It wasn’t until I understood how to write an article, and make it fun, informative and engaging that I started to have real success making money online.

The average person spends 60 seconds on your website so if you’re not pressing their buttons from the off, then they’ll be the ones that are off!  Thinking of yourself as a ‘writer’ can be intimidating, especially if you’ve not written anything yourself since 1986 in your diary.  However there are some simple guidelines you can follow so your articles will always sound fresh, original and will spring abundantly from the well of your mind

- You must research or know your subject matter.  You need to have enough knowledge to sound informative, if you’re not sure about something then find out, or leave it out.  Keyword research is crucial to understand how much your subject is searched for and good sub-niches – a good tool for this is Google’s Free Keyword Tracker

- Think about your tone of voice.  It’s so common to write something in jest that can be misinturpreted by a reader.  Chances are that you will never know either, they will just disappear from your site so think about if you’re tone should be chatty, informative, joking, serious, urgent etc and set your language accordingly.  It’s also best not to switch tones halfway through although you can of course introduce a note of levity into a serious piece.

- Plan your structure.  Articles should generally be between 440 – 800 words however if you’ve got great content and it’s 1000 words, don’t worry too much.  Chances are longer articles can always be broken down into 2 subtopics though.

- Your top paragraph should be the basis of the whole article.  Make sure you have your keyword in there (preferably highlighted or Headed).  This is where you convey all of your essential information.

- Review your article several times.  Condense any ‘wordy’ paragraphs and cut our unnecessary words.  Be ruthless, the aim is to be as concise and clear as possible.  You want your message to be instantly accessible.  I find a quick second opinion from the nearest passerby seems to work!

- Always write with the reader in mind.  Think about who the article is for, what they want and what possible interest level they might have.  What do they want and then think about what you want them to do.

- Pay attention to your grammer, spelling and sentance structure.

- Encourage the reader to keep reading.  Bullet points or numbers are excellent ways to do this.  If you are keeping some big ‘insider information’ to the end, then make sure you say so at the beginning!

If you stick to these basic principles for how to write an article you should be able to constantly produce content that is exciting, relevant and connects with your audience.