As I mentioned in the first post of this series, I’m not a particularly fast writer. But there is money to be made on oDesk if you can produce low quality, high volume material for buyers who need bulk to increase SEO ranking for their website or blog. Here’s how I crank up my volume.

Write smart, not hard.

(Yep, that’s a cliche. More on that later.)

I follow this strategy:

• Get comfortable with the subject area by reading enough to get a feel for the verbiage, the style and the tone. Ideally, your buyer will provide you with a blog where your writing will end up. If not that, they may have previously written articles you can browse through. Failing all this, I submit a trial article so they can tell me if my best guess matches what they had in mind.
• Write as many starter ideas down as you can. I mine these from the examples and my reading. These notes will guide you and save time later. Write provisional titles, subjects, and useful phrases. Each of these can be an article on it’s own or added as filler when an idea runs short in word count.
• Find a structure that seems to fit the articles you want to write. I’ll give you one common structure I use in the last section of this article.
• Get your ‘head right’. Set yourself on a goal that is realistic and then meet that goal. Forget that you are an artiste. In this line of work you have to push yourself to vomit out text. You need to produce to make a buck at this. If it’s an article every half hour for five hours, then stick with it- git ‘er done.
• Edit as you go. No room for extensive edits or rewrites in the volume game. Once you have a paragraph on the screen, spell check it and edit it right then. Your first draft is likely to be your final draft, except for:
• Put subheadings in last. Just before you save article 6 of 20, give it the once over and put some subheadings in. Check quickly for opening and closing tag lines, and then save it and move on.

Organization is key.

Here’s the structure I am using now for a bushel basket full of blog articles:

1. Intro- Usually one of the ideas I have mined from my reading or notes. Sometimes, a leftover bit from another article that seemed expandable. Often, cliches are useful, simply because they can be applied to so many different things. They read easy and you can spin them to fit almost any subject.
2. Example/anecdote- Here’s where you stick in a story or illustration of your main point from the intro.
3. Inflation- Run a bit wild, use cliches and keywords galore.
4. Restate and conclusion- Spin the intro a bit, refer to your example and stop.

This might seem a bit shallow. But it’s a good structure to keep in mind if not rigorous dogma. The point is to get your juices flowing, get words on the page and meet your numbers. Once you find and use a structure that fits your subject and get comfortable with the pieces that fit the topic (every article on dogs mentions the breed and maybe breed characteristics) you will start flying through the work.

The factory writing job is doable and you can make money at it. I’ve managed to meet some tight deadlines and made a few dollars. I won’t say I particularly like the work, but it’s work- and it pays.

ShareThis

• Volume Writing and Bulk Articles
• Open Office 3.0 Beta Released
• The Psychology of Successful Freelancing
• A New Scam
• Profiles I’d like to see on oDesk