Today, I came across a very interesting study by Dee, a fellow Internet marketer. She did a terrific job of surveying a number of ghostwriters to determine lowest, average and highest prices that people charge for an article or an e-book of any given size.

You can dispute her calculations all you like, but it’s still a pretty interesting read. One of the notable things is that those $5 writers are not as prolific as I thought - in fact, the study shows that, on average, a 500-word article costs $20! To be completely honest, this is almost too good to be true, so I can’t help but wonder if the relatively small sample size had something to do with it.

Be that as it may, Dee still did a great job and if you’re a ghostwriter or are thinking of hiring one, I strongly suggest you check our this thread on the Warrior Forum.

Well, I’ve been doing a bit more keyword research, and this is proving to be a tricky market, albeit a very rewarding one. Though I haven’t made any sales yet - I still can’t submit articles to EZA, remember? - I’ve found a heck of a lot of keywords and keyphrases to base my future articles on.

In fact, I’m so far looking at a list of 23 keyphrases, and I suspect I can comfortably get onto Page 1 on Google for almost all of them. Better still, all of these keyphrases get approximately 50 searches daily (according to the Freekeywords tool provided by Wordtracker) and can be seamlessly (more or less, anyway) integrated into the heading of the article twice, meaning much higher search engine rankings.

Hmmm, now - with 23 keyphrases, each getting about 50 daily searches, we’re looking at a total search volume of…  1,150! Heck, now that’s a lot - maybe not as massive as some other niches, but still rather promising.

I’m gonna get started writing them tomorrow and in the meantime hope that EZA finally pulls the finger out and gives me that damn Platinum status upgrade so I can start publishing articles every single day.

Well, ok, maybe making a post on WF titled “Writers, You Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Talent” was bound to stir up some controversy…

Anyway, I just wanted to explore how people felt about talent - however you define it - being an integral part of of the package of skills you need to write a good article.

The answer is: very strongly.

Luckily, I had a tinfoil cap that came in handy just for this occasion… Nah, I’m exaggerating, of course, and, by and large, I think we had some terrific and civilized debate on whether having this “talent” thing is important in order to write a good article for profit (thanks, Vince!)

All in all, it would appear that one can’t dismiss talent as completely irrelevant when it comes to writing a great article. With that said, I still believe - and I’ll stand by this belief no matter what until I see some real evidence to the contrary - that you don’t need to be a talented writer to write a good, solid article.

It’s like a geometry class - if you take 20 students who all work equally hard and apply themselves, all 20 of them will get A’s - but 1 or 2 will go on to become the next Pythagoras. Now, to put that into perspective, if you’re studying for your Maths GSCEs/A-Levels, how important is it for you to have Pythagoras as a tutor and would a simple maths professor suffice instead?

The choice is yours.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone on WF for taking the time to contribute to what I think was a very interesting discussion. For those interested to catch up on what went on, you can see the thread for yourself here.

Ok, so maybe some of the original articles I submitted in my first bid for complete marketing domination weren’t terribly successful; they still, however, completed one important goal: getting me closer to the 10 article submissions I need to qualify for Platinum status with EZA.

Now, obviously, Platinum doesn’t mean a lot in and of itself. Every man and his dog who bothers submitting enough articles seems to get promoted to Platinum status (though I saw some unlucky sods with 54 live articles and Basic accounts). However, the great thing about Platinum status is that your articles will get approved much quicker (just how much quicker, I have no idea - let me know if you do), which means that you can kickstart your bum marketing efforts a lot faster.

So, I guess the lesson for the day is - start writing and submitting if you haven’t got your Platinum status yet. These articles may not necessarily be relevant to your bum marketing effort per se, but they will pay off in the long run by letting you make money a heck of a lot faster!

Well, in addition to slowly building a list of subscribers, I’ve also released my secret weapon to bring out the article writer in you! In an act of shameless self-promotion, allow me to introduce my “20 Hints on Writing a Better Article” report, which is available for download to anyone free of charge. Simply fill out the form below to get your free copy today!

Ok, so ArticleDashboard doesn’t like bold tags around hyperlinks - all 3 of my articles were denied for exactly that reason. Live and learn, I guess.

Have you ever seen what your GoArticle submission looks like? If you have, then you probably know that, for whatever silly reason, URLs there do not stand out at all (they’re a very pale shade of green among black text - unless you’re looking for them, you probably wouldn’t even know they’re there).

Anyhow, I just went back and put all my URLs into <b> tags, making then stand out a heck of a lot more (I also put into <b> the first line of author biography, since it’s supposed to grab attention). We’ll see what happens and whether my conversion rates increase.

This shouldn’t really be necessary for EzineArticles as their formatting and choice of colors is a bit better - but I suspect it will do wonders for GoArticles.

If you are considering starting an online career, then doing so without involving your significant others is quite possibly the worst thing you can do, especially if you happen to be (un)lucky enough to live with them. Generally speaking, if your loved ones (parents, boyfriends/girlfriends, relatives, dogs) are at all reasonable, then they usually understand the concept of work - you know, that thing people do when they leave the house every morning and head towards a place called “office”, where they spend the better part of the day staring at their computer screens, typing things with a very preoccupied look on their faces and generally trying to look intelligent just in case their boss drops by their cubicle.

Unfortunately, this also means that your significant others may not always understand the concept of work as defined by someone who wants to make money online. Especially if your loved ones are computer-illiterate, you may find it a little bit difficult to explain to them the difference between doing research for an article and surfing the Net for topless pictures of Angelina Jolie. Because your concept of work doesn’t square with theirs, they’re all too likely to assume that you sitting in front of the computer means that you are available to be bugged about things that they wouldn’t dare pester you with if you were actually at work in their sense of the word.

What this means for you as an article writer is that you have to explain to your immediate relatives - and, in fact, to everyone else affected by your changed schedule - that spending hours in front of the computer doing research and emptying pack after pack of cigarettes as you finish that particularly nasty article is now your idea of work, which means that you are just as unavailable now as you would’ve been in the office. If you fail to communicate that, expect everyone to bug you about all the daily chores that they feel you should be doing just because you’re not at work - taking out the trash, moving heavy things, or, worse still, giving up your place at the computer so they can check their e-mail.

Now, luckily, I am blessed with a girlfriend, who, although somewhat computer-illiterate, was very understanding of the importance I attached to article writing. More importantly, she readily acknowledged that working online is, indeed, a form of work, and, since then, “Sorry, I’m writing articles tonight” has become a perfectly acceptable reply to a dinner invitation. However, I still had to prepare her and explain to her that what I’m doing now is just as important to me as what I could have been doing if I had a regular, classic job. Therefore, be sure that when you start your online career, your loved ones actually understand what you are doing and recognise the difference between working and mindless Internet surfing. Not only will it mean more time for you, but they will also be there to give you support when you need it (working online can get just as stressful as holding a classic job). Now, obviously, sometimes simply talking won’t get the job done - in which case, nothing will get the point across better than waving a thick stack of cash in front of them and pointing out that you’ve earned more money in the last 30 days than in the last half a year.

The importance of getting your loved ones and significant others on board is something that I recognised very early in my online career (well, ok, all 30 days of it), and, in retrospect, it was definitely the right thing to do. Unfortunately, sometimes I went about it in a clumsy way (to my girlfriend - if you’re reading this, I’m truly sorry), but, by and large, they were very understanding and offered all the support I needed when things got rough, even if they still don’t understand why someone would pay $1,000 to write a set of articles instead of doing it themselves. So, my advice to you is to get your family involved - they don’t need to play an active role, but they at least need to understand your schedule and its importance to the household. Believe me, you’ll all be better off for it.

I’ll kick-off the first part of my Post-Mortem series with some general observations of pre-writing - what it is, how you should use it and why it can make your writing job that little bit easier.

First off, what on earth is pre-writing, anyway? Those involved in IM (Internet Marketing) are probably (hopefully) familiar with the concept of pre-selling - getting your customer into the right state of mind to buy your products. Well, pre-writing is pretty much the same thing, except that it involves getting you into the right state of mind to do your job and actually write on what you are paid to do.

But pre-writing is more than just gathering your wits about you and firing up Microsoft Word - it’s all about planning your content and doing preliminary research. When you’re working on a small piece, you can easily (re)write as you go, doing all the research you need along the way. However, if you’re dealing with a particularly big project - like I was for the last 3 weeks - you seriously need to do pre-writing.

The goal of pre-writing is to give you an overview of the subject you need to cover, as well as some sub-topics to structure it around. Large topics generally contain lots of information and if you’re not planning ahead, all this information overload will pretty much get out of control and you’ll find yourself writing much more than you need to. Pre-writing basically helps you identify topics that you will need to cover as part of your work.

For example, let’s say you accept a job to write about Belarus (my home country). Sure, you can just start writing general stuff - but don’t be surprised if a few days later you will notice your writing spiraling out of control and losing any sense of directions, with some of the topics becoming completely bloated and others remaining entirely underdeveloped. Quite apart from this imbalance, you will also probably miss some of the more important - yet less obvious - topics about Belarus, such as, for instance, the impact of the Chernobyl disaster.

Now, what would it look like if you were to do pre-writing? You’d start off by doing some rudimentary research on the subject, maybe taking some notes along the way. You won’t be going into too much detail - you’ll be doing that later as you write - but you will have a rough idea of what’s going on in Belarus and what topics deserve special consideration. You could, for example, write a few pages on Chernobyl or on the opposition to the country’s current dictatorial government. Because you already have an idea of the subject at hand, you will be able to integrate content better by making references to other parts of your work or to subtopics that you have yet to write about. You will retain complete control of the direction of your work, because you already have a rough idea of what topics you need to cover and how much content you can allocate to each. Sure, you could write a book about Chernobyl alone - but, chances are,  you have a deadline to meet, and that means providing compelling, interesting and relevant content that briefly touches on everything without going into too much detail on any particular topic on time.

Pre-writing is something I didn’t do at the beginning, and, in retrospect, I paid for it dearly with a missed deadline and overbloated, overdetailed subtopics. For example, I was planning to write so much on one subtopic that even my client said it was unnecessary (and they wanted lots of content) - of course, that time could have been spend focusing on the remaining parts of my assignment.

So, my advice to you is pre-write, pre-write, pre-write! By knowing in advance where you’re going and what topics you are covering, you’ll stay in control of the creative process and ensure that all your topics are balanced in the amount of content they include. There’s nothing worse than reading an e-book on Belarus with 20 pages on demographics and only 2 on economics.

Ok, so you just landed that massive contract worth several hundred dollars. You’re buzzing with excitement, your fingers are itching to start typing on their own often with no feedback from your brain and you’re already fantasizing about how you will spend your newly found wealth on a new computer/new software/present for your girlfriend/expensive watch.

Ok, that’s all fine and dandy, but there’s just one thing I’d like you to do before you actually start writing.

STOP!

Yes, you heard me. Believe me, when you are just getting started on a big project that requires that requires you to write 30-50 pages on one topic (like what I’m currently working on), the absolutely worst thing you can do is start writing right away. Sure, you may feel inspired and think you have a lot of brilliant ideas, but, honestly, for your sake and that of your client - stop!

Why? Because you haven’t asked yourself one important thing - how am I going to organize my content?

Remember, we said this is a big project, not your typical article writing job. You won’t get away with pumping out 800-word long articles on a related topic - you need a more professional way of presenting your findings and putting them together.

Obviously, you can’t write 50 pages worth of one chapter just paragraph after paragraph. What you now need, first and foremost, is to identify some of the logical divides along which your content can be separated. In other words, finding out what subtopics you will need to cover and plan your content structure around them.

For example, suppose you accepted a contract to write about a country (let’s say Belarus, for the sake of the argument). Your logical divides or subtopics could include demographics, economy, political structure (it sucks), history, foreign policy. Sounds obvious so far, doesn’t it?

But that’s only because you already have a general knowledge of the subject. All of us should have a rough idea of what to write about when covering a country. But how do you structure your content when you have absolutely no knowledge of the topic at hand? Let’s say if you have to write a 50-page paper on acne removal and do not know the first thing about it, how can you break your content up into logical subtopics? Sure, it’s easy to start simply by writing and then hoping that some structure will emerge along the way - but, believe me, it doesn’t work like that, and, chances are, after your paper is written, you will end up spending just as much time reorganizing and restructuring your content to fit whatever subtopics you managed to identify in the process. Believe me, this isn’t a good way to write a long paper.

Before you even get started, you already need to have a general idea of what you are going to write about!

So, what I want you to do instead is visit http://en.wikipedia.org and first get a quick overview of the subject. Wikipedia is great for giving you a condensed version of the content that you will most likely have to include and that should already give you some ideas how to organize it. For example, for acne removal, you could identify such subtopics as the history of acne removal, most popular drugs on the market today and their criticisms, experimental treatments and case studies. This should already give you an idea of what the structure of your work should be like. Of course, remember that it’s not set in stone and there’s still some room for flexibility - but now, at least, your decision on the structure will no longer be arbitrary and your subtopics will actually be logical and make sense.