1) The opening paragraph gives your qualifications or grabs the reader and almost compels him or her to read further.
2) Your article will contain just two or three facts.
Fact 1) Perfect grammar is not a necessity.
Fact 2) The number of words in the typical article.
Fact 3) Separate each paragraph.
3) The closing paragraph summarizes the article and provides a link to your site.
Many people are reluctant to write articles because they think it’s too difficult. That’s nonsense. Article writing is actually quite easy once you know the three-step formula (above). Others are reluctant to write because they do poorly with grammar or spelling. Do you need to use perfect grammar in your articles? Certainly not, but some sites will refuse to print your work if it is riddled with errors. Fortunately, there is a way around this for those that are grammatically challenged. Most of the word processors available today come with a spelling AND grammar checker. You should make full use of both of these features.
The ideal article contains just 500-600 words. Many submission sites will not accept articles with less than 500 words and will refuse those with more than 1000 words. In addition, it is sometimes difficult to keep a reader’s interest if it is over 700 or 800 words. (They didn’t come to the site to read a novel.) For that reason, I try to make sure that all of my articles have around 500 words.
Break your article up into a number of different paragraphs and separate each one by a space. This makes your article more pleasing to the eye. This is important because your readers will make his or her first judgment about your article based on the way it looks. And like anything else, you want your reader to have a good first impression.
Your first paragraph or two should tell the reader about your qualifications or entice him or her to read further. This is called ‘the hook’. In this piece, we are using a “hook” instead of the qualifications. Our hook lets the reader know that there is a formula to writing articles and we will divulge this information in the article.
The next paragraph or two should discuss the facts, information, or points you wish to make. Each of these paragraphs should discuss the benefits as well as features. The benefits will grab the reader and let him know why it is important to him.
