Writing for Associated Content: My Worst Performing Article and What I Learned from It

When I first started writing for Associated Content, I wasn't thinking about gaining readership, how my articles were going to show up on search engines, or promoting my articles. I was only thinking about the upfront payment, not about the performance bonuses. Now I'm learning to write articles with my audience in mind, and writing stuff that people will actually want to read. While upfront payments are great, it's nice to get the residual income from the performance bonuses.

Now I'll take a look at my lowest performing article and discuss why this article failed to gain readership.

How to Find the Right Music Teacher

This was the third article I had written for AC. Many people take piano or violin lessons and are turned off because of a bad experience with a teacher. The article discusses the factors you should take into consideration when choosing a teacher. The article itself was well-written and informative enough, but why didn't it attract viewers?

Topic: The topic and title were too general. Music is too common a topic--classical music, rock music, country music, music therapy, music seems to encapsulate everything under the sun. An article about music lessons is bound to get lost in the shuffle.

If I had to do it over again I would have written about Finding the Right *Violin* teacher. Many people are interested in violin lessons either for themselves or for their kids. Violin is broad enough to appeal to many people, while specific enough to be discovered in a search engine.

Linking to Previous Articles: I had tremendous success with my *first* AC article Violin Practice Tips: How to Practice Effectively. If I had to do it over again, I would have found a way to piggyback off the success of this first article. I would have written about Finding the Right Violin Teacher and continued in a series of articles about learning to play violin. *In * the new article, i would have also linked back to the first article.

Keyword Density: If I had to do it over again, I would have made the article more SEO friendly. In How to Find the Right Music Teacher, the article jumps from piano lessons, to violin lessons, to a cappella groups. Instead, I would concentrate on "violin" and "violin lessons," making sure these keywords appeared in 3-5% of my article.

Hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

Happy Writing!

Tina :)