Excuse the mess of my site while I try to figure out where my old theme is. I changed webhosts and lost my custom theme. This one is temporary until my designer emails me my old files.

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While articles on topics of all types sell on Constant-Content.com, a good strategy to ensure that your articles have a fighting chance is to write a narrow topic with broad appeal. This take niche writing to a more mainstream level.

For example, let’s say you’ve determined that the auto insurance niche is hot based on your research indicating that bloggers and Internet marketers need articles about car insurance to support the “get a free quote” ads that they are hosting on their sites. Wonderful! You have a niche and you’re inspired to write about car insurance. Before you begin, consider this: Unless the site is brand new, it likely already has plenty of “how to save money on premiums” and “what is an insurance deductible” articles.

Go ahead a write a few of those if the mood strikes, but don’t stop there. Think beyond the niche. How about writing about who should pay for a teen’s insurance policy? Now, not only do you have an article that appeals to the niche sites, you have an article that appeals to parenting sites, personal finance sites, and even women’s lifestyle sites.

The other day a newcomer to Constant-Content asked me to look at his articles and make suggestions. One of the articles, which is perfectly fine, tells British citizens how to research their family histories. It’s market is limited to the U.K. However, a minor tweak (researching your British ancestors) could easily open up that article to a U.S. audience as well. After all, many U.S. citizens have British ancestors.

Another writer mentioned on the Constant-Content forum that she was considering writing articles about how to read music. I hope she thinks beyond the narrow audience of people trying to learn how to read music and writes articles that could appeal to parents, teachers, and lifestyle publishers. For example, an article illustrating how learning to read music improves math skills could have broader appeal than an article about musical scales. 

So, find your niche and broaden it so that your Constant-Content article has several possible homes.

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Constant-Content.com recommends that at least one third of an article submission be copied and pasted into its “long summary” field. This is the sample text that customers see when browsing for articles. While some writers post the entire article, others prefer to show a sample.

If you choose to display only a portion of your article, make sure that you make it obvious that the sample is an excerpt. Otherwise, customers may think that what they see is what they get. They could think your article is choppy (because you selected bits and pieces), extremely thin on substance (because you cut off the article before any key points were discussed), or that it just ends without a clean conclusion (because you didn’t display the final few paragraphs). If customers think any of these thoughts, do you think that they’ll be compelled to click the Buy Now button?

Avoid this problem by telling customers that the text continues. Type in phrases such as:

• (End of excerpt. . .)
• (End of sample. . .)
• (Article continues. . .)
• (Discussion continues. . .)
• (Article goes on to discuss ____, ____, and ___ before concluding with ____.)

What do you usually do? (I post the full article most of the time.) Please share your thoughts below.

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Annoyed by something? Have a pet peeve? Why not write an article about it? I don’t mean a rant; I mean a useful article.

For example, what if you’re still using Word 2003 and your colleagues and clients keep sending you .docx files made in Word 2007 or 2010? Instead of being annoyed that you can’t open these documents, a little research will reveal how you can update Word 2003 to be compatible with the newer .docx format. Use this information to solve your annoying problem as well as help other users in similar situation solve theirs.

Post your finished article on Constant-Content.com or one of the revenue-sharing sites and profit from your pet peeve.

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Finding an article topic particularly boring? One way to write about topics of no interest to you is to internalize the topic and make it your own. 

Think about how you can take a topic that isn’t interesting to you at first glance and apply your own unique interests to it. For example, what if you’re supposed to write about mold? Kind of unexciting, isn’t it? But what if you are a passionate foodie? How can you take your passion for food and connect it to mold? An article about moldy cheese may be in order. You could talk about edible molds versus dangerous food molds. You could write about unusual foods that are susceptible to hidden mold growth. You could talk about whether or not it’s safe to cut mold off of cheese or bread and serve the non-moldy portion to your guests.

Think about different approaches to the topic. When you do, you’ll likely come up with something truly unique and interesting to you, and by extension, to your readers or client.

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