By Debra L. Dragon

As the economy continues to cause stress for the majority of American’s, many people increase their efforts for finding additional income. Some people go out and get a second job in the evenings and/or weekends. Others turn their search to the internet in hopes of finally finally that “real” work at home opportunity amongst thousands of scams.

For people deciding to increase their income through online writing assignments, the best thing you can do to market yourself is to establish an online reputation as a writer. This doesn’t mean you have to have pages on Amazon.com showing your bestselling booklist, it just means you need to have a few articles online with your name on them as the author and a way to contact you if someone is interested in hiring you as a writer.

There are a variety of ways you can start establishing your online writing reputation, and most are either free or extremely inexpensive, including:

• Start and write a blog
• Become a writer on someone elses blog that will include a biography and contact information about yourself
• Write and distribute articles in article directories like ezinearticles.com
• Apply for writing jobs on freelance job sites, like rentacoder.com and getafreelancer.com

Freelance job sites are not only a good way to earn recognition as a writer, but as you complete work the buyers are able to give you a “rating”. This rating shows other buyers that you’ve completed work successfully and will help you secure additional jobs through the sites. In addition to the numerical rating that you have, buyers can leave comments and feedback. Hopefully, you will have completed the job above and beyond expectations and have gotten an excellent review! Hint: use your real name (or the name you plan to write under as your pen name) as your freelance site username. When someone searches for your name with one of the search engines, often the feedback and ratings will be returned in the first few listings giving prospective clients another way to find you.

As you start adding more of your writing work to various web sites and article directories online, you will begin increasing your chances of having potential clients find you and ask about your writing services. If they see your articles online and ty pe your name into a search engine – they’ll find your contact information (if you’ve provided it on your blog, website or author’s biography section – so you can see the importance of this step!) and email or call you to discuss their needs for writing work.

You can also use services that allow you to network and refer people to others, as well as receive referrals from people you’ve networked with. These websites are free to create profiles and offer additional exposure:

• Linkedin.com
• myspace.com
• merchantcircle.com
• facebook.com
• zerodegrees.com
• ryze.com

These are all free methods of networking and getting your name associated with “online freelance writer” – one of the first steps in establishing a successful online freelance writing career.

Debbie Dragon is the founder of MakeMoneyFromWriting.com where she teaches others about the online writing process, how to find freelance writing jobs, and securing their own writing businesses.