Blogging Profits for Editors – Adding Content the Easy Way
I was chatting with a pal who happens to be an editor (lots of those in the DC area) who was thinking of starting his own site providing information on vintage cars, his reason for living (outside of his wife, kids, and 9-to-5 of course).
I pointed him to The Editor’s Introductory Guide to Blogging Profits, an easy, cheap and potentially lucrative way to get him started and going, I thought. Strangely enough, it intimidated him. “Seems like hard work,” he said.
“Is it?” I asked. I figured the technical stuff, maybe, for someone who’s never set up a site and worked with WordPress before. Understandable. The good news is there are ways to help that (stay tuned!). But really and interestingly enough, he was talking about the content.
Being a smart guy, he asked how many articles he would need to add to his blog. “Aim for one a day,” I said. “More if you can swing it. A lot of your visitors will come from Google, and Google likes it when you add content regularly.”
“That makes it work!” he exclaimed.
I got it. “You love vintage cars, but you love them a lot mainly because you can love them whenever you feel like loving them… and that’s not necessarily on a find-and-edit-one-article-a-day routine.”
“Bingo!”
I shook my head. “Not a problem. Google likes to see daily posts, but that doesn’t mean you have to work daily.”
The bewildered look on his face was priceless. So I explained how although one could obviously do the find/edit/post-an-article-daily approach, a far easier, more efficient — and more enjoyable — way would be to do them in batches. And I took him through it step-by-step.
Here’s the process I showed him that brought the smile back to his face.
Finding Articles
- Go to your favorite free article site (a number of them listed here) and check out the articles in the category/topic you’re interested in.
If this is a subject you love, this’ll actually be fun — much like reading your favorite magazine about it. You can no doubt even go through a whole bunch of articles in one sitting.
- When you see an article you may be interested in running (interesting subject/angle, decently written), copy it to your WordPress installation as a regular post — but just save, don’t publish it. WordPress will set it aside as a draft post.
Depending on how quickly you read/work, you can set aside weeks, maybe even a month’s worth of potential articles this way!
BONUS FOR WRITERS: This process is a heck of a way for you to help generate your own article — maybe even book — ideas on the topic.
Editing and Posting Articles
- Log in to WordPress and go to the drafts.
- Pick out the article you want to work on, edit it, and set it to be published (posted) on a scheduled date and time.
Yup, you can do that with WordPress (and likely any blogging platform worth working with… this is basic stuff!).
Again, you can probably do whole bunches of these edits and future posts in one sitting.
BONUS FOR EDITORS: Since everything you need to futz around with is online, you can do this “work” anywhere you can find an Internet connection.
Think about it: One good night messing around with this stuff should give you enough blog posts for a week at the very least. I bet you can pump out even more.
For a refresher on the tech and resource links for this, read The Editor’s Introductory Guide to Blogging Profits.
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3 Responses to “Blogging Profits for Editors – Adding Content the Easy Way”
By Michael Werner on Apr 7, 2008 | Reply
Also, Eldon, two things I’ve found in following the process you advocate here are:
1. It gives me tons of ideas for my own, original, posts and articles.
2. If the article intrigues me enough, I can often add my own comments before or after it to make the whole thing “mine.”
Good stuff.
By Wordpreneur on Apr 7, 2008 | Reply
Thanks.
Deja vu on #1. See “bonus for writers.” You read too fast.
Yup on #2, I’ve sometimes run well-written articles I don’t agree with, just so I can argue before or after.
By Georjina Sinese on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
That’s a great idea starter too! Since I’m the only ‘author’ on my blog, it helps to see what someone else has written about a topic when I get stuck.
I’ve been debating whether to move to WP, and just knowing I can do this on the blog itself without cluttering up my hard drive with ‘post starters’ is swaying me in the direction to do it.
Great idea.