This is What Makes a Successful Associated Content Article

In her article, What Makes an Article Successful on Associated Content?, Nikki asks how to write articles that gets lots of page views and makes a good amount of bonus money. Well I happened to write an article or two that pulled an astronomical amount of traffic and so I am sharing my tips.

In doing so I we will examine my best articles and tactics I used to get maximum results. The first article to examine is 10 Ideas for Group Halloween Costumes

Rule #1 for a successful Associated Content Article: Take suggestions from Associated Content on what to write. While I would like to say this article that has over 250,000 hits and has made hundreds of bonus dollars with $200 of it being in the last month, was inspired or took a great deal of effort to write it did not. In fact, I believe it was a call for content suggestion that gave me the idea for this Halloween article. I read the suggestion and started cranking out Halloween articles. This was one of them.

Rule # 2 for a successful Associated Content Article: Keep it simple and scan-able. This article is not highly technical. No, it did not require the help of a brain surgeon to write. In fact, it is laid out in a very simplistic style that is easy to scan. A reader can take the information they want and move on.

Rule # 3 for a successful Associated Content Article: Use keyword rich introductions to each paragraph. I used keywords methodically in this article at the beginning of every paragraph. This lent to the consistent style and easy readability of the article.

Rule # 4 for a successful Associated Content Article: Write seasonal articles ahead of time. The article was published in September of 2006 and was featured for Halloween 2006. It garnered a great deal of hits that first season as it had plenty of time to pick up steam.

Rule # 5 for a successful Associated Content Article: Be patient. While the article was well read least year, the attention it got this year blew away last years traffic.

Rule # 6 for a successful Associated Content Article: Examine what works and repeat the process. Since the article was so successful, I wrote a sequel: 10 More Ideas for Group Halloween Costumes. In the one month that this article has been live, it has also been very successful making $20.00 + in one month and has over 16,000 hits.

Rule # 7 for a successful Associated Content Article: Write what you know. Outside of seasonal articles, I had another article set of articles do extremely well. Two articles on Painting Ideas for kid's rooms are at approximately 24,000 hits and get another 3000 or 4000 hits consistently each month. They were articles I threw together from information I already know (having been a muralist in my past life). They followed the same format as the in previous rules with the exception that I had to do absolutely no research to write these articles.