Article Templates Get a Visual Upgrade

Having trouble picking which article template to use? These new icons can help!

If you’re a fan of our article templates, you’re going to love our newest upgrade – Article Template Icons. These icons now accompany every article template in our blog inventory. Their purpose is to give you a quick visual synopsis of each template’s look and layout so that you might easily choose the most appropriate one for your next article. And from now on, you can expect every new article template to be accompanied by one of these icons.

If you’re not currently using article templates, now might be a good time to start!

Some of the advantages of article templates include:

• Inspiration – Stuck for ideas? Browse through the article templates in the blog until one sparks an idea for your next set of articles.
• Speed – Rather than spending time on creating the proper structure for your articles, you can invest the time you save into writing new articles!
• Ease – These templates make it easy to build high-quality articles that are designed to inform readers while also driving traffic back to your website.
• Clarity – Since these templates have been well thought out in advance, you’re articles will flow smoothly and have a clear introduction, body and conclusion that will make your articles clear and easy to understand.
• Style – Each of these templates is designed using the suggested EzineArticles layout and structure that insures an attractive, easy-to-read article that’s almost guaranteed to get results.

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on September 3, 2009 at 11:41 am

1,695 views | Comments (18)

Things I’ve Learned Article Template

This simple and elegant article template takes advantage of something we all have … experience.

Often, when we look back on our career, we don’t think of ourselves as knowing nearly as much as we do. If we sit back and really reflect on the years we have taken to get where we are now, we are surprised to see just how much we have been through, how many mistakes we have recovered from and just how much we know now that we didn’t know way back then.

We know ourselves to be experts in our field, but how did we get there? How long did it take to accomplish what we have in our niche?

This reflection begins a perfect article for your readers.

1. Illustrate your own path to expertise in your introduction. Include a humorous story of a mistake you made (that you found out later a lot of people in your field make) or show a turning point that helped motivate you and get you on your way.

2. Make a list. Type up a list (just for yourself to start) of all the things that you’ve learned through the years in your niche. Any axioms or truisms you can share? How about ways you’ve found to deal with challenging clients or get to the heart of a bureaucratic issue?

3. Cull the list down to the top 5 or 10 things you’ve learned.

4. Give a quick personal explanation for each one of the items on your list. You should share an anecdote or make up an example situation to better illustrate your point. Tell us how you learned this lesson…and what could have happened if you hadn’t learned it.

5. Conclude on an upbeat note. Tell your readers how much time and energy you would have saved had you known these things beforehand. Let them know how much faster they’ll get ahead if they listen to you.

You’ve learned a lot on your road to becoming an expert. Share it by putting this template to good use! Having made mistakes is never a bad thing if you’ve learned from them – and you can help someone else avoid them, prosper and continue to look to you for guidance.

Leave a comment and tell us about the experience you bring to your niche articles.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 28, 2009 at 8:58 am

2,274 views | Comments (20)

Industry Trends Article Template

Jump start your writing and keep your readers “in the know” by identifying and writing about trends in your niche.

So, you feel like you’ve written everything there is to write on your niche? Let’s say you’re an expert on cars. You know everything there is to know about every car from the Model T to the Toyota Prius. You can tell anyone what is wrong with their car, just from listening to it.

But you want to expand your writing repertoire beyond just writing about repairs. This is where finding and writing about industry trends comes in.

In order to identify trends in your niche, you can’t just write what you know – you have to find out what other people know. What are other blogs and online magazines writing about? What’s popular in your industry? Going green? Families? Has a big automaker just come out with a new fuel cell car? If you write about travel, are there new ecologically-sound vacations families can take?

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 24, 2009 at 8:14 am

987 views | Comments (2)

Current Events Article Template

This new article template takes advantage of news you can use.

One of the best ways to get readers immediately interested in reading your articles is to tie them to a current event.

The death of Michael Jackson, for example, spurred a flurry of articles tied to the speculation over how he died, his music, his legacy and how his death affected people.

In two very different articles, one author used the death of Michael Jackson to show how to talk to children about death. If you write about psychology and related issues, this would have been a good topic to cover.

On the other hand, one author in the exact same niche talked about throwing a Michael Jackson-themed party, which has nothing to do with psychology and related issues!

A word of caution: Be sure that your article is written for your niche. Straying too far from your niche or forcing the link between your niche and the current event can confuse readers and alienate your followers. Only use this template when there is a clear, firm connection between the news event and your niche.

Building an article around a news event is simple – and is very beneficial to your traffic, since keywords for breaking or celebrity news are highly indexed.

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 13, 2009 at 10:51 am

1,069 views | Comments (12)

Pain Points Article Template

This new article template is the perfect cure for your ideal customer’s pain!

This template is based on the concept of pain. More specifically, the pain your ideal customers may experience and the pain reliever you can provide. Two simple questions form the backbone of this template:

1. What are some PAIN points that your ideal customers experience?
2. What are some STRENGTHS/BENEFITS your company delivers to remove or prevent those pain points?

Let’s imagine you’re going to write an article using this template. The article is targeted at small business owners who are curious about article marketing. Some pain points you might consider addressing would be:

• Pain of losing a competitive advantage
• Pain of not having traffic
• Pain of not being recognized
• Pain of not knowing how to get your articles & message out to the market
• Pain of not wanting to screw up when trying the article marketing process
• Etc…

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 23, 2009 at 10:01 pm

1,483 views | Comments (24)

FREE Expert Author Training

“If you train hard… you’ll be hard to beat.”
– Herschel Walker

We’ve just added an entire collection of FREE Expert Author training materials to the EzineArticles Members interface. These valuable PDF and audio programs can now be accessed under the “Author Tools” drop-down menu:

1. Log into the Members interface
2. Click on the “Author Resources” drop-down menu
3. Select either “EzineArticles Training” or “90 Second Audio Training”

The “EzineArticles Training” PDF collection includes:

• An Introduction to Article Writing and Marketing Training Series
  

  Begin article writing and marketing today with this 12-part starter kit full of helpful tips on article writing, marketing and syndication. Learn the best ways to compose your article’s components, create your content and submit your articles to EzineArticles.com.

• Article Writing and Marketing: Article Title Training Series
  

  This 8-part training series offers tips, strategies, guidelines and more to help craft an expert article title that can improve on the success of your article and increase your readership.

• Article Writing: Paragraph and Grammar Structure Training Series
  

  This 7-part training series offers the basics of paragraph structure and English Standard grammar, punctuation, capitalization, word usage and agreement rules.

• Article Writing: Content Sources and Article Templates Training Series
  

  Looking for article content ideas and a quick way to compose them? This 7-part training series offers strategies to generate new article ideas and (8) article templates to compose your next set of expert articles.

The “90 Second Audio Training” series contains:

• Article Writing: Content Sources and Article Templates Training Series
  

  Listen and learn with these (13) quick tips and strategies to help you write efficiently to increase your article inventory and effectively to bring more targeted, qualified traffic to your website. This series also includes a complete (15 page) PDF transcription.

These training materials can only provide value to you if you use them and utilize them! In other words, take the time to review the materials and discover what they have to offer. Then put your new skills and knowledge to good use by writing and submitting more, higher-quality articles that will attract additional readers and drive added traffic to your website or blog. (Continue Reading…)

The (3) Stages of “X” Article Template

Another great template that you can put to use NOW!

Almost every article niche contains topics that can be quickly plugged into (3) clearly defined stages, or levels. Although these stages could be given any number of different labels, for the sake of simplicity let’s just call them:

1. Mild
2. Moderate
3. Severe

This article template capitalizes on the fact that your readers can mentally plug themselves into any one of these stages and in so doing can easily identify with content that is of interest or appropriate to them. In the case of painful subjects, like unhealthy debt, your article can guide the reader through the steps of escaping the negative impact of a particular stage. In the case of more enjoyable pursuits, like yoga, your article can give the reader a road map to the next stage of proficiency.

Here are (3) excellent examples of stages within a niche:

• Debt Relief

• Mild – Low Debt: Self-management through Consolidation
• Moderate – Medium Debt: Settlement Services and Grants
• Severe – High Debt: Bankruptcy

• Mild – Getting Started (Novice)
• Moderate – Developing a Routine (Intermediate)
• Severe – Maintaining Excellence via Advanced poses (Expert)

• Mild – Topical and Nutritional Products
• Moderate – Simple Procedures
• Severe – Cosmetic Surgery

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 18, 2009 at 10:57 am

1,195 views | Comments (13)

Article Templates = Blueprints to Success

Every once in awhile, we’ll do a blog post featuring an article template idea. Each of these templates serves as a blueprint for building great articles in a particular style. When combined, these templates alone can provide the guidance and inspiration you need to quickly and easily build an incredible inventory of high-quality, original articles.

Today’s post is an article architect’s portfolio of (9) excellent templates. Use them to simply spark a little creativity, or better yet, commit yourself to writing (10) articles using each template (in the end, you’ll have 90 new submissions!). Either way, these blueprints will get you started on on a solid foundation!

Nine Great Article Templates (a.k.a. Blueprints):

1. Traps and How to Escape Them
2. Things to Do
3. Top 7 Tips
4. Golden Rules
5. Pain Avoidance
6. Checklist
7. Principles of X
8. The Pros and Cons
9. I Love

Looking for more article templates/blueprints? A simple search of the EzineArticles article database will yield hundreds of ideas. If you find something really cool, be sure to share it here with the rest of the Expert Author community!

Traps and How To Escape Them – Article Template

Here’s an article writing template idea for you to use: The “Traps & How To Escape Them” article template!

We’ve all been trapped from time to time on almost every plane of possibility ranging from physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, etc… and you get to save the day with your expertise by delivering the “escape plan” followed with a Resource Box where they can learn how to further escape from the trap.

Here’s how the “Traps & How To Escape Them” article template works:

1. Make a list of every trap you know someone in your ideal target market has fallen into on purpose or by accident.
2. Important: Only list (1) trap per article but you can list a single or multiple ways to escape it in each article.
3. First paragraph clearly defines the “TRAP” along with why it’s bad to be in that type of trap.
• Example: Overtraining for your next triathlon event might be the trap and it’s bad because overtraining can lead to burnout and decreased performance.
4. Optional: Stir the pain up by selling them on the ideas as to why being caught in the trap won’t help them achieve their goals.
5. Optional: Sympathize with the reader as to why they are not alone and that many before them have fallen into this trap for the following 2-7 reasons.
6. Next, setup a sub-head to clearly show them you are now going to help them “ESCAPE” from the trap they have found themselves into.
• Important: Make it extremely obvious where in your article the reader can quickly scan to grasp your escape route ideas. Don’t hide this from them deep inside your article body or mislead the reader to think they have to visit your website to find the escape plan.
7. Give the reader a clear path from their current ‘locked up’ position of being in a trap to how to escape the trap via your unique ideas, strategies, tips, suggestions & secrets.
8. Optional: After you’ve helped them to escape the trap, show them how to never get caught again in the trap.
9. Conclude with a quick summary of the trap as you defined it; the most common ways to escape it and how the reader will benefit by following your advice.

So, get started with step #1, brainstorming all of the different traps your ideal target reader may find themselves in as it relates to your niche and expertise. You’ll be amazed how fast the rest of this article will seemingly almost write itself once you do the hard part of identifying the most common traps & your specific advice for how to escape.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on November 25, 2008 at 11:19 am

4,628 views | Comments (45)

Things To Do Article Template

Here’s a fun article writing template 2-pak called: “Things You Must Do” and “Things To Avoid.”

Your “things to do” articles will mostly be ‘pleasure seeking’ themes while your ‘things to avoid’ articles will cover ‘pain avoidance’ themes.

Article Titles options:

• Use different tenses:

• BEFORE: “9 Things To Do Before You Buy A Hybrid Car”
• DURING: “8 Things To Do To Get The Most Gas Mileage From Your Performance Car”
• AFTER: “7 Things To Do Get The Highest Resale Value On Your Old Car”

• “6 Simple Things You Can Do Before You Go On Beach Visit”
• “5 Romantic Things You Can Do While On Vacation”
• “4 Easy Things To Do When You Return From A Trip To Lose The Weight You Gained”
• “3 Things You Absolutely Must Do To Become Rich By Selling Real Estate”
• “11 Things You Must Do To Prepare For Your Next Olympic Competition Event”

What To Put In The Article Body:

The article body should not repeat the article title (as it is with all articles). Be sure to include a simple 3-5 sentence paragraph that explains the benefit of the things to do you’re about to list rather than rolling immediately into the list of things.

Reason why: Because we use your 1st paragraph to help sell your article to potential readers via email, rss, the widgets, etc. that are part of the EzineArticles system.

It looks best on the eyes when you use a numbered list, bolding the thing to do followed by a sentence or two that explains why the thing to do should be done. Most people would say that using the OL & LI HTML tags do make numbered lists look best, but that comes at a price: Incompatibility with TEXT-based email newsletters that syndicate your content.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 4, 2008 at 2:47 pm

4,386 views | Comments (32)

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