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.

To see all the templates currently in our inventory, simply click on the “Article Templates” link under “Browse Blog Categories” in the navigation bar on the right side of this page.

Are you an avid template user? If so, great! Leave a comment and tell us the advantages you’ve seen. If not, go try a few out. Then come back and let us know what you think.

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.

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?

An Industry Trend Article in (9) Easy Steps:

1. Do a search for news in your niche. Find out who the breaking news leaders are for your area and start bookmarking them and checking them daily.
2. Identify the trends in your niche through the news and any other sources (associations and the like) that are pertinent.
3. Write about the trend, starting with a great headline. “Are Rodent-Powered Cars the Wave of the Future?”
4. In your introductory paragraph, you should describe the trend briefly, including from where you got your information: “A study reported in Science News Daily found that rodent droppings are high in hydrogen-sulfides, a potential source of the raw hydrogen required in fuel cells.”
5. Provide examples of the trend for your reader to draw on.
6. If the trend is for something the reader can take advantage of, like travel or food, give resources as to how the reader can participate. A list of appropriate web sites, books or other sources is a great way to do this concisely.
7. Analyze the trend for your reader. One of the best ways to develop your readership and solidify your reputation as an expert is to expertly analyze the information you have found. Give your readers not just the information, but help them use it. Don’t just write about why the fuel-cell-powered car is great – tell them how many kids they can get into it, how long a ride they will get out of it and whether or not you think it’s a good deal for the money.
8. Your conclusion should include a quick summary of the trend and a clue as to where you think this trend is going.
9. That’s not the end of it. Keep up on the trend you just wrote about. Write follow-up articles.

By using this template, you should be able to write at least one traffic-generating article per week on trends in your niche. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to find and create these articles once you get the hang of identifying and analyzing trends.

Now put it to good use by making a trend article part of the next set you submit. Then leave us a comment to let us know how it worked out for you!

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.

(6) Steps to a Great Current Events Article:

1. The first step is to pay attention to the news – and not just the top of the hour headlines. Keep your ears tuned in and listen for news about recent studies or findings that you can use in your articles.
2. After you’ve found your news event, find a relevant aspect in your niche to connect your reader with.
3. Open your article with a one paragraph overview of the news event a its connection to your niche. If your readers want to know more about the news event in question, they can go to CNN. You need to draw them in and show them (don’t just tell them) how this event affects them.
4. In the next paragraph(s) describe in the related problem in depth and concentrate less on the news event. The news event, title and first paragraph were your hooks, the body paragraphs should be the meat.
5. Finally, give them a paragraph or two on the actions they can follow to overcome the problem you’ve outlined. Again, concentrate on the problem and solution here, not on the event.
6. Conclude with facts from the event and a “reminder” as to how they intertwine with your niche. Putting a twist on a news event will leave your reader satisfied that they learned something new, particularly if it’s an event that has been covered a lot.

Remember: Keep the content of your articles evergreen. The content should be as valuable and relevant in two years as it is right now.

Try to write an article related to a current event a few times a month. You don’t want to “overuse” the news, but incorporating a current event regularly will keep you tuned into the news and give you yet another go-to tool – especially if you feel writer’s block creeping in.

Put this template to good use in your next article set. Then leave a comment to tell us how it worked for you!

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…

You’d want to pick only (1) pain point for each article. For this particular example, let’s say you pick the first one, “Pain of losing a competitive advantage.” With that in mind, you then identify the specific ingredients (strengths/benefits) of article marketing that would help relieve this particular pain. Some ingredients (strengths/benefits) might include:

• Worldwide exposure of your articles, and hence your products or services
• Scalable marketing
• Combined benefits of increased website traffic and improved credibility
• Zero up-front cash investment
• Highly targeted

The next step is to build your article around the pain point and the prescribed pain reliever ingredients. Each of the ingredients is explained in terms of how it can help alleviate the reader’s particular pain.

The article wraps up by summarizing how your suggested pain reliever has many of the ingredients necessary to cure your reader’s pain. Then of course your Resource Box gives them a link to obtaining your suggested pain reliever. In the case of this example, that link would probably be http://EzineArticles.com/submit/ or perhaps to the EzineArticles home page.

In a nutshell, the Pain Points article template works like this:

1. Choose (1) pain point of your ideal customer.
2. In the first paragraph or two clearly describe the target niche and identify with their specific pain point.
3. The next paragraph introduces your particular brand of pain reliever and an overview of the ingredients (strengths/benefits) that pertain directly to the reader’s pain.
4. In the following paragraphs, these ingredients are explained in-depth in terms of how each can help alleviate the reader’s particular pain.
5. Before closing the article, be sure to give an example or two of how others have gotten relief from their pain by following this prescription.
6. The closing paragraphs pull all of the ingredients back together to reinforce your pain reliever as the right one.
7. Finally, it’s important that your Resource Box provides the reader access to your suggested solution for their pain.

At the risk of totally overdoing our medicine metaphor… this particular article template should be an easy pill to swallow. It’s targeted, fairly simple to understand and it shows empathy for your niche customers. Best of all, this one template can provide many, many articles. How many is only limited to the number of pain points you can identify.

Set a goal for yourself to write at least (5) articles this week using this template. Then leave a comment about what you discovered along the way.

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

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.

These materials are also available at http://ezinearticles.com/training/ and http://ezinearticles.com/training/audio/

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
• Yoga
• Mild – Getting Started (Novice)
• Moderate – Developing a Routine (Intermediate)
• Severe – Maintaining Excellence via Advanced poses (Expert)
• Anti-Aging
• Mild – Topical and Nutritional Products
• Moderate – Simple Procedures
• Severe – Cosmetic Surgery

How the “(3) Stages of X” article template works:

1. Find a topic in your niche that can be easily broken down into (3) levels of severity and give each stage a label.
2. Important: Only list (1) stage per article – but you can list multiple examples and methods within each article.
3. The first paragraph or two outlines the (3) stages and clearly defines the attributes of the particular stage explained in the article.
4. In the next paragraph, relate to the reader’s current stage and reassure them many others are currently at this particular stage.
5. Provide examples of how others have escaped this stage or graduated to a more desirable stage using your methods.
6. Give the reader clear directions to either escape the stage they’re currently in or to achieve a more desirable stage.
7. Once you have shown the reader the path(s) to their desired outcome, explain how they can maintain their new status.
8. Conclude with a quick summary of the (3) stages as you defined them, your method(s) for improvement and how the reader will benefit by following your advice.

By using this template you should be able to write at least (3) articles on each of the stages of “X” you discover within your niche. Find (5) topics that fit this template and your efforts will generate (15) new traffic-driving articles!

Better yet, it’s surprisingly easy. Once you find these topics and outline the stages, you’ll be amazed at how these articles will virtually write themselves.

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!

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.

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”
• Use adjectives for emphasis:
• “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.

End your article body with a brief summary of what the reader can experience in their personal or business lives when they do the list of things you’ve just outlined… then, roll directly into your Resource Box call to action.

Things To Avoid Article Template
(polar opposite to the Things To Do template)

EzineArticles Factoid: There are 705 articles that have the “Things To Do” article title in use vs. 143 articles with the “Things To Avoid” title… proving that we seek PLEASURE more than PAIN-AVOIDANCE in a 5:1 ratio.

It’s widely known that people will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure, yet there are currently 5x more articles written already with the “Things To Do” template. My theory is that it’s because of the positive vs. negative tone… even when you mean well to help save your reader from future pain… they might not be seeking knowledge on pain avoidance.

One way you can flip the “Things To Avoid” article template so that it has a positive spin: Write articles that helps the reader to understand your credibility by outlining why from your experience they should avoid X number of things having to do with your niche expertise… ie: How can your reader gain pleasure, peace of mind, wealth, etc. by avoiding x number of things.

Lastly, be sure to deliver in the article body on the promises you made in your Things to Do/Avoid article title. If you say here are *21 Things To Do To Win Your Next Golf Game*…there better be 21 items numbered in the article body… :) or you’ll be left on the golf course alone in the rain. Seriously, our readership tells us almost instantly whenever a newly accepted article doesn’t deliver on the promise made in the article title.

Have you ever used this article template, and if so, any additional insights to share?