When writing online, your aim is to attract as many hits or views as possible. Should you do it by writing about what everybody else is writing about as well? Or should you rather go for something nobody is writing about?
Writing online is done with an eye on earning money. There are exceptions writing for their personal gratification. Getting readers is still the aim. The way to get views may seem obvious: Write about something everybody wants to read. But is it?
If you write an article about Donald Trump right now, how many other articles do you have to contend with? A million? Ten millions? Maybe more. And they all vie for a place on the search engines' results list. How much chance does your article have to be on the first page on Google? Do you need that answered at all?
On the other hand, you are able to write unique articles about stuff you know best. That may sound unexciting at first glance, but consider it carefully. What you might know about your local area, your country, or what is going on around you right under your nose qualifies as expert knowledge. Write about it and secure your place on the first page of search engines. What seems like daily boredom to you is in fact a window you can open for people from other cultures into your special life. You’ll find your readers, and this long term.
But it is not only a way to find a niche sector to write in. Sometimes you’ll find something on the net or in your newspaper that amuses or inspires you. This may be a story, or maybe the circumstances around this story. Share such moments with your readers for a laugh; you never know what might come from it.
I had encountered such a story way back. I was tickled pink. The story as such was not amusing or even very interesting. It was about one of those self proclaimed 'celebrities' unknown outside their home town. But a national news page made a total mess of the headline over the story. They really put their foot in it with it. The headline of the story was changed after a couple of hours and a couple hundred vitreous readers' comments. The headline was worse, the comments got worse. And this continued the whole day with changed headline and harder comments.
My story was based on the story told in the article, but was centered around the incident of the headlines. I wrote it because I had a laugh. I didn't expect many readers for the story. After a few hundred views it soon fell into peaceful slumber. Months later, that 'celebrity' suddenly was in the world press in connection with a completely different story. And my article got views over views because it was the only article in English available about that person.
You never know where your stories will take you; that’s why they are worth writing, even if they seem not terribly exciting or important at the time. Others might care to disagree with your view about what is boring and what is exciting. Don't let the prejudice about your own life hold you back.
Writing doesn't necessarily mean that your articles will be read only by persons looking for what you thought you were writing about. They also get read by people looking for information contained in your article that you might have thought unimportant at the time. Call it collateral damage, but it still brings you views.
You might wonder why I never use the person's name or why there is no link to that article. I had to take it down after the lawyers of that 'celebrity' contacted me. Claiming their client's 'right to be forgotten' they asked me to take it down. This email alone cost him more than what I earned from the article. I was not going to dispute this with his lawyers.
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