Your guide to writing a keyword-rich 250-500 word article on any topic, in 30 minutes or less!

The number-one thing that keeps most writers from creating quality, keyword-rich content for their web sites regularly is a number of misconceptions about writing. Many people believe that creating content articles is hard work and time-consuming. The fact is, writing quality articles is simple. Even writing on topics you know nothing about is a breeze - as long as you have some insider tricks to get you started on your way. This guide is about to show you, step-by-step, how to write full articles in thirty minutes or less, consistently, but first you’re going to learn what is holding you back from writing fast and well right now. Before we begin, put these myths to rest right now:

Myth: I don’t have time!

Sure, you may have a business to run, a serious personal life to attend to and a million other things clamoring for your time. You still have time to write. If you have a PDA - or even a notebook - you can easily jot down ideas or even complete entire sentences while stuck in traffic or while waiting in line. Authors have written entire books by getting up 15 minutes early or by eating lunch a little faster and saving some company time for writing. You don’t have to find 30 solid minutes to write. Use our system but split up the 30 minutes into chunks throughout the day and you will have an article each day!

Want to speed your writing up considerably? We strongly recommend Jeff Herring’s article templates. This package of 20 templates will help you write articles in no time flat. They can be found by going to: http://www.thatarticleguy.com/jeff

Myth: I’m just not a writer.

If you’re reading this, you have enough skill to write. If you can talk, you can write using the same voice. Just put one word in front of the other, using the same style you would use when talking to a friend, and your readers will be happy to hear from you - and will be happy to keep reading the articles you will be able to produce consistently using our handy system.

Myth: Writing takes too many resources.

In school, you may have been taught that you need notebooks, dictionaries, thesauruses, and other tools to write. With today’s word predecessors, all you need is your computer. If you want to make sure that you really are writing as fast as you could be, get a kitchen timer to make sure you don’t spend too much time on each of the simple 3 steps.

Myth: I don’t have any ideas.

Ideas are all around you: conversations overheard, your experiences, the questions you ask yourself about a topic. If you have trouble generating ideas when it is time to write, just carry a notebook with you so that you can jot down ideas as they occur to you. By the time you sit down to write your articles, you’ll have plenty of good ideas on hand.

That’s enough preamble. You should be writing, not reading, which is why this guide offers you a simple three steps that get you started fast.

On you mark, get set go: 5 minutes

Don’t waste your time staring at a blank screen or researching. When you start writing an article, there are one of two possibilities:

1) You don’t know enough about a topic to write an article.
2) You know enough about a topic to write an article (Hint: If you could explain enough about the topic to keep up five to ten minutes of conversation, you fall into this second category).

If you have enough knowledge about a topic, start writing right away and tell your audience what you know. Don’t worry about where to start or how to word things. Just come up with a quick title and start off with what you might tell someone who wanted to know more about the topic. You’ll be helping those who don’t know anything about the subject, and once you start writing what you know, writing on will be a snap.

If you don’t know anything about a subject, do some research. The key word here is “some.” Spending hours researching and interviewing is not practical if you want to write fast. Luckily, all you need is online. There are literally millions of sources just waiting for you online, but don’t get caught up researching for hours. Not only will you waste time, but you will end up with far more information than you need. Instead, set a timer (use an online one if you like) and use search engines such as Google news or magportal.com or findarticles.com to do your searches. You’ll get actual articles rather than ads, so you will instantly get the information you need.

One more tip: when researching, don’t painstakingly read articles word for word. Use your smarts. Read opening and closing paragraphs, bullet points, and skim to get basic ideas, definitions, and interesting facts. For short articles, it’s all you need!

Writing through: 20 minutes

Ok, this is the hard part for many writers, but you can do it. Just write about the subject. Don’t get caught up in more research, looking up a specific word, coming up with the perfect phrase, or cleaning your desk. Just write paragraph after paragraph, sentence by sentence. Even if you write at only 30 words a minute, you should be done with time to spare. If you’re having a hard time deciding what to say, consider these tried-and-true formats that really help your readers and keep them interested:

• Who, what, where, why, and when. The classic journalism article just outlines the topic by answering each of these questions. Tell your readers the basics about your topic, and they will always be interested.
• Checklist styles. If you have a list of tips, ideas, facts, or even questions, a bullet style format is always appropriate. Bonus: in today’s busy world, readers are sure to appreciate your brevity.
• Definition. If you have a complicated topic, such as the stock market, a definition article is great style to use. Simply define your subject, tell readers a little about the history and offer examples to help them understand how it works. That’s it!

If you like, think about the articles that you have read and enjoyed recently. They likely had one of the above easy-to-understand styles. Just don’t get hung up on outlining or planning. At this stage, write to the finish! If you aren’t sure about something - the spelling of a word or the capital of Tehran - do not stop! Spell the word phonetically, write any city name and follow it up with a question mark so that you know enough to look back at your work later, then keep going.

Polishing: 5 Minutes

After you have written your article, step back. If you have time, walk away from your article for a while to give yourself perspective on it. If you don’t that’s OK too. Whether you take time off from what you have written or not, you need to reread what you have created. Read for typos and small mistakes that you have made. Now is also the time to go back to those words you weren’t sure of or the facts you need to double-check. You can look up spelling and information online in seconds.

Read through your article a final time to make sure that it reads pleasantly, but don’t fall into the trap of revising again and again or rearranging the same sentence ten times because it isn’t “just write.” Professional writers know that that sort of perfectionism is really just procrastination in disguise. As soon as your article is clear, stop working on it. Send it out to be published or place it on a web site.

Your thirty minutes are up. Now it’s time to get to work on the next one.

We would like to take this moment to thank Jeff Herring for all his help on this. Jeff is an EXPERT on writing articles. He’s a prolific writer with over 1000 articles published. You can find his article templates and many more great article writing resources at http://www.thatarticleguy.com/jeff

Good Luck!