On May 25, 2010, the team running Qondio (you may remember them formerly known as Qassia), an article submission site, announced the release of yet another new project: Fortitude Magazine. Unlike their previous projects, the Fortitude has less of a focus on link building, and more of one on commissions paid per article. It’s undoubtedly made to target the article writing community, rewarding content providers with cash for their worthy submissions.

How Fortitude Pays Article Writers

According to the founders of Fortitude, an article with first-page placement will pay $10 minimum to $100 maximum. Note how I said “first-page placement.” In other words, your strategy will require you to write something meaningful…spare no sarcasm or ingenuity. From the original announcement email:

The concept may blow your mind. Are you sitting down? Get this: submit a piece about any topic, in any format, such essay, short story, poem, or even a rant, and you’ll get paid in cash the instant your piece is published on the Front Page. By cash we mean at least $10.

Much like any successful article, Fortitude articles pay well if they’re effective. A $10 minimum payout is nothing to dismiss, and it’s in your best interest as a writer to write articles about your favorite niches before others do. Either that, or just simply do it better than them.

Fortitude also pays for article referrals: harness your article-writing friend community on Facebook or elsewhere, and refer them over to Fortitude. The site will then pay you $1 per article published by the people you refer for the life of the site:

Fortitude’s success will depend on having a large number of members, so we also have a powerful referral program. Refer a writer and you get a commission, plus – are you still sitting down? – $1 for each piece published by that user on the Front Page, for life.

Fortitude is Not About SEO

Here’s where you’ll have to do some strategic analysis. Fortitude in and of itself is not an SEO tool, nor will it be worthy of your backlink brigade. It is, however, an income generating measure. Just like your AdSense-earning sites, your eBay & Amazon affiliate stores, and your e-mail campaigns (if you have any); Fortitude is another way to bring in residual income.

However, it isn’t yet another “set it and forget it” backlink source like eZine or GoArticles. Links are all set to NoFollow, and Fortitude makes it clear that this isn’t much of a repertoire to your backlink building campaign.
Content Accepted Into Fortitude

Your run-of-the-mill articles will be accepted, of course…but that’s not all: Fortitude also accepts poems, rants (kind of like what you’d post on your blog) or any other kind of testimonial, editorial, review or otherwise. It doesn’t matter what you submit on Fortitude when it comes to getting paid: all that matters is that it’s a worthwhile inclusion, regardless of what it is!

Read more about Fortitude here.