I suspect that many freelance writers have stayed clear of the web because so much of what is written is available for free.  If you don't have to pay to get it, then how can you make a buck producing it? 

With the growth of article marketing, however, this situation is changing rapidly.  Of course, the money paid per word isn't great.  But since so much of what is needed is simply information arranged in an original way a half-decent wordsmith can really crank it out.

It's interesting that aside from the opportunities that bloggers now have to write stuff for others on their own blogs, they can also be paid to write guest posts on others' blogs, or even whole blogs for individuals or businesses.

I doubt that this opportunity boom is going to go bust, since the search engines will always be content hungry.  And as they become more and more advanced, they'll only get hungrier!