Article Writing Idea

[PascalE]

I completely suck in writing articles – no skills whatsoever.
Not wanting to pay a writer, I tried several tools/software products for rewriting articles but was not achieving any satisfactory results.
Today I was thinking to try the following:
Using Yahoo Answers create an article with a title like
“My Keyword or Phrase – Most commonly asked question and answers”
Than I write 1-2 general sentences about the subject followed by a list of questions and answers which I copy and paste from Yahoo Answers.
My question is, has anyone ever tried this?
Would this be classed as duplicate content by Google/Article Directories?
Would article directories actually accept something like this as an article or am I waising my time again?

[talfighel]

Don't say that you suck in writing articles. change your mind set completly. Start writing and submit what ever comes to mind. You will do great.

Again, change your mindset and tell yourself that you can do this.

Tal

[Andy1750]

Hi Pascal,

I think that this would probably constitute breach of copyright. The only way that you could conceivably do this would be to read whatever you find on Yahoo answers and rewrite in your own words.

Anyway, having read your post it seems to me like you write quite well. Your articles don't need to be out of this world. If you're just doing it for backlinks then it doesn't really matter what you right. if you're doing it for direct traffic then, OK, it's more important. However, just think out loud and write down your thoughts. The only key is don't give away too much. Keep your readers hungry for more information so that they follow the link to your site.

Best of luck,

Andy

[naphets66]

I think you could slip it past some article directories, but I wouldn't really claim this content as your own. Why not try something like Dragon Naturally Speaking. There is a post on this forum about writing articles really fast just by speaking.

[PascalE]

English isn't my first language, so writing articles in English on subjects I know nothing about is not easy for me.
Thank good for the spell checker in Firefox - saves me a lot of embarrassment when posting on forums
I guess I am just looking for an easy way out.Writing an article for several hours seems such a waist of time to me.
Will have a look at Dragon software - rather expensive but still seems like a good idea. I am also running Vista on one of my computers and might try the speech to text function and see how it goes.
Thanks for your time guys.

[TheRichJerksNet]

Hi Pascal,
Change your mind-set, first and foremost you can do it and you must have faith in that and live by that..

If you have ever answered a buddies email on how to do something then you can write an article. For example:

Let's say you buddy emails you asking you how to use the new warcraft controls for the new version of online warcraft. You send him an email back and explain in basic details how to handle the new controls. Well guess what ?? You have just written an article, you may need to tweak it or add to it but point is creating an article is not very much different.

James

[PascalE]

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

Hi Pascal,
Change your mind-set, first and foremost you can do it and you must have faith in that and live by that..

If you have ever answered a buddies email on how to do something then you can write an article. For example:

Let's say you buddy emails you asking you how to use the new warcraft controls for the new version of online warcraft. You send him an email back and explain in basic details how to handle the new controls. Well guess what ?? You have just written an article, you may need to tweak it or add to it but point is creating an article is not very much different.

James

Yea, you guys make it sound soooo easy
I get the general point but trust me, for some people it's not that easy. For example, I am starting to promote a new niche at the moment - ear ringing/tinnitus. Great little niche I believe but what the hell do I know about ear ringing problems. Doing research alone will take me several hours and than I get very frustrated thinking about the time I waisted. That's normally the point where I give up - hopeless

[TMG Enterprises]

PascalE, if you truly feel you can't write articles, why don't you focus on something else? I know that article marketing is the hot thing at the moment but there are plenty of other directions to go in. Although, from reading your posts, I do think you may be selling yourself short. I've seen native English speakers do far worse.

Tina G

Edited to add this in response to your last post - I can understand how you feel about doing a ton of research but you need to look at that a bit differently. An hour of research can turn up enough material to write many articles. You shouldn't have to repeat the research over and over.

[KarenMcG]

PascalE

I agree with Tina G and the others that have posted here. You've got great writing abilities. But it seems you're not quite convinced.

Also, you suggested that spending so much time on research is just a waste of your time. But really, it isn't! Just think how much you're learning about ear ringing/tinnitus (or any other subject you choose, for that matter). You'll be an expert in no time, too.

Karen

[TheRichJerksNet]

Originally Posted by PascalE
Yea, you guys make it sound soooo easy
I get the general point but trust me, for some people it's not that easy. For example, I am starting to promote a new niche at the moment - ear ringing/tinnitus. Great little niche I believe but what the hell do I know about ear ringing problems. Doing research alone will take me several hours and than I get very frustrated thinking about the time I waisted. That's normally the point where I give up - hopeless

Pascal trust me I am no writer, at-least I do not consider myself one. Have I written a darn good articles ? well yes but it is not as hard as you think once you learn the subject you are working on.

Do your research then write out a few paragraphs on what you have learned. Then create a title such as "Discover 5 Amazing Tips To Stop Ear Ringing" .. Look at your paragraphs and create the 5 tipes from there.. give it a summary and a conclusion then flow it into your resource box.

You would be surprised at how easy it really is and the more you do it the better your articles will get ...

James

[PascalE]

Originally Posted by TMG Enterprises

PascalE, if you truly feel you can't write articles, why don't you focus on something else? I know that article marketing is the hot thing at the moment but there are plenty of other directions to go in. Although, from reading your posts, I do think you may be selling yourself short. I've seen native English speakers do far worse.

Tina G

Edited to add this in response to your last post - I can understand how you feel about doing a ton of research but you need to look at that a bit differently. An hour of research can turn up enough material to write many articles. You shouldn't have to repeat the research over and over.

Thanks for the kind words Tina!
Reading about article marketing, there are so many other things I have to take in consideration apart from actually writing the dam thing. Choosing the write title, writing a resource box that actually converts into clicks and so on. My understanding is to be successful in article marketing there is a lot more to it that just researching and writing the article. By the time I get the hang of this, article marketing will be a thing of the past I am afraid.
Now, enough of my whining - thank you very much everyone for your comments - but I will keep thinking about an easier way to get this going. There must be another way for people like me

[jjpmarketing]

If you can make posts on forums... you can write articles. Just go through forums in your niche... look at the questions people ask... and then turnaround and write an article as an answer. It doesn't take much to crank out a few hundred words when answering someones question.

Don't copy and paste anything. Be unique and relevant to your niche. It doesn't have be a Pulitzer winning article... it just has to cover the subject matter at hand.

When you think about it, this post is almost 100 words long... so answer 3 posts per article and you should be good to go.

[rbabi18]

There must be something that you have great firsthand knowledge of that you can write about. That way it is not just writing an article, but a passionate way to communicate about what you know of. Everyone is an expert at something

[PascalE]

Great advice here from you guys - thank you very much to everyone!
Taking all the advice in account and doing some thinking the last few hours I came u with a great idea. Of cause I am an expert in one area - I am a professionally trained confectioner. I know everything just about every type of confectionery. There is something I can write about. Thinking now on creating a membership site with a monthly subscription where you get tips and guidelines on how to make your own confectionery or chose the best quality one and so one.
This is going into an unknown area for me in terms of creating a membership site and promoting it. I know this is a completely different subject now than my original question on this thread but would someone be interested in mentoring me to get a project like this of the ground?
Perhaps I should start a new thread for this.
Thanks for staying with me guys and let me know what you think.

[TheRichJerksNet]

I would wish you luck Pascal but also remember article marketing, bookmarking, rss submission, and etc is still part of promoting a membership website.

I think you should be pushing your own product and not some affiliate product but that is just my opinion. I think you are in the right direction just don't let things get in your way and slow you down, push forward and take action...

writing articles base on a confectionery topic could be your key ....


Wish you all the best

James

[PascalE]

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

I would wish you luck Pascal but also remember article marketing, bookmarking, rss submission, and etc is still part of promoting a membership website.

I think you should be pushing your own product and not some affiliate product but that is just my opinion. I think you are in the right direction just don't let things get in your way and slow you down, push forward and take action...

writing articles base on a confectionery topic could be your key ....


Wish you all the best

James

My mind s going on a hundred miles right now. So many ideas related to my new project. Have to start writing things down and get a plan for myself before I get lost
There are hardly any products available on clickbank related to confectionery so my own product is the way to go.
Thanks for your time James!

[TheRichJerksNet]

Welcome to Internet Marketing Pascal.. lol After 15+ years as a website developer my mind still goes in a million different directions and a million miles a minute ....

See you got something Clickbank don't have ..

James

[etmcl]

The Vista speech to text is definitely cheaper if you already have Vista than Dragon. I have tried it and find it extremely frustrating. I can't get it to recognize my voice and it ends up printing out gibberish.

[jjpmarketing]

Originally Posted by PascalE

There are hardly any products available on clickbank related to confectionery so my own product is the way to go.

Careful with that one. Just because there very few if any products related to that on clickbank doesn't necessarily mean its a good thing. Do your research and make certain it can be a profitable one. Don't just rely on clickbank... Do searches in Google to find out what other people are promoting via PPC/Adwords when you search using keywords related to that niche.

If you find very few people placing ads based on those keywords, then it might be too obscure of a niche. You could make a little money on it still... but it may not be worth investing lots of time and money into it.

If that is the case though, you could always expand the niche. Find similar niches that could fall into that same category and create a site dedicated to all of those niches.

Another thing... Clickbank may not be the best place for that niche. You might have to seek out independent affiliate programs. I didn't know what that was... but based on Google it has something to do with sweets or candy? If that is the case, I would check out all the candy manufacturers sites for affiliate programs. Amazon would be a good one too... I think they sell candy on their site. An eBay affiliate site would work as well... because I am sure there are lots of people selling stuff related to that niche on eBay. Cookbooks from Amazon might be another option.

You could seriously go in a million different directions with a niche like that.

[TLTheLiberator]

Perhaps you should have your articles written for you.

It won't cost you an arm and a leg and you can use the article in so many other ways other than just the article directories.

TL

[bluet]

Originally Posted by PascalE

Great advice here from you guys - thank you very much to everyone!
This is going into an unknown area for me in terms of creating a membership site and promoting it. I know this is a completely different subject now than my original question on this thread but would someone be interested in mentoring me to get a project like this of the ground?

I expect you can get lots of free advice here on the subject.

I am taking a paid course at the moment that is very good IMO. But not cheap I suppose, $27 a month, with 52 lessons if you go the whole year to complete the course. But it gets you started within a short time depending on your experience..

A course by Jimmy D. Brown, at membernaire.com, where you don't have to set up the usual type of site with scripts, etc. Using autoresponder, you just use email list that you create from sales pages, if you don't already have a good list, to subscribe members, and they get weekly emails from you with new links you give them to get the next "lesson" for their membership.

If you search for membernaire here, you will find a few people recommending it recently in some posts.

[PascalE]

Originally Posted by etmcl

The Vista speech to text is definitely cheaper if you already have Vista than Dragon. I have tried it and find it extremely frustrating. I can't get it to recognize my voice and it ends up printing out gibberish.

Yea, I noticed that as well with Vista - no good for me.

Originally Posted by jjpmarketing

Careful with that one. Just because there very few if any products related to that on clickbank doesn't necessarily mean its a good thing. Do your research and make certain it can be a profitable one. Don't just rely on clickbank... Do searches in Google to find out what other people are promoting via PPC/Adwords when you search using keywords related to that niche.

If you find very few people placing ads based on those keywords, then it might be too obscure of a niche. You could make a little money on it still... but it may not be worth investing lots of time and money into it.

If that is the case though, you could always expand the niche. Find similar niches that could fall into that same category and create a site dedicated to all of those niches.

Another thing... Clickbank may not be the best place for that niche. You might have to seek out independent affiliate programs. I didn't know what that was... but based on Google it has something to do with sweets or candy? If that is the case, I would check out all the candy manufacturers sites for affiliate programs. Amazon would be a good one too... I think they sell candy on their site. An eBay affiliate site would work as well... because I am sure there are lots of people selling stuff related to that niche on eBay. Cookbooks from Amazon might be another option.

You could seriously go in a million different directions with a niche like that.

Thanks for the advice. Done a bit a research and it's quite a profitable niche market apart from clickbank products. Will definitely check out some independent affiliate programs some of the manufactures might offer. I might even offer to set one up for them if they haven't got one. Amazon will be a great one for this niche as well.

Originally Posted by TLTheLiberator

Perhaps you should have your articles written for you.

It won't cost you an arm and a leg and you can use the article in so many other ways other than just the article directories.
TL

I hate spending money on things I potentially can do myself. I just have to get my ass into gear and get started.

Originally Posted by bluet

I expect you can get lots of free advice here on the subject.

I am taking a paid course at the moment that is very good IMO. But not cheap I suppose, $27 a month, with 52 lessons if you go the whole year to complete the course. But it gets you started within a short time depending on your experience..

A course by Jimmy D. Brown, at membernaire.com, where you don't have to set up the usual type of site with scripts, etc. Using autoresponder, you just use email list that you create from sales pages, if you don't already have a good list, to subscribe members, and they get weekly emails from you with new links you give them to get the next "lesson" for their membership.

If you search for membernaire here, you will find a few people recommending it recently in some posts.

Will have a look at the site but I don't think I wil have time for another task on a regular basis.
Thanks for the info!

[adamv]

I've used Yahoo Answers as a place to get ideas for articles but you should not simply copy and paste.

For one thing, that would be plagerism. In addition to that, you don't know if the people posting the answers know what the hell they're talking about so you would definitely want to do a little research and cross check any information found in those answers.