Beginner’s Guide to Writing Great Online Articles

You’re heard all about the ways to market your product through articles, but you’re terrified of actually sitting down and writing one. But you need to write articles to be successful. Here are a few key things to consider when you first sit down to write:

1. Everyone who’s ever written a single word is where you’re at now: terrified of what to write. Terrified that you’ll get it wrong. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, Grisham, King, every single one of them started somewhere. So, you are certainly not alone. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. In one of John Grisham’s forewords, he wrote that an editor cleaned up “more mistakes that I care to admit.” Even the accomplished novelist John Grisham makes mistakes.
2. Begin writing. Just write. Don’t correct, just write. Many writers are afraid of the “inner editor” inside themselves, always correcting, always criticizing. Get it all on paper or the computer, then you can clean it up. That’s how it’s done.
3. Use bullets or numbered items as often as practical. People like reading Top Ten (or Top Four or however many you can think of) categories. Just go to town with those.
4. After you had a chance to put it down on the screen or on paper, put it away for some time. Depending on the article length or deadline, you may put it away for an hour or a few days. Then when you come back to it, it should be fresh and then you can start editing it. Stephen King puts his novels away for six weeks at a time after he’s written the first draft.
5. For online articles, keep them short. Remember your audience is ready to click away if they see you have a novella going there. I find that 300-600 words is a good read for most people (that is your goal, yes, to get people to read them?). Six hundred words will hold their attention, 2000 might not.
6. After you’re done with the first one, celebrate (however you do that), and then immediately sit down to write a second article. As you gain momentum in this skill, you’ll find it easier and easier to write. Then, when you’ll feel the rush when you see that people have actually clicked on your article and read it.

Believe it or not, principles 1, 2, 4, and 6 apply to longer articles and novels. Novels are just longer and more complex, but still the novelist always starts with a fresh screen or a blank piece of paper.