I originally wrote this as a response to help a new article marketer starting out, and I think there's too much helpful information not to share this with everyone as well. Here goes:

Niche Selection

Thanks for touching base! I'd love to help out someone just starting out. I'm assuming that you've picked your niche, but if you haven't let me know and I'll back up a bit.

I started out in the Forex robot niche, because I'm an experienced Forex trading systems developer and I had a good starting understanding of how everything works, what people basically want and how to identify good programs to recommend. It's best if you start out with something that you're passionate about, or something you have a lot of experience in, or ideally both. If you totally have zero experience in a niche, then you're going to have a hard time writing for it.

Researching Keywords And Niche

Here's my "formula" for writing an article, and if you can write one article doing this, you can write hundreds. I start out with my keyword research, I use the WA keyword tool to find 2 or 3 keywords that have less than 500 quoted results in Google. Typically these are the keywords that have a high article score as well.

Next, armed with my keywords, I open up Rapid writer and key in my keywords in the phrases to watch area. Rapid Writer requires you to have a campaign name and article name before you start writing, but don't get stuck here, just name it campaign 1 and article 1 and you're good to go.

To generate ideas for my articles, I'll normally just enter my keyword into ezinearticles' search and see what pops up at the top. I'll read 3-4 of the first articles that catch my eye, and from this little exercise I'll have my article idea. What this does for me is that it helps me form an opinion on something. It's hard to just come up with something from scratch, but it's easy to read something, have an opinion on it, and write a response whether you agree, disagree, if the previous writers have missed something, if you can expound on that line of thinking, etc. Don't worry if you are short of ideas after 3-4 articles, just keep reading more, or pick another keyword if nothing comes up.

Title & Outline (IMPORTANT!)

By now, you should have a clear idea of what you're going to write about. At this point, I will write out my title and my outline. Don't underestimate the power of the outline! Before I started using outlines, it took me an average of 90-120 minutes to write an article. With an outline I got it down to 60 minutes, 30 minutes and now I'm at 20 minutes an article. 

My typical title will be "Keyword 1 - Insert Attention Grabbing Headline Here". The keyword 1 at the start will be good for ranking you at the top of the queue for searches in Google and in EZA, and the attention grabbing headline should communicate with your audience and lead them to click on your article. Some examples that I tend to use are "The Secret To...", "How To... In ... Days", "Are You Making These ... Mistakes In...?", "The Shocking Truth About...", "The Blatant Lies That... Tell About..." and so on. If you're ever short on a headline, grab your closest women's mag and you'll have ideas in spades.

My Typical Outline

Introduction

Point #1(Problem)

Point #2 (Solution)

Conclusion

I find that when I type my outline out, it adds structure to my thought and I know where I'm going. Before I used an outline, I used to get stuck, but now it's so much faster. Obviously, for your first few articles, you may still be a bit slow here, but it will pick up, trust me.

Example Of An Introduction

In the introduction I like to connect with my audience in the first sentence, outline the problem in the second sentence, outline the solution in the third sentence and in the fourth sentence I'll tell them the point of this article. For example, if I were promoting Wealthy Affiliate, I would say...

"Are you tired of all the garbage launches that are thrown at you week after week by internet marketers who don't really care? The fact is, most launches either cover part of the puzzle or just skim over all the steps while they try to upsell you into higher and higher priced programs. Like you, I was caught in that rut of buying junk program after junk program until I came across Wealthy Affiliate University, and that's when I really started to see results in my efforts. By the end of this article, you'll know why Wealthy Affiliate University is the best internet marketing program in the world, and I'm not kidding!"

Normally I find that I can hit 400-600 words easily using this template. If you find yourself struggling to come up with the minimum 400 words, then just try to be a bit more elaborate with your sentences and you'll get there. If you find yourself going much closer to 800 or even 900 words, then chop your article in half, and you'll have two articles. The optimum article word count is always 400-600 words, so try to keep it to that.

Landing Pages & Email Marketing

At this stage it may be a little advanced to talk about email marketing, but my formula for using EZA to market has been EZA -> Optin Page -> Review Page -> Sales Page. The Optin page to me is crucial because it allows me to build a relationship with my visitors and market to them long term. I make much better use of my traffic this way, and most my sales have been from this "relationship marketing". That's because of the nature of my niche, the price points are high and people have a healthy sense of skepticism. However, you can always set up this type of funnel first: EZA -> Review Page -> Sales Page. Then add the Optin Page later when you're more comfortable.

With regards to landing pages, I like to send them to comparison style landing pages. You can find everything about landing pages in the website development section in Training. Everything I know I learned from there.

Hope that helps! Do let me know if you need more help.

Thad

Would love to hear your comments.