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Make Money Online- the baby steps part 27

It´s time to write our content plan. For a content related site this plan perhaps has the highest value. This is simply because of the fact that the quality and quantity of content is one of the largest contributors to a website´s ultimate success or failure. Even if you don´t know squat about SEO. Even if you disregard backlinks. Even if you are not a technical wizzard. If you write lot´s of quality content Google will find you eventually. And Google will love you. It may take a lot longer than it needs to, but if you persevere, chances are you will be located. The content plan has a number of important components. Each content plan has a different set of variables, but these are the ones that we employ in our work:

1. Quantity. We have a fixed amount of content that we must write each year. This content is broken down in weekly and daily plans and it makes us work in a disciplined manner towards our longer-term goals. For instance as I am writing this text I know I am ahead of schedule for this week. My content plan states that I must write 2 000 words of hight quality content each and every day. This may not sound as much, but bear in my that I have several businesses to cater to and several employees. Also, I have quite a few meetings and phone calls relating to other projects I am involved with. As you might understand, a daily dose of 2 000 words can be difficult to produce each day. But that´s fine, as long as I make it up later on. So what I try to do is I go into these writing manias where I write and write and write. Very often I do this late at night or early in the morning, when my family is asleep. I generally need a lot less sleep than others and I try to use that particular habit to my advantage. The 2 000 words I try to write each day are normally divided into 2-3 posts depending on which website the content is intended for.

2. Frequency. While I may not write my posts at regular time intervals at times, I always try to post at predetermined time intervals. I usually post just before time periods that I know from experience will bring larger infusions of trafffic to that particular site. Most sites have weekly updates. On Richopedia.com and one other site I try to do daily updates as often as I can. Keep in mind that you don´t have to write and post at the same time. At times, when I produce a lot of content, I simply store it so I can post it at a later date, when I don´t have as much time to write. This way there is always fresh content available, and I get to be more flexible with regards to when I write my content. This type of arrangement can´t be employed for time-sensitive information for natural reasons. For all the other stuff, it works like a charm.

3. Relevance. I am always looking for ideas about good content. This is not as hard as it may sound since I am very interested in most of the topics I am covering. Before I write anything I always ask myself whether it is relevant to the audience of that particular website. For instance, before writing anything for Richopedia, I might ask myself if what I´m about to erite will help visitors increase their wealth, increase their financial literacy or simply give them a sounder financial platform. The parts of this guide that I have written have all been written from the standpoint of helping our readers make the most out of their newly started content websites. While I can guarantee you it won´t get you rich quickly, those of you who act on our advice in a consistent, disciplined manner and employ a longer-term time horizon are likely to be rewarded well in financial terms.

4. Quality. There is a trade-off to be made between quality and quantity. Most of the biggest bloggers have a rule that states: “spend 80% of your time preparing to write, and 20 % of your time actually writing”. We understand the logic of this ground rule, but we cannot honestly say that we always adhere to it. What we can say is that we always try to produce quality content. We always try to write stuff we would enjoy to read ourselves. That´s our most important ground rule. If I do a piece on being an entrepreneur and one of the other guys says he loved it I actually get very happy. Those who contribute to Richopedia.com have all been around. I consider praise from one of these guys an outstanding compliment. And I hope to some extent they are happy when I acknowledge one of their pieces.

5. SEO. You will gain a lot by incorporating at least some minimal form of SEO and keyword density principles in your content plan. This will save you time, as you will be doing a lot of the neccessary SEO stuff as a natural part of your daily writing, rather than treating it as a separate time-consuming activity.  I try not to overdo keyword optimization. I do some keyword research 1-2 hours a month and upgrade the list I want to rank for. Other than that I just try to get a humble 2 % keyword density on most sites. I realize this is not enough, but I just find keyword stuffing to be such a party-pooper on some websites that are otherwise quite compelling. Also, I believe that Google will lower the bar for optimal keyword density in the future. While it may be tempting to go for around 4 % at times I am happy with a measly 2 % and I am content writing stuff intended for humans not robots, that will stand the test of time.

6. Long-term plan. Our content plan is a direct function of our strategic business plan. One supports the other. You can derive information from one and use that information in the other. Is one of your primare business plan goals to be one of the top five content-oriented websites in your particular topic in the next five years? Excellent. You can derive a lot of information from this and this information can be of great use when deciding on your content plan. How big are the sites you are up against? How much content does your team need to do in order to match that? You have a number of visitors you would like to see each day on your website? What do you need to do SEO-wise and frequency-wise to get to that number? Just look at your long-term goals and break them down. Once you do this they don´t seem that impossible anymore. You eat a giant elephant a little piece at a time, remember. Even the longest journey starts with one small step. But in order to make that small step we need to know whre, how and why we are doing it. We all want meaning, we are all searching for purpose. The best way to obtain it just might be to plan for it. One of the most importan parts of our long-term content plan is to have the topics we write about planned out for a long time into the future. I know what I will be writing about during the next 3-6 months. It is all part of a bigger strategic business plan. But I know what I need to do. And once I know what to do, I just need to make sure I get it done.

We´ve covered our business plan and our content plan. In “Make Money Online- the baby steps part 28″ we will cover the final part of our structured approach towards this business, the wekly and daily plan. As it implies, this is nothing more than an even more detailed plan of the content plan. The main purpose of the weekly and daily plan is to micromanage our work load and to ensure everything gets done. Because getting things done is the name of the game. Join use for more on this important topic.

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