Article Writing – My #1 Secret Blogging Trick

In this post, I’m going to tell you about my #1 secret blogging trick that I’ve discovered that has revolutionized the way I create a blog post and has honestly changed my online businesses.

In my articles about online marketing and creating an online business, I talk about how important it is to post a lot of articles on your website. In fact, I usually say you definitely want to be posting more than once a week and ideally three to four per week.

I have also talked about the rule of 100+, which you can read about here in my OnPage SEO Checklist for now as I haven’t made a separate post about this particular concept yet.

Your blog needs to be built up to 100+ articles as fast as possible 

So obviously that’s a challenging task, right? If you have a boss, a full-time job, a consuming academic career, and a family that you’re trying to support then it can be very challenging to put out three to four quality blog posts a week.

Not to mention all the other things you should be doing when you’re starting an online business!

This was actually one of the main issues that I really struggled with for a long time.

My very first blog that I made is actually still live and I’m not even going to tell you what it’s called because it’s just embarrassing haha but I still to this day over 3 1/2 years later, I have not published more than 30 posts on that blog.

I would say not publishing enough content is probably the #1 reason that blogs fail and why most online businesses that are based on websites and blogs fail.

People give up on building out their websites because they just don’t have the time that it takes to put out the content. And that content is necessary to get rankings. Then it’s confusing because there’s no traffic when they think there should be and then they get stuck because they aren’t sure how to drive traffic.

You can be doing everything right in terms of OnPage SEO, creating a user-friendly website, and publishing killer content but Google still won’t rank it. And it won’t rank it because you just haven’t been producing enough quality content quickly enough and you’re competing with massive websites with over 100k words on them.

You can’t compete with that unless you can be better AND catch up quickly. 

Paid Traffic | Is it a great way to start blogging?

It’s very tempting at this point when you’re just not ranking to turn to paid traffic in an effort to get some momentum to your website but resist this urge because this quickly digs too deep a hole into your wallet.

There is definitely a time and a place for paid traffic but for simply getting traffic to your blog posts, you want to be relying 99% of the time on organic search traffic.

Consistently Publishing 3-4 Articles/Week? Let’s be Real…

So how do you make sure that you are not one of those people who give up, realistically?

Trust me – it’s easy to say “oh yeah like I’ll just write an article every single day after a workday” but much harder to actually do. 

So your plan is to get home from work Monday to Friday and pump out an article. That gives you a solid routine, and structure and is putting you up at 5 articles per week. Alright, an article every single day after work, sounds reasonable enough right?

Wrong! 

What if you have something you need to do after work besides sitting at your computer for 2-3 hours? And trust me, once you get into topics that you’re not all that familiar with, and you start doing review articles and you have to put even a little bit of research time into it, the hours add up.

Not to mention that you have to be ensuring you’re doing your keyword research, your OnPage SEO checklist for each post, your OffPage SEO checklist for each post and all that entails, which adds time.

And then if you want to write out a really good, long-form pillar article, it’s going to take you even more than 2-3 hours to do sometimes, right? 

If you’re a real expert in your niche on all the topics that people are researching on Google through your keyword research, then it’s a little bit easier because you can write a lot of the stuff just off the top of your head. But even then, remember that you should be including some links to authority sites for reference as part of your SEO.

For instance, with Don’t Want A Boss, I’m starting because I’ve already done so much of this stuff, and being through the learning process for years myself, I know exactly what people are looking for.

So, it’s a little bit easier for me because of that – I can literally just sit down, find a keyword and type up the whole article in under an hour off the top of my head a lot of the time.

In the horse niche with Equestrian Boots & Bridles, it was a lot harder and I made a ton of mistakes. 

The problem was that I had a lot of experience riding horses and taking care of horses day-to-day but a lot of stuff that people were searching about online had nothing to do with that knowledge. The keywords that I knew the most about were getting the least amount of traffic and would definitely not make my blog successful if I focused just on them.

Most people wanted to know about the psychological benefits of riding horses, what types of supplements to give different horses, product reviews on different types of tack, trending riding apparel, etc.

This isn’t stuffed I could just come up with it off the top of my head. Of course, I knew about the equipment I personally used and I could talk about the benefits I personally experienced from horseback riding but I knew that wasn’t going to be enough.

For instance, I spend I think 10+ hours and a lot of time on PubMed coming up with complete supplement reviews. Not something I could have done after work one day for sure. 

I also am going to talk about in one of my articles coming up with a great social media strategy to drive traffic more quickly to your website as well as get really high engagement on social media. The problem is that it takes a while to create these articles because they really involve a lot of research and again, you simply can’t get that done in a few hours after work.

Also, if it’s your first time starting something online (like with me and my first blog haha), it’s going to be tricky for you to get into the habit of just writing a bunch of stuff. You’re probably going to overthink a lot of what you’re saying and you’re going to be very conscientious about editing.

All of this is to say that it’s going to take you a lot longer than you expect to get everything down properly.

What NOT to DO

After reading through all of this, you’re probably thinking “How am I going to do this without hiring a writer?”

At least that’s the conclusion I came to after about two years of struggling.

So I will write an article about hiring writers, and I do think there is a time and a place for that as well but that is not the trick I’m going to share in this post.

That is because, it’s a very annoying, lengthy process to find a great writer for a reasonable price. It’s probably the most frustrating thing that you will do for your blog. 

Even with services like Onlinejobs.ph, Fiverr, and Freelancer, it’s really hard to find an excellent writer at a good price. And unless your writer is excellent, they aren’t worth any amount of money because you will have to re-write their articles.

I do believe that things don’t have to be perfect on a blog and if you shoot for perfection then you’re never going to meet it and things aren’t going to get done. Your grammar doesn’t have to be immaculate but you do have to be able to speak in a conversational tone that’s fluid to read like you were writing an e-mail to a friend.

This is a tough thing for writers for whom English is a second language without proper training and practice.

Basically, you really want to do the writing yourself until you are making consistent and sufficient income with your blog. Only then should you take a portion of that monthly income and use it to hire a writer.

This way, you have the experience to really teach them how to write the articles properly, you’re much more careful choosing a writer because you’ve already built up a great reputation with your website and established a relationship with your audience. You also have the money to pay a good quality writer or writing service.

I personally think that finding a great writer to hire independently is the way to go rather than hiring a writing service. 

Mostly this is because of the cost and the familiarity with your website and your content, which will both be better if you just hire your own writer.

Writing services are extremely expensive for a new blog here, new blog. You just can’t afford to hire a writing service when you’re starting. You have no traffic yet, do you know what I mean? So you’re definitely not making the extra 500 to even 1000 a month to spend and that’s just for 4-6 articles so you’re not even meeting your quota.

As I said, I will be publishing an article or hiring a writer and will also cover writing services that will be coming up. But I would strongly urge you not to worry about that yet.

So let’s get back to the question at hand.

How are you going to make this doable?

Getting the 90% Done Fast to Make Time for the 10%

If you read the article about OnPage SEO, you’ll remember I talked about how it’s important that when you’re starting off your blog, 90% of your keywords are low, hanging fruit, or low competition.

I mentioned that those articles didn’t have to be too long or in-depth, right? You’re looking at 1000-1500 words each. They obviously need to be well written and they need to have your images, OnPage SEO checklist done, etc.

That’s all given, however, they don’t need to be your long-form pillar articles. Your pillar articles and any articles you want to use my social media engagement strategy for will take you a long time no matter what trick you use in the book.

There’s really no way around that. You got to put your head down, do the research, and get ‘er done.

So the question becomes, how do you get the 90% done ASAP in as little time as possible so whenever you do have a 4-5 hour chunk every few weeks, you can dedicate that to putting out 1 long-form article?

That could be like every other Saturday you sit down and write an excellent article that takes you up to 5 hours. Sounding more reasonable than every day after work? 

An excellent pillar article every other Saturday for a few months is more than enough if you’re putting out 3-4 low-competition keyword articles per week in the meantime.

That low-competition keyword content should mostly be made up of something that you at least have a good amount of knowledge on already. Hopefully, you’ve chosen your niche in a field that you already have some kind of knowledge on. If not, then you need to get a book on your niche and start reading it whenever you get a chance.

As you read the book, you’ll have more and more on-hand knowledge of your niche.

Then, you want to start picking the 90% by choosing keywords that you kind of already knows the answers to. In the end, you’ll need a total of 90 low-competition keywords so just start with 10-20 of the easiest ones. And by easiest, I mean the ones that you feel like you could talk fluidly about.

For example, for Don’t Want A Boss, 90% of the articles that I’m writing are things that I am super familiar with like SEO, keyword research, platforms that I use on a day-to-day basis, e-commerce, social media, crypto investing, etc. These are things I could carry on a conversation about for days probably.

But even in the bulk articles, there’s some stuff that I don’t know off the top of my head like the newest ICOs so I listen to podcasts and keep up with the news so I’m informed about those so I can then publish up to date article reviews on the ones that I think are the most promising.

Then I have my pillar articles, which I still know a lot about and I know the general answers to, but I want to make sure that I’m not missing anything, right? Maybe I use methods A and B to do something, but out there on the internet, there are also benefits to methods C and D that also work.

I don’t want to miss those methods.

I want to give you guys all the content that you need to make the best decision in terms of what method you wanna use to get the job done, right? I also want to use my social media engagement strategy to get more traffic and to get social media buzz going on and potentially even going viral.

So I want to make sure that I’m doing the research in order to do that. I want to make sure that I have a list of blogs that I can out link to. I want to make sure that I am touching on every single key point. That part is going to take me time and I just have to deal with that.

For the bulk of the stuff that I already know, however, all I need to do is just get it down on paper. 

What I’ve noticed is that speaking is 20 billion times faster than typing. And when you’re typing it’s a lot easier to get distracted to get bored.

I mean you could be with your kids, watching TV, or hanging out with your friends instead, right? Also, you’ve probably spent a good chunk of your day already on the computer at work or at school.

You can only type when you’re sitting down in front of your computer somewhere, you need to be very focused, etc.

So I don’t know about you, but I don’t get a lot of time to be focused and sit on my laptop on a day-to-day basis. Do you know what I mean? Especially not enough time to put out three to four articles per week.

Invest in a Transcribing Software

I have an app on my phone called “Transcribe Me” and it literally changed my life.

There are a few of them that you can download from the app store. They all generally charge a fee per minute of transcribing time.

You want to get the ones that charge you a fee because the other ones that are either free or you just pay to buy the app don’t work very well or don’t actually subscribe.

I like to Transcribe Me because it’s one of the cheapest ones and for automatic transcription, it’s only 10 cents per minute but you can choose the more expensive options if you want a 100% finished piece at the end that’s been proofread by someone. 

I always use the software one because I find it’s good enough and then I go through and parse out the paragraphs, add titles and do all my SEO stuff right before I publish anyways.

So if I dictate an article that takes me 20 minutes and I’m only paying 10 cents per minute, I’m paying a dollar every 10 minutes and $2 for 20 minutes.

That’s less than a small coffee at Starbucks.

The app automatically charges my credit card when I order transcription and then they e-mail me a word doc. So that’s what I do and it has saved me HOURS. 

Especially when I’m driving! I often have to make trips so I’ll have to drive for like two or three hours at a time for business, for family, for other reasons.

For instance, this article I actually transcribed this when I was doing a 3-hour drive. In total, I dictated 6 articles on that drive with breaks in between to listen to music (haha!)

Also, when I’m walking my dog I’ll put on my headphones with the microphone in them and I’ll transcribe an article while walking my dog in the evening. I don’t have a commute to work but if you’re commuting to work and back, that is a perfect time every day you can get out articles.

Now, let’s say you have 6 transcribed articles that you’ve created during the last few days while you’ve been driving to work, walking your dog, etc.

Now, you book 1 time per week where you sit down and you fix any mistakes, run through your SEO checklists, and publish 6 articles at a time! 

Don’t actually publish them all at once but schedule them into the future so they’re coming out consistently.

What you’ll find is that you’ll start having scheduled posts too far into the future. Your publishing schedule won’t be able to “keep up with you” for once! Isn’t that nice?!

Getting Used to Transcription – Some Pro Tips

Pro Tip #1: As with anything, there will be a bit of a learning curve. If you’re not used to speaking, you will catch yourself saying “like”, “umm” and other little word spacers quite a bit initially.

Of course, when you get the document back, you’ll need to take a bit of time to edit these out.

Don’t worry though, the more you do it, the more you’ll start speaking much more smoothly, confidently, and in sentences that are grammatically correct when transcribed. It took me about 3-4 articles to start getting the hang of it.

Even before you get the hang of it and you’ll still take some more time to edit, it still takes 20 times less than writing an article from scratch on your computer.

For six articles, I would say you’d need about 2 hours to go through edit, and do your SEO, or about 20 minutes per article. Maybe a little longer initially depending on how comfortable you are with your SEO. For me, it now takes me ~10 minutes per every 1000 words to publish

I literally transcribe everything now. 

Even when I need to do research, I’ll do it beforehand separately and then dictate out the article with the main concepts I remembered and then put in links afterward.

I actually prefer this way of doing it so much more because I’m much better at putting things in my own words and integrating them into the article if I’m summarizing after I’ve already read the other resources.

Pro Tip #2: When you start automating your publishing times, you need to also automate when you publish on social media as part of your OffPage SEO. 

I would recommend using Zapier to automate publishing off your RSS feed so it will create a social media post you can customize every time a new post shows up in the RSS feed of your blog.

I guarantee you that will dramatically cut down the time that you’re spending and it will help you so much to actually feel like you’re making your online business work. You will actually be able to publish quality content on a consistent basis and be consistent with your audience, which Google will absolutely love.

So get a transcribing app on your phone, and dictate your articles based on low-competition keywords or even all your articles.

If you feel like you haven’t got enough knowledge about your niche to do this, start reading when you have spare time. Read books and blog posts about your niche. Soon you’ll have a lot of floating knowledge that you can then use to start dictating.

Also, when you’re talking about one article, you’ll notice that it’s going to become really easy for you to come up with new article ideas really quickly. Obviously, do your keyword research first, but it’s going to become really easy for you to come up with keyword research ideas.

Soon, articles will just be pouring out of you!

Pro Tip #3: Whatever niche needs you’re in, you can always use some reflection pieces.

For example, for Don’t Want A Boss, I have article types that I call reflections. Basically, they’re articles where I kind of reflect on the state of things.

So what I think about having bosses, the situation of financial health in North America and in the world in general. What I think about is why people don’t like their bosses, why people don’t like their jobs and how the system is flawed, etc.

I love doing reflections like that and I think they’re awesome. With those, you can literally just go on and on when you’re talking. It turns into a huge amount of content for your blog and also values because you’re being super authentic when you just talk about something that’s important to you.

Of course, maybe some of your audience doesn’t really care to read about what you think and just want their questions answered, but some of them will care and will enjoy reading about something that they’re also passionate about. And Google will definitely like that huge amount of content.

I personally love reflection content because it also adds your own personal touch to your blog. That type of content won’t be in any other blog. Even if they are in your niche overlapping with a ton of others and you have lots of competition and you’re taking a lot of content from other places online, there will be no reflections that are quite like yours because they’re your thoughts.

I mean, I hope you guys enjoy reading mine from time to time. So far at the time of this recording I’ve only written one but I will definitely record more. When I’m recording them I feel like I’m talking directly to you guys and it’s great!

Take Full Advantage!

I hope this helped, and I really think that this method will help you publish more articles faster and give you a huge edge over your competition because that’s what it’s done for me.

Honestly, without this method, I probably never would’ve been able to keep up with my writing and I wouldn’t have been able to start this brand or talk with you guys.  

Before I started this method, I spent SO MUCH money on writers trying to make sure that my blog was publishing content consistently. The writers were just way too expensive or the English wasn’t conversation and it just never really worked for me or my businesses.

Even when I hired some writing services, they weren’t that great.

Also, I actually love publishing my own personal content because it feels weird when you start publishing content that isn’t quite yours. For Don’t Want A Boss, I’m not going to let anyone else touch it. This is 100% my own and because it’s for people that were literally in my shoes, I want to make sure you guys get only the very best.

On my other brands, I still have some old content that isn’t mine on there and just don’t like having it there because it’s reflecting my brand but I don’t feel like it’s quite up to standards for my audience.

I have plans to go back and re-write all of that content but it will take some time because there are probably over 50 articles. So, avoid this headache for yourself!!

Take full advantage of the transcribing software please please, please. I guarantee it will make your life so much easier. You’ll feel in control of your business again. And for those of you who like to scroll through articles, make sure you quickly skim over my pro tips above so you’ll be able to save the most time the fastest.

Best of luck!

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