by Janet Pieterse

Created on: July 02, 2010

Writing content for the Internet is not the same as writing for newspapers or magazines. Yes, they are all media you read - but you use and read them in different ways. Taking an old print article you wrote and publishing it on the Internet is probably doing it a disservice - if you're a writer worth your salt, you'll either tweak or rewrite it for this entirely new medium, same as you would if you wanted to convey the information on radio or television.

There are news sites, and there are magazine sites: those are specialist sites and they will usually have specialist guidelines if you want to submit articles. However, if you want to make money writing general content for the Internet, it's worth understanding what makes the Internet special.

• Write for Search Engines.

How do people find information on the Internet? They go to a search engine, type in a search phrase, and hey presto! They get pages and pages of results offering answers. Your article needs to be on page one of those results for the best chance of people finding and reading your article. Before you type a word of your article, think about how people are going to find it. What are they going to search for to get your article? Those words - or that phrase - should be in the title and opening paragraph of your article. And you should scatter them judiciously throughout the article as well. When writing for the Internet, leave the Search Engine in no doubt as to what you are writing about.

You will get considerably more views from good use of keywords in your article than you will from spamming your friends and family with your links. Publishers looking for Internet writers will usually have a list of keywords they want included: often, they have used Search Engine Optimisation tools to help them find the best keywords for their content. If you want to self-publish lucratively on the Internet, find out more about those tools and how to use them.

• Write with a specific person in mind.

There's an old saying that goes "You can fool all people for some of the time, and some people for all of the time, but you can't fool all people for all of the time." The same applies when writing for the Internet: you cannot appeal to all people all of the time.
Decide who you want to write for. Who is the person typing those keywords into the search engine? Identify the searcher among your circle of friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues, and write the article for them. This helps you pitch your

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