How writing for non-paying writing sites can be beneficial to your writing career!

For those of you out of curiosity I suppose, who decided to find out why an author herself would recommend to other writers to write for non-paying sites, or just to find out if she has lost complete control of her senses, I intend to give you the best advice you could ever get if you ever want to attain that coveted role, "The Published Author".

Before you give me a swift kick in the pants, let me explain.

More than half aspiring writers never reach the status of Stephen King for the simple fact that nobody knows they exist.

They submit their best pieces to those "paying" markets, only to get one more piece of graffiti for their rejection collection. Paying markets today are getting choosier and choosier. After all, it's they that have to dig into their pockets to pay these aspiring authors and only the cream of the crop, alias “the next Stephen King”, gets accepted.

Not long ago, I was the brunt of a little flame-war on one of the writing groups I subscribe to. One lady, who I would imagine was going through an extreme case of PMS, decided to berate me for asking writers to submit their writings to an anthology I was compiling and not get paid for doing so. I could certainly understand her concern, but what she failed to see was the fact that what monetary compensation these authors were not getting, what they were getting was EXPOSURE.

I was a writer-wannabe when I was writing at Themestream, now a defunct writing site. Nobody knew I existed when I started writing for them. Even though at the time they were paying us at 2 cents a hit, it was still considered a "non-paying" site. I did not write for the money. I wrote to learn the craft. I found that although my writings were not good enough for the "paying" markets, they were establishing my literary portfolio. I read every writing article I could get my hands on, especially the writings of Moira Allen and Rusty Fischer, now well-known and successful authors.

After Themestream died, I wrote a how-to piece and sent it to Writer’s Manual, a writing website sponsored by the WebSeed Publishing Company. Krista Barrett was a fellow Themestreamer, also, and accepted my article. Although this did not pay, I learned enough to know what will make you or break you in the literary world and that is having a “byline”. I owe it to Ms. Barrett for creating my first “byline” and giving me a start in my quest to become published.

A “byline” as you know is your publishing history. It tells a prospective editor what and where you have written. It shows the editor that you haven’t been sitting idly by waiting for your big break, that you were making it happen.

After my first accepted publication credit, there was no stopping me. I was on a roll. I started submitting to other non-paying sites. Each time a piece was accepted, I chalked it up to having another byline. One by one, they added up.

With a few publishing credits under my belt, I decided to take the plunge and submit to one of the “paying” markets. I submitted another how-to article to Writers-Exchange.com and was pleasantly surprised when Sandy Cummins wrote to me with an acceptance letter. Wow, I thought. I’ve made it. Would Ms. Cummins have accepted me if I had no bylines? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly it helped.

The point I am trying to get across is, in order to get yourself noticed, non-paying sites are your best bet. Until you reach that point when you finally become a published author, you have to get out and let the world see what you can do first. Because non-paying sites do not have to compensate their authors, they are more lenient to accepting submissions. Creating your byline and creating exposure for yourself is the most important thing you can do for yourself in order to become a published author.

So, far those nay-sayers who condemn the non-paying markets, all I have to say is that without these markets, I would not be where I am today. I have my own writing site, a children’s ebook, and have been published all over the web, paying and non-paying. I owe it to these non-paying sites for giving me that chance, that one hope, to become what I had dreamed of all my life and that is a published author. Now, for me, it is not so much as the byline I am after, it is the EXPOSURE. If nobody reads my writings, how will they buy my books?

Go ahead, submit to these markets! Let the world see what a great writer you are! What are you waiting for? While you are waiting for those paying markets to accept your brilliant masterpieces, you are creating a byline for yourself and on your way to seeing your dreams come true !