How to Write Your First Article for Suite

My last post made me think it might be helpful to talk about how to write your first article for Suite101.

Like I mentioned in the last post, the first time I tried to work with Suite, I couldn't get past the editor. I had picked a technical topic that I have a ton of first hand expertise in and even though I added citations, my citations were not good enough.

Since when was the US Government with an in text linked citation, not an acceptable source?

I couldn't figure out how to make it work for the editor and I thought, if this is how the editors are, I don't want to work with Suite.

So I left.

When I came back, I was more strategic in selecting the topic for my first article.

I avoided anything technical or legal or with lots of facts and details.

I avoided sections like Health, Science, Law, and Business that typically require a lot of citations and enforce higher journalistic standards.

I actually wrote about a product category and made a shopping guide based on customer reviews on the internet. Not much for an editor to get hung up on there, fact-wise. My sources were from Amazon and unless they were going to read 300 reviews like I did, there was no real way to make life difficult.

If I had to do it over, I would probably write a craft or recipe article. Those topics probably represent the lowest barrier to entry for a first article on Suite101 because they are personal and not really authoritative. (Although note that those sections have some formatting requirements.)

I would also be sure to visit the forums and get a feel for each of the section editors. Most editors post their own section guidelines in the forum and it is well worth your time to become familiar with their requirements above and beyond those of Suite101.

It's also good to pick a simple topic since you will spend a lot of time learning Suite101's format and article structure in your first post. Don't complicate things with a complicated topic.

Oh and for the love of God, avoid the en dash--don't use two hyphens, like I just did here. You will be burned in effigy if you do that. If you don't know how to make an en dash or have no idea what I'm talking about, just avoid using dashes. Parentheses work really well.

Lastly, be sure to run your first few articles through Copyscape as Suite does check for plagiarism and scrutinizes new writers particularly closely.

A Suite101 Rant: Editor Badassery

Okay, even though I made like $4-$5 yesterday on Suite I am still fuming a bit.

There are editors and there are editors. Most editors are fine. Others have delusions of working for the New York Times or fantasize about being a Grammar Stealth Ninja. In other words, they have a terminal case of editor badassery.

I wish there was medication for that.

This is actually my second time working with Suite. The first time, I couldn't get past the weirdo editor to publish my first article and I walked away. Who needed Suite when the eHow gravy train was still going full steam ahead? (Ha! Famous last words.)

So the second time around, I picked an 'easier' topic, one less likely to bog an editor down in details, facts or figures. Or their own opinions.

Because some editors confuse their own uninformed opinions with editing.

Anyway, the other day, I was lurking in the forums and ran across some posts by a particular editor who was in full blooming glory of editor badassery. Hmmm, I thought. I am not going to write in this editor's section. They are way too hardcore.

Well, guess what?

Editors at Suite don't stay in their little sections. If other areas have a lot of work, then topic editors who aren't buried, pitch in and help.

Next thing I know, the grammatical equivalent of Attila the Hun is slicing and dicing my articles. Not only flagging them, but completely disabling them, which is quite unusual for Suite.

Notice I said articles plural. It's almost like they are gunning for me. I mean, what are the odds of the same editor hitting my articles across multiple topic sections? Some of them weeks old even?

Now, in some cases, I agree with the (minor) edits, but, the thing is, there are also inappropriate edits mixed in there. Edits based on what they think about the topic, not based on what I'm actually writing. (Maybe they should go write their own article, you know?)

For example, say I write an article about 'How to Choose Between Cats and Dogs for a Pet' and the editor comes in with a 'what about ferrets?' comment. This is the kind of stuff I am dealing with. It's just not appropriate. Or helpful. Or productive.

So I am not happy. I am an experienced enough writer to know when an editor is just yanking me around because of their own agenda vs. me actually sucking enough to need an editor smackdown.

Flags I could maybe handle, but being disabled? Is not nice. And then to go after my other articles? Really not cool.

I hope this blitz fizzles out. In fact, I'm not going to add new content to Suite for a while just so this editor, hopefully, has time to forget I exist.

Stay tuned for some tips on writing your first Suite Article. Maybe I can spare you some pain.

$1 a Day

I am making $1 a day so far on Suite101 with just 20 articles. So yes, there is money to be made at Suite101.

It will be interesting to see what happens to earnings as my articles age, search engines find them, and my back linking takes effect.

If there are people making more than that with a similar body of work, they aren't posting on the forums. I am seeing a lot of posts from people who feel they aren't making enough money...with less than 5 articles.

Listen, folks, you have to do the work. Once the work is done, the money rolls in for years to come with little additional input. But if you are going to write 1 article and give up because you didn't instantly make $50, you are deluded about how this works.

Write until you hit 50 articles.

Take a deep breath and review earnings.

If earnings suck, your SEO probably sucks too. So fix it.

Then write 50 more.

Then move on to another site and do the same thing to diversify your income.

And keep adding articles to Suite.

That's it. The secret money making formula.

April Earnings

I am still alive and kicking, although barely it seems. My health continues to be a challenge. Hopefully this is the last of the bad ju-ju for a while.

Earnings chugged along nicely and boy am I grateful for the power of passive income.

eHow--Almost $400 for 100 articles. It won't last, I know but it was nice to see. I hope to see a few more good months from eHow before they screw us over completely--you know more sweeps are coming once they hit critical mass on content submitted from the DS platform.

Also, it was interesting to see the earnings be so high considering that I have copied some of my content on other sites. So perhaps the penalty of duplicate content is not immediate or a myth? Time will tell.

I do need to get the rest of my content established elsewhere and aging so when eHow pulls the plug on us 'old timers' I still have earning potential.

Suite101--Is going slowly for me because of my health--less than $5. I will make the 10 articles in 3 months deadline by the skin of my teeth. Some of the editors are really picky and the style guidelines feel like a minefield. Every content editor has their own take on the rules so it can be annoying.

However, the editors have been unfailingly professional. Which is a huge and welcome change compared to Demand Studios.

Infobarrel--Is going to be a moneymaker in my humble opinion. I make more there than on Suite101 so far (and I've been targeting good keywords on Suite too). Today I had a $2 click.

Niche Websites: Are chugging along. More on them when I talk about adsense.

Hubpages: Not producing much for me. I still love the format. I suspect they are going to suffer a google smack because there's a lot of crappy spam and international scam types on there churning out low grade content. If they don't clean that up, I think their days are numbered.

Amazon: Could have been better but not horrid either. Less than $50.

Adsense: Hey, whaddaya know? I'm making almost $1 a day. Now to grow that by a factor of 100. My adsense income breaks down roughly like so 40% Niche blogs, 40% Infobarrel, 20% Hubpages. In terms of age, the Hubpages are the oldest in terms of age, followed by the niches, with Infobarrel being my 'youngest' content.

Now to get healthy and find more time in the day to write more content!

Hubpages: Answering Questions

So Maria read my last post and asked:

"I am a UK resident and wanting to start on hubpages and then on to suite101 when I build experience.Unfortunately I don't have such a large choice of good residual or upfront income writing sites. I can't seem to get to the bottom of whether hubpages is worth writing for I have looked at their page rank and its pretty decent but you have a very negative view of it. Could you please elaborate a bit on why you don't think it is a good earner? Also, what do you do when you find a good keyword based on the amount and quality of the competition and you check hubpages and somebody has already used that keyword. Can you place modifiers before or after the keyword? Can you still compete effectively with the other hubpages contributors for that keyword? Excuse all the questions, but after reading around a lot I haven't found a lot of objective information about hubpages except for your site. With thanks for all your kind help."

Truthfully, Maria, I have no idea if HP is a good idea or not. I don't think my experience makes for a full data set. However, I know from my earnings on eHow that I am not an SEO idiot ergo I would expect to be more successful on HP. The fact that I am not, is suspicious.

I love the Hubpages format. It's elegant, easy and there's multimedia. I would love to make my residual income 'home' on Hubpages, but after 12 hubs and some backlinking and time to allow the search engines to find me, I have not seen enough earnings to justify spending any more time on HP. And yes, I know 12 hubs is nothing, you need a lot of hubs just like you need a lot of eHow articles. However, I still would expect to see some earnings. Even on eHow, I earned with just 2 articles when I first started out.

I do hear many people talking about a google 'smack down' that pushed HP off the first page. I would hazard a guess that this is true. HP is not getting the traffic that eHow is and is nowhere near as competitive as eHow or even Infobarrel for that matter. I know for a fact that traffic is better on eHow and Infobarrel, because I can compare that data point for my content one-to-one against Hubpages.

As for keyword modifiers, yes you can use them. How well you can compete against other people targeting the same keyword is going to be a factor of the long tail keywords you use in the article and the back linking you do.

Using HP as a training ground for Suite 101 is probably a good idea. I would not go into Suite 101 completely green on web writing. You can even join eHow and post some content there for additional experience ( you just can't earn any money). I would write on topics you want to address at Suite so you can use your HP work as a back link. eHow's links are 'no follow' but they can still drive traffic so you can also market your Suite work there.

Hope that helps!