Content Creation Secrets

The Internet Gurus will tell you that you can make thousands of dollars within a single day with your content. That’s a laugh. They are the ones who make thousands of dollars selling information products telling you how to do it.

Those who have tried making money with their content have some sad stories to tell.

There are thousands of webmasters or bloggers with great content sites or blogs carrying hundreds of articles making only a few dollars a week through Adsense. The same goes to the Adsense gurus, but they make money selling information products teaching you how to make a fortune with Adsense.

Still, there are some who make a living online with their content. They offer freelance writing services. They are certainly the envy of many who have not yet met with success in their attempts to monetize their content.

You may envy them, but the Internet gurus do not. These slick salesmen tell you it’s not enough to make a living with your content. You are only considered a success when you make a fortune out of your content.

I came across such a statement in a sales letter for a product which teaches you how to make a fortune with your content. You know what’s the secret? Just provide quality content which is in demand.

Gurus share another `little-known’ secret. Don’t write your own content. It’s time consuming. Get someone to do it for you for a few bucks. Sell the content for thousand of dollars. Very simple, isn’t it?

If you come across such a product just ignore it. You are not going to get content creation secrets to make a fortune by buying such products.

Save your money and visit good content creation sites or blogs to pick up useful tips. Keep creating content and be patient as you keep learning.

But if you’re lazy and greedy and always look for shortcuts in life, this advice will be useless to you.

The greedy and lazy will never make a fortune with their content. They will only make the Internet gurus rich and end up frustrated – the just reward of greed and laziness.

How will my blog post benefit my readers?

If you don’t ask yourself this question, you may end up writing a post with a personal agenda. There’s something in the post for you, but very little or nothing at all for the reader.

An example is a blog post written with the intention of selling an affiliate product. The post says, in between the lines, “Hey, I’ve written this so that you will read it and buy the product. I badly want to earn my commission.”

A typical post says you will get all the benefits only if you buy the product. The reader comes away with nothing from the post unless he’s willing to open his wallet. Nothing is given as a reward to the reader for reading the post, not even a single tip which the reader could use without having to spend money.

If you have to write a blog post promoting a product, do offer some tips or valuable information readers can use without having to buy the product.

The other type of `selfish’ post is one about the blogger’s personal life. The blogger talks about his personal life without asking himself what readers can learn out of it. He talks about his dog falling ill and he takes it to the clinic and now his dog is recovering and he will wait patiently for it to be back on its feet.

The reader does not learn anything useful about dogs, or clinics or anything. However, the blogger assumes you know his dog and therefore you must be concerned.

Then there’s the post about struggling with a problem. Recently I read one about a blogger who has not been blogging regularly. She writes about her problem and just ends the post saying she must write regularly. The post is merely a personal reminder to write regularly. No tips or solutions for those who may be facing the same problem.

So, the next time you sit down to write a blog post, ask yourself, “What reward will the reader get for spending time on this post?”

This will prevent you from writing `selfish’ posts.

It happens to even the most prolific of bloggers.

Yesterday, I was going through a blog which was well-known for being updated at least every other day.
There were many interesting posts on blogging to browse through.

However, one post caught my attention. In it the blogger the blogger talks about his absence from his blog for about two weeks.

He starts off saying how his traffic dropped by 50 % during his absence.

The 10 to 20 daily comments he used to receive dropped to only 4 or 5.

The blogger had a confession to make. He revealed that he had taken it easy after enjoying a little success with his blog.

At that point, he had over 250 blog posts and thought that it was enough to keep readers coming in. He was soon proven wrong.

He learnt that readers were always hungry for fresh content no matter how many existing blog posts you have.

What happened? Why did the blogger stay away for two weeks?

Did his ideas dry up? No. He had about a dozen posts in draft form. All he had to do was edit them and post. He did not do it.

I don’t think it’s wrong to be absent from your blog. Maybe a day or two is no harm. But then two days may stretch into three and more and you readers would soon grow tired of checking your blog for fresh content.

Apart from creating a bad impression on your readers, you would also find it difficult to get into the blogging momentum, as our prolific blogger experienced after the break.

Are you willing to go through this pain?

From experience, I can say that if you decide to blog long term, the first thing you should do is not to think about taking a break.

The exception is when you’re really unwell or an emergency happens.

But if you take a break just for the sake for it, then you’re cultivating an unhealthy blogging habit which may work against your blogging success in the long run.
Maintain the momentum once you keep going.

The lesson the prolific blogger learnt was to treat his blog like a daily newspaper.

How would readers react if a daily doesn’t turn up for days?

So, when you feel like taking a break, the first question is not to ask whether you deserve it, but how it would affect your readers.

There are many out there who are raring to blog, but one thought holds them back.

“I’m not an expert yet to start a blog on my favourite subject.”

This thought may occur even if they have come across blogs run by non-experts.

This Experts-Only Syndrome has probably been acquired from the print publishing world where you need credentials - education, experience or celebrity status - for your words to see the light of the day.

Some folks just can’t cope with the thought of suddenly acquiring so much power and freedom when it comes to content creation. Yes, they can’t come to terms with the fact that in the online world they can just go out and publish any material without having to wait for approval from an editor or publisher.

We appreciate what the publishing big boys have done for us – giving us quality and reliable content. That’s about what they can do. Quality and reliable content is not really enough. Such content has to sell, too. You’ve to understand that publishing is a business first and an avenue for self-expression second.

So, you can’t really blame them for not giving space for folks who desire to be heard.

Most of the time they fail to take the risk of publishing works by non-experts. Do they realize there’s a hungry crowd out there who are tired of listening to experts and want to hear what ordinary folks like themselves have to say?

Blogs fill the need print publishers do not want to or cannot accommodate.

And if you feel you’re a victim of the publishing world just because you’re not an expert, blogging is your path to salvation.

You’ll have your say, if you believe in it, without having to query an editor, spend on postage stamps and waiting for an endorsement.

If this thought – doing something without expert opinion - doesn’t terrify you, you’ve the potential of making your mark in content creation.

Instead of asking whether you’re an expert, ask whether you can hold your own if you start a conversation on different aspects of your subject with like-minded folks.

You don’t need to be an expert. I’ve met many an expert who don’t fancy starting a conversation on their expertise.
They know what they should do and do it well, but they simply don’t have the desire or ability to start a conversation.

Can I start a conversation on my subject and keep it going?

That’s the only question you should ask yourself before deciding whether to start a blog or not.

Never mind if you’re not an expert.

The Blogosphere would be very much better for it if you steer clear of this subject.

Yes, I’m talking about starting a blog on how to make money blogging.

It seems to be one of the easiest blog subjects to get started with.

I said easy to start with, but not necessarily easy to keep the blog going.

Anyway, let’s look at a few titles of blogs centering around the subject: Make Money Blogging, How to Blog for Money, Money-Making Ideas for Bloggers……

Isn’t this interesting - a bloke who has not made a single cent blogging and probably is blogging for the first time starting a blog on how to make money blogging?

Research could have pointed him to this subject. Make Money Blogging. Making money doing anything is always a red-hot subject for web content. There is always a hungry crowd waiting to devour such information, never mind if you can’t really make the dough.

Yes, making money blogging is a red-hot idea. All you have to do is tell your readers you can make money blogging. You’re assured of their undivided attention. They never seem to question whether money can really be made or whether you have really made the money.

I’ve never seen comments on these areas. Maybe there have been comments, but deleted by the blogger. Comments are usually about how good the tips are. No comment has asked, “Hey, show me how you’ve made your money using these tips.”

Not surprising. Those who are focused on making money always want to hear the nicest things. That makes the work of Internet marketers a no-brainer.

Just say some nice things to them like you can earn $100,000 a week blogging on autopilot while relaxing in a Caribbean holiday resort and there will dozens of suckers who will be clamoring to buy the product that can help make the vision a reality.

Anyway, since the blogger writing on making money blogging isn’t challenged, he goes on with his blog, usually rehashing stuff from the ebooks he has bought.
But how long can he go on? Soon, it becomes almost mandatory for him to make money with his blog; otherwise he has no business keeping such a blog going.

After a while, smart readers, reading in between the lines of his blog posts, sniff him out as a fake. They deem it a waste of time visiting his blog.

The blogger himself realizes he has entered the wrong door.

If you’re an Internet marketing guru, you can write an ebook about blogging for money and get away with it although you have never blogged in your life. You’re more of a hit-and-run maestro. You tell your readers what they would like to hear, grab the money and run off to the Caribbean holiday resort.

But as blogger, you’re exposing yourself to your readers. You’re allowing yourself to be judged by each and every post you write. Readers expect you to go on and on with your blog, immaterial of the hardships you’re facing. You are an innkeeper; the Internet marketing guru is a guest. He leaves when his purpose his served. You have to keep the inn going.

But since the blogger himself has set out to make money with his blog on how to make money blogging, he will find the going tough when he has not made any money or very little of it.

Since his primary aim is not dissemination of information, he has no motivation to continue. He gasps for breath and gives up.

When he gives up, he sends out a loud and clear message: “Although you would like to, it’s not that easy to make money blogging. Just look at what has happened to me.”

This not to say you can’t start a blog on how to make money blogging. You can if you’ve been doing it successfully over the past few years and are still at it. You’ll have so much to write about, that you’ll be able to sustain your blog for a long, long time.

But if you’re not making much money blogging what are you going to say? Are you going to write on how you made $1 on Adsense for a whole week?

So, please don’t start a blog on how to make money blogging unless you want to expose yourself as a fake soon enough.

You’ll not want your blog to suffer the fate of a blog I visited yesterday.

The blog was run by an experienced journalist.

In his last post – after about six months of blogging – he writes that his blog is `dead and buried’. Anybody who wants to revive (aka buy) the blog is welcome to contact him. He says there’s much good content in it.

Looking through the blog, I soon learned that the journalist had started it to prove that he can make money blogging.

Months later, he lays his blog to rest saying that he has not lost his desire to make money. Only that he will be doing it in the offline world.

A real case to show how difficult it is to make money online, contrary to what the Internet marketing gurus say.

But then he has made money with another blog – he has sold it for $1000. Now I understand why some people are so keen on blogging.

Anyway, the journalist attempted to salvage his credibility by saying he will write content for other unspecified blogs at the same time contradicting himself by saying he has found a better-paying vocation, more exciting than blogging.

He cited workload as the reason for being unable to continue with the blog. I don’t buy that.

How difficult is it for an experienced journalist to pen a few hundred words at least once a week?

The blog will still be alive, collecting revenue from banner ads and Adsense and most importantly, waiting for a buyer.

As I was about to leave the blog, I spotted a mission statement.

The journalist says he’s going to put all the techniques he has learnt from probloggers (the ones who sell ebooks and other info products on blogging) and see whether he can make tons of money like them.

He will do the experiment for a year.

He lasted six months and on the seventh month he made his last post titled, Still Alive, which means he’s still alive but `as for this blog, it’s dead and buried’.

Obviously the techniques of the `millionaire’ bloggers did not work.

What he did not realize when starting out was the `millionaire’ bloggers have not made their money through blogging but by subtly hoodwinking the greedy to buy their ebooks which claim to reveal the secret techniques used by millionaire bloggers.

These millionaire bloggers know you can’t make millions quickly and easily by running a blog. But you can make millions selling a product which makes people believe they can.

A comment by a reader on the last post, hitting out at the so-called `millionaire’ bloggers says, “I didn’t start a blog so that I can retire (rich), but because I have things to say… you’ve got to write because you want to write, or your writing will suck so much that no one will want to read it a second time.”

A valid comment to bear in mind every time we write a blog post.

By now you’re pretty sure the journalist dug his blog’s grave because his primary aim was to make tons of cash with it.

His experience teaches a good lesson. If you start blogging with $$$$ as your primary aim, your blog will suffer the fate of his.

PS. There’s an interesting link in the blog – How to Write Great Posts.

I didn’t read it. It was written by a person not qualified to do so, written without any sincerity or passion.

The Second Type: The Keyword-Mad Blogger
This blogger will not write a single word until he checks his intended topic with a keyword tool and gets approval from it.

He’s excited about blogging on a certain topic but because he has just bought a keyword analyzer tool from an Internet Marketing guru, he will have to put it to good use and get his money’s worth.

The ebook that came with the keyword tool has taught him only to write on `profitable’ keywords, which means keywords with high search volumes.

Still, he searches the keywords he’s passionate about and finds that there are only a few searches or no searches at all. He’s in a dilemma. But the Internet Marketing guru’s brainwashing wins the day.

He decides not to write on topics he’s passionate about. He will spend his time hunting for `profitable’ keywords. Or he doesn’t have to. Some gurus do their readers a favour by listing down profitable niches in their ebooks – saves their readers a lot of hard work and time.

What these gurus suggest is the moment you use a `profitable’ keyword in your blog post, readers will come rushing to your blog because it’s a hot keyword everyone is searching for.

So, the blogger, faithful to his training, comes with `profitable’ keywords and starts writing away although he may not be excited about them or has very little knowledge on the subject of the keyword (the gurus don’t address this issue in their ebooks).

According to the gurus, once the necessary keywords are chosen, readers will be clamoring to read the blog posts and from the `tsunami’ traffic you can earn through PPC advertisements or sell affiliate products etc.

The blogger will soon realise that he’s not the only one who’s using the keyword tool. There are many others using the same shortcut method to draw readers to their blogs or websites. Some have done it much earlier than he has. So, he’s going to be up against stiff competition.

The second thing he will learn is if he keys in a `profitable’ keyword into his favorite search engine, he will find millions of sites already using the keyword. He mistakenly thinks this is good because there’s demand for the keyword.

He will soon learn that he will not get any traffic to his blog because people who search for the keyword will not find his blog. Yes, he’s not going to get first page ranking in the search engines because there are many other mature (have been around for a long time) content sites already using the `profitable’ keyword and there’s no way he’s going to beat them. He would be lucky if he finds himself on the 100th page.

Let’s be a little optimistic for a moment. Say some searchers manage to find his blog. How would they likely react to it? They will find that the blogger’s content is nothing special, not valuable enough to spend their time on. Because it’s keyword-based, they would have seen many others like it elsewhere – maybe better content than what he has to offer.

The smarter ones will sniff it out as a spam blog which focuses only on keywords rather than offering valuable content from the mind and the heart of the blogger. They leave with a bad taste in their mouths, never to return again.

There’s one sure winner though in this game – the Internet marketing guru who sold the keyword tool or ebook to the blogger. He’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

While our blogger, having burnt his fingers, is trying to find blog topics (if he has not given up yet) and trying to win readers, the grinning Internet marketing guru is already planning his next product and looking for ghostwriters who can do the job for him.

I’m sorry, it’s not `looking for ghostwriters’. The gurus call it outsourcing.

Yes, they are so busy subtly hoodwinking gullible folks out there that writing does not deserve even a single minute of their time.

The First Type: The Catablogger
This blogger has a product to sell. He has read in some eBook that blogging about a product is an effective method of selling it.

So, every post he writes is aimed at selling his product although it may be in the guise of offering valuable content.

I read in another blog that this type of blogging is called catablogging. I guess it’s a blog that contains a catalog of products.

The catablogger tries hard to pretend he is offering valuable content to his readers. But with every post he makes, he reveals the card up his sleeve. His readers discover that he’s not a writer, but a salesman out to get their money.

The salesman makes a fundamental mistake when starting a blog. He fails to understand that people don’t visit blogs to buy products.

I’m not saying there aren’t bloggers who are successfully selling their products or that of others. I think these bloggers succeed because their first priority is providing their readers with useful content. And they don’t sell products, but recommend them.

When a recommendation comes from someone readers trust and respect, they’ll likely take action. These bloggers also seem not to mind whether you buy the products or not. They don’t force you to sign opt-in forms or provide links to sales pages or keep bombarding you with emails promoting more and more products.

They are bloggers first and sellers second.

Readers can easily sense whether yours is a content blog or a catablog. In a catablog, every post says in between the lines, “Hey, read this quick and click on the link below to buy my product.”

I visited such a blog recently. This blog talks about how you can create content quickly. The whole motive seems to be to hoodwink your readers into believing that your `shortcut’ content is genuine.

What’s interesting is at the end of every post, there are three clickable links. Two links take you to sales pages of quick content creation products the blogger is selling. The other takes you to an opt-in page for a free eCourse which will eventually ask you to buy something else.

The blog was only active from 2006 to 2007. I noticed that there were instances of even two daily posts.

A content creation blog fizzling out after a year? Can you beat that?

If the blogger claims he can teach others how to create quick content, then he should be doing it himself with his blog.

The blog could not win long–term readers because every post was aimed at selling the same products. There was no genuine intention to provide useful information to the reader.

The blogger on his part would have quit after his primary purpose – selling his products – was not fulfilled.

If you’re a blogger just starting out, remember this for your own good: Readers don’t like to be taken advantage of. The moment they learn you’re luring them into something that benefits only you, they leave and look for another blog. When they leave, you lose them forever.

Anyone who has attempted to blog has a common confession to make: It’s easy to start a blog, but it takes a Herculean effort to keep it going.

It takes great stamina and will power to last the marathon race.

Many have the potential to last the blogging marathon. However, due to some self-defeating habits, they fall out of the race and give up altogether.

The first self-defeating habit is expecting every post to be perfect, to be of the standard of a New York Times article. If you expect that, you shouldn’t be blogging but writing for NYT.

You can’t expect every blog post to be perfect. It’s like a game of darts. You can’t expect to hit bull’s eye each time you unleash a blog post.

It is enough that you’ve said what you’ve wanted to say. So long as readers are not commenting how terrible your post is, you have no reason to doubt the quality of your posts.

Maintaining regular posts is more important than writing masterpieces. You don’t have to write to the highest standard. Just write to an acceptable standard. So, don’t send your posts to the recycle bin yet if you’re not entirely satisfied with it. Publish them and give your readers a chance to decide.

Then there are bloggers who worry about not getting enough comments or getting none at all. For them this means their posts are not good enough. Believe it or not, to some bloggers comments will determine whether they’ll go on blogging or not. They tell themselves what’s the point of going on blogging when nobody is commenting.

No comment is always better than a bad comment. You know people - when something is good they just remain silent. When something is not right, they would spring to their feet and point out the mistake.

Don’t worry, if you’re not getting any comments. Your blog will be around for a long, long time. Eventually the comments will come.

Meanwhile, look ahead to the next post, because your mission as a blogger is to keep making posts not worry whether they are good enough or whether you’re getting enough responses.

I have been using this Hemingway technique for years and it has worked wonders for my content creation.

The technique is when your writing is going good, you don’t write away to completion. You stop at a point where you know what’s coming next. You save the rest for the next day.

In this way, you will easily pick up from where you left when you restart your writing the next morning.
Of course Hemingway was talking about fiction writing – novels, specifically. I’ve used his technique for fiction writing and every morning I’ve gotten off to a good start.

Lately, I’ve been writing mostly non-fiction for the web and was wondering whether I could put the same technique to use. The pieces I’m writing now are mostly 400 to 500 words.

After some reflection I did a little modification to the technique.

I would outline the article I would like to write the next day.

Then I write the opening paragraph and stop at the point where I know what the second paragraph is. So, the next morning I can easily pick up from where I left. It works because the subconscious would have figured the rest of the content while I’m asleep. The best part is I can’t start typing away the moment I sit at the keyboard.

Last night, for some reason, I did not prepare an outline; much less write the opening paragraph. So, I have to pay the price this morning.

Time is going to be spent starting the engine and warming it up before I can get going. And much more effort will be needed to get going, all because I didn’t put the engine on standby mode the night before.

That’s the trouble with most of us. Sometimes we just fail to use the powerful tools available to us.