When you're new to the Freelance Writing Business it can get frustrating.  There is just lots of competition to deal with for the both the beginner and the experienced writer. To avoid the brunt of the frustration you can make your life a little easier by following some simple steps.

Find a Few Sites Your Comfortable With

This is important because by following the editorial and style guidelines you'll be learning the ropes of content writing for the web and some SEO basics.  Even sites that pay just pennies are actually giving you so much more in the way of experience.

Save those articles, too!  You can use your best for sample writing for private clients that request a look at your work before hand.  Just make sure they know that they are for sample only and cannot be used!

My favorites:  Textbroker, London Brokers, eCopywriter, Break Studios  (which is more of a blogging site and really fun!) and Independent Publishing/Helpful.com (it seems as though they are going to try and compete with ehow.com

Don't Work For Free.  

It just makes you look unprofessional and desperate.  The client gets one over on you despite their claim that more work could arise out of it.  You didn't get into this business to work for free or look unprofessional so don't do it!

Companies that Pay Employees even to Train:  McDonalds, Walmart and the US military.

Revenue Sharing Sites are for Display and Samples

I've seen many people claim that they make hundreds, and in a lot of cases thousands from these sites, but they are the exception.  However, crafting work for these sites will provide you with "linkage".  That is, writing samples that actually have a URL and can look kindly upon you as samples with clients.

My favorite is Associated Content from Yahoo!  While some jobs do pay up-front and you will always be eligible for their page view payments the real benefit is getting something on their partner sites like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Shine.  These are viable, proven links that will impress any client.