The web is setting new standards for severely underpaying writers. This blog is a great example: I don't get paid anything at all. There are a number of websites aggressively developing systems that help writers earn as little as 1 cent per word all the way up to 5 cents a word.

To get an understanding of what a huge rip-off this is, the National Writers Union does a survey and publishes a report of rates. It seems like the going rate is around $60 an hour for any kind or writing. So, unless you're writing 6,000 words an hour with ease, you're not breaking even.

That said, here are links to some of the top destinations where aspiring hacks can write for peanuts.

about.com
associatedcontent.com
helium.com
ehow.com
suite101.com
examiner.com
ezinearticles.com

Part of the problem with revshare agreements on these sites is that it's so opaque. Adsense pays pretty well, ranging from a nickel a click to up to a $3 or $4 for some placements, but these writing sites don't pay out at nearly that rate.

Some sites pay by pageviews. I've started putting up pages with revshares to see what the rates are, and, so far, Associated Content pays around .15 cents per page view. (That's $0.0015, not fifteen cents.)

Other sites, like eHow and Helium, pay out only after authors accumulate money. So, if you put up a few articles, it can take months (or longer) before you accumulate enough money to get a payout.

Some sites, like Helium and Examiner, take ownership of the articles. This means that you can't easily resell them to another party. Other sites, like Associated Content and eHow, don't take ownership, so you can control if the article is altered or removed.

These online sites are a rip off, but they can help you experiment with "SEO writing", or writing tailored for web search engines. You can find the hot topics and target those. You can also re-post your articles to the different sites, and interlink the stories, to generate new traffic. These sites generally have a high PageRank, so, linking from a story on a site like eHow to your personal site/blog will raise your search engine rank.

A better way to make money is with AdSense to place ads on your site. This site makes around $50 a year. At one point, it was starting to look like $100, but, traffic dropped off and high-value clicks declined. Traffic is low - around 140 visitors per day.

Worst of all, the traffic is the worst kind - poor, college educated, male, computer nerds (due to the content of the site). A click from one of these guys is worth a lot of money, but they don't click on ads. These are the guys who boast that they've never, ever clicked on an ad (they're Asian too - see domain). The big clickers are 30+ year old women. Just ask around - every 30 year old woman has clicked on one ad, and the older they get, the more they've clicked.

Before you even consider blog ads sites, you need real traffic, like 30,000 pageviews per month at the bottom end. Look at the stats for Federated Media. You can guess the revenue by reading the ad rates, traffic and visiting the site. A 125x125 ad costs around $7. At 30kppm, you make $210 a month from one ad. The tall ad earns $25 a month, so that makes around $700 a month.

If you look at FM, you might figure out the real money maker - don't write, but aggregate. Aggregators are like editors who pick out interesting content, and promote it. They read all day, and post all the time. That's because, on the web, it's hard to find stuff and keep up on stuff. There's just too many suckers writing for free!