I am a former high school English teacher and returning writer after a ten year hiatus and am trying to get all the dust off my pen (computer keyboard).

The online world of writing jobs does appear to pay so cheaply that I don't understand one thing. How is anyone supporting themselves, including the originating company?

One excellent commenter here, pheelyks, mentioned that he or she can research/write four pages per hour, or 1200 words. I am not sure if that means all citations are also done and are correct in the bibliography. That would be $40 per hour on the average.

At that rate, pheelyks says he or she can earn $1000 per week in the busy times, which is about six months out of the year. I believe the average rate is $10 per page for a new writer on certain sites, and each page must have 300 words. So is this writer working five hours per day, five days per week, at $10 per page?

Do you agree or disagree with the ability to produce four quality, ready to submit, pages of noted research content within one hour? I am a pretty fast typist, reader and note-taker and can organize in my head on the run, but that production rate seems a bit of a push if quality is an issue.

Thank you for your response.