There is probably no easier way of earning extra money online. Yet many people ignore online writing and lose all that extra money, mainly because they get put off by those single digit dollar rates. $5 is a common one.

But even as you read this, more and more writers are making lots of extra money online and some are even making a living writing articles. Yes, they're doing it writing $5 articles and even $3 articles.

Writers were never meant to be good in math so let us make a brief comparison here between online writers earning lots of extra money with $5 articles and offline writers writing $500 articles to earn their extra money.

The $500 article writer starts off sending queries to several magazines. If they are really good at this marketing side of freelance writing (most writers are not), they will probably end up with about two assignments by the end of the week. That's $1,000, which is not bad, but hold your horses a while. The article is not yet written, some research will be required. Usually this will take two to three days per article, and only if the writer is lucky and is able to find sources and the information he needs quickly. So let us say that they will probably take a week to research and write the two $500 articles. The truth is that only very good and experienced writers can accomplish this.

The writer seeking to earn extra money from his writing (or worse still to make a living) will need another two weeks or so, sometimes much longer, for an editor to make a decision on the article and communicate this information to them. If they are extremely lucky, by the end of the month they'll have their $2,000 in extra money or income in their account. But as any experienced writer will tell you, it rarely happens quite like that. Inevitably there will be delays. Maybe the article will be sent back for a re-write or the editor will have a bad or really hectic week (happens all the time) and it will take longer. The list of usual and possible problems is too long to go into here.

Now let us see how the poor, desperate $5 per article writer is doing trying to earn extra money. If they can write fast, they will be doing 10-15 articles per day. (some writers do 20 comfortably). All the research is done online for articles ranging from 300 to 500 words. No delays in their efforts to earn extra money or make a living from their online writing. 15 articles per day will give a writer an income of about $2,250 in 30 days. That's very good extra money. And thanks to services like Paypal, many keyword writing programs pay shortly after the article has been delivered via email.

Granted, this may not be a lot of money, but it is excellent extra money, earned easily by a writer doing what they enjoy most - writing. And what a great way to launch a writing career even as you earn lots of extra money. From the reputation you build up over time, you can at the same time be targeting bigger writing jobs.

I started with $2.50cts articles. Mostly out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could really get paid and earn some extra money. Gradually I realized that a four-figure monthly income was easy to achieve. Later I was able to land $500 assignments (mainly from offline magazines, but everything was done online). Still $2.50cts online writing assignments remained my bread and butter for a long time. The rest is history.

You could be ignoring your big opportunity to earn easy extra money online from your writing, even as you find your feet as a writer. It's easy extra money if nothing else.

Christopher Kyalo makes a good regular income from online writing. Visit his writer's blog; http://100grandonlinewriters.blogspot.com. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com