Time is a top commodity when running your article writing business.
If your goal is to earn income, take the time to make sure you’re making the most of the writing process. How do you do that? Here are a few tips to help you.
Planning
While I know that life can make it near impossible to actually schedule WHEN you’ll get a chance to focus on article writing during each day, it is possible to be prepared for that opportunity. Choose now WHAT you’ll use that time for. Will you write, edit, or post? Believe it or not, separating the three actually increases the ROI (return on investment) for the article writing time spent.
Choose topics and plan time lines before you ever put down words. How about covering a specific topic? Can you break it into a series to be covered in a set number of articles? Are you doing article marketing? Where will the articles be submitted? Will you be posting them to your own sites or will you need a resource box?
Preparation
Prepare the list of keywords and illustrations for each. Cloak your affiliate link (if it isn’t already) and keep it in the same file. You don’t want the article writing flow interrupted by the need to hunt missing material. If you’ll be needing a resource box, prepare the links for it now. Why not go ahead and write the resource box? Because it pays to end the article in the resource box instead of inside the article body.
If you will be using an article submitter, make sure it is set up and ready to go. Ideally, your original article should go directly to your own website first then to a major article directory. If you don’t have a website of your own, go ahead and submit to your first choice of article directories. Consider directories such as ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com. Submit a secondary article via the article submitter.
One expert recommends submitting batches of approximately 5 articles at a time to a main directory. I’ve found that brainstorming at least 5 potential article topics per keyword speeds up the creation process. Consider “How-to,” “Tips-to” “Why You Should…” “Why You Should Not…” “Ten Reasons…” “4 Ways” etc. There are lots of ways to get creative with articles.
Getting the Words Out
Writing time is just for article writing. Nothing else. No image linking. No affiliate linking. No researching. Just get the words down. No spell checking or grammar checking allowed either. It’s all about the writing.
Putting It All Together
When you put your editor’s hat on, you’ll now have image links and affiliate links all ready and waiting to be plugged in to the content. The original key word list helps you verify that the necessary ones have been covered and that article groups are focused. It’s time to run spell check and to look for sentences that make no sense. Polish the finished product so that it shines and stands out among all those other written pieces online.
The Bottom Line
Once you’ve actually separated the processes involved in article writing and creation, you’re likely to find that you produce better articles (and more of them) in less time. When you have more than one piece in process, you can fit the task to the time you have available. Sitting in a waiting room somewhere? Brainstorm and write. Find yourself with real time? Clean out the edit stack.
Like many other processes, writing improves with practice. Both the writing time and the editing time will decrease as your ability increases. The equation is certainly an encouraging one. Potential earnings (your return on writing time invested) will rise. It truly pays to plan the article writing process.
