How To: Writing Original Articles
Let’s assume you have your own website. Let’s assume it’s based on a subject you’re interested in, and you enjoy writing for your website.
You’re already ahead of the curve compared to guys who are just trying to make Adsense money on micro-niche websites like “Best Washing Machine Parts,” or guys who are doing the next variation on a fitness website to sell protein powder who outsource everything on Fiverr because they know nothing about the subject.
But let’s assume you are writing a fitness website or for a website in another competitive field where there’s masses of other sites that can divert attention from your website to someone else’s. What do you do?
You could get some software that blasts your website to a million links or spend fifteen hours a day on Twitter promoting your bland articles… or you could do the smart thing and write articles which people can’t get anywhere else.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. You hear the old adage all the time, “It’s impossible to be original because everything has been done before.” Luckily though, that’s a load of rubbish. There are new inventions, new thoughts and new attitudes being discovered and developed all the time. It’s not the hardest thing in the world to appear original amongst copycats, and it’s made easier by the fact that there are so many copycats who are all saying the same thing.
For those of you who don’t like to read articles all the way through, here’s a TL;DR exercise: Think about websites in competitive niches that you read. Bearing in mind there are probably ten million websites about that topic, why do you read that one?
Being Original: It’s Not All About The Content
Chances are you’ll read a particular website in an industry. You might even read a couple. Let’s take fitness, because we’ve used the example before and it’s an easy one to use. There are a trillion websites about fitness on the net. Most of them are carbon copies of each other. You’d think that fitness would be a horrible niche to get into for this reason. However, let’s use me as a case study.
I am not a fitness fanatic and that’s putting it lightly. I’m not out of shape, but outside of my general health and wellbeing, I don’t pay much attention to fitness. I do light exercise daily – a mixture of calisthenics and not-particularly-intense cardio – and I hate going to the gym. I take no pleasure in it whatsoever. Also, I can’t stomach protein powder or other supplements. Every so often I’m tempted into buying some because I feel I should, but I try a protein shake or two and spend the next six months looking at the rest of the tub with contempt and wondering how anyone manages to down a couple of them a day.
Added to that, due to a gut issue I’m never going to be a hugely muscled guy: I can’t eat huge amounts without regretting it (to put it mildly) and so substantial weight gain is not something I want or aim for. Probably as a result of this (but I’m not sure) I think that “bro culture” is pretty stupid, and I hate the memes and whatnot.
Now, you might think “Jamie, what is the point of that tangent?” or “Yeah… you’re clearly not the market for a bodybuilding website.”
You’re right in a way. I don’t go on Bodybuilding.com’s Forums, and sites like T-Nation make me want to switch the computer off. On the other hand though, there are fitness websites I read pretty regularly. I buy fitness products – both equipment-wise and in terms of books. The subject we’re talking about today is having an original blog and writing original articles: fitness blogs that cater to the profile I’ve outlined are providing original content in a massively competitive niche. They’ll write things in a way that’s counter to the mass-produced bodybuilding market, and it’ll hit people who usually wouldn’t be into fitness at all.
Let’s dispense with the analogy/”Dear Diary” and get to the subject at hand: How do you write original articles?
Writing Original Articles: Actually Do Stuff
The first step to writing original articles is to actually do original things. Practically anybody can write an article about the pros and cons of protein powder or meditation. Absolutely nobody other than you can write about your experience learning something. If you’re a cynical silver-tongued serpent, then you don’t actually even have to live the story you’re telling: You just have to write a convincing journey that the readers can relate to.
Of course, it’s a lot easier and ethically pleasing to actually live the life you’re broadcasting, and if you do, you won’t run out of original material.
Writing Original Articles: Your Voice
You and I could write about exactly the same topic, and you’d get two very different accounts. This is natural, because everyone notices different things, and people are drawn to certain things at the exclusion of everything else. To some people one night could be a “great night out on the town” and to different people in the same group that night could be a “night from hell.”
You can always tell when news and media sites are shilling because disparate writers and companies will release a news story which uses exactly the same words to describe something. People don’t work like that.
How does this matter to your fitness blog? It matters because you don’t want to sound like a media shill; you have a unique voice, and even if your grammar and vocabulary aren’t writerly, it doesn’t matter. Your voice and viewpoint are unique, and you need to let them out if your goal is writing original articles.
I remember reading a movie critic website where the guy who wrote it pretended to be the Incredible Hulk. The writing was in all capitals, punctuated with exclamation marks and generally impossible to read. It was hilarious though, and it was a great example of a guy going all out with a unique voice and building an audience despite competing with every other graduate in film with a review blog.
Writing Original Articles: Your Interests
You are not a two-dimensional character. That’s another thing that bugs me about a lot of fitness websites: It’s great to post memes of a massive, drug-addled Michelin Man lifting a 200lb dumbbell, sweat dripping down his face along with a caption “YOU HAVE TO SACRIFICE EVERYTHING TO GAIN EVERYTHING,” but that sort of message is useless at getting readers.
Very few people are going to look up a fitness website with the hope of being an IFBB pro. If I read an article that says, “Here’s a routine that’ll get you massive gains” but it involves two hours at the gym and never eating a cheeseburger again, you’ve lost me. It’s two-dimensional, all-or-nothing thinking.
If your niche is people who want to be massive and sacrifice everything, then fair enough. But your niche is going to be vanishingly small. Trust me, it’s hard enough trying to build an audience when you’re talking about making money, which everyone wants to do. Being a behemoth is a real niche industry.
For the rest of us who aren’t dedicated to a single goal, it’s better to embrace your 3D nature.
By that, I mean that you need to embrace your different interests and merge them to create something new.
You might like fitness. Millions of people want to get fit.
You might like making money from websites. Everyone wants to do that.
Let’s face it; millions of people want to make money from fitness websites… we need to go deeper.
Let’s take a step back… what else do you like?
Heavy metal?
Rock collecting?
Bird-watching?
Motorbikes?
Lebanese Food?
Blowing Glass?
Those are a few different hobbies which are completely random. But I can guarantee you that if you were to position yourself as the world’s leading authority on the skills you need to be a heavy-metal loving, Hell’s Angels-style guy who travels around photographing birds and collecting rocks and managing to cook food in the middle-of-nowhere, you’re going to have next to no competition. You’re going to attract loads of audiences that would otherwise have no crossover. You’re going to be considered a massive authority for those people:
Bird-watchers are not normally fitness freaks, but fitness stuff would help them for expeditions to find rare birds.
Biker dudes and heavy metal fans, similarly, aren’t fitness freaks nor do they tend to know anything about rock collecting.
Blowing glass is just awesome and you could probably write a site around just that because it’s such a niche thing.
Outside of this silly example, you’re probably one of billions of guys who wants to get hot girls, or one of a billion girls who cares about making money or shoes or whatever. You’re going to be one of millions of people who’d love to make money as a musician or wants to write about how they got six-pack abs. You’re only going to be one of only thousands of people who has a niche skill like speaking both Urdu and Navajo, and you’re probably going to be the only person in the world with your combination of interests overall.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, being original doesn’t involve being the best at something or having some profound insight which only PhD’s and lifelong scholars would have access to. Mostly, it involves actually being yourself and finding ways to express information you know to people like you who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in a particular topic.
There might be a billion websites about a certain topic. Ultimately though, you aren’t in competition with all one billion of those sites, because whether you know it or not, you’re going to be going for different audiences. Also, when you make a commitment to providing original content, you’ll realise that the fact that there’s a low barrier to entry doesn’t mean everyone else actually competition.