Websites to remember for selling your articles

I've been writing online for just the past 7 months or so, but I continue to have jobs available to me and I'm quite pleased with the residual income that's come as a result of my efforts.

Probably the hardest part to starting a freelance writing career (although in my case I would not yet suggest it is a career) is to find projects and/or clients.

There are a number of websites you should check out that are legitimate and (most importantly) free to join.  These sites will either directly or indirectly get you potential clients and/or projects. 

The first is to check out freelancewriting.com.  Several months ago this site was not so highly ranked in the search engines, and it took me awhile to find it.  This isn't the case anymore: a simple search for "freelance writing" in Google will give you their site for the first hit. 

In any event, this site is linked with several job feeds for writers (both online and offline jobs).  You ought to be able to find at least a couple of prospects within an hour or so of researching.  I've found two of my most highly paying opportunities here (one for an MMO-related startup and another involving academic and interest research/content development)

The second place to check out is www.associatedcontent.com.  This site will pay you for submitting content on virtually any topic.  Sounds great, but do realize that in terms of the industry standard for freelance writing, the initial payout is poor to say the least.  The authors who make any kind of significant income on this site are individuals who market their articles and write extremely keyword-dense articles.  They end up receiving high performance bonuses (based on page views), but realize that while this strategy is viable, you're probably going to have to say goodbye to creativity (to an extent) and will have to devote a lot of your time to marketing.  I use associated content for basically quick cash if I just want several bucks, and (more importantly) as a place to display the kinds of articles I'm capable of writing.  It's not a scam at all, just realize we're not talking about writing for TIME magazine here.

Third, go to the Digital Point Forums and head to the "buying/selling" thread.  There are many stories of individuals selling heaps of their originally-written articles for a hefty sum.  If you go this route, you'll probably want to sell your articles categorically or by topic name.  Again, because most if not all of your potential buyers care about search engine ranking above intriguing, articulate, and/or novel content, you'll have to tell your educated and/or formal self to back off a bit. 

I hope that can get you started.  To be honest, the first site I mentioned, FreelanceWriting.com, should have the majority of your prospects.  Note that FreelanceWriting.com is itself a directory of sorts, not a place that directly provides clients and/or jobs.  It's just that Freelancewriting.com offers the most legitimate and, in my opinion, the best job and job feeds for beginning writers.