Content Writing for Other Sites and Blogs
When you’re creating written content for yourself, it’s pretty easy. It can get hard, though, when you undertake content writing for other people, for other websites or blogs. Writing for someone other than yourself can make you a freelancer, a copywriter, or a ghost writer, or all three of them at the same time. It can also make you just a guest author, which is what I am today and I’m going to tell you how I tend to proceed.
Research about the Subject at Hand
Most of the time, I’m invited to write an article or two. I usually decline if I know nothing about the subject or if it’s going to take me more than a day to research it. On the other hand, if I find the subject interesting, whether it’s for a specific niche or not, I’ll usually go out of my way to create something unique and informative, regardless of how long it takes me to do the research.
Most of what I do is ghostwriting, which means my name and links to anything I do are not attached to the article at all. I’ve written articles for small fees and sometimes for free because it’s someone I know. I prefer guest articles because then I can get a link back, which is usually worth more than any fee.
How to Research
It’s hard to describe, so I’ll use an article about an old movie as an example. The first thing I would do, if I hadn’t seen it, would be to watch it somehow.
The next step would be to glean as much information as possible about it at IMDB and Wikipedia. Plagiarism isn’t my thing and that information is used only to give me ideas on what to focus on.
If there isn’t a lot of information about a specific topic available at well-known sources, I’ll fire up Google and perform a kind of search and destroy mission. The destroy part is when I have to ignore the spammy websites to get to the gold, so to speak.
Rewrites
There are people who are never satisfied. I tend to deal with people like that one time and one time only. If you’re writing to earn a living, it’s one thing. When you’re not, you can be choosy.
Rewriting what you’ve written shouldn’t be an issue if it’s a sentence or two. You should always put yourself in the shoes of the person reading the content and if it doesn’t make sense to you when step away and read it later, it won’t make sense to them either.
If something you’ve written requires a complete rewrite, every time, then you may want to consider writing for yourself only. Not everyone is cut out to be a writer for other people. On the other hand, practice makes perfect if you’re trying to turn it into a freelancing career.
About the Author
RT Cunningham writes for himself at RTCX.NET as well as a few other places. You can find him all over the place if you search for his name using Google. You’ll know it’s him if you see a picture of him and his wife next to the results.
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June 23rd, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Thanks for the great information – especially the part about research. I’ve been invited to guest post on numerous occasions and I am always nervous when the requested article isn’t something I write about frequently.
June 24th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Excellent article! I’ve graciously declined guest posting for other due to lack of confidence. Maybe after reading this i’ll take on the next opportunity!
June 26th, 2012 at 12:42 pm
Great tips from RT! I get a lot of guest posts on my blogs and it’s a win win situation. I don’t do much guest posting myself, only due to lack of time.