Why I Write the Articles that I Do

Often I just write what articles on whatever comes into my head, but sometimes I have a thought to write an article that I know will be controversial to some people, and I write about it in such a way as to hopefully generate a lot of detailed comments by visitors who both agree and disagree with what I have written.

I think that we can break down the reason to write articles into three main categories.

Firstly, the ones that we feel like writing, the ideas that leap into our heads, the ones that are fun to work on. These often include poetry, or stories from our past, but whatever the theme, it's something that we are passionate about. This type of article however, usually attracts visits from our followers on AC, and some outside friends, but often doesn't travel much further, unless it is on a popular topic.

Secondly, we have the articles that are on a newsworthy item, something that is maybe scandalous (eg: Tiger Woods), or about a recent tragedy (eg: Haiti). These are often high traffic articles, however they often disappear from view as quickly as they came and are short lived. They do however often provide a lot of page views from sources outside of Associated Content, and that in turn can lead to visitors looking at the author's profile and reading other articles that they have written, which is very worthwhile.

Finally, we come to the item or location reviews and the ever popular keyword topics, like food and recipes, fashion, travel etc. These might not be every author's passion, and they may or may not generate masses of traffic, depending on the topic, but they are usually very durable articles and over time the traffic does make them worthwhile.

The other area to consider aside from Page Views is of course Up Front Payments, which can make a huge difference to the amount that an author earns. I haven't personally managed to write an article yet that qualifies for up front payments, but it is my intention to do so as soon as I can find a topic.

As far as promoting articles, I find that blogging about them helps, especially when the blog posts act as links back to the original article, which can result in the article being listed higher in the search engines. Outside visibility to your articles is critical if you want to achieve a lot of traffic, but this again is determined by the popularity of the topics on which you are writing.

But going back to where this article started, one area that many authors don't think about is the interaction with their visitors. If your article inspires visitors to leave comments, either in agreement with what you have written, or in disagreement, you can turn the article comments into a whole discussion thread that can go on for ages. This leads visitors to keep returning to see what new comments have been left, and the page views and popularity of your article go up exponentially.

This is one area that I try to explore, and a twist on this is to leave controversial comments on other articles too. Expressing your views, not in a negative way, but throwing a twist on the contents of the article, can lead to visitors looking at your profile and articles to learn more about you. If they like what they see and decide to follow you, then all the better.

Ultimately I think we are all looking for the article that will go viral, and hit the world outside of Associated Content running. Can you imagine how it feels to write something that people distribute to their friends, and their friends of friends, and in just days it circles the world and you have thousands of visitors? That is what we all need to aim for I think, because being found will make a huge difference to our writing future.

If just 10,000 people were to visit one of your articles, and only 1 percent were to look at other articles that you have written, that could be worth hundreds more page views. Now if half of those were to follow you, that is potentially 50 more page views per article that you write in the future. Now 10,000 visitors is great, but something that truly goes viral could get a million visitors or more. At this point your daily page views really begin to add up, and you could go through the clout levels in days not months.

Well I haven't achieved this yet, and probably never will, anything that I have written and thought might take off has usually ended up as dead as a Dodo. But this hasn't stopped me trying, and I know it won't stop you trying either to be successful as a writer.

I hope I have given you a few useful tips. You probably are aware of these anyhow, but it's always good to refresh your thoughts and to set the little gray cells into motion.