How To Write Articles And Blogs For Money
Writing from home with your own set schedule and being your own boss sounds appealing to us all. It can be done but it is also a lot of work. Those that are good at it make it look easy but I assure you it is not. If you do it only because you think you can make easy money with little effort you won’t succeed.
You have to love writing:
This is the number one rule. If you do it only because of the convenience of working from home and you look at it as a chore you probably won’t be good at it. If you already enjoy writing and are pretty good at non-fiction you have a chance of making an income.
You must be good at basic grammar and spelling:
You cannot write slang, text speak or broken English. There are exceptions where a blogger writes about rap music or a few other examples but they won’t appeal to the masses and the more people you get reading your work the more money you make.
You must be self-motivated:
You can’t write a couple or even four articles sit back and wait for the money to come rolling in. It doesn’t work that way. Leave your other work to simmer and keep writing. It takes months and sometimes a year or more before you start to see any income. Keep writing, editing, posting, researching, advertising and you’ll get there.
Know the difference between a blog and an article:
Blog-
A blog is a personal story usually written in first person and often about accounts that have happened in your life. The word blog comes from two words- web and log, put together. It’s basically a diary entry. It can be interesting to others but for the most part unless you lead a very eventful life it will mostly appeal to friends and family. Some bloggers can make any story sound great; even the mundane of activities but that takes great talent and isn’t easy.
You can write articles on a blog site.
Blogger and Wordpress are blog sites. You can write anything you want on a blog site, they aren’t picky as long as you follow their terms.
Articles-
An article can have a personal bent on it but must be informative. Read newspaper or magazine articles and you’ll see the difference. News stories tell about a person, place or thing that educates others. Celebrity news, travel, politics, current events and anything that informs the public.
HubPages, Squidoo and a few others are intended for articles and if you write stories that are too personal you may be asked to edit or remove them.
You can't write blogs on an article site.
You do not have to spend money to make money in this business:
Some may argue with me on this one but other than my computer, the Internet (even that you can borrow from coffee shops and libraries) and my domain name I am out of very little money. In the beginning you don’t even need a domain name so really all you need is a laptop, talent and motivation.
You can pay websites to advertise for you but there are so many free options out there and even ones that will pay you, it is silly to spend anything.
Advertise:
You are your own public relations (PR) person. No one else can do it for you although after you’ve been at it for a while you can work with other writers to help promote each other but don’t assume or even ask someone early on. They have their own work to do. I occasionally post stories of someone I admire or if I consider their articles useful information but have never asked another writer to help me advertise my own work; that’s my job.
Facebook and other social network sites are great places to promote your work but make sure that isn’t all you do there or it will be considered spam. People and sites delete spammers. The reason they are called “social” network sites is because the main purpose is for chatting and getting to know people. In between the banter you can post a new story or even an old one.
Redgage, Pinterest, Stumble Upon and a few other places are also good. Keep up with your research and you’ll find new ones. It changes all of the time.
Twitter is another good place but don’t over do it. A few tweets a day spread out is good, constantly tweeting over and over fills up people’s pages and can be annoying causing them to delete you.
Make business cards for yourself with your website(s) and email address on them. I have a separate email for my business. When you go to conferences or other gatherings where you meet people give out your cards. Leave them on notice boards and in restaurants. It helps if you write a short slogan or sentence so people who don’t know you get a feel of what you write. Get to know the person a bit first and don’t just walk around handing out cards or you’ll appear to be a salesman and most of your cards will go in the bin.
Use good keywords:
Make sure the key words you use reflect your story and you don’t just pick ones that are high paying search words. Not only is that cheating it misleads your readers and will make them not want to read anything on your website. It also loses credibility for the website you are using such as HubPages.
I’ll give a link at the bottom of this story to help you pick good keywords. HubPages has a video giving a tutorial on this if you need more help.
Buy a domain name:
This isn’t important in the beginning but eventually it’s a good idea. It helps if you have something easy to remember that is catchy and reflects your pen name. Mine is pamelanred.com. Easy to remember and spell.
A domain name can be moved to any site so if you leave a location your readers can still find you so long as they know your web address.
Godaddy.com and a few others will sell you one for as little as $10 for two years. Godaddy throws in a free email address, which is great and helps keep your writing emails separate from your personal. Prices change and companies are bought and sold so check around for the best one. Reputation is more important than price.
Attach this domain to your main site and post links on your wall so they can find your other locations. I use my blogger site and have a widget to the side for HubPages. It shows my latest stories in the box people can click on. Blogger has tutorials helping you with these.
Adding Links:
If you wrote a story here and it is similar to an article you wrote somewhere else add a link or two. I suggest you try to add links to the ends of your pieces because when people leave following another story they don’t always come back. If you put the link at the end they will read the entire piece before following the trail you left.
You may think, “It’s okay, the link they are following is also my writing so I haven’t lost anything.” Most websites and advertisers have a set time your reader should stay on your page to count it as a “view,” if they leave quickly it gives your story less credibility. Google figures your writing or story wasn’t any good so that story loses ground in the search list. This is very important.
Don’t overdo links, I think a couple are fine, more makes your story look cluttered or over promotional.
The method I think works best is to add a link at the end of your article, then they may read that second story. Add a link to the end of the next story, if they have time they may follow the third link and so on and so on.
Make sure the link is relevant. If you write a story on recreational vehicles and add a link for tofu burgers you may be wasting your time. If however you add a link about outdoor grilling and then at the bottom of outdoor grilling you add that link for tofu burgers it makes more sense.
Don’t Give Up:
Whatever you do don’t let that little voice inside your head, another writer or reader make you quit. Hang in there. We all have good days and crappy days no matter how successful we are.
