Content Creation

by Sapphire (September 23, 2006)

I’m building a new content site, and I know the trick is lots and lots of pages of content, and that means oh-so-much writing. I don’t think I can pump out three decent articles per day on this new site, and keep up with other sites I have to write content for.

My initial idea was to pad the site with some free reprint articles. Then I thought why not spring for private label articles? So I went to look for some, and found some discussion about people selling stolen or scraped content as “private label” articles on eBay. There’s a good question: how do you know the content you’re publishing under your name is actually legally yours? You have only the word of the person who sold it to you, and that’s not much on the internet.

So what about free reprint articles? Is adding a few well-written, very on-topic reprint articles a bad idea? In my mind, there’s no question the search engines tolerate some duplicate content. Very often, the top 10 results on Google will be the same article on 10 different sites, and the top three sites will be known, respected ones. So I’m thinking at least a few reprint articles can’t hurt. But I want to use them sparingly, so that only accounts for a few articles a month.

I may ask some friends to write articles, but if I’m going to pay them anything like a fair amount, I can’t afford very many. So what to do?

I need to come up with a very simple formula for writing good content articles. “Think up a topic and write about it” is too vague when you’re not feeling inspired. I need a sort of detailed checklist full of ideas, so that even when I’m tired and overwhelmed, I can follow the steps and crank out something of reasonable quality. Step One might list some sites I can check to come up with ideas. Step Two could be suggestions on how to take those ideas and warp them into something fresh. Step Three might be an outline for general articles.

Posted in Development & Design
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