Quick Case Study: Tiffany Dow
The 
sixth edition in a series of posts that highlight one Expert Author who has achieved success by doing just one thing exceptionally well.
Tiffany Dow is quite simply “A Writer.” Unlike many EzineArticles Expert Authors, she is not a marketing specialist who writes for the sake of getting exposure for her links. Instead, she tells us, “I’m a writer first, who discovered I could use my talent to make money online. I have over a decade of experience writing about a wide range of topics and can write approximately 5 pages/hour.”
As a dedicated Writer, Tiffany has embraced a no-nonsense method of overcoming the writing struggles many of our other members face. “I think one of the biggest problems I see is a lack of organization,” she says. “I always have an outline in mind using the introduction, at least 3 main points, and conclusion layout. It’s something we learned in grade school that still applies to readers today. This makes it easy to move from one point to the next, without simply trying to fill a word count requirement.”
Tiffany’s Secrets to Success
Where others may use creativity as a motivator, Tiffany focuses on her end product as a way of keeping herself motivated. “There are three things that motivate me to write more articles,” she says. “First, there’s money in the end result. Second, there’s a new and powerful backlink pointing to my site for added relevancy in the eyes of the search engines. And lastly, there’s the opportunity I’m given to share my expertise and increase my own branding authority within a niche.”
And finding something to write about doesn’t seem to be a problem for her, because her desire for organization is also reflected in her topic plan. “This is all based on whatever marketing campaign I am immersed in at the time. I often go back to old campaigns and submit some new, updated articles for the niche. I also keep tabs on the news and print media for ideas. One issue of Woman’s World Weekly could literally yield hundreds of article ideas.”
Insights on Article Marketing
Tiffany fully understands the need to balance quality and quantity in her article writing. She tells us, “I lucked out with my background in journalism, my experience working for a newspaper, and my years of ghostwriting [original articles] for top Internet marketers; so the more I wrote, the more experience I gained. It also helped me get faster with each piece of content I delivered. But make no mistake in choosing quantity over quality – you almost always lose as a result of taking this mindset.”
EzineArticles helps transform her original articles, and her clients’ articles, into revenue-producing end products. “It’s not only helped with direct click-throughs to my affiliate links,” she says, “but it’s assisted me in getting my own sites ranked higher in Google because of the page rank authority that EzineArticles has. Also, my sites get more exposure and traffic each time a publisher picks it up and introduces it to his or her target audience. [Article marketing] is one of the most important components to me because I’m a freebie addict. EzineArticles.com, and article directories in general, give me a simple platform to use with many perks and I reap the rewards of providing good content. I’m allergic to paid traffic tactics, I think, so article marketing suits me perfectly.”
Her praise of EzineArticles continues. “I really love that we can use the author tools to see what keywords we’re ranking for. I can take a list of keywords I’m being found for on EzineArticles and use those on my own domain as new articles or make brand new articles for them to grab those coveted top spots.”
Despite her success, Tiffany does have one regret. “I would have taught myself how to write more SEO friendly articles,” she laments. “I wasn’t well versed in that at first, so I wrote completely for a human audience. Now, I grasp the idea of mixing the two elements together – so not only does my human reader like what they see, but the search engines do too.”
Some Good Advice
So what advice would she give newbie article marketers? “Start with a list of keywords,” she replies. “Keep it small – about 5 to begin with. Use the keyword in your article title, first sentence, and maybe twice more in the article if it’s a full page length article. Organize your thoughts before you write, and end with a nice call to action in your resource box. Let the reader know what they should do next and why, creating a certain sense of urgency.”
As an ethical and successful ghost writer, Tiffany shares this crucial advice: “Don’t try to game the system. I see so many uninformed marketers trying to slip some plagiarized content or shoddy writing from an article spinner into EzineArticles, and they get blocked each and every time. You’re wasting time doing this, and losing money because the sooner your article gets published, the sooner you’re seeing click-throughs on your links!”
That’s good advice! So good in fact, we covered it just yesterday in a Blog post and video. Check that post out if you haven’t already.
Speaking of good advice, here’s 8 pieces of good advice you can take from this post:
We couldn’t agree more with Tiffany’s advice. Now take some of this advice and apply it to your next set of high-quality, original articles today.
Now it’s your opportunity to interact with a top-performing Expert Author – leave a comment or question for Tiffany.
As a newbie writer — one who wants to share the ‘inside workings’ of teaching an learning, I have to agree with your Connie. Tiffany’s post is an inspiration to me and I am sure many others. I sure am enjoying reading about all the great authors and reading comments as well. I think I am finding a home here at EzineArticles !
June 10, 2010 at 9:21 AM[Reply]