Why I Stick with Triond as an Online Writing Site

For those who might not know, Triond is an online site where you can publish your writings, photos, videos and sounds for free, while getting paid to do so.

I recently commented on the Triond forums about why I stick with Triond when there are other writing sites available, many which pay better than Triond. I came up with three reasons why I stay with Triond, and I thought I’d expound upon those reasons here.

The freedom

Triond allows you to publish online just about anything, with very few limitations. You can’t plagiarize and you can’t publish something that’s already been published elsewhere, even if you should own the rights to the material. Triond also usually won’t allow excessive cursing in articles submitted to it, and graphic sexual and violent content are generally not accepted. I say “usually” and “generally” because sometimes it seems anything can get through Triond’s editors and automated features.

All that being said, Triond still has far fewer limitations than any of ther other online writing and publishing sites I’ve tried, used and in some cases continue to use.

For example, Bukisa doesn’t accept fiction. Triond does. I don’t publish a lot of fiction on Triond, despite the fact I’m also a fiction author, but every once in a while I’ll have an older short story I’ve never been able to place with a magazine or ezine, and I’ll want to go ahead and publish that story online. It’ll end up on Triond.

Other sites, like Helium, force you to have to write to particular topics. Of course you can try to create a topic, but that’s subject to approval and I’ve found Helium to be more trouble than it’s worth when it comes to creating topics. I continue to publish there, but only if I happen to have written something that already fits into the alread-provided parameters. I don’t go to Helium with an idea of starting from scratch and writing whatever I want.

And that’s what Triond does for me. It allows me to write whatever I want.

The payment plan

Some sites, such as Redgage and Gather, don’t pay you directly through Paypal or another online service or by check. Instead, Gather offers gift cards. Redgage offers a debit card. While I use both those sites, I find it preferable simply to have my earnings deposited into my Paypal account, which is what Triond does.

It’s true many other sites pay much better than Triond, which pays according to the number of views an article earns. But a large portion of those sites pay upfront fees only. Some of those upfront fees sound enticing when compared to the seemingly paltry sums one can earn on Triond. Some of those upfront fees are as high as $5, $10, $15 and sometimes more for a story. But once you’ve been paid that upfront fee, you no longer receive anything more for your writing. I don’t care for that. Triond might pay me less in the beginning, but in the long run I feel I’m being well-enough compensated.

Some places online, again looking at Helium, do offer some payment based upon the number of views earned by an article, but they also have a somewhat complicated payout plan that includes original articles and articles added to particular topics (though not all) chosen by Helium. Frankly, I don’t want to have to think about it that much. I just want to write, get viewers and get paid for it, and not have to try to treehorn my writing into certain topics that Helium or some other site considers advantageous to them (but not necessarily advantageous or of interest to me).

One last thing about money on Triond: You can also add advertising from Google’s AdSense program to your Triond articles. Believe me, it is well worth it. By using AdSense, I more than double the amount of money I make from Triond, and most other online writing sites don’t provide for using AdSense (though some do).

The starting-off point

Okay, Triond doesn’t pay much, but its payment plan is simple enough and hardly any restraints are forced upon my writing interests.

So what’s my third reason for sticking with Triond? Because it’s a great place to begin promotions. Since Triond only publishes original material, any of my articles appearing on Triond have been published there first before anywhere else. Sounds limiting? It’s not, mainly because Triond provides easy connections to tons and tons of other places for linking back to your Triond articles, which brings in viewers (and thus more money). Stumblupon is one such place, as is Reddit. I also prefer to use Xomba and SheToldMe. There are tons of other sites that can be utilized for linking to your Triond articles, including socializing sites such as Facebook, Twitter and even the online classifieds site Craigslist.

It also doesn’t hurt to have your own blog, or maybe even a series of blogs. Once your articles have been published on Triond, you can republish those articles on your blog. Then you can link from the blog back to your Triond articles, and vice versa. Then link to other blogs. The list could keep growing and growing. Link, link, link. That’s one big key to bringing viewers to your Triond articles. You could even use sites like YouSayToo where you can bring your blogs together in one space for promotional or social purposes.

The ideas for linkage are nearly endless, only limited by your imagination and knowledge of what’s available out there on the World Wide Web. Triond provides plenty of opportunities for you to link to other sites and blogs, but with some thought you can discover even more places for making connections.

Remember, Triond is just the beginning. What happens from there is up to you.

Related links

Promote Your Writing by Promoting Others

Four Places Online to Publish Your Ebook for Free

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