How to Make Your Online Content Earn You Money and Recognition Part 2: How to Keep People Reading Your Work

 
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So, the friends you made, have stopped over to read your work

Through your hard work of paying attention to other people’s projects, you’ve finally managed to get a few to return the favour to you. (You might have even been able to attract the popular writers you lied to about reading their work, when they aren’t even listed on your page, as one of the people you follow.) This was just the first step, so how do you manage to keep them coming back for more?

If you know anything about angling, you’ll know that catching a fish does not stop at the point of it biting your bait. You have to reel it in, and place it inside your bucket. Sometimes, even this is not enough, as fish are known to jump out of buckets, and back into the freedom of the sea.

Earn their respect for your abilities

I’ve read so many articles on the internet which have made me feel ashamed of being someone who creates online content. I wish that there was some sort of editing system which chewed up and digested any piece of work which was substandard.

Since there is no such device, we have to rely on our own standards, to produce high-class, well-edited internet content.  

As in other areas of life, no employer would keep paying her/his employee if the product of his employment was less than that which was expected. If you wish for anyone (especially people who produce top level pieces) to respect you or your work, you’ve got to pay attention to quality control. Try not to be promoting several pieces all at the same time. Publishing three or four top-class article per week, is 100% better than churning out six half-cooked pieces every day. Not only will you be allowing time for your friends to be able to read them all, but the promotion of each piece will be more concentrated, thus more effective. Remember that your friends have got their own creating to do, in addition to this, your work is not their only port of call.

What should I pay attention to

Here is a very brief answer to this question, but the following are some mistakes which I think are most often made.

Use the uppercase version of the letter ‘I’ when you talk about yourself (the common i shows immaturity and carelessness). Use your spell checker, and if you have the grammar suggestions’ option, don’t be shy. Ask it for help. You shouldn’t hit the publish button without first re-reading your work at least five times.  If you’re a serious writer, you’ll have quite  a number of pots brewing at any one time.

(I’m working on two books, a magazine article, and four pieces in this series at the moment. This means I have to write a lot, but it also enables me to go back and check the projects many times before publishing. When I get to the end of this page, I am going back to parts three and four, add to them, then come back here to read and edit this for a third time. However, it will be two days before I publish this particular article.)

As you write, come back and re-check the ones which are almost ‘cooked.’ When you feel that they’re done, leave them for a day, then come back with a fresh eye, and give them the once over BEFORE you share your brilliance (or lack thereof) with the world.  I judge a writer’s abilities while reading the first two paragraphs of her/his profile page (or even by a message he/she sends to me, asking to read their work).  If English is your first language, you should be able to write in perfect, comprehensible sentences. If it’s not, then I salute you, because you’re braver than I am, to make that difficult decision to write in your second language.

Should I copy and paste from elsewhere

No.

“But it’s so easy to go to Wikipedia and copy stuff. Shouldn’t I just make use of it?”

No!

If you simply trot over to Wikipedia and copy the information you want into your word document, you’re not a serious writer, and will never make much of an impact as an online content provider. You certainly will not get any sort of recognition for your art.

If you find that Wikipedia is useful to you, there is no law that says you cannot go over there and consume a pageful of information. However, while a child would copy and paste, then pretend it was all their work, a talented creator would read the information, digest it, then write it up in his/her own words, adding their knowledge and information to the piece. The end result of such an article is one that is fresh, readable, and original – the very thing which will earn you respect as a sought after internet creator. Make sure that your research is thorough, that you always find something new, and that you’re using at least ten different sources for your research. This way, all your creations will be truly yours, because it would’ve come from your wealth of knowledge. In the end, it’s you who benefits, because whatever you’ve learned from your studies, will only add to your progressive knowledge. Knowledge, as we’ve read, is power.

How do I keep the attraction going

With plenty of original content, demonstrating an increasingly high standard, and using appropriate pictures in the right places. Don’t be lazy. If you see an image you’d like to use, write to the owner and ask permission to use it in your work. They usually say yes, as long as you can write a decent letter, and you promise to link to their site. More often than not, as soon as you make contact, they will check you out. The better your profile, the more likely they are to say yes, because it means serendipitous exposure for them. If you make contact saying, ‘Yo, can i use your picture for my article i wanna right {sic}?’ They are likely to never reply to you.

Keep reading and commenting on others’ work, and you will maintain a steady stream of online business. Remember we’re all the same here, we know that it’s a two way street. If you keep coming, so will I. If you stop, what reason have I got to keep visiting your page, when there are others out there who will reciprocate my hard work.

Keep sharing on social networking sites

Keep building your profile on social networking sites so that your friends will be happy to share your work there, in the knowledge that when you do the same for theirs, your high rating means that their work will become viral in the internet scene.

Keep fixing, retagging and editing old articles

What has this got to do with keeping people reading your work?  Well, everything, if you want your old projects to stay current and keep on earning! As web content providers, we want to keep making money from our earlier, AS WELL AS our latest projects. Why else would we keep producing. As online writers and creators, we also are aware that we grow and improve every time we publish something new. This is why it is important to spend a few hours every week, going over the old articles and fixing them if needed. 

As we said before, it’s very difficult to edit one’s own work, because we’re so familiar with them. It gets easier though, if you read them with a fresh eye. Going over the articles you wrote a year ago, gives you a new perspective and enables you to be a better, more objective judge of what works and what doesn’t. You will find mistakes you didn’t know were there. 

Retagging your pieces at regular intervals means that you are more likely to catch topical issues (which weren’t topical at the time you wrote the article) which are now pertinent to that specific article. This new tag puts a new engine on your old project, and sets it up to a possible revival into the current internet scene, and out of the slush that it had inadvertently fallen.

Use your keywords throughout your articles

It can be a bore to think up different ways to use the keywords (words that describe what the gist of your article is) throughout your piece. I admit this. Nevertheless, it helps search engine to figure out where to place your article, when people type in random words related to the subject about which they want to read.

For example, this article gives tips and ideas about how you can use the internet to gain recognition, and make money from creating web content, right? Right! Therefore, I had to think up ways to express this idea, over and over again, throughout this piece, without repeating the same thing several times.

How do I decide which words to use in this article to enable, Google, for example, to throw this article your way when you search for this topic? What words are you MOST likely to type into your search panel, if you were attempting to find such an article? My guess is that you would use the following: ‘making money from writing,’ ‘writing for internet sites,’ ‘gaining recognition for internet content,’ ‘writing better articles,’ ‘how to publish good articles,’ ‘tips for online writing,’ etc. If you go through this article, you will find all those words and phrases hidden among the sentences therein.

Follow these simple tips, and your readers should keep coming back for more of your work. It can never be guaranteed that a particular writer will remain popular indefinitely. However, having a sound quality control in place, along with the other factors discussed here, you should find that your work will remain in the minds of those who’ve come across it, because they would’ve recognised it for the original, well-presented gem that it was.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series. If you haven’t yet read the first one, there is a link provided, at the bottom of the page.

Revision

• I’ve got to keep working hard to maintain friendships and my fan base, by showing my support for their work.
• I have to pay attention to quality control, by always taking the time required to produce top quality pieces. If I don’t know the rules of grammar, I should learn them. I cannot be a sought after writer if I don’t know the first thing about sentence construction and rules of grammar.
• I shouldn’t copy and paste. I should read, digest and write instead.
• I should remember that original work earns me respect.
• I should keep building my profile on social networking sites, so that my rating helps the original work I share to go further.
• I have to remember that retagging and editing, are like new polish to older articles.
• I have to know the importance of keywords.

Find out more about writing and publishing at A Blogger’s Books.com

More in this series:

Part one – Why add friends

Part three – How to keep the ideas coming

Part four – Developing skill and technique

Part five – Setting out your article for internet skimming