Writing Articles- Should I Write Short Articles Or Long Articles?

One of the questions that newbies in Internet Marketing often ask is ‘How long should my articles be?’

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This question especially gets asked quite a lot in the Warrior Forum and there is a lot of discussion on whether it would be better to write short 250 word articles just so that the articles generates a higher CTR% or if you should write lengthier articles of about 500 words or more.

One of the most important criteria is to make sure that you provide GOOD VALUE to the readers (apart from doing keyword research, coming up with an enticing title and organizing the article into several short paragraphs). The length of the article is not that important compared to the value you provide.

It’s usually quite hard for you to give that high value in a 250 word article. You are more likely to accomplish that in a 500+ word article.

I highly recommend you to write well researched, high quality engaging articles. If it takes 500 words, it’s fine, if it takes 750 words, that’s fine too and if it takes 1000 words, that’s fine as well.

I usually won’t go over 1000 words and I think you will find very few articles in article directories going over 1000 words. You can always split the content into multiple articles and generate more traffic to your websites.

But even as you strive to provide great value through your articles, don’t be surprised when your CTR% is very low for your best articles. Personally speaking, there have been a number of times when I overdelivered which often does not create the need to click on your links in the resource box.

So you need to be careful in making sure that you give the readers good enticing content that will compel them to click on your resource box links to know more about what you have to offer.

Tips For Better Results From Your Article Writing

There are many marketers who may come up with stats to show their CTR% and how well the 250 word articles work for them. If you are one among them, good for you. However what matters at the end of the day is not the number of visitors to your websites, but the number of leads you capture and the sales you make.

So in other words, your lengthier articles (hopefully they are also the articles that you provide greater value) may have lesser CTR% but may convert higher compared to the 250 word crap articles that you write that may have a higher CTR% but may convert lower.

Moreover if someone were to use your articles on their sites, they are more likely to use the longer ones that provide great value to their readers than the shorter ones.

Please know that you can still write articles of the highest quality and get very few views. That is why it is important for you to do the right keyword research which is a separate topic by itself.

Plus you are faced with the increasing challenge of your article standing out against the slew of text ads that are slapped everywhere around your articles that even scanning the article without being distracted by these ads is impossible.

You almost seem to wonder, who in the right mind would ever read the article without clicking on the ads?

shorter articles are better to write

Creating Custom Short URLs for Amazon

As you may noticed in tweets and emails newsletters, the short URL of any product page on Amazon.com has a standard format that looks something like amzn.to/XYZ.

The path portion of Amazon short URLs is made of random digits and alphabets but if you wish, you can also use a more memorable string as a short URL. Here’s how:

Go to bit.ly and sign-in using your Facebook or Twitter account. Next paste any Amazon URL into the text box and hit the Shorten button.

Bitly will generate an amzn.to URL with a random suffix but you use the “Customize” option (see video) to set any other string as the suffix for that short URL. For instance, I reserved the following two URLs for my eBook that I published last week.

1. amzn.to/MyKindleBook2. amzn.to/MostUsefulWebsites

These URL suffixes (or keywords) are shared across the bitly ecosystem so if someone has reserved a particular keyword with another website that also uses bitly (like nyti.ms or 4sq.com), it won’t be available for your Amazon Short URL.

One more thing. All products listed on Amazon are assigned a unique ASIN code (it is listed in the item’s description) and you can just add this code to amzn.com to quickly create a short URL. Here’s an example - amzn.com/B006R4RN3U.

The same technique may be extended to other websites that are configured to work with bit.ly - these Facebook (on.fb.me), BBC (bbc.in), The Wall Street Journal (on.wsj.com), The New York Post (nypo.st) and others.

China pulls off “short squeeze” in manipulating copper market, again, as it also has with corn and cotton (JJC, CORN, BAL & GLD)

One of the nice things about having $3.2 trillion in foreign reserves -- more than any other nation -- and a state-controlled economy is that it allows China to continually manipulate markets for commodities such as copper ( JJC , quote ), corn ( CORN , quote ) and cotton ( BAL , quote ). As reported in an article in the Financial Times , "Copper soars to hit $8,000 level," it has been a good week for the red metal, a key component of a wide range of industrial and construction activities throughout the world.
The exchange traded fund for copper, the JJC, is up almost 9% even though every major user of copper (China, Europe, India, US, Brazil) is reporting or projecting lower economic growth.
In addition, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan (JPM both downgraded commodities such as copper this week.  According to David Wilson, director of metals research for Citigroup, as quoted in the Financial Times piece by Emiko Tereazono and Javier Bias, this rally was due to "fund activity rather than any fundamental change in the overall outlook, including the macro economy."
In other words, it is not fundamental economic demand that is fueling the rise, rather speculation.
In this, Beijing pulled off a classic "short squeeze" to drive up the price of copper. In easing its monetary policy, China caught many "in bearish" positions according to the Financial Times .  Noted David Wilson, "The market has been very short, for sure."
As China is, by far, the world's biggest consumer of copper, the price was obviously going to rise after the announcement.  Also of note is that this is the first time in three years that Beijing has reduced the reserve requirement for banks, which can now lend more to copper consumers .
China also wreaked havoc with the corn market this year.  Early in the summer, articles in The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times reported of record demand for corn from Chinese buyers.  As a result, the exchange-traded fund for corn (CORN) rose from about $38 in March to over $50 by late August.  Since then, it has fallen to under $40.
Further proof is the trajectory of the ETFs that track gold ( GLD , quote ) and copper (JJC).
There should be an inverse relationship between these funds, as copper rises in price due to greater demand from growing economies while gold rises in price due to a lack of confidence in fiat currencies due to floundering economies.
But both the GLD and the JJC have risen sharply since October.  For the year, however, the GLD is up double digits, while the JJC is down double digits.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.