Keyword Tools

If you are not earning from online writing, you may want to take a look at keyword tools such as Google's. A good keyword tool can help you find the phrases that people are typing into the search engines (Yahoo and Google) to find articles. This is helpful to know, because you can write spectacular articles that are never found if you are not using the correct keyword phrases.

Using a Keyword Tool

Begin by having your own idea for an article. Type into the keyword tool a few words you are planning to use to title your article. Two words is best. After you search for phrases, you will get a list of commonly searched for terms. Choose a term, or phrase, that most accurately relates to your article. Try to find one that has low to medium ad competition. I have good luck with the ones that return a high GSV and "not enough data" in the LSV.

Cautions:

A few words of caution about using a keyword tool. You can spend a lot of time researching, but if you don't write anything, you won't earn any money. Try to get what you need and not over analyze. Then, get started writing.

Also, if you want to earn a reputation as a great writer, you will stick to what you know. Don't try to write articles about things that you aren't experienced with simply because it has a high keyword phrase associated with it.

eHow - Trending Your Article Earnings and Organizing Your Writing

Something I tried with my articles at eHow that helped me a lot is to set up each niche in a different eHow user account. There is nothing fraudulent or sneaky about this. eHow allows you to set up an account with any email address. After you have it set up, you will need to sign up with the WCP under that account and your real name and paypal email address. Be sure to use the email address for your paypal account for the WCP. It doesn't have to be the same one you signed up with for that eHow account.

For example, I have a Knifty Knitter account for my crochet and knitting articles, a Canning Preserves account for my canning articles, a TaxGuru account for my tax articles, etc. Each of them have the same Paypal account listed, but they have different email addresses as the main email contact for the account.

By setting up my niches separately I can see the earning trends for each. I can also see the average earnings per article in that niche easier.

This might be a little over the top, but I recently graphed each niche to better see the trends. Up the left side of my graph is $.00 to $2.00. Across the bottom of my graph are the months. I figured the average earnings per article each month and graphed them. Having the niche articles in separate eHow accounts made calculating the earnings per article easy. The result was a graph that clearly shows when that niche earns big money and when it does not.

I keep a folder of keyword ideas for each niche. I taped the graph to the front of each niche folder. Now if I need to pump up earnings for February, for example, I can easily look at my folders and say, "Oh this is my best paying niche for February," then open the folder and use the keywords inside to choose article titles. It is magical... I am telling you!

Good luck with your writing,
Heather

9 Tips for a Better Squidoo Lens

1.       Write Squidoo lenses just like you would an article with keywords and SEO in mind.
2.       Put the keywords in ALL of these places throughout the lens: URL, Title, Intro paragraph, Module Titles, picture titles, and keyword tags
3.       Turn on the table of contents and discovery tool in the intro module. Link to your own related lenses in the discovery tool.
4.       Include a photo for every module. People like pictures.
5.       Run a health check on your lens and correct the problems listed.
7.       Update your lens at least once a month
8.       Make friends and rate the lenses of other lens masters to get comments and ratings
9.    Lensroll all your lenses.