Article Writing Master Class – Ideas
by Allison Whitehead
Allison is a frequent writer for Constant-Content.com where you can buy original articles and original website and blog content (usually from $20-$50 and each article 300-1000 words) on every conceivable topic.

Ideas are behind every successful article sale.  Ideally we will have an abundance of them in reserve, so we will never be short of articles to write.

Here are some pointers to ensure you’ll never run out:

1 – Where to find writing ideas.

Answer – everywhere.  But the best and most convenient place to look is in your immediate vicinity.  You can get ideas from friends, family, your own experiences, work, hobbies, your daily newspaper, magazines, problem pages, and so on.

The key is to start being aware of your surroundings, and opening your eyes to the possibilities of the things you see.  Asking yourself ‘what if’, ‘why’, ‘how’ and so on, is also a good way to get ideas, but you need to train yourself to spot what’s all around you.

2 – Developing article topics.

It’s not enough to look at something and think you want to write about it.  You need to develop that idea.

What angle do you want to approach it from?  If you’re writing about teabags, to pick a mundane subject, are you going to write about a specific type, or how they are made, or how tea was discovered, or how many people drink it compared to coffee, or is it good for you?

Writing about teabags in general is too unfocused to make a knock-em-dead article.  Narrow the focus – specifics are more interesting.

3 – Angling your writing ideas to a specific market.

Ten different magazines could do an article on the same subject, but they would all be vastly different, because they would all be angled to a different readership, and this is the rule to bear in mind when offering an article for sale.

Sometimes the article idea will come first, and you can look for a suitable magazine to target; other times you will find a magazine you would like to write for and think of an appropriate idea for it.  Whichever way you approach an idea for a market, make sure the angle is specific to that market, and can be written for that audience.

4 – Make article ideas unique to you.

Ever heard people say, ‘only so and so could have done that’?

Well you can aim for this in your writing too.  Make your approach or angle something that editors won’t see from anyone else.  This is harder than you might think, but if you can make it unique in some small way, it will stand out and get you noticed by the editor.

This will develop in time, this way of looking at an idea from your unique point of view, but it’s a skill that’s well worth developing.

5 – Matching writing idea to article length.

Again, this is a skill that will come with practice.  Obviously, if you want to write a piece on the history of the American elections, for example, you’d be hard pushed to cram it into a 500 word piece.  You’d be better off concentrating on a single aspect or election for a length like this.  Conversely, if the article length is 2000 words, you know you can fill it with much more information.

A word of warning here – don’t offer a long article until you’re sure you’ll be able to get the information you need to fill it.

6 – Different types of article from the same idea.

This is a good multiple sales technique.  Gaining the most out of each block of research is one of the secrets to fast sales.

Let’s take dreams – I sold an article on erotic dreams, another on naked dreams, and I have more ideas for precognitive dreams, animals in dreams and their meanings… and so on.

You can also do a humorous article, a practical article on dealing with nightmares and bad dreams, a first person piece on your own dreams, and what you’ve learned from them… the list goes on.

7 – Maximum article mileage from a single niche.

Think of all the different articles you could write from a single idea – and think of as many angles as you can.  This is more of a case of the same type of article (practical, for example) slanted towards different markets.

This is especially good to do with a familiar subject, like your hobby – try and think of as many different magazines you could slant your hobby towards.

8 – Brainstorming.

A fantastic way to come up with ideas, and also to develop them.  Pick up a magazine at random and open it to the first word you see.  Use this as a starting point, and see where it leads you.

Alternatively, write down as much as you can think of to do with your work or hobby, and see where it leads you.  Write down everything you can think of, however silly – it lets your mind wander and encourages creativity, so let it express itself.

The silliest idea can often trigger something else, or generate an article idea that is within your grasp to write, and is worth writing about.

9 – Try word association and other methods.

Word association can generate lots of ideas for subjects to write about.  This is an easy way to start with some fresh ideas.  Reading news stories, problem pages and surfing the net are other fast ways to get the initial germ of an idea.

You will still need to develop it, but writing non newsy articles that are inspired by news stories is a great way to take advantage of using ready made news stories as a springboard to some original material, using the original story as research.

10 – Knowing what to reject.

Unless you know you can get an interview with a world famous star, it’s probably not a good idea to develop an article around that.  An idea that is workable must be one you can research without too much difficulty.

Either that, or find an angle on a subject that you know you can do.  Sometimes it can be a case of just altering your focus, or narrowing it, to get the article idea to a size you can write about.

Provided that doesn’t ruin the whole drive of the article, that could be your best bet.  So recognise whether or not your enthusiasm matches your ability to write the article… before you offer it.

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Below is the definition of “blog” from Wikipedia

“A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual [1], with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order”

By that definition, the only aspect that prevents a Facebook profile being called a blog is… wait there isn’t one!

Indeed you wouldn’t call a Facebook profile a Web site, it is part of a Website, but then company blogs are only a part of their Website and yet they are still blogs. I am very surprised that few other bloggers haven’t made this connection. Facebook users, i.e. people we consider “normal” and “mainstream” are in fact bloggers too.

The question is, how far away is a decent app or Facebook update that lets you turn your Facebook profile into a blog as we know it with more text content? All that needs doing is the option to publish longer status updates combined with a simple text editor (which isn’t even essential as web browsers can do most of that). From a blogging perspective, Facebook has something to compete with Google’s Blogger. Has Facebook realized they have a huge army of content creators, waiting to be unleashed?

At the moment bloggers can use Facebook to promote their blog posts, for example, by posting a link with a text snippet to their post. In the future mainstream Facebook users could start a blog 100% contained within Facebook. That idea may not sound attractive to current self-hosted bloggers who want the rights to own their content, but plenty of bloggers use blogger.com, why not use Facebook when/if it becomes fully available?

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These are 3 ways I have found blogging to effect my thinking, in a positive way:

Awareness (and criticizing) Of Advertising

Being an active part of the Internet advertising industry makes TV ads look like a toddlers attempt at reaching the target market, which results in them being muted and criticized. I find criticizing new Websites has also become a habit, looking how they are monetized and seeing what they could improve is more of a compulsion, which (as you can imagine) is a time waster!

Printed Books Are Different For Bloggers

Blog posts have been honed and skillfully evolved over the last few years to the point that they are extremely readable, scan-able and contain just the right about of “mental taxation”. A novel, while being enjoyable in a different way now seems like more of a mission.

With a novel it’s important to read every word so you can create the world the writer is describing in your head. Blogging is the exact opposite. It involves lots of reading and scanning to get out the vital information needed to proceed. Doing that everyday trains the mind to keep doing it, making researching fun and easy, and reading novels more off a challenge.

Blogging Forces You To Have An Opinion

Blogging isn’t a spectator sport, you have to play (I.e. write blog posts). It’s easy to go though phases of life where you don’t have any opinions about anything, because you just don’t care. This is because with many people’s lifestyles they aren’t absorbing any new information and as a result are bored, with everything. Blogging forces you to read and write, which in effect is to absorb information and display an opinion about it. Having opinions makes you more interesting socially and less of a blank, boring slate which is definitely a good thing.

Have you found blogging to have effected the way you think?

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There are already a fair few blogging forums, but the fact is that if your blog is popular enough the forums would end up growing anyway and increase the overall monetary value of your blog.

Most bloggers are also capable of making a pligg site (a digg clone using free pligg software) and adding that to their blog. Another alternative is to allow bloggers to write there own blog posts that are moved to the front page if they are good enough, like Performancing.

If you try adding one of these social communities to your blog too soon, they will not take off and will just get filled with spammers. You would end up having to constantly delete their spam or delete the site altogethor. If your blog is very popular is seems like a no-brainier, why not add these communities? Imagine Problogger with a ning.com network and a pligg voting site, it would get popular incredibly fast.

When do you think the crossover point is? How many RSS subscribers do you need to “have the authority” to launch something like this?

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Nevertheless, is there not a massive difference between a blog about an “emo” teenager chronicling their latest pubescent worry and a company blog issuing their latest software development? They are not just blogs in different niches, they are different types of blog, period.

1. Personal blog. Its purpose is to be a outlet, where you can write what you want and about anything you feel like, while not worrying about earnings/traffic/stats which are put very much to one side. For example The Life of a School Bus Driver

2. Corporate Blog. Its purpose is to help the company to:

• Gain traffic
• Let the world know when they add a new feature to their business
• Connect with their users/customers on a personal level
• Build or change the company’s brand by writing in a certain style.
• A way for users/customers to offer feedback

For example the PayPerPost blog

3. Small Niche blog. A blog on a highly specific topic aimed to dominate the SERPs for a few select keyword phrases and make money with very few updates. For example Cheap-Ass Airsoft Guns (a blog of mine)

4. Flagship niche blog. A blog on a slightly wider topic, aimed to build a powerful brand. They are very high maintenance, but also have the biggest potential for profits. For example ReadWriteWeb

5. Hybrid blog. This is when a blogger starts a blog about a hobby of theirs and includes details about their personal life here and there in the content. Normally these blogs are updated roughly 4-7 times per week and usually fail to become known as “the flagship blog” for any given niche, but earn more money than a personal blog. If they are kept running for long enough they can become pretty big. For example 45n5.com. Sometimes they have an added purpose gaining credibility in a field where the blogger has future plans, such as Instigator Blog, where the author Ben Yoskovitz recently launched the very impressive Standout Jobs.

Out of all 5 types I read a lot of Hybrid and flagship blogs, as well as a few corporate blogs.

What types of blog do you own or read?

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“The target with this site is to earn $150-$250 during December when everyone is buying Christmas presents and then sell the blog late January when the January sales are slowing down. I will then pick the most profitable 30-day period to display as the monthly earnings. E.g. December 15th - January 15th may have earned more than simply the month of December. If there is a 30-day period where $200 was earned, the site should have no problem selling for over $2000.”   

Its’ ethicalness was questioned, but generally the idea went down well. The site I created was Airsoft Store Online, here are the results: 

December

• $18.96 From Amazon Associates
• $21.50 From Google Adsense
• $13 from an Airsoft Affiliate program

The Important point about December was that I was on holiday for 3 of its 4 weeks and so the $50 earned was quite literally from me doing nothing. While this is short of my goals of hitting over $150, I wasn’t disappointed. 

January

• $15.52 From Google Adsense
• $0.80 from Amazon Associates (how embarrassing!)

You can see in January how there is a 95.8% slump in Amazon sales, and a noticable decrease in AdSense earnings and nothing from the airsoft affiliate program I used. Traffic remained much the same - consistent low levels with the odd Stumbleupon spike. It seems a bit pointless analysing this in too much depth when the figures are so small, but it is clear to see the so called ‘January sales’ are considerably smaller than the December shopping spree, or at least that is the case with Airsoft Guns.

What About Selling The Blog?

I had originally planned to sell, but I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. This is all small money at the moment so I’ll just add the site to my slowly growing collection of niche blogs that earn a little money each month.

Lessons

Erik Karey took up my challenge and looks to have done very well using eBay, rather than using the low paying Amazon Associates. Congratulations Erik! I’ve since replaced some of my Amazon Associates links with eBay links.I am of the belief that my target of earning $150-$200 in a blogs first month and then selling for $1000+ was attainable, had I used done these things differently:

• Use a higher paying affiliate program like eBay where the lowest tier of earnings start at 50% rather than Amazon’s lowly 4%.
• Work hard to grow the blog for 1 month and not go on holiday for most of it!
• Take the opportunity to sell in very early January

Did anyone else take up my challenge or do something similar? Do you have any more advice to add?

Click here for eBay!

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I am all for sharing, but I think many bloggers are making the mistake of not capitalizing on their talent for idea creation. I’ve previously skirted around the thought that bloggers are fledgling entrepreneurs.

The reason many bloggers remain that way, is that due to stiff competition. They are desperately in need of new content for their blog which results in bloggers putting every little ounce of themselves into their blog; including their ideas that could be worth millions if they took a big leap, ‘moved up a level’ and carried them out.

This is only really true in the meta-blogging (blogs about blogging) niche, but even so, if you have a great idea why not execute it rather than taking the lazy option and turning it into a blog post?

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N.B.
Every blog is in a niche. The term ‘niche blog’ implies the blog in question is on an extremely focused topic or a very small niche.

Pros For Having A Single Flagship Blog

• You have time to be ubiquitous in your niche (seen as being everywhere at the same time). You can have a strong social media profile on several sites, leave comments in the places that matter while still having time to plan big linkbaits and make contacts on Instant Messenger. In other words having time on your side means you can have every promotion method on the Web in your arsenal.
• You can build a brand around your blog, which attracts more links and loyal readers and raises the value of your blog when it comes to the sale.

• It Can be outsourced more easily if you play your cards right. If there is just 1 blog on a certain topic you only need a few bloggers for it to be totally independent of you (think Blogging Tips). It is still important to take the time to ensure the bloggers you hire complement each other so that all the topics you once covered yourself are catered for. With 100 blogs on varying topics finding an ‘all-round blogger handyman’ is a much harder task, where the only alternative is paying lots of different bloggers to run the blogs which would be incredibly costly.
• You can ‘get the scoop’ on news stories. Having just 1 blog means you have time to stay up to date with the latest goings on and quickly make a post to break the latest hot industry news as soon as you find out about it. This behavior is rewarded by using voting sites like digg.com.
• There is the potential to become an Internet celebrity. For some of this gives a plus on the pleasure side of things, for others it doesn’t.
• You blog about a topic you thoroughly enjoy and understand. Most of us don’t have 100 different hobbies to blog about but we do have at least one that we could blog about all day (an example of the 80/20 rule).
• A flagship blog can be used as part of a business to relate to your customers and to keep the world informed about your company’s developments.

Put into a sentence, with 1 blog you have the time to both write and market it the best way possible.

Cons Of Having 1 Flagship Blog

• You can get stuck trying to break your way into a crowded niche. With 1 blog you are entering 1 niche, pick the wrong niche and you wont get far.
• You can run out of posting ideas. All bloggers have phases when they find it hard to come up with post ideas, but for those that fail to recover it kills their blog.
• Increased pressure to post due to the loyal readership. Niche blogs are about getting traffic from other methods and not about building a loyal following. Once you have a following with a flagship blog there is a lot of pressure to keep posting in the same way as you did to get that following, which can be very stressful.

Pros Of Having 100 Niche Blogs

• Blogs can be interlinked to increase/manipulate their search engine rankings and share traffic.
• Having a diverse range of blogs makes your earnings more stable. With a big flagship blog you might sell those $100 advertising spots or you might not. If you go on holiday you definitely wont. With 100 small niche blogs earning from Google AdSense, lack of maintenance should result in a gradual decrease in earnings down to a point where the only traffic arriving is search engine traffic, where the blogs will earn a similar amount each day amount all by themselves (I experienced this when I went on holiday). Overall, this is because the 2 blog types need to be monetized in different way.
• The blogs are not dependent on your personal brand to be successful. A brand can increase a sites value, but a brand that needs you to be there for it to exist is a bad thing when it comes to selling. With 100 niche sites you wont have to worry about this.
• Diversification of niches means at least one of the blogs is likely to get a lucky shot in at keyword sniping.

Cons Of Having 100 Niche Blogs

• A niche blogs’ growth is incremental rather than exponential. What I mean by this is that with a flagship blog if you have a successful piece of linkbait you build on it by releasing an even better post, which gets more attention than the first and it builds up and up. With a 100 small blogs, if you had a successful linkbait you would have to rush off to manage the other blogs rather than capitalize on that success. If you did capitalize on it… you would be building a flagship blog and not a niche blog anyway!
• There is no community and no fun. What is so great about blogging is the interactions with readers and other bloggers. What’s the use of a getting a traffic spike with no-one to brag about it to? (having a readership interested in hearing about traffic spikes is one of the few pros of meta-blogging)
• Domain name costs. 100 domains at roughly $10 each, that’ll be $1000 please.
• Content quality suffers resulting in almost all the inbound links being from another of the 100 niche blogs rather than an established site, making it hard to rank for competitive keywords in the search engines.

Conclusion

I definitely prefer the flagship blog method. Money can be made with either approach but ultimately it depends on knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and making the decision based on those. Blogging is still booming and if you have a good idea for a flagship blog then I say it is a good time to test-drive it.

I look forward to reading your thoughts on this.

P.S There are still a few hours left for you to order ads at January sales price. Check them out now!

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