Don’t fret–We all are at some time or another.

No matter how long you’ve been writing there are always times when the creative well is just bone dry, and you need a little jump start.

Well, here it comes:

I’ve assembled 25 of my favourite and most effective article topic ideas and article topic idea stimulators. I hope these are helpful to you!

Let’s get started…

1) Use one of our free article writing templates (that’s actually several article topic ideas right there!)

2) Adapt content from your blog to create articles.

3) Write for newbies and more advanced readers–you can cover the same topic in two different articles geared towards groups with different knowledge levels.

4) Use customer frequently asked questions as the basis for an article.

5) Use a keyword suggestion tool, such as WordTracker, to see what keywords your target readers are typing into search engines. Then write articles to satisfy those searches.

6) Look a the search stats for your website–what search terms are people typing into Google to reach your site? Create content to satisfy those searches.

7) Get inspiration from magazines covers. Which titles jump out at you and make you say, “That looks like it would be a good article–I want to read that!”? Many times you can bounce an article off of a title you see on a magazine cover. Can you convert that title to apply to something in your specific niche? Remember just use the title, rather than the entire article. Your content needs to be your own, so might be a good idea not to read the article.

8 ) Use template titles and fill in the blanks. Here are some of mine:

* 10 Great Reasons Why ____
* How To ____ in 7 Easy Steps
* 3 Secret Tricks For _____
* 9 Surefire Ways To ____
* How To Conquer ______
* The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When ____
* Reader Question: “[insert question here]”

9) Have an open classroom–teach, teach, teach!

10) Look at forums, blogs, newsletters in your niche for insight into hot topics that your target readers would serve your target readers.

11) Google Alerts- set one up for each of your keywords, then scan the titles to see what are popular topics in that niche. Again, the idea is to glean article ideas, so look at the article titles rather than the entire article or post.

12) Ask yourself: “If I was a member of my target market but wasn’t really sure what was up from down with the very basics, what sorts of questions might be floating through my brain?”

13) Ask yourself: “What information can I provide that would build the skill of someone with an intermediate knowledge level?”

14) Write a “what are the benefits?” article. For example, you have a niche that you would like people to be more interested in, so it is helpful to readers to tell them right out front what the benefits are–why should they be interested in your niche? If your niche is Article Marketing, you would do an article called “Is Article Marketing For You?” or “5 Top Reasons Why People Do Article Marketing”.

15) Solicit questions from your readers/subscribers. If you have a blog associated with your website, then I encourage you to routinely ask your readers what they want to be seeing on your blog. Because your blog is on the same topic as your website, any suggestions can be used as both article and blog post topics. This works the same for anyone who has a newsletter list–ask your subscribers what types of content they’d like to receive, and then write articles to satisfy those requests.

16) Read blogs in your niche, and look for posts that have tons of comments. That is a great way to identify a hot topic with your target market.

17) Dig deeper: Look at your previous 5 articles, and figure out a way to explore each of those topics on a deeper level.

For example, I wrote this post (later turned into an article) called How To Get Out Of A Writing Slump and realized that several of the topics included in that post/article were worthy of articles of their own. I ended up making 4 additional articles off of that one original post (here, here, here, and here). I also have some more article ideas from that one post that I haven’t written yet.

The good news: It is not always necessary to come up with brand new article ideas–sometimes you can use the same topics, but just go deeper.

18) Go wider: as an expert in your niche you can cover your topic from many angles. When you go deeper you cover a smaller topic more in depth–by going wider, you would have an article that covered a wider spectrum of information (but was less in depth). With your articles, you can dig deeper, go wider, or hang out some where in between.

19) Setting out to write a particular type of article, such as a ‘How To’ or a list article can really help stimulate ideas.

20) Get article ideas from your own website.

21) Have you written an e-book on your topic? Use the table of contents as an article ideas list.

22) Look through your newsletter messages that you’ve sent out to your list. You must be sending your readers something–you can re-use that content by adapting it to be an article.

23) Have you done any audio interviews? You can use the questions and answers from that interview to create one or more articles.

24) Got any elaborate customer support replies? Sometimes you’ll get a customer question that is a perfect opportunity to teach an important technique, principle, or skill. You can use your reply as the basis for an article.

25) Have you created any detailed forum replies or blog comments? I’ve sometimes created blog comments that I thought, “Hey, that’s pretty good–that might be worthy of a post on my own blog or an article.” You can use your blog comments and forum responses to come up with article ideas.

Does that help any? I hope so!

Do you have any article topic ideas to add?

Photo by Leo Reynolds

Some things you need to keep in mind as you’re writing your articles are:

• People have shorter attention spans when they are reading things online. You need to catch someone’s attention relatively quickly.

• People have more options for clicking away. They tend to bounce around from site to site, quickly searching for the information that they’re looking for or that catches their attention.

• Computer monitors are not easy on the eyes. Even if a person wanted to, it is just not that easy to read loads of information on the internet.

With this in mind, here are 10 ways to make your articles web-friendly:

1) Your title should be succinct and tell exactly what your article is about.

Avoid metaphors and clever puns. Remember, a reader is scanning your article title to see if they want to read your article. The easier you make it for a reader to determine the topic of your article, the better.

Can the reader get a good idea what your article is about by reading the first 3 words? That is something to shoot for.

Also remember that some article directories have length limits on titles–another great reason to keep the title from being overly long.

2) Present your main point right out of the starting gate.

When writing your introductory paragraph, get straight to the point. This is a work in progress for many of us who like to wax poetic, but it’s just a matter of disciplining yourself not to ramble, especially at the beginning of your article.

3) Use a word count goal.

If you don’t use a word count goal, the article can very easily get away from you. You might choose to aim for a word count somewhere between 400-800 words. This will help you write with more focus and discipline. You are not just writing indefinitely–you are placing limits on the amount of information you can include and that will help you get straight to the point.

4) Use short paragraphs.

As much as possible, keep paragraphs short and sweet. More line breaks give the reader’s eyes a chance to rest, and it helps a person read your article more easily.

5) Use sub-headings.

The more you can guide a reader through your article, the better. Sub-headings are a great way to delineate sections and topics in your article so that the reader can skim and easily follow the information in your article. Sub-headings should stand apart from the other sentences in your article.

Here’s how:

USE CAPITAL LETTERS IN YOUR SUB-HEADING

OR…

Use Capital Letters Just For the First Letter Of Each Word

OR…

*Put A Star (Asterisk) Before Your Sub-Heading

OR…

=> Put an arrow in front of your sub-heading.

(You can create an arrow by pressing the “equals” key (=) and then the “greater than” key (>)

Also, be sure that your sub-heading has a blank line above and below it–that makes it easier to see.

6) Include list elements.

Lists are hugely popular on the internet, probably because they are easy to skim. An article can contain list elements in the form of steps in a how-to article, or an actual “Top Tips” or “Top Mistakes” type of article.

7) Choose your links carefully.

Multiple links in an article can be distracting, so keep the links to a minimum. Remember, the main link you want the reader to click is the link in your resource box, rather than links in the article.

8 ) Put links after the 3rd paragraph.

Avoid putting links at the beginning of your article–it is distracting. If you must include a link save it for after the 3rd paragraph, when readers have had a chance to get into your article. Also something to consider: Some article directories will decline articles that have links in the first 3 paragraphs.

9) Your article is not a term paper.

Readers are not expecting you to provide every last detail about your topic in every article. When you’re writing articles, think “bite sized morsels” rather than “doctoral thesis”. Choose a subject that is manageable enough to cover in a medium sized article (800 words or less) and include as much information as you can. Provide a good chunk of valuable and unique information in your article, and let the reader click through to your website if they have additional questions. Remember, your article is the appetizer, and your website is the main course.

10) Edit, edit, edit!

Review your article and remove/edit any sentences that are redundant, rambling, or awkward.  This is where your word count goal is extra helpful–it’s much easier to decide to give a sentence the ax if you’re forcing yourself to stay within a certain word count.  Every word must earn a place in your article.

Conclusion

In a way, writing for the web requires much more discipline than offline writing. The idea is to quickly catch the reader’s attention, make your article as easy to read as possible, provide valuable information in your article, and also leave them wanting more.

In fact, writing from scratch is something that I try to avoid.

Here’s what I do:

Sometimes when I get an idea for an article, I write down a makeshift title, jot some notes on the topic, and then stash it away for a rainy day when I need to write an article.

This is like an article skeleton–just the bare bones of an idea to be developed later.

This takes an immense amount of pressure off of the writing process–when my writing day arrives, if I’m stumped for something to write about, I look at my folder of “skeletons” hoping to find something that will inspire me.

And then–JOY!

I open a file and find that the article main points are already in there, a head start!

Do you stash writing ideas like this?

Right now I have about 50 article skeletons– Sometimes I will just type in the title and leave the body blank if I don’t really have an idea of how to start. Then I’ll save it and just use the title to jumpstart a new article.

But the real treasure is opening up a draft to find that the article is already started, with either points listed or an intro paragraph.

It’s daunting to start out looking at a white page–it saves so much mental energy to start off with the article skeleton already in place.

Today I got on a roll and created 4 article skeletons in about 20 minutes–very satisfying!

It doesn’t take much time when your mind has got that creative momentum going, and there’s no pressure to come up with anything resembling a finished article.

What do you think– Will you try this “article skeleton” technique?

Photo by perpetualplum

Question:

For SEO purpose, do you suggest we write one article per keyword, or are we able to write multiple articles per keyword with the same effectiveness?

Answer:

When you you want to write articles targeting specific keywords, I would use this model:

1) Do your keyword research before you start writing articles.

2) Then just cycle through your keyword list, focusing an article on one keyword phrase at a time until you go through your list.

3) Then start again at the beginning, and go through the list again (and again, and again…)

4) Be sure to update your keyword list every so often, because that information changes.

This approach is a good way to dominate your niche on the search engines, and ultimately, the more content you have out there for specific keywords, the more likely it is that at least one of your content pieces are going to show up for those searches.

I hope that helps!

Photo by ul Marga

That saves bunches of time–your previous piece of content serves as an outline and source of research for your article, so you don’t have to spend time thinking up a new topic and points to cover.

But how do you re-work a blog post or some other piece of content you have to create a unique article?

I bounce my articles off of my blog posts every month, so I’m happy to give you some pointers:

1) Don’t try to go line by line rephrasing things–that makes it too easy to duplicate the original content of yours.

2) Instead, read back over your blog post and jot down the main points. Don’t copy whole sentences or anything, just a quickly jot down the main points of the article.

3) Then, using the notes you’ve jotted, start fleshing out the article. Do not look back at the original piece–if you do it is too tempting to start copying parts.

4) Remember that you can take a different approach in your article –your blog post may be in essay form, but your article could be a Top 5 List or a Top 15 List.

5) Do not try to re-work a previously submitted article–this re-working process is for content of yours that is in different forms, like blog posts and content on your website. It is perfectly fine to get ideas from previously submitted articles and to write new articles that go deeper or take different approaches to the same topic, but you should not take an article that you’ve submitted and try to create a different variation of the same article. Each article you submit should be unique and fresh and should not re-use content from previously submitted articles.

Here are some examples from my own writing:

Example 1

Original blog post:

How To Get Out Of A Writing Slump

Article that was bounced off of the blog post:

5 Tips for Getting Out Of A Writing Slump

Example 2

Original blog post:

Do I Really Have To Think About Keywords?

Article that was bounced off of the blog post:

I’m A Newbie To Article Marketing: Do I Need To Do Keyword Research?

The idea is to get the most benefit from your previously created blog post without copying it–you want the content on your own site to be unique, but you can still use your blog posts as a starting point in creating new articles.

If you learn how to do this you can get a content creating system going that can save you bunches of time and help you submit articles consistently.

Photo by Kristina B

I’m creating this resource with the intention of helping you newcomers maximize your time and focus on goals.

Here are the elements we’ll be focusing on:

• What can you expect (this is a big deal as you’re getting started)

• Setting priorities (what should you focus on)

• Organizational and writing tips

If you’re a newbie to article marketing (and you’re in good company if you are), then you can read this resource and get direction on what is absolutely necessary to focus on and what can wait until you’ve got more experience.

This will save you bunches of time and mental energy!

Okay, let’s get started…

What can you expect?

This is mandatory reading for everyone who is doing article marketing:

The # 1 Reason Why Article Marketing Fails

What are the major things I should focus on?

As a beginner, there are just a few things to focus on:

1. Submit articles consistently, somewhere between 2 and 8 articles a month per site is sufficient.
2. Take the time to craft a strong resource box–this will impact how many people will click the link in your resource box, so it’s important. Here is a very simple guide for writing a resource box.
3. Write educational articles. Do not write articles that are sales oriented. Write as if you are an expert in your field and you are teaching your target customers valuable information. All sales information should be saved for your resource box.
4. Pay special attention to your titles. Your title should clearly indicate what your article is about. Try to make your titles interesting. Imagine that you are a reader looking through hundreds of article titles–what sort of title would catch your attention?

As a beginner, if you just focus on these 4 things, you will make an extremely strong start.

Tips For Writing Quality Articles Faster

1) Brainstorm a list of article topics. Do this before trying to write–get an article topic list going and keep it by your desk.

2) Create a writing schedule. Pre-decide how many articles you will submit each month, then schedule writing days for yourself. Mark these days on your calendar.

I’m telling you–this writing schedule saves my life and helps keep me on track. If you’re anything like me, when you’re left to your own devices to decide when is a good time to write, you will put it off indefinitely.

On your writing days, select a topic from your pre-made list of topics, and write about it.

3) I find it infinitely helpful to create an informal outline before getting started writing. I get my main points down on paper, then I flesh things out.

4) Use an article template if you’re short on writing ideas.

5) Give yourself a word count goal. You might aim for a 500-800 word article. Putting boundaries on your articles helps you write faster.

6) If you have a blog, you can rework blog posts and submit them as articles.

Keep It Simple

That is it–that is all you need to know to make an excellent start.

Do not feel the need to learn every last thing about article marketing right at the get go–that’s a sure fire way to burn yourself out.

You do not need to get tricky, you do not need to try to understand SEO, you do not need to employ any advanced techniques to get more dramatic results.

Save yourself some time and brainpower. You can explore the more advanced elements of article marketing  after you’ve got these basics down pat.

But as you’re beginning–Just do these simple things and you will make a strong start.

Additional Resources:

Article Marketing Tips For Beginners

Photo by wwarby

You have more article ideas than you realize.

The most common question any Article Marketer asks is this:

“What should I write about?”

I think folks sometimes get stumped for topics because the expansive sea of possibilities is just mind boggling.

I have a theory though:

You have more article topics at your fingertips than you realize.

You may even have ready-made content just waiting to be tweaked and submitted as articles.

Look at your own website.

Now, if your website is a blog, then you already have a storeroom of article topics at your disposal, but in this post I’m specifically talking to people who have traditional websites.

If your website is like most people’s websites you have on your very own site ideas for several articles just waiting to be written.

Example:

Let’s say you’re a Virtual Assistant– it’s likely that you have a page on your site that answers the question “What is a Virtual Assistant?” or “How A Virtual Assistant Can Save You Time”, or some other content that you’ve written to help persuade an interested party into being interested in working with a Virtual Assistant.

That info is a prime candidate for an article or two or more.

Audio Content From Your Website

Have you done any podcasts or audio interviews on your topic?

These can be great sources for article ideas.

Example:

Recently Mark Bowden, an internet marketing specialist from the UK,  interviewed me on various aspects of article marketing for his own clients. It was about a 45 minute interview with lots of good questions asked by Mark, and I had linked to the interview from my site and encouraged readers to listen to it.

But then I thought–”Hey, that’s good content. I can use this!”.

I just re-listened to the interview and took notes on major topics, then broke those topics into articles.

More Article Topic Sources On Your Site and In Your Business

E-Books

Have you written an e-book on your topic?

Pull chapters from your e-book and adapt them to be articles. You might have to do some slight rephrasing on the intro and concluding paragraphs, and also whittle the chapters down to article length (no more than 1500 words), but depending on the length of your book, you probably already have the makings of several dozen articles.

Your List Messages

If you have a list of email subscribers, what are you sending out to your readers?

Do you offer an e-course (you know, lessons sent out automatically to people who sign up)?

Or perhaps a newsletter?

If you have a list, you must be sending information to them.

Look through your email messages and see if there is anything that you can morph into an educational article. Remember, you’re looking for educational, teaching content to turn into articles.

For messages going out via email, you do not have to rework them like you would if the content was on your own site. It is fine to use verbatim content that is going out to your email list in an article.

Your Customer Support Replies

Many times I’ve used my customer support replies as the basis for articles. You can sort of tell when you have an ‘article worthy’ customer support reply:

• You find yourself explaining a very important concept that is essential to the person’s success.
• You notice yourself teaching –you’re providing background info, explaining things in depth, and giving examples.
• You’ve noticed this same question coming up before, and you know that if a handful of people are asking it then likely many others are wondering the same thing.

My attitude is this: As long as I’ve taken the time to write a really thorough reply to a great question from a customer, why not use that content in an article?

Much of the work is already done, and my mind is on the topic anyway. Makes the most use of the time and brainpower I’ve invested.

How To Re-Work Website Content

Here are some pointers for transforming content on your website into articles:

1) Rework your appropriate website content and submit it as an article. Do not submit the same content verbatim–it is in your own best interest to keep the content on your own site unique.

*Exceptions to this would be if you were using audio content, email message content, or content you’ve sent as a customer support reply. For those, you do not need to change the content to be sure the original is unique.

Only content you’re using from your own website needs to be re-worked.

2) Be sure that your article is not promotional–you cannot talk about yourself or your business or services in the article body. Save that for the resource box. The info you provide in your article needs to be objective and educational, so content on your website that is all about you and more of a sales pitch for your business would not be appropriate material.

3) Set a word count goal–Your article should be at least 400 words long, but it can be  longer than that. A good goal to aim for is 400-800 words.

4) Use the website content as an outline for writing your article. That will help you write the article faster. I use outlines for all my articles, and they help me stay on track.

5) Write for different sections of your target market. For example, you may write an article on one topic 2 different ways–One for newbies and the other for experts.

Have You Found Hidden Article Ideas?

When you find a source of article ideas on your own site or in your own business, it’s like discovering a hidden treasure.

I found one of these recently–I looked at an e-book I’d written and noticed that I could use the table of contents as an “article idea list”. That is a 70 page e-book, so I will be set for article ideas for a while!

I hope this post has helped– have you found any hidden article ideas?

Photo by Cayusa

You have two options:

1) Your real name.

You would use your real name if you have no other reason for changing it, or if you would like to become known as an expert in your niche.

Using your real name adds a level of authenticity that a pen name sometimes misses.

If you do use a pen name, it’s a good idea to try to make it sound real.

2) A pen name

A pen name (aka alias), is a fictional name adopted by an author.

Here are some reasons why authors use pen names:

*To be more memorable. Maybe your real name is very common and you’d like to have a name that stands out more.

*To come across as being a person of the opposite sex.

*To differentiate other writings you may have done on other topics.

*To avoid overexposure.

*Your name may happen to be the same as that of a well known writer (Stephen King, Mark Twain, etc), and you may change your name so as not to confuse readers.

*For some reason you want to conceal your identity.

In article marketing, there is nothing wrong with using a pen name if you feel so inclined.

If you decide to use a pen name, keep these guidelines in mind:

*As I said before, it helps to make your pen name sound like a real name, rather than an obviously fake one.

*Use a first name and a last name.

*Avoid silly names. If your name sounds like a cartoon character or some kind of alter ego or computer avatar (Mr. Zebra, Party Animal, Website Guru, Cupcake Girl, etc), it can make it hard for a reader to take you seriously. Remember, you are writing educational articles, and your goal is to provide helpful information to your target market.

*Don’t try to play a name off of your topic–like if you’re writing about “Lord of the Rings”, using a name like Frodo Hobbit is a bit too obvious.

*Do not try to morph your business name into a pen name. I’ve seen folks try to do this, and it is not very subtle and it doesn’t sound like a real name at all. It can also get your article declined for being promotional.

*A website addy is not a pen name, so you can’t say that your pen name is ExtremeCars.com or anything like that.

What is a good pen name?

A name that sounds real. Use a first and last name.

If you have no real reason to use a pen name, then use your real name. The choice is up to you!

Photo by pareeerica

Yes, we want to provide educational helpful info to our readers with every article, but have you ever craved a different perspective, a jolt of creativity, a way to combine a love of history (or TV!) with your article writing?

I’d like to push you a little bit out of the box with this article template.

Use a historical figure, TV character, or any sort of popular icon as an example of the principles you’d like to teach.

A great example of this is The Mark Twain Guide To Better Blogging from Copyblogger.

Now, this example is a blog post, but as we know blogs and articles are complimentary.

Here are some guidelines for you:

Pick a historical figure that has made some great quotes.

If you’re stumped, browse around BrainyQuote.com

Here are some ideas for you:

• Shakespeare
• Mister Rogers (you know, Fred Rogers from Mister Rogers Neighborhood–he had some great quotes!)
• Bill Cosby
• Katharine Hepburn
• Helen Keller
• Abraham Lincoln
• Winston Churchill

You get the idea. You do not have to pick a person that has anything to do with your niche–that is what makes things interesting.

How do Mark Twain and blogging go together?

It’s that odd combination that intrigues you to want to read the article. The quotes you choose will tie the historical figure to your topic.

Select several quotes that you can work off of. The idea is to choose quotes that you can in some way connect to principles/ideas having to do with your niche. Quotes that are ideals, beliefs, or observations are good inspiration.

Write a commentary on how each quote connects to a principle having to do with your niche.

Write an introductory paragraph that gives a little info about the historical figure, and why you think he/she would have been a great blogger, virtual assistant, website designer, entrepreneur, affiliate marketer, caterer, dentist, florist, real estate agent–whatever your niche is.

Write a conclusion–could just be one sentence.

Write a title that mentions the historical figure in combination with your topic. For example:

The [historical figure's name] Guide To [Your Topic]

Some Tips:

Now, depending on your personality, this will either be the easiest article you’ve ever written or the hardest.

I encourage you to use this template as inspiration to think about your topic in a different way and adapt it to suit your personality.

Suppose you’re not all into the quotes–here’s an alternative example:

Carrie Bradshaw’s Guide To A Stylish Book Launch

In that post, the author used a TV personality as an example of the principles she was teaching. There were no quotes involved, but the article played off of a situation the TV character was in, and then morphed into a How-To piece.

Why do this?

It is intellectually and creatively stimulating for both you and your readers.

It can be intriguing and attention grabbing.

It’s just plain fun.

Will you try this?

If you’re brave and use this template to write your next article, please share a link to your article in the comments so we can be inspired!

100 articles is your marathon.

I got some great feedback from you guys on the post about aiming for 100 articles, and I’d like to offer a plan for making this grand achievement more doable.

I know that when a huge goal looms ahead of you it can be daunting (especially when you’re just starting out!), but anything is doable when you break it into steps.

Why Aim For 100 Articles?

Do you know where most people go wrong with article marketing?

A lack of CONSISTENCY.

That’s right–the most common reason why an article marketing campaign “fails” is not because of a lack of technical knowledge but rather for something as simple as not submitting enough articles on a regular basis.

I keep this quote from Benjamin Disraeli beside my desk:

“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.”

Doing anything consistently month after month after month will make an impact.

What does “consistency” look like?

Submit articles each month. Do it for the lifetime of your website.

Having a goal like 100 articles is a great motivator for building consistency into your article marketing routine.

It’s like when you decide to take up jogging, you might set yourself a goal of running in a marathon.

At the time you decide to do the race, you can’t run that far, but the goal is what motivates you to keep on progressing to that distance in a certain time frame.

Think of the 100 articles goal as your marathon.

The Time Frame: Why A Year?

I must say that the idea is not to submit 100 articles in a short period of time–if you submit articles at the rate that I recommend, this will take a year or so to accumulate 100 articles.

Doing things faster is not necessarily a bonus–it’s better SEO wise to gradually build up the links over a year’s time.

Quality and Quantity Count

Remember, we are not just shooting for a particular quantity, but for articles that have quality as well.

Every article you write needs to be a quality article that is useful to your readers, but a HUGE component of article marketing is also consistency.

You can write 100 articles using this plan and this time frame (a year or more) and still write quality articles.

Writing 25 articles or so is a great start, but you will see your best SEO results with an ongoing article marketing campaign that goes on for months and years. Article marketing is all about momentum and compounded results.

Aim for 100 quality articles (and it will take about a year to reach that goal) and you will have a built-in consistency that will payoff.

Simple Strategies

Submit 2 articles a week, or 8 a month

Set a goal for yourself–try 8 articles a month. That’s 2 a week.

Then just plug along consistently and before you know it the year will be over and you will be rapidly closing in on 100 articles.

To accomplish this goal you can take a few approaches:

=> Schedule 2 writing days a week, and write an article on each day.

OR

=> Write several articles at one writing session, and schedule one or two writing sessions a month. You may be able to accomplish all of your writing within a few days if you batch process your article writing.

Write In Bursts

Or here’s another idea–I have a friend who prefers to write in bursts.

She sets the goal for herself to write 5 articles a week for 5 weeks, then she takes a break for a few months.

So, imagine it–if you write 5 articles a week for 5 weeks, you have 25 articles. If you’re submitting 8 articles a month, then that will keep you going for a little over 3 months.

So, you can write 5 articles a week for 5 weeks, and then take 2 months off, then start back up again after your break.

Finding Article Topics

Writing 100 articles in a year does not take a Herculean writing effort–rather, it takes consistency.

Do not imagine that you will need to be spending all of your time writing. You can accomplish this goal by writing 2 articles a week, and that is entirely reasonable.

The hardest thing about submitting articles consistently is coming up with writing topics–I think if we all had someone telling us exactly what to write about for each article, there would be much less procrastination and more enthusiasm for sitting down at the writing desk!

So, let’s talk about finding article topics:

1) Use these article templates to jump start your writing. Each one of these templates can be used over and over again.

2) Multi-task your content creation: Bounce articles off of your blog posts (if you have a blog)

3) Consult this resource I created about how to find great article topics– there you’ll find resources for stimulating new article topics, writing strategies, and organizational methods.

The Impact

I submitted just 8 articles a month last year (submitting through SubmitYOURArticle.com) and saw a dramatic increase in my search engine ranking for some new keyword terms that I was targeting.

One of them jumped from #88 to #1 in the results listings. Now that’s a dramatic difference!

Submitting 100 articles over a year’s time can have a huge impact on the health of your site.

Your Homework

Don’t think you can accomplish this feat? Well, you can, and you can do it without killing yourself. All you need is a plan.

1) Step one is the biggie: Commit to submitting 100 articles in about a year’s time (will likely take a little over a year).

2) Create a plan for yourself:

Are you the sort who wants to get all of your writing completed in one or two days a month?

Or do you like to be slow and steady, writing 2 articles a week on different days?

Are you an all or nothing type of person who would enjoy the challenge of writing 5 articles a week to create a storehouse of articles to submit over a period of 3 months?

Or come up with your own plan!

Will you at least try to run this writing marathon? Let me know in the comments.

Photo by OskarN

Update: SubmitYOURArticle.com allows unlimited article submissions, but we still recommend for an optimum campaign submitting up to 8 articles per month/per site, although there’s no actual restriction.