Over Thinking Your Writing

You may not think that it is possible to over think when you are writing, but in some instances, it really is. One prime example of this is when you are writing for a client who will use the work in article marketing, or for the purpose of moving up in search results with SEO content. This is why it is so important to have a clear understanding of how your client intends to use the work that you provide them with.

That is not to say, under any circumstances, that your work should be less than perfect. It must be perfect when you are being paid for it - or if you are OCD like I am. What over thinking means, in this context, is that you do not have to get in every nitty, gritty detail on the topic.

Most clients in the online freelancing world are not looking for Pulitzer prize winning content. They know, for their purposes, how long the article should be in terms of how many words it should contain. They know what the topic that they want to cover is, and they know which keywords and keyword phrases they want used, and usually also know how many times they want them used. Beyond that, they want proper spelling and grammar, and they want the article to make sense (good flow of content and good sentence structure).

Their purpose for this content is to get traffic to their website and/or to sell a product. The website or product is where the in depth information is, if in depth information is even required for their purposes. This isn't usually what they want you to write, and if it is what they are wanting you to write, they are going to be requesting a great deal more than 500 words or less - and they better be willing to pay a great deal more for that type of writing.

I once hired a young woman to write for me, to help with some overflow. She did not last long. This wasn't because she wasn't a good writer...she was! It was because she took too long writing articles, simply because she was over thinking them. It would take her three or four days to write one five hundred word article. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. The girl went to her local library to do research for articles that simply did not require that level of information (or work). I could not get that idea across to her, no matter what I said.

As a freelance content writer, you cannot over think the content. If you are finding that it takes you more than thirty minutes to do one 500 word article, you are most likely over thinking it. Ideally, you should be able to do this type of article in 15 minutes or less, including the time it takes to do research.