Need help: Article writing 101

13 replies
That's right guys, I'm here to lower the IQ of WF with my obsenely ignorant understanding of the world of I.M. It's probably important to know that I'm not deluded enough to assume that you can make money by simply starting at a computer screen, I know it takes work!

I'm writing to try and perfectly understand how to put the art into articles.

Articles really appeal to me for a number of reasons:
  1. Lack of financial investment. I'm a student, enough said?
  2. I LOVE to write. I don't care about what but it would help if it was something I was interested in!
  3. I can't think of a better way to earn money than sitting in front of my computer and working from the ease of my extremely cramped, smelly accomodation, complete with a scenic view of the local Manchester kebab shop!
  4. It's really the only thing in the I.M world that I have been able to grasp whatsoever. For a student I sure am easily overwhelmed in the breadth of information.
  5. Given my other committments - going out & drinking, studying, going out & drinking, the gym, going out & drinking and maintaining a long-term relationship - having something that I can make decent money from (while devoting only a few hours a day) is very appealing... Did I mention going out & drinking?
  6. I'm NOT looking for $1,000 a day! In fact if I made this is in a month I'd be over-the-moon - of course the equivalent in £ would be nicer.
I'm sure I can think up some more perks, but I think it's time I moved on to the actual topic at hand!

Here is my basic understanding of a decent article-writing scheme, based purely around affiliate marketing, of course:
  • These guys seem to be the top dogs for article submission:
articlesbase.com
ezinearticles.com
squidoo.com
hubpages.com
goarticles.com
  • QUALITY and QUANTITY are paramount in successful articles. By this I mean the quality or the article must be decent in order to initially be published and subsequently read, and quantity is important for the obvious reason that the more you've got, the more likely it is you're gonna get some decent traffic!
  • You can make money by linking to affiliate products which are related to your article (I'd use ClickBank), I guess it'd also be possible to use AdSense here?
Now here are my problems - it is important to bare in mind at this point that I am not joking. I really am this stupid - even after quite a bit of reading, I might add:
  • The concept of unique articles. Now as far as I can tell, these are articles that are unique to the individual publishing sites. In other words, you can only submit them once, to only one site. Now it's not this that throws me, rather the fact that I see people in the same threads talking about submitting both unique and non-unique (for lack of a better term) articles. How does this balance work?
  • I understand that ezine doesn't tolerate affiliates being linked into your articles. I've heard the term landing page thrown about a few times. I really don't know what to do here. Would I set up a blog relevant to my article's niche and place the affiliate links in there - providing the link to my blog in my article and getting people to find the affiliates from there?
  • The concept of backlinks. Is this simply providing links to other articles you've written within the same niche? If so, how is this done? In your resource box? If you provide such backlinks, where would your affiliate or blog link go?
  • Keywords! I understand these are vitally important to your articles getting found. How do you find and implement these? When you've found a set phrase that attracts people do you then proceed to put it in your title and then try and include the same exact phrase into the rest of your article, without appearing spammy?
I'm sure I'm still oblivious to a lot. Nevertheless, the read is over. Congrats if you made it this far!

Once again I'd like to apologise for any offense caused by my severe lack of know-how.

I'd also like to say a huge thankyou to anyone who can provide help for me. For some reason I've found myself heavily into my overdraft and I can't figure out why... Is it the studying? The gym? Must be the girlfriend....

Not only is this a desire to make money for university, but it also gives me the opportunity to develop these skills into something that I can, with any luck, rely on as a primary source of income in future.

Once again a huge thankyou, and repeated apologies,

LookAlive
#101 #article #writing
  • Profile picture of the author Intrepreneur
    The overdraft isssues is the "going out & drinking"... right?

    It seems by your post you can write so there's a plus. One or two good clients and you'll have a good outlook on spending an hour or so a day making cash with your writing.

    On that note that's the only way I could realistically see making any guaranteed sustainable income in a short space of time. Because the whole article marketing thing is actually a toughie too so be wary of "article marketing secrets" and "overnight article marketing riches" because realistically it's not the "article marketing" but the niche domination that counts.

    There's also other factors one must look into and it's not found behind some salespage with a massive promise headline. For you I reckon it's lack of precise information on how you could get up and running and earning fast. The rule applies, stick to what you know best for fast riches because everything else is a learning curve. Something I never realised for a long time but what came with it (new knowledge) was helpful al the same.

    If you can assure yourself what exactly you would like to do, then you'll find the money because it's that easy to go out and market something you are sure of.
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  • Profile picture of the author LookAlive
    Thanks a lot for the advise!

    I've taken it all on board and have this thread subscribed for referance.

    I may have also forgot to mention that I'm not deluded enough to assume that there is a "get-rich-quick" scheme. In fact, I'm more than willing to accept a month of consistent article writing before I see even £1 in my account.

    I just want to make sure I do it the right way to appeal to people. Devoting the time and eventually getting something out of it is my driving force. I'm afraid that devoting a large amount of time to something, only to find out it was all in vain spells out defeat in the I.M world for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author LookAlive
    I'm /bump my empty head against this thread.

    Any more tips guys?
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  • Profile picture of the author LookAlive
    If someone could help out with one problem in particular that would be great. In regards to the topics, themes, niches - what have you - of the articles, I'm not entirely sure on how to maximise the efficiency of these?
    Say I write 5 articles a day, ideally should I aim for all of these to be in the same niche? Also, how many would ideally be unique and so only submitted once.

    It truly is the precise information that I'm missing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Liam Hamer
      Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you on having a fantastic attitude You've clearly done your homework, read around, researched and as a result you have a very good mindset. If you are prepared to learn and take action, then there's no reason why you can't make some good money from IM. Here's some of my answers to the questions you posed:-

      Keyword research - the Google Keyword Tool is more than enough, and is free. Think of a few topics you can write about, and for each one simply type in a broad keyword related to it. Before you get into SEO and all that, I suggest you use the keyword tool to see what terms are in demand - i.e terms that people are searching for and niches they are spending money in. From the broad keywords you find you can start to target sub niches - for example if your broad term was 'weight loss' you can target something related with less competition such as 'weight loss benefits'. Weight loss is probably a bad example because it is an extremely competitive niche, but hopefully you get the idea.

      Keyword use in your articles - if you are looking to rank your articles in the search engines, I'd personally recommend you put your keywords in your article title, and once every 100-150 words or so. As you said, try not to make your use of the keywords look too spammy - make it look as natural as possible to the reader.

      Backlinks - a backlink can be to anything of yours - a site/blog or another article for example. Your anchor text(the text of your clickable link) is key here. Say you had a website called dogtrainingsecrets.com, and you were targeting the keyword phrase 'dog training secrets' - you would want to have that term as your anchor text at the end of your article. For example - For more dog training secrets click here. There are masses of ways of backlinking your sites or articles - social bookmarking, blog commenting, profile backlinks and MUCH more. Read the SEO section of this forum for lots of info. One point to note - an article you submit to an authority site(for example, Ezine Articles) is often easier to rank high in the search engines via backlinks than your own site if your site is brand new. In time though, when you have built your site, you can rank content on your own site highly too if you do things right.

      Unique/Not unique - despite what you may have heard, duplicate content is a myth. You could post the same article to 100 article directories and not have a problem(except with maybe Ezine Articles), but in my opinion you should at least mix up your titles, bodies and resource boxes some when submitting to multiple directories/sites.

      I hope this helps, there are people here with WAY more knowledge and experience than me, but I hope these basic tips help some. The very best of luck, as I said earlier - sounds like you have the right attitude
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      • Profile picture of the author abdin66
        Thanks Liam, that was very informative and easy to understand. I have been looking into writing articles and LookAlive's queries and your answers have given me a lot of insight.

        Thanks to both of you.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        LookAlive, for someone who keeps claiming he's stupid, you ask some pretty smart questions. You can string words together in a way that makes sense and you have a decent sense of humor. Sorry, make that 'humour'...

        As was mentioned, writing for others on assignment is one way to bring in some fairly reliable income. Just beware of the '10 articles for $10' offers out there. With your skill, you should be able to make much more.

        Do a search here on the forum for "freelance writing" and pay particular attention to what Bev Clement says (along with a few others you'll quickly identify).

        Tell the g/f you're staying in a couple of nights and join the War Room. You'll find a lot more good stuff. Don't just focus on the free offers - there's a lot of gold in the older stuff, especially the stuff old enough to make the trip from the old stuff. Allen Says handpicked a lot of that stuff personally.

        One last bit of advice...

        Pick a site, free blog, whatever, that becomes your play site and laboratory. It's a site you don't depend on for income, but rather a place to try stuff out and have fun with.
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        • Profile picture of the author Kay King
          When anyone asks about "writing" these days it is assumed they want to write as a freelancer.

          From what the OP has asked I have the impression he's asking about writing content articles for his own blogs or sites.

          Clearly the writing itself isn't a problem - so search for specific info here on keyword research and niche research. Visit sites in some of the signatues here and look at the content - go to EZA and look at some content by expert writers there who have submitted decent articles.

          Put it together and don't over analyze it. You choose a product,do keyword research, start a blog or site and write content for it. Write and submit articles and you'll learn as you go.

          Although there are a lot of posts here by those who suggest writing for others and who are trying to make money writing for others - my suggestion is to write for yourself first.

          Here's a good starting point for planning an article campaign to promote your sites. Don't worry about the "bum" part - just look at the article campaign structure and plan.

          Bum Marketing Method - Free Traffic Tips

          This thread from a few months ago by TimG has some good info - he is a veteran at building a business through article marketing.

          http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...rated-but.html

          kay
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    • Profile picture of the author Intrepreneur
      Originally Posted by LookAlive View Post

      If someone could help out with one problem in particular that would be great. In regards to the topics, themes, niches - what have you - of the articles, I'm not entirely sure on how to maximise the efficiency of these?
      Say I write 5 articles a day, ideally should I aim for all of these to be in the same niche? Also, how many would ideally be unique and so only submitted once.

      It truly is the precise information that I'm missing.
      Hit me up on Skype. I will help you resolve your thinking. I'll PM you my skpe addy. Speak soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author dreamer111
    i agree with your thoughts..
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  • Profile picture of the author LookAlive
    Wow, this sure has got a lot of feedback since I've been offline!

    Thanks a bunch for all the helpful information! Every single person who has posted here has helped me learn so much more.

    Intrepeneur thank you so much for the offer, but my university actually blocks programmes such as skype, msn etc. for reasons that are beyond me.

    Again, a huge thanks guys!

    EDIT: I'd also like to say that I did attempt PM'ing you guys back, but I need a higher post count before I can do so!
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  • Profile picture of the author Sparhawke
    Not sure what to say here now, but posting just to bookmark it for later
    Signature
    “Thinking is easy, Acting is difficult
    And to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world ~ Goethe”
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