If you want learn how to write articles that make money, you’ll need to learn to juggle speed with quality. Writing articles does take time…especially when you are not familiar with the topic or information at hand. What’s the solution? How can you write articles quickly and at the same time create quality content that readers will actually read and benefit from?
Introducing Egg Timer + Digital Recorder = Quality Articles FAST!
Writing your article should only take 15 minutes. For some of you, that would be a dream come true. Let me show you exactly how I use an Egg Timer (the kind you find in the kitchen section of Walmart or KMart) and a Digital Voice Recorder (any model will do, but for this example I am using an Olympus DS-40 at the moment) to make it easier for anyone to write articles.
Now, the solution that most author’s give for writing faster articles is to simply pick a topic you are already familiar with and write tips. That’s a great way if you have a head full of original, quality info on dozens of topics…but that isn’t going to work when you are trying to write on topics that are foreign to you.
Tip #1: To write articles quickly, learn to gather research in bullet format on your digital recorder. There are lots of reasons why this is so effective, but I am going to name just one of them: bullet research makes creating outlines really easy. By bullet research I am referring to short one or two sentence “bursts” of information…no fluff, just really concise facts. This will become the foundation of your article research going forward, so don’t skip this step. You will be amazed at how effective this is when you begin writing articles this way. You’ll have your first paragraph and first draft completed in the shortest time possible.
Truth is, instead of being hard, learning to write articles with an egg timer and a digital voice recorder is actually very easy…and may, in some sad, sick way, become mildly enjoyable. You’ll be using words in your research instead of typing articles or writing in longhand.
Research takes time, yet it is the one thing that separates a great article from a “fluff filled”, worthless piece of digital ink. By using the strategy below, you will quickly realize how easy it is to write 400-1000 word articles very quickly.
Step 1: Determine what topic you want to write for, then do your KEYWORD RESEARCH FIRST. Don’t skip this. Before you do a single search for content, KNOW what you are going to write about, and what keyword(s) you are trying to rank for. This will keep you on path throughout the rest of the steps.
Step 2: Set your egg timer for 3-5 minutes. (The better you get at this the less time you’ll need on this step.)
Step 3: Start your digital recorder and start devouring content from web sites…talk research bullets into your recorder. Don’t think about the outline at all at this point, you are aiming to just try to get as much info as you can into the recorder in short statements or facts. The more info you get on the recorder the easier the article will be to write. Talk quickly and skim for content. Record short bursts of information, not whole sentences or paragraphs.
Step 4: Visit as many sources of information as possible. Try to see how many different perspectives you can record info on in the time allotted…but hurry, time is ticking!
Step 5: STOP…as soon as the egg timer goes off, stop the recorder. Take a break for two minutes and think about what you just put into the recorder. Your subconscious mind will start thinking about the possible outline/order for this information.
Step 6: Put your research down in bullet points, EXACTLY in the order it was recorded. You’re just making a list of contents you recorded in wrong order. Don’t worry about duplicates, spelling, content, or anything else at this point. Just get those short burst bullets of information out of the recorder and on their own line.
Step 7: Now, go back and read each tip and start Copying/Pasting into some order for an outline. You still are NOT WRITING anything new or editing…just get rid of any duplicates, and put the bullets into some type of outline.
Step 8: Now that you have an outline, it’s time to begin “fleshing” out some details. By now, your “author brain” is probably jumping at the opportunity to “spill out” all that info that you took in when you were scanning the websites, or information you came up with during the entire process of recording and ordering the bullets. Now is the time to write, so set your egg timer for 10-15 minutes.
Wasn’t that easy? Remember, you are not writing a book or even an essay, you’re writing an article. People scan information online and writing this way almost automatically makes articles that are easy to scan. (Formatting your article can go a long way here too. Format for scanners.)
Here’s a few more tips you’ll need to consider:
Tip #2: Use good transitions between paragraphs. When people do stop scanning and start reading, you want them to keep reading. Make sure each paragraph leads into the other seamlessly.
Tip #3: Nothing stinks more than a content that is fluffed like a pillow (yes, the reader knows it). If you are just rambling to get more words, you need to set the egg timer for more time and talk faster into the recorder. Research KILLS fluff. 
Tip #4: Make a note of how many tips work best for your article writing style, then shoot for that amount in place of setting the egg timer. For instance, if you find that you work best with 20 bullets, then just turn on your digital recorder and quickly find 20 bullets of research…you can still use the egg timer to challenge yourself to get those 20 tips faster. There is a fine balance here. Gathering seventy-five tips may make for great research, but trying to order those tips into a single article will waste too much time. Find your sweet spot then improve on it. Learning how to write articles this way becomes “painlessly simple”…
Hint: This article was written using the above method. 1,045 words in approx. 20 minutes. Not too shabby.
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