New Career Path?

 A few days ago I joined the Yahoo! Contributor Network.  It's a site that allows you to submit articles, creative writing pieces, etc. to be reviewed by editors and subsequently (assuming what you have written is any good) published on any one of the Yahoo! sites or on an affiliate site.  Anyways, I said what the heck and submitted a few articles, a poem and a creative writing piece; 5 writings in all.

The idea behind this is if Yahoo! likes what they have read they will offer you money up front for your piece, which you can choose to accept, and once your work has been published you also make money from the traffic generated to your site.  Sounds pretty good, right?

For kicks I submitted the writings mentioned above and waited a few days before receiving some emails telling me Yahoo! had published 3 of my works: two articles and a poem.  I have to admit, I was pretty stoked.  It's one thing to self-publish my work here and on the other website I frequent, but to have someone actually review what I've written and deem it good enough for publishing on a major website is very humbling... to say the least.

The downside to this whole experience so far is that the writings I submitted had already been "published" elsewhere and are therefore not original - hence I was not liable for any upfront payments... I will only get paid based on the traffic to these sites.

Not to be deterred (and still excited by this new venture), I set out last night to write a fresh, original article.  After a few hours of research, writing and editing I submitted my new piece.  This time I am even more nervous.  Is it good enough?  Will they like it?  And if they do want to publish it how much will they offer?

Could this be a new career path?  Honestly, I have no idea.  I would have to write many, many more read-worthy articles and build a following of sorts to truly see any real revenue generated.  In the end I guess I am still getting to do what I love... and maybe that's all that matters.