Making money online generally requires two things: a lot of patience and a lot of writing. I can’t help you with the first, but I can help with the latter.
You see, I have been writing for most of my life and have only recently begun to monetize it. This usually involves either creating your own website and pasting affiliate links and advertisements on it (kind of like this blog) or submitting your writing to somebody else’s website, like Associated Content or Review Stream. In both cases, you will need to back-up your content and anything else you have done for the site.
The solution is simple on blogs powered by a system like WordPress, but for sites to which you submit content and it is published, what do you do? I present to you the ultimate writing application list.
Google Docs
Google Docs is a free, online, backed-up solution for writing anything. It can also accept Microsoft Word documents and process them, and documents can be exported to popular desktop writing applications and word processors.
Zoho Office
Zoho is a free online office service that provides a lot more than just a word processor, including an organizer. They also offer a lot of additional services for a fairly low rate.
Windows Live Writer
I am writing this post in Windows Live Writer. It can work with nearly all blog systems that work with the Atom or XML-RPC publishing protocols, including Blogspot, WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal, and many more. Note it is only for blogging, rather than article writing.
Notepad++
If you need to paste directly into something that does not require (or allow) HTML tags, you will need to write your article directly in the field on the website or use plain text. Notepad++ is more for programmers with its syntax highlighting abilities, but I keep many things, including my to-do list, in plain text and edit using Notepad++.
If you have trouble with distractions, Darkroom is for you. Based off Mac-only WriteRoom, Darkroom is a full-screen plain-text editor, which means you can work on your content without distraction. I encourage you to use it if you are working on something lengthy and have trouble with distractions. Also check out similar (with more features) Q10.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a best-of, which is why it is not a 100-list (plus, I get distracted easily – I’m not using Darkroom). Whatever your writing needs, these apps will get you through the trouble.
Oh, and for the record, Microsoft Word or Open Office do not make this list because they include XML markup, which is a huge no-no for online writing – especially for pasting content into fields.
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