Authors of "Before It's News" Articles--Want to Maximize Your Readership?

As a Before It’s News (BIN) author, I’m sure you do not want to spend all the time that you do preparing your articles and posting them on the BIN website just to receive only 0, 1, 10, 25, and maybe even up to 50 readers per article.  If you open anyone’s article at random and click on the “More Stories” button in the header of the article, you will see all of that author’s articles.  Some authors receive nothing but very low numbers of readers per article.  That should be frustrating for these authors.  As an author, would you like to increase your article average number of readers?  If you do, read on.

I first started writing articles and posting them on BIN two years ago (started in July 2010).  I have written over 600 articles thus far during that two-year period.  My goal at that time was to move my average article readership to over 100 readers.  I sporadically have had some articles achieve over 1,000 readers and have gone as high as over 37,000 readers.  However, I struggled for months with articles receiving under a hundred readers.  My desire was to increase the average readership of all of my postings.  As time progressed, my average readership went over 100 readers per posting.  Then, it went over 200 readers per posting.  Now, it is over 300 readers per posting.  My next threshold is to get it over 500 readers per posting.

My top 15 article titles and number of readers are as follows:

1. BREAKING: Obama Enemies List Candidates Dying Off One at a Time: 37,551 hits
2. European Union to Implode—The Crash Is Coming: Told You So, Idiots!: 17,084 hits
3. Stock Market to Crash in Coming Days: 12,790 hits
4. Obama Must Apologize: Genuine Birth Certificate Surfaces: 11,578 hits
5. Connect The Dots: Andrew Breitbart Was Murdered: 9,909 hits
6. Airline Incident Unreported: 8,518 hits
7. U.S. Navy SEAL Rebukes Obama: 8,314 hits
8. The Beginning of World War III: 7,867 hits
9. The Real Truth about Sarah Palin: 6,811 hits
10. Netanyahu Urges U.S. Return To 1845 Borders: 4,437 hits
11. The Coming of the Global Collapse of 2011: 4,338 hits
12. American Military Officers against Obama: 4,322 hits
13. SCOOP: Dave Ramsey—Housing Foreclosure Moratorium: 4,102 hits
14. The National Breaking Point is Approaching: 3,873 hits
15. U.S.-Mexico War of 2011 to Start Soon: 3,141 hits

So, how can YOU maximize your average readership per article to 100, 200, 300, and 500 or more readers?  Here are some ideas that I have learned while writing and posting over 600 articles on BIN.

Write Articles of Broad Interest

If you write articles that are dull, uninteresting, or of interest to only a few people, you will not receive a wide range of readers.  Write articles on politics, war, terrorism, health, the economy, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), science, sex, gore (not Al Gore), natural and man-made disasters, love, money, race relations, aggressive sports, and provocative current events.  You will have a much wider readership than if you wrote articles on bricks, ants (excluding killer ants), jogging, obituaries, fishing, golf, pool, stuttering, manufacturing processes, and so on.

Write articles that are interesting, provocative, and motivational.  Note the top 15 articles that I have written and posted on BIN.  Note the topics of interest attract a wide audience.  Note that politics, the economy, war, and terrorism elicit the most interest of readers.

Use an Attractive Title

The title of your article is very important to maximizing your readership.  Your title must be a hook that grabs the reader’s attention.  As readers scan the titles of all of the articles in the various areas of their interest, the title that stands out and snatches their attention will get clicked.  Note the top 15 articles and the provocative titles.  Note the use of the words BREAKING and SCOOP.  If the article title did not attract the reader’s attention, thousands of readers would not have clicked on the article title.  Whether the reader reads completely through your article depends on how interesting it is written.  So, write interesting articles.

Gain the Confidence of Readers

Don’t use a pseudonym.  Use your real name.  Own up to what you write.  Don’t be ashamed of your ideas and what you write.  Don’t be afraid of stating your personal philosophy, beliefs, values, and political biases.  Place your current photograph on your articles.  Let people know you.  Include a good bio in your Contributor Profile.  When people get to know you, they gain confidence in you.  If they like your writings, they will seek out your latest articles.  Respond to comments people write below your article.

Write Your Article Well

The worst thing you can do is to include numerous spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors in your written pieces.  Put your articles through Spell Check before posting them.  After you post your articles, re-read them frequently.  When you spot a typographical, spelling, punctuation, or grammatical error, correct it immediately by clicking on the Edit button above your article.  People get turned off to your articles when they are riddled with errors.  Errors indicate your inability to write well and communicate your ideas effectively.

Keep your articles brief.  Use the KISS approach, i.e., Keep It Short, Stupid.  Simplicity should be your byword.  Write short sentences between 5 and 25 words.  Don’t write long paragraphs.  Keep your paragraphs down to three to six sentences.  Use simple words that people understand.  Write to the eighth to tenth grade level.  You don’t need to write a lot of articles.  No more than an average of one a day is better than posting 25 or more articles a day.

Increase Exposure of Your Articles

As you increase the exposure of your articles, you will gain more readers.  Besides posting your articles on BIN, post it on other websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Digg, Tumblr, and many others.  Send your articles or links to everyone on your email lists.  Encourage readers to pass on the article to their friends.  Your friends and other readers will forward your good articles to their friends.  They may post it on other websites that they frequent.  They may even retweet your articles on Twitter.

Just within the BIN website, move your article through the numerous appropriate Categories.  For example, a political article may be appropriate to place on any of the following Categories: 2012, Politics, Power Elite, Scandals, Opinion, and U.S. Politics.  Many other categories a political article would fit include Alternative, Business, Crime All-Stars, Economics and Politics, Libertarian, Media, Republican, and Tea Party.

Conclusion

There you go, friends.  These are just a few ideas that I have learned and formulated by testing and experimenting with each article I write.  Do the same yourself.  Try out different techniques and strategies.  Find out what works for you.  If you do that, you will find your average article readership go up, up, up with each passing month.  After all, you are not writing for the sake of writing.  You are writing to positively and constructively impact the largest audience possible with each of your articles.  Good luck!