by Amber Hilton

Created on: November 17, 2009

Whether you are writing an article for Helium or working on another writing assignment, writing about what you know has many benefits.

For one, when you write about a topic that you know a great deal about, it will take you much less time than a topic that you know nothing about. Research takes a lot of time and if you are getting paid per article, writing about what you know means that you can produce a high-quality article in less time with little to no time spent on research.

When you write about what you know, you are able to share unique personal experiences and perspectives in your work, which makes your content more original and thus more valuable. Anyone can summarize information that they find in a book or on another website and call it an article, but when you add unique experience your work becomes something that no one else can produce. These are the types of articles that people want to read and therefore publishers are more willing to pay big bucks for them.

Writing about what you know also reduces "fluff" in your work. When you write about a topic that you aren't familiar with, you are more likely to add "fluff", which is information that is not relevant or that no one cares about. This is especially bound to happen when you are dealing with a minimum word count and you don't understand the topic well enough to write a long and informative article about it. When you really know and understand a topic, every word will be essential to the article.

Just remember, even when you are writing about something you know, it doesn't hurt to do a little research and include your sources. You may have read a given statistic so many times that to you it is an undeniable fact, but your readers will want to know where you got your information. Take some time to check your references and cite your sources to give your article more credibility.

As you can see, writing about what you know results in not just quantity of information, but quality information as well, which should be your goal if you are creating content for the Web. You are also more likely to be passionate about the topics that you know a lot about (otherwise you probably wouldn't know so much about them) and this passion and enthusiasm with show in your writing and may even inspire some readers.

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