The Secret of Fast Quality Article Writing!

The Keys to the Kingdom: Writing Articles

I never seem to have problems writing articles - I pick a topic, and just start typing away. It helps, of course, that I'm writing about topics that I know something about... I just pretend that I'm explaining the topic to someone (just as I'm doing right now). I'm writing down what I consider to be the keys to my writing ability, such as it is. I certainly don't pretend to be a writer, that's a description that's a tad beyond my capabilities, but I do enjoy communicating through writing, which is a skill within almost everyone's reach. You may not be a Tom Clancy, or a James Clavell, but you can surely, with the aid of modern programs such as Microsoft Word, put out articles that are interesting to read, and cover a topic well.

So how do you go about writing an article? First, immerse yourself in the topic, read enough on the net to understand the topic. You may even want to print out some of the more interesting articles on a given topic so that you can remember the main points. The intent isn't to plagiarize when writing an article, but to learn enough from others to be able to re-form a given topic in your own words. I have a style of writing that's unique to me, and I can always recognize my style. Even if written years ago, I can spot stuff that I've written. I tend to use certain words and phrases, and the way I organize my thoughts is something that I can always spot. You need to do the same - learn a given topic, and then rephrase it in your own words with your own unique twist of humor, or way of presenting the facts. (I generally think of myself as funnier than other people do... I wonder why that is?)

Next, I like to ‘Outline’ the article. For example, let’s imagine that I’m going to write on the SEO benefits of back links to your website… I might start off my page like this:

Do you want a flood of traffic to your site? (Eye-catching headline)

What traffic can do for you.
Why your website will succeed or fail based on traffic.
Why Search Engines love back links.
How this improves your organic & free traffic stats.
Overview of other methods, how does back linking compare.
Conclusions.

Now that I have an eye-catching title – and the individual sections – I’ll expand each sectional ‘thought’ with at least one paragraph, perhaps more – expanding on my short section theme that I wrote down. Before you know it, you’ll have a complete article.

For Article Directories, I tend to write articles that will run around 500 words. If I'm writing a new article for my website - such as this one, I tend to ramble on until I think I've covered the topic in a reasonable way - but I always shoot for closer to 1,000 words. I like my website articles to be a little more in-depth than Article Directory articles. The purposes of the two types are different, of course. Article Directory articles are designed merely to give me more back-links to my website, while articles that I write for my site had better be more interesting and content filled. I don't want you, the visitor or website member, to grow tired and click off to another site. So the purpose of the article will tend to color the depth and length of it.

Once I have the 'first draft' typed up, I go back through it and correct all the spelling and grammatical errors noted by Word. There don't tend to be too many - as I love to read, and being a rather voracious reader, I tend to spot spelling errors quite easily. There's always something to correct however - I'm no English major... This step is one I can't emphasize too much - correct your spelling! You can get away with sloppy grammar far easier than you can get away with bad spelling - more people can spot bad spelling than can spot poor grammar usage - so spend the time to make your articles look professional. Nothing spoils a good article faster than miss-spelled words.

My next step is to go back and re-read it slowly. I tend to 'skip' thoughts, and make presumptions... but I can't presume that you know what I'm thinking about - so I have to go back and read my article as if I were another person - and see if I can understand it. Most of the time, I end up re-writing unclear sentences - or adding new thoughts that make the article 'flow' better. These two steps, correcting your spelling/grammar; and re-reading for comprehension - can dramatically improve your article writing.

By the way, it's easiest if you write your basic article in Microsoft Word - or your chosen word-processing program, then copy it to Notepad. By doing this, it strips out the miscellaneous formatting garbage. Then do another cut & paste from Notepad to your favored HTML editor - I use KompoZer, and there you can put in the final touches, such as bolding, color, font size, etc. Then I copy the HTML that KompoZer puts out, into an HTML window of my Drupal editor – for posting on BurningKnife.

Now, I'm presuming that you're interested in writing articles for money - as I am. Why else would you want to improve your article writing skills? There are many ways to make money with writing skills - I've chosen to create a website that will host all of my articles. Keeping all the profit to yourself is a slower way to profit by your writing skills, but I believe it’s far more profitable in the long run.

Some of you will choose to make money quicker by selling your articles to webmasters needing articles for Article Directories. (Quite honestly, I prefer to hire out Article Directory articles - they aren't quite as exciting for me to write!) Perhaps you're interested in BUM marketing - this is another way to utilize your writing skills to make money.

But no matter how you make money with your writing skills, being able to turn out a reasonably interesting article in the minimum amount of time is valuable from a financial standpoint – the more articles I can turn out that meet at least minimum quality standards, the more money I will make. This seems so obvious that I’m embarrassed to re-state it. Hopefully, however; I've given you a few ideas for how to more quickly turn out high quality articles that readers will want to read.