Suite 101 - Page 66

[MyTwoAs]

Congrats Lisa!!

[lisarussell]

Originally Posted by Smokering

Congrats Lisa!! Thats's fantastic!

Interesting discussion about stats. My revenue per thousand PVs is atrocious - currently $1.93. I do have one-third of my articles getting over 100 PVs a week, though. And in the interests of full disclosure I have slightly over 150 articles up and am making in the area of $150 a month. Which is enough to impress DH, but not as much as I'd like to be making!

So, any hints? I recognise my topic isn't ideal in this regard - if someone wants to learn how to braid a rope braid, clicking through just won't happen. I do have a fair number of non-haircare articles, but then quite a few of those are low-click-through topics as well. On the other hand, maybe it's my keywording or something; so if anyone has nothing better to do and wants to critique my articles, go for it!

Hey Sarah- have you tried hair product reviews? or a series of articles for different hair types- like braids for thin hair, braids for curly hair, etc? I haven't researched, I'm just thinking the pv's would be more likely to click on links promising results for their personal hair type.

just a guess.

and what I notice a lot of writers doing, is not putting enough KW's in their title, subtitle, lead

I do...1-2 KW's in title, 2-3 kw's in subtitle, repeat all those kw's in the lead para plus add 1-2 more.

The title & subtitle kw's BECOME my bold subheadings (sometimes merged together, sometimes not)

and all my KW's are sprinkled once into each paragraph, if I can pull it off. The ones I have trouble fitting in, I try to squeeze into the photo captions. I add photos just for that purpose if I need to.

is that a formula? not as complicated as my KW research formula, for sure.


----------------------------------------------------------

Title kw1 kw2
subtitle kw3 kw4 kw5
lead para kw1 kw2 kw3 kw4 kw5 kw6 (if I can fit them all)


bla bla bla first paragraph of article, around 100 words with including at least 4-5 kw's

subheading - 2kw's

bla bla bla around 100 words with 4-5 kw's

subheading 2 with 1-2 kw's

bla bla bla around 100 words with 4-5 kw's

final paragraph with around 100 words and 4-5 kw's

photos with neglected kws that i couldn't naturally squeeze in

----------------------------------------------------------

sometimes I add an extra subhead & paragraph- usually when I don't feel like my story is told and there's not enough missing to warrant another article.

When I write- I research KW's related to what I want to write, or sometimes I let the KW's guide me

I write the title & subtitle at the same time, fiddling with the arrangement until I can get the most KW's in there.

then, i write the lead para and (if necessary) fiddle with the title & sub some more

then, I craft the subheadings.

that gives me the skeleton for the article and at that point, I just plain write whatever ends up filling out that skeleton the best.

Jeesh- it's the perfectionism that's keeping me from writing,m huh. I haven't heard from Irene and I'm 4 articles behind right now. I don't want to step down. my stupid computer shut down while I was writing a S101 article today, I was so peeved. Stupid laptop decided to stop warning me when the battery gets low, it just shuts down.

Anyhow- I hope that process helps someone.

Welcome & congrats new writers.

[Smokering]

Heh: the irony of it is, most of my expertise is geared around NOT buying stuff. Productless hair washing, natural haircare, no-shampooing, natural alternatives to mousse, that sort of thing. Which is totally not bringing in the clicks, because who'd search for "how to not use shampoo" and then click on a shampoo ad, you know? And if baking soda even has a CPC value, it ain't sky-high.

So unfortunately it would be totally against my principles to endorse products, as well as kinda outside my area of expertise ("Try Maybelline Sleek and Shine Volumising Goddess Fruit Hair Burst... never tried it myself, I use honey"!). I'm not even sure how one would go about reviewing a haircare product, actually... isn't it way too subjective? Given that we're not allowed to use first person, and even if we could it'd be no more journalistic than "My hair felt really nice afterwards but went greasy after two days... but yours might not, who knows?" You see the problem?

What I probably should do is keep doing Hair Care for the love of it and the FW bonus, and ramp up my non-FW articles in the meantime. I just checked "homeschooling" on Google Adwords out of curiosity, and holy cow. The CPCs blow even the more lucrative haircare keywords out of the water! So I just published two articles on LOTR homeschooling project ideas. Those were for art; I'm gonna follow up with a whole content web on LOTR English projects, science projects and so forth. Should be fun!

Aaaaanyway. I definitely need to try out your keyword scheme, as I haven't been nearly scientific enough in my approach thus far. Do you find it hard to write within those perameters without sounding stilted? Thanks for the tips!

[lisarussell]

I probably do sound stilted- totally

I have a similar dilemma- I'm supposed to be writing about homeschooling but at heart, we're usnchoolers. So whenever i write about curriculum, there's always something in there about how you don't need curriculum. Maybe it makes me look unbiased- I don't know.


top three conditioners for curly hair

name the brand, the ingredients for #1 and claims

name brand & ingredients for #2, sales claims

same thing for #3

then list the key ingredients and mention "although there's controversy regarding their safety, for an alternative try ___link to natural article___

I don't know. I wouldn't endorse something that sucks, but that doesn't mean you can't write about it.

I saw that keyword Calvert School (homeschool-in-a-box) once had a cpc over $15 so I wrote about "the history of calvert school" so maybe "The history of hair straightening creams" or "common ingredients in clarifying shampoos" with a paragraph praising vinegar instead.

braids- I have no idea. You know all those learn-to-braid videos, perhaps you could do an article comparing the cost of learn-to-braid video programs

[MyTwoAs]

Great ideas Lisa.

With regards to autism/Asperger's Syndrome, I also run into similar issues. I am a nuerodiversity proponent, in other words I'm not trying to cure my kids from this horrible disease. Instead, I'm supporting them to help them feel comfortable in their world. However, biomedical treatments and autism cure conferences are popular so I write about the conferences but just in an informational way - conference date, conference speakers, etc.

[beanma]

Wow, that's really impressive Lisa! Thanks for the formula, too.

I'm waiting for my first article to be approved. The editor was pretty quick on the first flags (that I knew would have to be there) — w/in the 48 hrs, but now that I've made the changes it seems like he's taking his time getting to them. I keep hoping I'll hear something, but nothing yet. It'll show up under "my articles", right? or I'll get an email? ...drumming her fingers impatiently...

[widemouthedfrog]

Yes, it should show up under My Articles, with the flag removed.

Thanks for the formula, Lisa! I do need to work on squeezing more keywords into those important places. I do it, but I'm not super consistent all of the time.

Ah, subversion. Gardening is fraught with pesticides and all sorts of things I won't endorse. In my articles about mechanical devices for water gardens, I always have a paragraph about natural ways to do things, and then I follow up with progressively less natural ways. I also write a lot about solar and LEDs.

[Smokering]

This is great - I love how you're all subverting the keywords for nefarious MDC purposes!

Yes, I do need to start researching some alternative hairtypes! Thing is, I like writing Hair Care articles off the top of my head (heh... as it were), just from my own experiences and general knowledge. But I think I've reached saturation point on those articles and need to start doing my homework again (sniff!). Black haircare has *slightly* better CPCs and it does interest me, but until now I never gave it much thought, being the palest of the whitest girl ever to have straight hair! Similar with curly haircare, which is another specialised topic.

I'm pretty sure my sister used to do Calvert School once upon a time! We had a Calvert School ruler, anyway...

[beanma]

Hey, I finally got published. Apparently there was a little user error going on (). I had "saved changes", but not "submitted changes". Oops.

Now that I've got that one under my belt I'll have to get crackin' on some more.

[beanma]

Have any of y'all used Google Insights to get ideas for articles? It's kind of addictive. I'm not writing today (I'm a bit under the weather and one kid stayed home from school), but this is giving me some ideas.

[MyTwoAs]

I haven't used it in a while but I agree, it is definitely kind of addictive. I also find Google Trends to be entertaining. Google has quite a few nifty little tools - I've been playing with Wonder Wheel lately, as well.

[beanma]

Hey y'all, I have a question for you veterans.

I'm up to five (whoo-hoo) articles now, but got flagged on my latest one for kinda weird reasons to me. The editor had three main reasons – 1) content too light, 2) too many bulleted lists (I had two) and 3) links to my other articles should be "organic".

I was fine on the first one about the content. Frankly, I thought it was a bit light also, so didn't mind going in and beefing it up a bit.

On the second point, though, about the lists, I thought we were advised to include lists to break things up. I changed it anyway and made one list part of a paragraph although I thought it was easier to read the other way.

One the third point, I was absolutely copying how the $5000 woman does links on some of her articles. I altered this copy of hers a bit, but she does something like this:

More Infant Costume Ideas – Baby Girl Halloween Costumes

Want more baby Halloween costume ideas? The article Baby Girl Costumes discusses more options...

Related Halloween articles:

* Halloween Costumes for Adults
* Pirate Halloween Costumes...

So my question to y'all is, do different editors just have different styles about this kind of stuff or is there a definite S101 style to go by?

Should all links to your other articles be inline and not called out and bulleted? Did I go by a bad example?

How about the lists? Should I stick to just one list and no more per article?

I'm just a bit confused, but I don't wanna post these questions on the S101 forums for fear I come off like I'm criticizing the editor or getting Lena in trouble if the article I looked at was a bad example, so I thought I'd post here and ask for your feedback.

thanks for any help you can give clearing my head :

[MyTwoAs]

I think what they mean by more organic is to include the links within the body of the document as opposed to including them at the end. I've had some section editors want related links embodied in the post and others are fine with the links at the end.

So instead of saying "read this article", and then putting the name of the article with a hyperlink, you can find text in the body of the article that alludes to baby girl costumes and link to it there. An example: I have an article about the history of autism spectrum disorders in the DSM, I link to that article if I mention the DSM (by linking the name of the DSM spelled out) or if I mention a specific diagnosis (ie. autistic disorder).

I'm just guessing this is what is meant, though, hopefully other writers will chime in.

As for the bulleted lists, I don't think I've included more than one but I did get pinged for having too many bulleted items in an article once.

HTH!

Oh, I'd like to add you to my google reader, can you PM me your profile page please?

Thanks!

[beanma]

Thanks, MyTwoAs. So the gist of it is, a lot of stuff depends on the editor?

Will PM you.

Btw, the baby girl costume stuff was not my article. That was the one by the $5000 woman that I was using for style guidelines.

thanks,

[widemouthedfrog]

beanma, the guidelines for sections absolutely vary, as do the things that editors flag for. I get a lot of flags for some things in some sections, none or very few in others. Some editors also seem to flag more than others.

If you go to the forums, you can see the sections and click on section expectations. That might give you some assistance.

[beanma]

Thanks, Tricia.

This article in particular is in a section that doesn't have a very vocal editor. I did check for his expectations in the forums, but there just wasn't much there. I guess he just operates a little differently than some of the others which is okay. I'm just still trying to feel my way around.

thanks

[beanma]

So, how long does it usually take for a flag to go away? He flagged my article Thurs night/Fri morning. I fixed it Friday and it's still flagged. I'm assuming he's very busy and might not work on the weekend. I think he's in a very different time zone, too, but I really hate looking at that darn flag. Are editors usually able to get back to it in a few days? I want it to go away!!

[lisarussell]

I noticed my editor tends to do everything on Sundays, I'd give it at least a week.

I've notice a big variance in how editors will allow links to be formatted

I just skimmed the guidelines and the only advice I saw was to limit the anchor text to 2-3 words.

What I've seen people do instead of making lists, is to create an extra paragraph at the bottom that crams in the titles they want to link to.

Like this:

In addition to the advice above, when celebrating holidays with children, keep in mind that kids with autism sometimes have difficulty with transitions and assigning classroom jobs may help alleviate the stress.

Instead of

You may also enjoy:
Classroom Jobs for Young Children
Autism and Classroom Transitions
Celebrating Holidays the Montessori Way

The 2-3 word anchor text is better from an SEO perspective, but the other method clearly communicates to the reader that they're headed for another article, called______



AND- FYI, I just pulled those titles from today's list of published articles.

[beanma]

Thanks, Lisa.

I'll try to be patient with the ugly big pink box. Bleh!

I'll definitely try to do the cram it all into a sentence method in the future, too. I was trying to do it the "right" way, but it was a mite confusing. I can see if google likes the sentence method better then that would be the way to go. Personally, I think the list method looks cleaner and more inviting to click on, but I guess we really want them to click on the darn ads anyway.

Btw, I'm doing pretty well with the ad clicks! I've made $16-something (whoo-hoo, pizza here I come) for my 5 articles this month. Just gotta get some more up there, too. I've got a couple of seasonal ones up and I know they'll take a nosedive later. They're almost guaranteed to be the ones generating the clicks, too. I gotta get something to replace them!!

[Smokering]

Beanma, I hate to say it, but on occasion flags don't go away even after you fix the article. I've had a few take months to disappear, and I currently have a couple that pesk the eye every time I view my article list - they're fixed, they're fine, but the darn flags won't go away. (And incidentally, I wrote a few articles in the homeschooling section recently and hoo boy, Irene is a tough editor! I'd heard it before, but they weren't kidding! Compared to the extremely laid-back Sarah in Home and Style, it was a bit of a shock.)

$16 this month for 5 articles? That's amazing! That's really very impressive. Congrats!

I've been slack with Suite recently, doing the bare minimum. Mostly because we're moving house in a week, I got sick for a while and then I went on a sewing kick. My revenues are chillin' along, but not doing anything spectacular. Once we're moved into the new place, somebody bug me to really get stuck into Suite for a bit, k? We need furniture!