How I went from an "ugh" writer to a "yay!" writer in just a week!

Anybody with a basic grasp of English can write, but not everyone can write professionally.

I like to think of myself as being a good writer, as I have a good mastery of English (at least in my opinion) but I have come to learn a lot about writing good articles just after a week on this platform.

A little side story before the main event

I have written articles for different websites and forums over the years, worked as an editor in my university, and have also worked for opera.news as a content writer but I never really had the motivation for writing either because I'm doing it for free or the pay is too small.

I find it easier to edit other people's work (which got me the role of an editor in my university) but coming up or writing my own content is a hassle.

What I usually do back then when I was writing for Opera news is to check online for a particular topic I'm writing on, copy bits and pieces from 4 to 5 different websites, combine everything and edit it by changing the wording, sentence structure, and grammar, and then run the finished work through a plagiarism checker.

I knew what I was doing is wrong, but I couldn't bring myself to go through all the stress of researching about a topic and end up earning just about $10 every month for all articles I have written (yep, it's that bad 💔).

Even then, some of the work will get rejected by the moderators, Who will still go ahead and post the same article as theirs and earn a lot from views (really nasty and corrupt moderators), and that is precisely why I left.

How I got back in the game

I got to know of read.cash when I was reading a thread about sharing remote working experiences on one of my favorite online forums.

Someone (@Morning_Star) mentioned cryptocurrency writing and how he has been earning from it since last year.

At first, I didn't take interest in it (as I imagined it is another Opera news) but a couple of persons asked him about it and he explained.

From his explanation, I quickly deduced that this is far better than Opera news so I quickly hopped on the new thread he created since he might end up derailing the thread about remote jobs.

The new thread where he was talking about read.cash and other crypto-related blogs got deleted by the forum's bot (a super crazy bot) so he mentioned we should message him on telegram.

I messaged him immediately and he gave me an in-depth explanation about read.cash. I signed up right away and got started on my first article immediately.

Now for the main event

The first article I wrote about is diary of a newbie programmer (yep, I'm learning web development as well 😎).

This wasn't so hard for me to write because it's something I am passionate about and I know it well enough, which brings me to my first tip;

1. Write about what you know

Being a good writer is all about writing what you know, this is quite obvious.

It can be an article about your life and experiences or an article about something you are learning (just like my diary of a newbie programmer) or learned (just like this article) or it can even be about something you have read or watched (just like my article about Lucifer).

The whole point is, write about something you know so well and it will come very easy to you. Don't just go and pick a random topic you know little about (just like I was doing during my time in Opera news) and start writing about it, you will likely end up burning yourself.

After my first article, Morning_Star (who at this point has become a mentor to me) gave me tips on how to format my articles to make them more presentable.

Before you post, check some of the best articles, see how they formatted their articles, and try and replicate it.

You know, headings, subheadings if need be.

Bold/italicized headings and those kinds of stuff, Spacing. Try not to write in block paragraphs, let the words breath.

And here goes my second tip:

2. Properly format your articles

Being a web developer and also having a history in graphics design, I know how to properly layout and format text when designing, but not in content writing! Although most things are similar.

I knew there is still a lot I don't know about content writing, so I got into my research mode and went digging.

I googled how to write articles and I got some pretty good tips from a couple of websites. I also checked YouTube and after going through a couple of videos, I got a pretty good one by Neil Patel

One thing I learned from Neil is; always make sure to break up long lines of text. Try to write in short paragraphs of about 5 to 6 lines as possible as you can, why?

People tend to run away from very long lines of text, as it can look like a lot of work to read. But using 5 to 6 lines of paragraphs (whenever possible) can help people to easily skim through your articles.

I'm not saying all your paragraphs have to be 5 to 6 lines (which depends on the type of article) but the majority of it should be around that range. Avoid having more than 10 lines of paragraphs.

I picked up a lot of things in that video including how to write introductions, using subheadings in your article body, putting up links to credible sources where you got information (just like I did in this article!), and a lot of others.

After watching the video, I checked out a couple more of Neil Patel's videos and I learned a lot (a hell lot). I also took a look at his website where he talked more about content writing.

It was through one of Neil's articles that I got to know of another great website:

To be continued...

I will be stopping the article here for now as it has gotten freakishly long 😂. Wouldn't reading 2000+ words in a couple of minutes be ridiculous to you? Well, it will be to a lot of persons.

I'm just gonna give you guys room to breathe and digest this first part while I work on the next part and trust me, you wouldn't want to miss the next one, as I will be dropping even more tips. This article is just the tip of the iceberg (see what I did there? 😉).

Don't forget to subscribe so you can be notified of my next update. See you next time