Many authors, especially those who write for the Web, use various techniques and practices that help them get the maximum number of readers possible. While I've successfully used some of them myself, there are others that I just refuse to do. I have listed five of them below.
1) Write about the most popular subjects. Sorry, but I can't write about stuff like hairstyles and crafts and I don't do reviews, even though I've noticed that people who focus on such topics get tons more readers than I. The problem is that I'm not interested in things like that certainly not enough to write about them, no matter what the potential reward. I can only write about the stuff that interests me. If that means fewer readers and diminished chances to make money and gain notoriety, so be it. I'll succeed on my own terms or I won't succeed at all.
2) Write on demand. I can't do that any more than I can poop on demand. I apologize if that's a little too much information, but I couldn't think of a better way to express myself on this issue. I've tried writing for sites that offer pay and/or extraordinarily high readership in exchange for writing about very narrow subjects of their or their clients' choosing. In many cases, they want articles of 500 words or more. For some of that stuff, I can hardly think of one sentence.
3) Tailor articles and their titles toward popular keywords. I don't think so. Pardon the expression, but I have no desire to become a keyword whore. I don't feel comfortable twisting my words like that in order to create contrived articles. It seems like such an unnatural way to write. I have to write the way I think and I don't always think in terms of keywords. Anyway, if I tried to cram an article with keywords, I would almost certainly put in too many, which would result in the search engines flagging my articles as spam.
4) Network. I've never been able to do the networking thing, whether on the Internet or in person. Sites like Facebook and Myspace are definitely not for me. I know that kind of thing helps build popularity for a writer and his or her work, but I've always been a nonconformist and a kind of lone wolf. It just seems to me that there's a little too much kissing up and brown-nosing involved in the whole process. I hate that kind of politics.
5) Promote. Excuse me, but I'm a writer, not a promoter. I barely have enough time for writing. My goal is to write the stuff and let someone else do the promotion. The way figure it, if my writing is good enough, I shouldn't have trouble finding people who would gladly promote it for me. Therefore, I'm going to spend my time being the best the writer I can possibly be, not trying to artificially inflate the numbers for mediocre work.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. Terry is also the owner and operator of a website that is dedicated to allowing U.S. citizens to find all types of insurance at reasonable prices.
Hi Terry, Excellent. I agree one 100%. I write about what interests me, very few things happen to be poplular, most not. For me, I have taken on things outside of my comfort zone to help improve my writing skills and it is fun to investigate the subject, but there is no way I could do this on a continual basis. I would run out of things to say. My favorite thing to do is write about family (obviously) hee, hee. This is a great reminder to stay true to the things that can make us the best writer we can be. I for one think what you write about is important, insightful, and helpful. I have "promoted" you on another site. (BTW, it gets a lot of votes) - oops, the secret is finally out. Held it in for over a year, then you had to go and write this article. :-)
Well written and well said. I totally agree. Again you make sense and tell the blunt truth about where writing is going. Writing is for the writer. What comes out is for the reader. And wherever the two shall meet is destiny.
I completely agree with your first point - I can't easily force myself to write about a subject I have no interest in or knowledge of, no matter how popular the subject.
Point three applies to me too - I can't (and don't particularly want to) build articles around keywords. That strikes me as cheapening the integrity of what you're saying, and reducing your credibility.
Having said that, I did deliberately include some keywords in my cellphone review article's title that I thought would draw in readers from elsewhere though. More out of curiosity to see if it actually made a difference to the number of search engine hits or not (it did).
I definitely wouldn't want to let keywords influence the style or structure of an article itself though.
Overall, I think articles written due to inspiration or passion about the subject matter tend to be far more interesting to read.
Cynically written articles that are obviously designed to do little more than attract "hits" and send people to commercial URLs don't sit well with me at all (I always give such articles very low marks), especially the ones that seem to be crudely copy-pasted from wikipedia, with a few of the author's website URLs thrown in.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
tweet this!
