By now, you should have a clear idea of what you're going to write about. At this point, I will write out my title and my outline. Don't underestimate the power of the outline! Before I started using outlines, it took me an average of 90-120 minutes to write an article. With an outline I got it down to 60 minutes, 30 minutes and now I'm at 20 minutes an article.

Writing Attention Grabbing Titles

My typical title will be "Keyword 1 - Insert Attention Grabbing Headline Here". The keyword 1 at the start will be good for ranking you at the top of the queue for searches in Google and in EZA, and the attention grabbing headline should communicate with your audience and lead them to click on your article. Some examples that I tend to use are "The Secret To...", "How To... In ... Days", "Are You Making These ... Mistakes In...?", "The Shocking Truth About...", "The Blatant Lies That... Tell About..." and so on. If you're ever short on a headline, grab your closest women's mag and you'll have ideas in spades.

My Typical Outline

Introduction

Point #1(Problem)

Point #2 (Solution)

Conclusion

I find that when I type my outline out, it adds structure to my thought and I know where I'm going. Before I used an outline, I used to get stuck, but now it's so much faster. Obviously, for your first few articles, you may still be a bit slow here, but it will pick up, trust me.

Example Of An Introduction

In the introduction I like to connect with my audience in the first sentence, outline the problem in the second sentence, outline the solution in the third sentence and in the fourth sentence I'll tell them the point of this article. For example, if I were promoting Wealthy Affiliate, I would say...

"Are you tired of all the garbage launches that are thrown at you week after week by internet marketers who don't really care? The fact is, most launches either cover part of the puzzle or just skim over all the steps while they try to upsell you into higher and higher priced programs. Like you, I was caught in that rut of buying junk program after junk program until I came across Wealthy Affiliate University, and that's when I really started to see results in my efforts. By the end of this article, you'll know why Wealthy Affiliate University is the best internet marketing program in the world, and I'm not kidding!"

Normally I find that I can hit 400-600 words easily using this template. If you find yourself struggling to come up with the minimum 400 words, then just try to be a bit more elaborate with your sentences and you'll get there. If you find yourself going much closer to 800 or even 900 words, then chop your article in half, and you'll have two articles. The optimum article word count is always 400-600 words, so try to keep it to that.