For centuries, writers have done more or less the same thing: sold their work to publishers who printed and distributed it. The Internet has changed all that. Instead of depending on publishers to take the risk and reap the reward of publication, writers can publish their own work online. This is different than being a "content provider," an underpaid writer who furnishes verbiage to existing sites. This is being an entrepreneur. The writer becomes the publisher. It's not only possible today, it's already happening.

A lot of writers struggle to cope. Traditional publishing opportunities are drying up at the same time that Internet writing assignments, though plentiful, are paying even less than the peanuts writers used to earn.

Some writers give up, others move on to different careers, and a few others hack their way as best they can through the new jungle of low-paying, fast turnaround gigs.

This might sound glum, and, indeed, many writers have taken it so. But rather than seeing the new content provider role as a demotion, what if writers peeked behind the curtain? The fact is that the world, for writers at least, has changed.

Not since Johannes Gutenberg has it been so important to be a writer. The change is something that even Marshall McLuhan could never have predicted.

The shift is that writers who are willing to think a bit differently about writing can now supercharge their careers both in terms of income and opportunity.

The Internet has allowed virtually anyone with a computer, a few bucks, and some basic skills to do business globally. It was not very long ago that even starting a simple business required a considerable investment: you needed a storefront, some employees, products. For publishers, it meant investing a lot of money to print, produce, bind, and then distribute a magazine every month. If you sold ceiling fans, you had to have inventory, a retail establishment, employees, and probably a delivery truck.

Now you need a website.

I do not for one minute want to downplay the fact that this takes a lot of hard work. And there are numerous Internet business models, many of which do require a significant investment, inventory, and distribution. But it is still not like it used to be.

Some websites function more like magazines, with highly focused information for a special keyword set. This is what happened to the traditional print magazine: it's a niche website. In the old days, a magazine had to be printed on paper, delivered to newsstands and super markets, and sold. Publishers also pounded the pavement to sell advertising. Now a website conveys the same information, but there are no printing or distribution costs.

Those sites make money by selling advertising. They can do it individually (by working out deals with related businesses) or they can sign up for a program like Google AdSense and just paste some code in their website. Google sells the ads, so the Internet publisher does not even have to worry about that.

Many lucrative websites today do not sell physical products, but rather sell information. Information products can range from online courses to e-books to reports or physical CDs and DVDs. Whether you want to learn how to raise llamas, homeschool your children, or understand the commodities market, there are information products for you.

That's where writers come in. So far, most of the people who have understood this tremendous shift in business models have been geeks, Internet guys, or dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneurs. With only a few exceptions, they are not people who know how to write.

They tend to want to out-source their information products. Think of that! They build a site about how set up a home-based business importing from China and then hire somebody to write about importing from China and hire another person to write a book on the subject, and hire yet another to write some articles that get strung together as an online course. They then start selling that stuff and move on to another niche topic.

These Internet business people found out that even writers with experience were willing to work for low pay and new writers had to. They pick up bargains by buying writers' "content" at bargain basement prices.

But what if a writer suddenly stopped being a writer and instead considered his or her output as potential information products rather than work-for-hire articles? What if that same writer got a bit of entrepreneurial spirit and launched a website rather than tried to scare up some jobs for articles?

Writers who once wanted to get assignments writing about race cars or horse dressage or traveling to Hawaii can now launch websites on the subject. Of course, it's not quite as easy as it sounds. Despite what some folks will tell you, starting and maintaining any successful business requires a lot of hard work, perseverance, and some sense of the marketplace. Writers can't just transform themselves overnight into millionaires.

But think of it another way. Writers have never had a better opportunity to re-invent themselves as Internet business people and put their writing talent to good use while earning better money than they ever could have as a "mere" writer.

Jo Ann LeQuang is a writer who owns her own business and has mostly given up on traditional writing paradigms in favor of business writing and writing for online businesses (which she also owns). To see just how great an edge today's writers have in information marketing online, go to workingonlinewriter.com