers don’t buy your recent articles, they are likely to click through to your portfolio. I can speak to this from my own experience. When I was writing and submitting to my portfolio every day, I was selling at least one article per day. When I started spending most of my time working on private requests, I noticed that my portfolio articles stopped selling consistently. Make it a goal to submit at least one article a day for several weeks. If you want to see lightning-fast results, submit 5-10 articles to Constant Content per day for the next month.

3. Public request submissions=more sales.

If you submit a high-quality article of the right length and price to every single public request, you can expect to start selling articles within a few days. Some of these public requests may garner you private requests, which are essentially guaranteed sales.

5. Many articles between 400-700 words=more sales.

Most web content buyers are looking for a specific wordcount. If your articles are too long or too short, they will not sell consistently, no matter how well you can write. If an article becomes too long, just break it into several shorter articles.

6. Many articles between $20-$50= more sales.

If you price all your articles under $20, you’ll make less per article and will find it hard to sustain a reasonable hourly wage. If you price all your articles over $50, you make it difficult for customers to afford you. Offer a range of prices, but keep the majority in the $20-$50 range if you want to make lots of sales.

7. Focusing on production=more sales.

This may sound counter-intuitive, because you want to sell articles. But if you focus all your mental energy on selling, you may find yourself engaging in low-value activities like checking the number of hits on your articles or refreshing your sales page every 5 minutes. In contrast, if you focus on production, you will find it easier to engage in high-value activities. High-value activities include writing, revising and submitting. If you focus on doing these three things, the sales will come far more quickly than if you sit worrying and wondering about sales.

How much money will you earn at Constant Content?

I can’t tell you exactly how much you personally will make at Constant Content, but if you follow the strategies above and use the Constant Content Earnings Tracker to create financial goals, you will achieve your peak earning potential.

Will it be $300 or $3000? It’s your choice–not luck–not chance–but choice. Once you know how much you earn per article and per hour, you will have complete control over your earnings. Not only will you sell more articles, but you’ll be able to plan your income and even make a full-time living if you choose.

If you haven’t already done so, please sign up at Constant Content. To reward members for referrals, CC passes along part of their cut. Don’t worry, you still earn the same amount per article! Obviously, I want you to succeed, so feel free to ask me for individual help, either through this contact form or through the Constant Content author forums.

Download the Free Constant Content Earnings Tracker

I created this tool to help me take control of my earnings at Constant Content. I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me!

Download Earnings Tracker

(You can open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, Numbers or any similar program.)

How to make your first sale–guaranteed

I’ve showed you the proof that writers are making good money on Constant Content, I’ve explained how to calculate projected sales and earnings, I’ve given you 7 specific strategies to start selling work, and I’ve provided you with the free Constant Content Earnings Tracker.

Even after all this, maybe you’re still unconvinced that it’s worth the time and energy to write articles for Constant Content. If so, how about this: if you submit (and have accepted) 1 article a day for the next 30 days and don’t sell anything, I will personally buy an article from you. (To take advantage of this offer, you need to sign up for Constant Content through one of the links on this page. However, I know you will definitely sell articles if you do this, so I’m not at all worried about having to purchase an article from you. )
Did this post help you sell articles on Constant Content? Post your comments below.

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