Writing Articles Online - A Few Helpful Tips

I’m going to keep this brief … but lets make that the first tip. Keep it brief and get straight to the points!!!

Writing Articles Online

• Always make a plan before you start.
• Never edit your first draft.
• Let your first draft sit for 24 hrs … fully un-edited.
• List your main points in point form.
• Never number count … say what you have to say.
• Always “eye skim” … if it looks too long it is too long.
• Try to include an image.

Writing Online My Style

I saved these comments online not so long ago, and sorry for the life of me cannot find their original author to credit them.

However, confess they made me think. Made me think …. about each line and every point. (see 12 points below)

I know many readers wont care and probably wont read, listen and digest. However, thought these points were worth re-publishing.

I wonder at times if we ever learn from past experiences, if what was a mistake yesterday could turn out to be a mistake today and God forsake a mistake tomorrow.

Personally, I spend a large proportion of my “free” time inside online communities and can’t help but think the mistakes & hence subsequent downfall of the previous “popular” distributor of “news & information” Cable news services has taught us nothing.

Personally, I spend my “free” time in online communities for a few simple reasons

1. There diverse in nature.
2. With anonymity often comes the “real” truth
3. Many have no commercial axe to grind.
4. Many are global – don’t no why but maybe living on an island this is important to me

Now here comes the quotes “Cable news thinking has nothing to do with fires or with politics. Instead, it amplifies the worst elements of emotional reaction:

1. Focus on the urgent instead of the important.
2. Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what’s important.
3. Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.
4. Unwillingness to reverse course and change one’s mind.
5. Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).
6. Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.
7. Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.
8. Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).
9. Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.
10. Confusing opinion with the truth.
11. Revising facts to fit a point of view.
12. Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

If I wanted to hobble an organisation or even a country, I’d wish these twelve traits on them.”

So there you have it? Can we really learn from the past. Suppose ultimately only time will tell.

First wrote these “Guidelines” way back on the 8th July 2003 and thought now is as good a time as any to revise & revisit. My intention is to revise them over the next few months on a point by point basis.

Basically, I’m going to write a separate article on each point, adding what I’ve further learned over the last 6 or so years … oh how time waits for no man or woman.

As I write the article I will link each point, point by point if that makes sense.

1/ “Making money” from your website is not as hard as it sounds just depends on how many mouths you have to feed.

2/ Selling information is much easier, cheaper and cost effective with little to no risk.

3/ Quality dynamic content helps drive traffic to your site therefore to your message.

4/ Being a big fish in a small pond has its advantages.

5/ Get large amounts of traffic and people start to offer you opportunities.

6/ Focus on multiple interlinking self owned site strategy.

7/ 10 small sites are better than one big one, but you still must have the one big one.

8/ Multiple sites perform better if there is a common thread, even if this threat is merely target audience.

9/ Don’t make a site do multiple things – one site one goal works beautifully.

10/ Optimise your site for traffic before you optimise for the eye – but don’t ignore the eye.

11/ Quality traffic will make you money – just depends on how much quality and how much traffic.

12/ Online traffic attracted from online sources are better buying prospects to buy online.

13/ If your promoting a bricks and mortar entity don’t try to sell product online sell the enquiry instead.

14/ Basic offline marketing and selling skills work online assuming the product stacks up.

15/ Its not only seeing the idea that counts its how you implement it that counts.

You need “hits”, yes real people, to read your real articles. Hey wait a minute I know what your thinking … build and they shall come, come and they shall buy!

Customers just floating around cyber-space, patiently waiting, waiting for your next morsel of information so they can devour it in nano-seconds.

Nope … WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, look I hate bad news as much as anyone.

However, somebody has to spill the beans.

Lets break it down almost word by word.

You need “hits”…. now there is a ground breaking, earth shattering revelation. However, put another way … you website needs traffic. Sounds easy doesn’t it.

Here is your first bean … WRONG … traffic from traffic sake is useless.

The numbers of “hits” you get on a hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis is irrelevant. Quality beats quantity every time.

After we define more effective .. then we can start planning.

“More” = a greater quantity, amount, or degree

“Effective” = adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result.

If you don’t tell anybody … then neither will I. However, there is no real secret … just smart planning combined with quality market research. Planning & research are essential elements that many, many webmasters just fail to implement.

I suspect not through laziness more through the lack of setting specific measurable goals. However, importantly also in relation to “effective websites”; more a state of being partially educated or uninformed and not generally sharing in the effectiveness the site needs to obtain.

However, there are a couple of small points that have helped me over the years.