How To Write Ezine Articles In Clusters

Writing Ezine articles is a great way of obtaining free publicity for your website. Writing Ezine articles is, however, time consuming so it is important to make the most of every word you produce and every minute of the time you spend researching the subject. Writing articles in clusters is an efficient way of doing this.
Writing several articles at once might seem pretty much impossible to do if you are just starting to write Ezine articles and find producing them one at a time hard enough. However, writing articles in clusters is not difficult and, once you understand how it's done, you will enjoy the benefits. A group of articles written as a cluster can easily be turned into a series but for now we are looking at the how to produce a group of unique articles written at the same time around a central topic.

Some of the main benefits are as follows:

1. Writing articles in groups saves time when you are researching your subject;
2. It gives you space to fully develop a theme;
3. It gives you more unique content for your blog or website;
4. It gives you extra articles to submit to ezines or to sell.

When you write an article for publication in ezines, you have to keep the word count within certain guidelines (about 500-800 words is usually most acceptable). If your article is too long, ezines might not be prepared to give up the space required to reproduce it. If the article is too short, there is a danger Ezine publishers won't take it seriously. Cluster writing is definitely not about turning out a number of truncated Ezine articles instead of one full length one. Neither is it about stretching or padding your material (you'll only ever get a poor fit if you try that). It is about making full use of ideas and not wasting time or words.

If you are writing about a topic you know well, you will find yourself constantly having to edit your articles to keep the word count down. Instead of throwing away the excess material, paste it immediately into another document with a new title. I would suggest keeping the titles similar - eg "Puppy Training, Why To Do It" and "Puppy Training, When To Start", you can swiftly move on to "Puppy Training, The Best Methods" etc. Don't let the document get too big, anytime your word processor reaches page 2, it's time to think about breaking it into two.

As you write, be alert to any tendency to wander off topic. You might be writing about how it is one thing to have a cute puppy jump on your bed but quite a different experience when that pup has become a 10 stone hound with muddy paws. Suddenly you remember something about doggy vitamins. Instead of popping the idea into one of your puppy training articles as an aside, put it into another new document which you can later use as part of a new cluster about dog nutrition. With one quick "cut and paste" you have kept one article focussed on the main topic and saved an idea, which might otherwise have been wasted, for a new project.

If you are writing an article on an unfamiliar topic, you might think you won't have the problem of needing to cut down your article and will have trouble finding enough to say. However, if you undertake proper research about the subject matter (as you should if you want your article to be taken seriously), you are bound to come across material which relates to the article you have planned but does not quite fit it. Make notes of all this related material. If you get ideas for further articles as you are researching, make a note of these ideas. Research for article writing takes time, so make the most of it. Even if you can only manage two articles on an unfamiliar subject, it is two for the price of one.

Let's look at how to use just one passing idea as the basis for a group of articles. Take the thought "my first home business venture reminds me of Apollo 13". To make this idea into an article, we have to say what is behind the initial thought. Otherwise, the reader will be left thinking "What, it nearly got lost in space?" or "You were trying to land on the moon?". With no explanation or clarification, the idea is meaningless to anyone but you.

The thoughts behind the idea could be about a series of numerical coincidences in regard to events, about surviving near-disasters, about how duct tape solved a huge problem and about the power of prayer. With all these four things encapsulated in the idea, you have the basis of a four paragraph article. It does not require much of an imagination stretch to see that you could have the basis for four separate articles clustered around a central idea.

Never let an idea or a word go to waste. For the time and effort cluster writing saves, it is worth trying to use the technique even in the early days of your Ezine article writing career. Once you try itFind Article, you will realise it's even better than "buy one get one free".

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For more articles about writing go to Writing Tips or visit Elaine Currie at her Work At Home Directory

Ezine Articles - The Benefits Of Publishing

Writing articles and submitting them for publication in ezines is an excellent way to get free publicity for your website. Webmasters who underestimate the power of the viral spread of ezine articles are making a huge mistake.
Writing articles and having them published in ezines (electronic magazines) and on websites is one of the most effective free promotional resource available on the Internet.

When you submit your articles (ie offer them for publishing), a "resource box" is attached to each article. The resource box is simply a couple of sentences containing a brief bit of biographical information about the author or a reference to the author's field of expertise or interest. Most importantly, the resource box contains a link to the author's website.

You need to get the widest possible circulation for your article. To do this, you could submit the article to owners of websites with similar content to the subject of your article. This, however, is a time consuming process and the same results can be achieved faster if you submit your articles to article directories. If there are certain high ranking websites where you particularly want to place your article, you can email the webmasters of those sites direct. However, excellent results can be obtained simply by submitting your articles to directories. When you submit your articles, each one will automatically be available for anyone to republish provided that they do not change the article in any way and that they include your resource box with the link to your website.

Simply having your article posted on article directory websites means that each directory is providing a one-way link back to your website and this will enhance your website's status with the search engines. Free one-way links are sought after by all webmasters, but the benefits of article publishing do not stop there.

Once your article is published on the article directory websites, it will be discovered by owners of websites and ezines who visit the article directories looking for content to use in their web pages or to send to the people who subscribe to their ezines. When these website owners publish your article (complete with resource box) you get the benefit of further one-way links back to your website. When other webmasters read the ezines and like your article, they will use it on their websites and this gives you more one-way links back to your site. When these websites are visited by other webmasters, they can pick up your article and publish it on their websites or in their newsletters where it will be seen by further webmasters… This should give you a pretty clear idea of the viral nature of advertising by article writing. Just sending your article to a few directories can result in it being published in hundreds of different locations, thereby giving you more one-way links, but the benefits do not stop even there.

We have looked at the benefits of article writing as a way of obtaining valuable one-way links. There are also direct benefits to be obtained from every published article in terms of human appreciation. All those webmasters who are republishing your articles are doing so because they believe the article will interest, amuse or maybe even educate their subscribers or site visitors. When people read your article and find it interesting, amusing or informative, they will quite likely click the link to your website.

Sometimes article readers who visit your website will do so out of pure curiosity, others might be looking for something specific and, with luckArticle Submission, you will be offering that very item and will make a sale. Maybe the curious visitor will sign up for your newsletter to see what else they can learn from you or maybe they will bookmark your website for future visits and make a purchase at a later time. Any of these outcomes are satisfactory - the visitors have cost you nothing apart from the time spent in writing and submitting the article and a good article will continue to spread and work for you for years to come.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

You will find ideas about how to earn money working from home and useful home business resources at Elaine Currie's Work At Home Directory For more articles about online writing visit Writing Tips