Often times a new content producer will get off to a start without realizing that writing for the web, whether it be for AC, Helium or somewhere else, is much different than writing for a print publication.
when I first started I had no idea there was a difference. I hadn’t paid any attention to the differences between articles on the internet and articles in magazines. I thought I had found a site I where I could rewrite all my old print articles and make a killing in cash doing it. Easy as 1-2-3.
Around the time the page view bonus program was put in place.I found the AC forums and began to learn that writing for the web is a whole different beast.
At first glance it’s easy to fall into the trap of promotional techniques. Someone recommends doing some promotions to get your name out there and suddenly you find yourself linking everywhere you can. That’s not promoting, that’s spamming.
If content is King then a well written, grammatically correct copy is surely Queen. Quality counts.
How well an article is written is just as important as how searchable and high ranked it is on Google.
Having said that, there is a time when promoting become necessary. At some point you have to let people know that you have a presence on the internet. One of the best threads I ever read on the subject was Michy’s promotion thread. It’s about a gazillion posts long now but it’s still the best thread for newbies to read.
With print publications there is no need to advertise yourself or promote to certain audiences because the publication has done that for you. They’ve take the time to gather readers, learn their interests and discover how to cater to what they are looking for; they’ve done the demographics and dry runs. You, the writer, are selected solely to fill in the already labeled and defined slot.
As a web writer you have to define that slot yourself. Your job is to carve a groove into an already existing niche or to create a new one. And while you do that you’ll be expected to research and stay abreast of the trends going on in whatever demographic of reader you are trying to build a readership out of.
Web writing is hard work. It is by far harder than whipping out an opinion piece for print where simple, friendly conversation is accepted both as a tone of voice as well as a style of writing. Being able to combine that with efficient keywording techniques is an art not easily accomplished.
It is indeed an art because the most successful web content writers are those that know how to communicate with us in a conversational manner and still manage to keyword and optimize the piece so that it rises to the top of Google.
I posted all of this to say to anyone coming from the print world into the web writing world, don’t rest on the laurels of your past print world successes. What may have fueled the flames of your successes then won’t necessarily work on the web now. Don’t let it get you down. Just keep plugging and welcome to web writing.
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There have been many firsts in AC’s history including its group of first content producers. Some of those first content producers have moved on to other ventures but a handful of the original CPs still remain. These are the CPs that have found success as a web writer and many of them are willing to share what they know with new CPs. Here’s a list of successful veteran CPs you might want to emulate. You could do worse than aspire to be like them.
