Image from the Sanfranciscosentinel
Seriously. I don’t. But that’s okay. You know why? Because I don’t need to. Such is the life of a freelance writer and long-tail key words. So much for “Write what you know.” If that was the case I’d be sunk. Thank goodness I fake it pretty good.
Really, some of the most fascinating assignments for a freelance writer are those 500 word long-tail keyword phrase based articles that get batched to you ten at a time. Have you ever had these? Florida Foreclosure House, Low Rate HELOC, Health Fitness Club, Tax Filing Return, Body Acne Treatment and the list goes on and on. When you look at these long-tail keywords you may think they look innocent enough. Yeah? Try fitting Health Fitness Club into a title, the first sentence and lightly peppered throughout a 500 word article. I double-dog dare ya. The grammar gymnastics would make a young Romanian Olympic hopeful blush.
So, how do you write a dozen articles on a subject you know nothing about and end up looking like an expert while you’re at it?
“Watch the keyboard closely, Ladies and Germs. Notice that my fingers never leave my hand.”
Smoke and mirrors? Maybe. Illusion? Perhaps. Sleight of hand? Almost certainly.
Actually, for a vast majority of these it’s pretty simple. Deceptively simple.
The key is to draw from your life experiences and the knowledge you already have in your head. Have you ever signed up at a gym? If so, it ain’t rocket surgery to write an article on “Health Fitness Club.” Think about your experiences and build an article around what to look for when shopping around for a Health Fitness Club. Discuss features, rates, location and anything else that comes to mind. You’ll hit 500 words before you know it.
If the keyword assignment is on something that you are totally unfamiliar with then just a little research is needed. When I had to write 10 articles relating to HELOC (Home Equity Lines of Credit) I had NFI what to write. I spent about 20 minutes looking up sites based on that phrase and was able to garner enough information to squeeze out ten of those little puppies. Learned a lot about home equity loans while I was at it, too!
When these kinds of batched assignments come to you, my highest recommendation is that you complete them in batches. Sit down with the intention of writing five of the ten articles in one sitting. Depending on your comfort level with the keyword, you should be able to crank them out in two to three hours. I recommend this kind of batch writing because you get into a mode, a groovy groove, a sweet spot that makes it easier to get the God forsaken things done and out of your life.
With that said, do NOT try and complete all ten in one sitting. What are ya, crazy? Don’t even consider it. Your brain will be a pile of mush and you may try and go postal on the nearest Google office. Seriously, your articles will all start sounding the same and the quality just plain suffers.
So don’t do it.
Writing long-tail keyword articles is not the easiest or the most fun assignment you will ever receive as a freelance writer. It is however, entirely doable if you try. A lot of writers won’t even try. This means that a good keyword article writer is worth their weight in gold. And while you may not be raking in huge dollars for your first few assignments, if you give your best and prove yourself you could end up with steady work that pays the bills. Yee-haw.
Awright. What are your thoughts? Have you written these kinds of articles before? What’s your take on the matter? Any words of wisdom?
Oh, yes.. I did 10 articles on roses and then 2 rewrites of each.. My gosh! It was a challenge as it was the first assignment like that I’d taken. I made it and now I know a little about roses. Not my most favorite stuff, but cash in hand.
You’ve given me a bit of a nudge as lately I’ve been ignoring those jobs for topics I know and enjoy…
Walker´s last [type] ..The Places I Want To Go
Hi Walker,
Yeah, at first it’s like, “Write about Roses? I love roses! This will be easy!” Then reality kinda sets in and sometimes it feels like you can say everything you need to in one article. Sticking with it is the key – you go girl!
Love paying those bills! Sometimes I can do this and sometimes I can’t. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I wrote a group of articles about wedding rings not long ago, and really worried about whether I’d find enough info to get them done but it turned out much better than expected. I did essentially what you recommended except I wrote 3 at a time instead of 5. Great advice, George.
Thanks Dava. I’m glad to know that other writers have faced the same kinds of struggles that I have. You raise a great point as well about procrastinating these things. The longer you put off writing them, the more locked your mind becomes and the more difficult they are to write.
George
Hi George, Great post – you’ve captured the feel perfectly. I edit slews of articles every week, and it’s almost comic how wildly the topics vary – from cement process to credit card compliance, on and on. With every bit of research, the writer’s experience expands. After a while you start to recognize typical business models, and it becomes easier to grasp what the crazy topic is all about.
Hi Brad
Thanks and it’s nice to see you here. It’s really true that experience counts and if you stick it through the initial tough periods you can put a lot of fruit in your basket.
George
Oh George, I feel your pain. I remember once we had a couple of people flake on us and somehow Sean and I managed to bash out like 20 in a few hours.
You’re right, do them in batches so you can get a nice momentum going. The more you do, the easier it is to find different angles when you’re told to write 3 500 word articles on “Florida Insurance for Small Business Health”. You’ll also get quicker and it stings a lot less when you realize you can do 2-3 an hour for an hourly wage of 20-30, rather than taking a couple of hours to do one at a rate of $5 an hour!
I think it’s good writing practice to do the best job you can, even for a keyword article, however I wouldn’t recommend that you be realistic about what you’re being paid and not invest too much time into any one piece. Don’t turn in crap, but there is no need to do a couple of rounds of edits, either. To be blunt, if anyone thinks they are going to get highly polished, magazine quality prose for $10 an article, they must be smoking crack.
Ahh Tracy. So glad you went there. That is an excellent point. At first, it may take you an hour to do a post, therefore you are making an hourly rate equal to your per-post figure. Hone your skills and cut the time down and before you know it you are making a decent hourly rate! Right now, if it is a topic I’m comfy with I can crank out about 2 and a half per hour, sometimes three.
And I agree about doing your best. Any assignment worth accepting is an assignment worth doing well. It takes very little to tank a reputation these days.
George
Make that I *would* recommend that you be realistic.
Nobody paid me crap for that comment so I didn’t bother editing before sending. ;-p
Tracy´s last [type] ..I Took the 7 Link Challenge
T-dawg – The fastest sense of humor in the west. Er West Tennessee? West of Florida? Yeah, That’s it.
Too funny, girl. Crack me up.
When I started freelancing, keyword articles were what most of my clients wanted and wrote hundreds of them (I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not). While you do get in a zone and can turn out 10 or so on the same topic, I often found that with batches of 100 or more, I’d feel that I’d said it all by about article 60 and had to gut it out to finish the batch. My clients were happy, though. I still have a couple of clients I write SEO articles for, but the batches tend to be smaller, which makes it easier to differentiate the articles.
Sharon Hurley Hall´s last [type] ..Recognizing the Signs of Freelance Writer Burnout in Yourself
Sharon,
“Said it all by article 60″? You are a machine! Sometimes I feel like I’ve said it all after about 6. If handled correctly, I can see long term relationships blooming from putting your best foot forward with those articles.
George
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You and me both George. LOL
I know what I want to say but actually getting it down on paper…. that can be tricky.
Beauty of typing it out is that you can cut and paste, mix and match or even start all over again.
I don’t usually try and include keywords but before I publish I add a few and mess around with the H1 tag etc.
Never thought how difficult it might be to write a post for someone else using their keywords.
Keith Davis´s last [type] ..A splash of colour
Hi Keith. Glad to have a kindred keyword soul out there.
Heh. Kind of amazing, isn’t it? The amount of manipulation we need to do at times.
Thanks for stopping in.
Cheers
George
Hi George – I’m astounded that Sharon can write a batch of 60 articles on the same topic. She must have a lot of patience. And like you, I wouldn’t have had the first clue about HELOC. I didn’t even know what it stood for.
I haven’t done this type of assignment for anyone else yet but I’ve used a lot of long tail keywords on my own blog and website. On my blog, it’s easy cos I know what I want to write about and then I look for decent keyphrases that will work.
On my websites, I’ve often chosen keywords first and it is so much harder. I just try to read up on the topic and write as many pages as I can in one go. I do find it harder when it’s not a topic I enjoy, so I try not to have those types of site anymore.
And I really don’t care if I never write about banking again – it seemed like a good idea when I bought the domain.
Am I right in guessing that these batches of articles don’t have to be of a high quality and you can write pretty much anything you want, so long as you optimize them for the keyphrases?
Cath Lawson´s last [type] ..New Business Mistakes- The Hidden Startup Killers
Cathy,
Hmmm. I think that the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of beholder” is appropros here. Personally, I would never attach my name to something that I did not consider to be of good quality. I have seen articles obviously written for their keyword enrichment that were positively awful. I could not believe they were even on a site. I’ve seen others that were a work of art in how they manipulated the keywords into informative and conversational prose.
To answer your question, Yes, generally you can choose the title and angle of the article as long as the keyword is being used.
George
Hi George,
How informative. Freelance writing is not something I’ve considered and it was mainly due to what you wrote here – having to write numerous articles on the same topic – a topic you may have no interest in. As much as I like to learn, I’d probably make a terrible freelance writer as I’d use up my “hourly wage” researching for way too long. And then doing too many edits.
And…the hourly rate becomes pennies.
Hey! That sounds like what happens in our business sometimes. (I hate when that happens)
Barbara Swafford´s last [type] ..Who’s Who In Blogosphere
Hi Barbara,
Here’s how I see these articles: Remember MASH? They constantly talked about “Meatball Surgery”. Get the job done and move on to the next one. I think it’s kinda like that. I’m not going to spend hours making the sutures pretty, but I’ll by God make sure the patient lives to fight another day.
George
Fascinating article, George.
Nope, I haven’t dipped my tootsies into the keyword article pool. I’ve been fortunate in my life thus far that I’ve only freelanced writing about topics that have interested me (mostly science writing or health related).
That said, I think it important to stretch ourselves and write about things we don’t know, too. I also liked you and Tracy’s conversation, ha ha. I agree that people wanting a quality article for $10 are definitely smokin’ somthin’!
Take care, lovely.
Lori´s last [type] ..Your Body is a Fortress- Part 10 – Training for Old Age
C’mon in, Dah-Link. The water is fine.
Heh. That Tracy’s a hoot, eh? She has got such a great sense of humor. I never know what she’s going to come up with next!
George
Hi George – It sounds like you’ve got to do the very best you can, in a reasonable amount of time then. Can I be really cheeky and ask if you can point me in the direction of a site with articles that are written to a suitable standard for this type of job please?
It doesn’t matter if you can’t – I’m just curious to know whether I’d be able to do this and not make something like a dollar an hour.
Cath Lawson´s last [type] ..New Business Mistakes- The Hidden Startup Killers
Cath, I love cheeky.
How about this. I’d love to send you some that I have written for submission. They would definitely give you an idea for content and flavor. Each lists the keyword at the top and you can see how I’ve plugged those in. Shoot me an email (george@tumblemoose.com) and I’ll send you a few. I’ll bet you could make your hourly rate worthwhile. Oddly enough, I’ve never visited a site where my articles were published. More often than not, I never end up getting the URL info from the folks that hire me (often a third party).
George
Thanks George, that would be a brilliant help. Shooting you an email now.
Cath Lawson´s last [type] ..Why You Are Letting Your Blog Readers Down