Well folks, today, I did it.  And I am totally amazed at how quickly I worked through the process!

I got up this morning with one goal in mind.  I was going to TAKE SOME DIRECT ACTION -- DO SOMETHING -- that would bring me closer to my goal of making money online.

I've spent a lot of time on various training modules in WA, I did a lot of messing around and practicing using the key-word tools.  I've done a lot of reading on SEO.  So, today, it's time for me to really do something -- take one positive step in the direction of making an income online.

Since Wealthy Affiliate really touts the importance of article marketing, I decided (since I love to write so much) that today would be the day I write my first real article.

I wrote my article with the intention of submitting it SOMEWHERE.  Anywhere it would be accepted.

I chose a topic, and BAM, after about an hour I was done.   Some thoughts that rolled through my mind as I was writing the article were:

1.  Should I have done my keyword research BEFORE or AFTER I started writing.

I thought about this one for a minute, and then decided "not in this case" because I have already joined the program I'm writing about (before I saw the "W-A Light"), so why do that research? In drawing this conclusion, I also thought: "The folks who developed the program must have already done that research, otherwise, they wouldn't have so many affiliates involved.  [Aside:   In retrospect if I had been a member of WA prior to joining the program, I would have known to research this particular niche before even signing up.  But hindsight is 20/20.]

So, after everything I've read on this site, I concluded that (since I'm already in an affiliate program)  the emphasis should be on writing the best article I can write promoting that program, then optimize the article for relevance, which is what I tried to do.

After writing my article, I then went to the keyword tool, and started scanning for words and phrases within the article, and placing them in the keyword search too, to see how many searches were being done on those exact keywords.

As I found words and phrases with low search results, I went back into my article and removed those words and phrases replacing them with  other more relevant keywords that did show up in the search engines.

I can only hope from all my reading and study, that I'm doing this right.

At any rate, I MADE THE ATTEMPT to optimize my article, and now, on to my next step:

At this point, I don't believe I have the confidence yet to actually submit the article yet.

What I want to do at this point, is post the article on a page on my own domain, and the use the Keyword Density tool to crawl the page, so I can check the article for key-word density...  

So, maybe after another day of "tweaking" the article, and I will submit it.

 I'll let you know how it goes.