Today is the day that you’re going to start writing your first article. I expect at least one article to be done by the end of this first hour. Now, there are 2 groups of people at this point. The first group are the people who picked a subject that they know about and can readily write their articles without having to do much research. The second group are people that don’t know a thing about the subject that they chose, but are interested enough to try and learn about it so they can write their articles. I happen to be in this second group of people.

When choosing my subject to write on, I found one that really piqued my interest; How to make beer. I know absolutely nothing about making beer, but I do know a lot about drinking it. Anyway, I thought it would be an interesting topic to learn, and then write about. Since I have a list of keywords from the last hour’s work, then all I have to do is learn about the stuff that is described in those keywords. That makes things a little easier now. The other thing that should bring you a little comfort is that several of those keywords are going to end up having a lot of similar content, just rewritten to sound different than what you’ve already written. That’s why the truly great article writers don’t mind jumping into brand new subjects and can write about everything.

In order to learn about my subject, I visited a site that is very popular among Internet Marketers who are trying to earn some money. That site is http://www.ezinearticles.com. While there content may not all be incredible, they do have a large number of authors that can product some quality content, so they are a great place to learn about a new subject. I read about 15 - 20 different articles on how to brew beer, so I learned enough to be able to start writing comfortably and actually make sense. I also visited some of the websites in the author’s profile box and used that information to fill some of the holes left from the various articles.

Anyway, after about 30 - 45 minutes of reading, I was able to nail out a pretty good 500 word article. Associated Content requires only 400 words, but they appreciate the longer articles because it allows them to have another page of content without having to pay much more for it.

When you write your article, just come up with about 3 - 4 points that you can write about. The first paragraph should be a nice little introduction, and let the reader know why they should check out the article. The next 3 or 4 paragraphs should sum up each point in about 75 - 100 words for each one. Make a final paragraph that nicely wraps up the article and you’re good to go. It really should take about 20 - 30 minutes at the most, and after this whole case study you should be able to do them even quicker. Some people even report that they can write articles about new subjects in 7 minutes or less.

You can also find articles and simply rewrite their content, producing a new, original article. This is very common too, and if done correctly can yield some quality content in a quick time.

Once you’re done with your article, simply follow the steps at Associated Content to publish your content. Chances are, you’ll want to just submit a General Article, and then follow the rest of the steps. If you have a picture that you can upload that is related to your article, then definitely do that too. Make sure you have rights to upload the picture, though, otherwise you could get in some serious trouble. Most of the stuff is optional, so don’t worry about it, but the one area you want to focus on is the tags. When you get to that part, simply enter 3 - 5 of your keyword phrases, separated by commas. For example, with my article I used the tags of “how to make beer, make beer at home, beer homebrew”. What this does is tell the search engines that if somebody is searching for those phrases, your article has a good chance of giving them the information that they need. This is what allows certain articles to show up higher in the search results, and will result in a lot more traffic to your articles.

Finally, you should make every effort to do a good job writing your articles. Your goal is not to just get a whole bunch of content out there and not worry about how good it is. Your goal is actually to get a whole bunch of great content out there that people want to read. If you can get somebody to link to your article from their blog, then that’s even more traffic that comes to your article. More traffic equals more money.

The one major thing that I want to point out is that this single strategy will NOT make you rich. There’s no way that you’re going to generate $1,000’s per month by selling articles for $3 - $4 each, unless you can become efficient enough and dedicated enough to write 10 - 20 articles per day. That’s very hard for even the best people to accomplish, so don’t plan on doing that right away. What this WILL DO, however, is give you the skills to do basic keyword research, learn how to write quality articles, and earn a little bit of money to be able to start your business with. Most people don’t have an extra $100 that they can use to buy domain names, pay for hosting, and cover other incidentals that pop up when they start their business. With just 2 weeks of working an hour each day, you’ll actually have that little bit of seed money that you need to get started. The best part of this whole project, however, is the residual income that you will be creating. It’s not much, but once you get 25 - 30 articles online, you should be able to start making a nice $5 per month, assuming that you did your keyword research properly. Even if you top out at only $3 per month, then that’s still better than before you did it. My website hosting plan costs me $4.99 per month, so $3 per month from my articles means I only have to come up with an extra $2 for hosting. That’s a piece of cake! Then, spend another 2 weeks, make some lump sum cash and add another $3 - $5 to your residual income. Do this 3 or 4 more times and you may end up getting enough residual income to go out to dinner guilt-free every month. That’s the most exciting part of it, is the ability to continue to make money on something that you’ve already done, even 2 years ago or more. No, it’s not much, but it gets you into the mindset that you should have when you’re building your business. Focus on active income at the beginning, especially when you have specific needs, like paying a bill, or buying a computer, or that kind of stuff. Always be working on your passive income, however. That’s what is going to let you retire from your day job and work online, enjoying your time at home with the family.

Now, get back out there and write some more articles! I have one uploaded, how many have you done?