Writers Tips

It is in the best interest of Say It Aloud and our writers that the advertising space sells on each article that is submitted by our Café. After all, how much writing are you going to do if your advertising space isn’t selling and how much of your space will advertisers buy if nobody is reading your article? In order to maximize your chances of selling your advertising space you must have a balance of popularity, quality, and content. To that end, the team here at Say It Aloud has put together these useful tools that will hopefully help you maximize each and every article that you place on the Say It Aloud website.

Content Wears the Crown

For an advertiser and a reader to take interest in an article, there must be some virtual heft to it. The biggest reason we have seen articles on sites not grabbing the attention of advertisers is because of how short the article is. Yes quality is important, however if your article is only one hundred words, advertisers are going to not be as enthused to pay money on your page when the average ready will only be there for six seconds. They would more likely go to an article with lesser quality that people will stay at for a longer period of time. Articles should be no shorter than 300 words. If you are having a problem getting an article to stretch that far, look at the other tips we have put together and you will may be surprised how far your articles can go.

$Keywords$

When writing an article, think of the topic and the potential advertisers who would most want to take advantage of it. Incorporate words and phrases that will directly tie into the article. For example, if you are going to write an article about brushing your teeth you may also want to tie in about picking out a good toothpaste, toothbrush, and the importance of flossing afterwards. By incorporating each word several times and broadening the types of phrases you place within the article you can expand and increase the number of potential advertisers who may take interest in your article. Now an article that may have only had the interest of dentists, now is of interest to toothbrush and toothpaste companies. By expanding your keywords while staying on topic, you increase the likelihood of pulling in a wider range of advertisers.

Add Color & Images

Many people have great ideas on topics they can write about, but their writing skills lack. Many of the articles the Say It Aloud team prescreens would be much stronger is those articles were written with a splash of color. There are many ways to add that splash of vibrancy to your writing and grab the attention of readers and advertisers alike.

Analogies

Analogies are a great way of tying an article into a story and tying the two together. For example, in the Article, “Bad Website, No Customers for You” A solid emotional tie in was made between telling someone their website was horrible, and informing a person that they had an ugly baby. This not only added additional content and descriptions, but entertained the reader as well.

“How do you do it? How do you tell someone that the pictures of their son are the ugliest thing you have ever seen and that there should be a law against displaying him in public? How do you tell someone that it isn’t the dress that makes their butt look big, it’s the Doritos? At what point do you finally let someone know that they will never have a career in singing, dancing, or movies? Yet here I am, looking at a doe eyed thirty something year old contractor who is trying, yet failing, and asking me how his most important marketing tool looks to me, the guy who does nothing else for a living.” The reader will feel uplifted and compassionate at the same time. Phrases like this also bring people back to the article in a Pavlovian trance when someone else makes statements similar to these.

Descriptive Writing

By utilizing a little description, or even a lot of description, you can create a new dimension in your writing that entertains and draws the readers in. This sentence is an example of a simple sentence that has a small appeal:

“I Play video games all the time.”

Now, take the same sentence and insert some strength in description:

“I am obsessed with video games. I spend more time glued to my flat panel TV with a controller in my hand than many Americans do awake. I have calloused every finger and have worn the letters off every button of my console. While you sleep, I play. When you are getting ready for work, I play. I know each pixel, every storyline, and all the cheat codes to my library of CD’s and cartridges.”

Which of the two gives you a better sense of the writers obsession with video games? It’s obvious. Taking that extra time helps people to know exactly what the author is saying.

Get Controversial

Many people who write are afraid to get any kind of argument going. However, keep in mind that advertisers are looking for articles that get a good number of people visiting them. With the comments section of each article, it is easily noticed when an article is getting a fair amount of readers.

In a post on another website, one of our writers wrote an article on why a certain pregnant under aged singer was the perfect role model for kids. This article infuriated several hundred parents and he received literally hundreds of comments on his writing. This article was extremely controversial, however, given the number of people who came to his page, had he done the same on Say It Aloud, there is no doubt that his article space would have been sold out in record time. So you may want to consider the best way for you to spark that interest and remember, that many actors love taking the role of the bad guy.

Pimp Yourself

The writers who do the best are the writers who advertise their writing. Through blogs, with message boards, and even e-mailing potential advertisers, many of our writers have seen good results in the past. Say It Aloud even has a writer who promoted himself so heavily, that several advertisers will advertise on his articles sight unseen. This type of self marketing is one of the best ways to get your space sold in a fairly short amount of time.

One of our writers contacted several of his clients before Say It Aloud even launched. She told the advertisers what her ads were going to cost and before we even accepted payment she was already getting requests for exclusivity to several of her articles.

Write Often

As yourself how much writing you can do in a day. Most of our writers say they can write up to three articles a day just by gaining topics by surfing the web, watching TV, or just living life. If you are experiencing any form of writers block, change your gears. If you are at home, go out and do something that will get your brain going.

Of course there are other ways you can increase the caliber and quality of your articles, but these should give you a good direction to go. If you have additional suggestions that you think other writers would benefit from, let us know.