This is a guest post by James Martell from AffiliateMarketersBootcamp.com.
Let’s face it. Starting any business is difficult, but starting a business in this economy is downright scary. And starting an online business has its own set of particularly challenges.
You’ve got to always have your eye out for ways to improve your SERP ranking, not to mention think of new ways to drive more viewers to your site. While we all know that there is nothing like new and exciting content to get people’s attention, creating great read material is not always as easy as it sounds.
The main problem with creating content is that it typically takes about three times as much time to research and outline what you want to write about as it does to actually write it.
Of course, you have to do your due diligence if you want to write a good article, but there is a great way to make your hard earned research go further: use it to write more than one article.

Let’s say that you have a really well researched outline for an article you wrote last month. You can take that outline and use the information in it to write another article. Or maybe even many other articles. This is called repurposing the material. This works for anything you’re writing about from wooden crates to paper weights to Cuisinart 4 qt slow cookers.
No One Can Write Just One
When you choose to repurpose an article you make the conscious decision to say the same thing you said before, but in a new and unique way. The first time I tried this; it involved an article on the horrors of modern article marketing.
I spent about three hours carefully putting together all the information I needed to convince any thinking reader that article marketing, as it is practiced today, is for the birds. And the bird brains.
As I though more about the article, it occurred to me that it would likely mean different things to different readers. I knew that someone just getting into internet marketing would benefit from being warned away from unsavory article marketing practices.
At the same time, someone who might have already fallen for some of these schemes would find encouragement in the article to put aside his past mistakes, correct the problems, and get his business back on track.
So I reasoned that if the article could appeal to different types of readers, I could use the information I already had to write several different types of articles.
Articles and Websites: The Toddlers and Tiaras Version
As you have probably already noticed, article marketing is committing slow, interminable suicide by refusing to acknowledge that companies are no longer falling for the “ten different words for fish” style of article spinning. I made this point in my first article, which was based on a 3,000 word outline I had developed. Then it hit me: why should this precious little article be an only child. What he needed were siblings.
So I romanced the outline a little more and what do you know? She gave birth to another article, a sister for my first. Sure, the new baby was shorter than the oldest, but it doesn’t matter to a loving parent. I was able to send both to a couple of the best websites in the industry.
That’s right. No low ranking, everyday sites for my babies. While one went to a PR3 site, the other made it into a PR6 ranked website. I couldn’t be more proud.
Now, unlike human children, my little darlings quickly began to pay me back for all the care I’d given them. They drew traffic to my website and landed me with a great SERP ranking. They also showed off the anchor text I’d attached to each, which really got people’s attention.
More Help Comes Along
Once my two gorgeous articles were out in the world, many people found
them irresistible. They Tweeted their URLs all over cyberspace, which brought even more people to my site. One of these folks was from ABC Affiliate. He liked what he read so much that he interviewed me on his podcast. Even better, that interview was picked up and rebroadcast by Geekcast.
By this time I knew I wanted a big family of articles. However, I was busy with other tasks, so I decided to hire a couple of surrogates to bear the rest of my offspring. These two freelance writers each produced five more articles from their relationship with my original outline. Like their siblings, these 10 articles each had two backlinks, and were sent to only the best blog sites. And, like their siblings, they produced amazing results for my business. Those 24 little backlinks are still out there today, showing people the way back to my site.
So, that’s my “article marketing is bad” based family. What will you’re topic be? Fast food, snow boots for girls, Cuisinart food processors? Whatever you choose, this method will work for you.
But Remember, This is Not Article Marketing
I love my articles, and think of them as children. OK, maybe not as children, but I still respect their value and the value of the time it will take others to read them. I truly believe that if I write something that people want to read, they’ll believe that I am selling something that they’ll want to buy. So no, this is not just more article marketing.
Nor is it SEO writing. My articles are full grown, interesting pieces of writing. They are not puny little 450 word articles in which the same five keywords are used 80 times. They are informative and interesting and worth a read.
Finally, this is not spinning. I use humans to do my rewrites, not machines. So you will not find one article that says, “The cat was cold.” Followed by another that says, ‘The feline was cool.” And another that says, “The kitty was chilly.” That’s just not my style.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Once you’ve worked up several articles, do me a favor and show them and yourself a little respect. Don’t send them to one of those low class content farms that promise to forward them onto hundreds of directories each day. We both know that that’s just going to send them to the very pit of search engine hell.
Instead, do the right thing and send them so where respectable, with a PR# rating or above. I know this takes a little more effort, but your diligence will be reward when you see your new SERP ranking.
So, that’s all I have to say. Why don’t you talk now? Send me a message in the comment box below and let me know what you think of this process.
Really a nice article. It is true that it takes immense time to collect necessary ideas and information to write an article. However, with a little more thought, the collected information can be used to prepare at least a couple of more related articles. I wish to compare it with the branches of a tree giving rising to more new branches.
today the blogging world is full of people who are trying to play with the SEO tactics to get in position and traffic, this is not because they want it to be, but just because of money.
being a regular blogger one has to be always careful if somebody eat up their competition.
about reusing, everybody is doing this today, spreading mass amount of reworked things on already existing stuff
I really like your closing, showing some respect. I guess you’re right. Well written articles deserve much attention, much treatment than the others. High quality articles must be published to high quality directories too. Be sure to at least choose quality rather than the quantity of links.
Nice article. There are huge number of content scrapers who stole our content and put in the 100’s of directory. Its good to reuse our own research and get advantage from it. Thanks for sharing such awesome article.
I really understand what you are saying because research is may be more than 50% of doing the article, but if you don’t have the luck for any famous guy to read it, what do you do then?
Thanks Jame for sharing your experience!
And that’s also true that if readers understand that we’re helpful and have something really valuable to offer, they will be more likely to check it out. It’s the nature of the game.
Hey James,
My articles are full grown, interesting pieces of writing.
It shows! From the headline to the well thought out content to the end.. it shows..
I think one needs to find the right balance between SEO, quality content and at the same time getting those affiliate products sold. that’s not easy! But writing content like this will go a long way..
At first, this seemed kind of like a cop out to me to do. You shouldn’t write the same thing twice, even if it is in different ways because someone already read it. But then the more I think about it, there are probably very few people who read a blog every day and will be getting this information twice. For the people who don’t read it every day it will be the first time they are getting the material, so if you didn’t repurpose some material they would have to look back to a really old post to find that information.
Hi James
Thanks for this advice.I agree with you that article reusing is an integral part of any online money making strategy.Whenever I search in Google for any kind of information that there is nothing about which people have not written already on Google.So The writing is clear on wall that if you want to stand out you have to provide information in a unique way
Can’t agree more.
Usually, I do not use rewritten articles, but I will certainly go with the HUMAN option, rather than some piece of code.
Some might protest that codes have developed quite a bit in the last few years, but I would never rely on some algorithm to provide valuable content to my readers.