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In the previous post “my article topic finding process“, I went over how I am finding topics to write about in an article, this was basically the complete process I take when I need ideas for new material to write about. Now i`m going to go over the article itself because I now have a topic and a related affiliate product to work with.

My main objective when writing an article is not only to make sure it’s decent, but also to give out good information without giving everything away. I want someone to find the article after they search for a particular phrase in the search engines, then I want them to stay on the page reading the article in full leaving them with two options, click on the affiliate link to learn the final solution, or click off the page.

Obviously I want the person reading the article to click on the affiliate link rather than leave the page altogether, so in the article copy itself I want to make sure it’s engrossing enough to keep their attention right down to the bottom of the text!

A good tip I use here is to study the sales page of the affiliate product I want them to buy, its at this point I want to copy and paste the headline of the sales page, as well as any bullet points that may appear on the page into a separate text file.

The reason I keep a small text file like this for every article is because it gives me an idea of what the creators of the product are using to grab peoples attention on the main product page, after all they have done all the research for you to find an attention grabbing headline in the first place, so why re-invent the wheel?

I then re-write the headline in my own words and customize it for the article, but still keeping the theme of the headline the same.

I use the bullet points from the sales page in the same way, but I will also re-write and expand upon them creating an entire paragraph out of each to include in the article. Using this method means that I can write a decent article on a subject I don’t really have a great deal of knowledge about,  and all without spending hours on research.

So I now know I have a pretty good headline, and the content is also solid. After all its the job of the products sales page author to keep the visitor engaged in order to make the sale, so they need an attention grabbing headline, and the bullet points will usually voice the greatest concerns/questions that the reader may need the solution for.

The length of my article is determined by other articles with a related topic, so if I search an article directory for similar topics I’ll be looking for two things, the first is how many words the author used, and the second is the amount of views/reads that article has. If I find a related article with 600 words and a ton of views, then I’ll be looking at writing around about that many words too.

Most of the articles I’ve been finding during this research are only at around 200-300 words, very short, good news for me right;)

Depending on the article directory and where you can place your link, you might only have one chance to add this important link right at the bottom of the page in the bio. If this is the case what you write here can be as important as your articles headline, as this is your last chance to ask the reader to take action(meaning click your affiliate link).

What I will generally do here is take what I believe to be the best and most appealing bullet point from the sales page, and then re-write it including my link in the bio.

example..

Discover Why Taking —– Can Actually Give You A Stroke – Learn The True —- —–  —– Remedy

Remember to use your –keywords– in your text link;)

I now have an article written that should be enticing enough for the reader to want to click on my affiliate link, If they do, then I have done what I wanted to accomplish with the article.

Next post I will go over how I redirect links to affiliate pages using php, and what I then do to try and get the articles flying up the search engines.

If I have no idea what to write an article about, I’ll use a few steps to find a great topic to base an article upon. The very first thing I do is open up Wordtracker and use the free keyword tool.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Once I open up Wordtracker I will be met with a blank search box just waiting for me to enter a term to search on. As I said before I don’t have any idea what I want to look up right now, so what I do now is use certain action words and make Wordtracker find interesting article topics for me instead.

By “action words” what I mean is using words that people will use in search engines when they want to perform and action, like “buy”, “order”, “purchase” or “how to”. They are all words used by people wanting to do, or find something in particular. The good thing is that you don’t have to guess when using Wordtracker, all you have to do is use your action word and Wordtracker will find related terms people use that include your action word.

This is my example…

finding action phrases with Wordtracker

So my action word for today was “how to”, that’s all you need for now. Once you are ready to grab your results click that “Hit Me” button to bring up some related phrases.

Wordtracker brings back results

The number on the left of this table represents the number of searches per day that people use to find that information. Then on the right side you are presented with the keyword they are using too, notice how they include your action word “how to”.

The next part is up to you to decide what one of the phrases above will have the best possible chance of a person coming to your article to find information, and once you present them with some information, you will then want them to click on a link in your article to find the solution to what they are looking for.

So the intent of your article is to have that person searching for your action word phrase to click on your article listed in the search engines, then read what you have written in that article, which will hopefully point them to your ultimate destination which is an affiliate product that they will purchase, making you a commission at the same time.

Two phrases above stick out to me in this example…

• how to survive a depression
• how to make a charcoal grill

Both of the words above are from people looking to take some action, in the first one they are looking for help/knowledge about how to survive depression, in the second they want to build a charcoal grill. Now we have a couple of options we want to find out if we can find them the answer to their problem in the form of an affiliate product.

The next step I take is to search through my affiliate programs to see if I can match an affiliate product to one of the previous searches. So I will go over to Clickbank and search in their marketplace for that exact keyword hoping to find a depression help, or charcoal grill building product that I can earn a commission on.

Hopefully I will find a great match for my action phrase, if not I’ll check other affiliate programs the same way to find a product. If I have no luck at all I’ll go back to the first step and start it all again.

If I find a great product my next step is to find out how much competition that search phrase has, so I’ll head over to Google and do this..

Make sure to put your phrase in ” ” to find out how much direct competition you have for that phrase. Then hit the Google Search button.

This is what you are looking for, the Results section which can be found just to the right of the search box that includes your phrase. So for the depression search you would have 796,000 sites competing for the same phrase!

This is what we get for the charcoal grill phrase..

So just 42!! Much better than 796k right!

There are other things to notice on this Google listings page apart from the number of competing sites, you might want to look to see if other articles have been listed in the search results too, and also check to see if any sponsored ads are present for that term, if people are paying for clicks then you can be pretty confident that it does convert from searchers into buyers.

If no sponsored ads are present then you might want to consider another action word altogether. But I say that  if its not costing you money for people to click on your listing in the search engines, and as in the case of charcoal grills you would get around 500 searches a day, why not give it a try anyway?

So I picked “how to make a charcoal grill” as the keyword I will base an article on in this example. Next post I’ll go into writing an article, then matching my affiliate product to the searchers action word of “how to make a charcoal grill” hoping that I can persuade the reader to click on my affiliate link at the end.