One of the main reasons why most bloggers fail in blogging is that they select the wrong articles to write.
If you can select the right articles to write, you don’t need thousands of articles to make money blogging. You may be able to make a full-time income blogging with just 200–300 articles.
Selecting the right articles to write is more than just looking at search volume, you also have to consider, competitiveness, buyer intent, and affiliate opportunities, among other criteria.
In this article, we’ll talk about what you should write in a blog given the following unique criteria.
If you have a new blog, you want to find articles that fit the criteria from number one to four.
Click here to read, how many articles do you need to blog full-time on average.
Table of Contents
1. Enough search volume
You should write articles on topics that have enough search volume.
You can read this article to find out how you can determine search volume with a free Google Keyword Planner tool.
Depending on your niche, the amount of search volume you need to target would differ.
In a competitive niche, you may want to target article keywords with lower search volumes.
In a less competitive niche, you may be able to target article keywords with higher search volumes and still rank high on Google.
When you’re just starting out, don’t overlook articles with low search volumes (10-100) monthly searches.
Winning some key terms with lower monthly search volume can help Google trust you so it’ll be easier to rank for key terms that have higher monthly search volume later on.
Click here to find out how many articles you should write per week.
2. Not too competitive
You can find out whether a key term is competitive or not using Google Keyword Planner, click here to learn more.
When you haven’t seen too much success with your blog yet (typically less than DA of 40), you want to aim for lower competition key terms.
On Google Keyword Planner, they conveniently label each key term as either low, medium, or high in competition.
You want to focus on low competition key terms.
If you already have a high DA score, you may be able to rank for more competitive key terms but if you aren’t too confident about your ability to rank, you’ll want to stick to low competition searches.
Of course, you can still write for articles that are more competitive but just know that you may face a harder time getting organic traffic to your blog post.
You’ll want to link the article to your other better-performing articles with more organic traffic so you can still attempt to drive more pageviews to the article with competitive key terms.
3. High buyer intent
Another criterion you want to look at is buyer intent.
Buyer intent is the buying intention of the visitor to your blog. Are they looking to buy things?
Let’s say you write an article on “10 Best laptops to buy for students” this article has high buyer intent since visitors are looking to find the best laptop to buy for their college experience.
Typically, articles with high buyer intent are more competitive and harder to rank on Google.
You may not gain too much organic traffic if you write an article in a highly competitive space but it may still be worth a try.
To get the most out of your time, however, you should aim to find articles with high search volume, low competitiveness, and high buyer intent.
This will help you make more money out of each article.
4. Affiliate opportunity
You want to write articles where you can strategically place affiliate links in.
For instance, say you write an article on the best web hosts for blogs, you can easily place affiliate links to different hosts (BlueHost, HostGator, etc) within your article.
You can go check out which companies you want to work with first before you start to write an article so you can confidently place an affiliate link in your article without it seeming out of place.
5. Topics that you have some knowledge of or are willing to do more research on
It’s best to write an article that you have some knowledge about or is willing to do more research on.
If you really don’t know anything about what you are attempting to write, I would suggest you to pause on writing an article on that topic as it can damage trust with your readers if they realize you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You can always learn more about it online first before you try writing it.
6. Has forums on the first page of Google
When you type in a search term, you want to check whether there are any forums on the first page of the search result.
If you see forums on the first page of the search result, it means that there aren’t enough blog posts written about the topic. Or at least, there aren’t enough high-quality posts on the topic yet.
It would be easier for you to rank on the first page of Google if you do see a forum on the search result.
This is a major green flag so you’ll want to move fast and procure a blog post on it.
7. A vs. B type articles
This type of article is typically good for making you money.
Again, you want to do keyword analysis to make sure there is enough search volume.
Once you realized that there is enough search volume, it’s low in competition and has at least some buyer intent, you want to start writing.
It’s okay if the article doesn’t tick off all the boxes. The most important thing is that there is enough search volume (at least 10–100 per month).
Someone who searches A vs. B type articles may be looking to buy something but they need to decide which one to buy.
For instance, an A vs. B type article could be an article titled, “BlueHost vs. HostGator: Which is the best host for bloggers?”.
You can then embed affiliate links in your article so that when someone purchases something using the link you provided, you get a cut of the profit.
8. Review type articles
Another type of article you can write is the “review type” article where searchers are looking to find out whether something is worth buying.
For example, your visitors could be looking to find out whether the latest iPhone is good. So an article titled “iPhone 13 Max Pro Review” would be quite fitting.
You can include an affiliate link in your blog post so that if your readers decide to purchase it, they’ll use your link and you get a cut of the profit.
9. Topics you are passionate about
This one is less important if you are just thinking about how much you can earn from your blog post.
It’s okay to write articles you aren’t terribly passionate about if it hits most other boxes.
However, the best article to write is also an article that you are passionate about.
You need to at least write some articles you are passionate about so you feel compelled to keep on going.
It’s a lot easier to persist in blogging if you like what you are doing.
Click here to read the article on why it’s okay to write articles that you can’t rank for.
10. Articles that you can use 1200+ words to cover
You don’t want all your articles to be 500 words because Google doesn’t favor short articles.
You also don’t want to include a bunch of unnecessary stuff to fluff up your article because Google also doesn’t like that.
You should write an article that has enough content to cover and not something you can use 500 words to get across.
You want to aim to produce articles that are at least 1000 words but it’s best if it’s over 1200 words. It’s even better if it’s between 2000–2500 words.
The 40% and 60% Rule
Something to note before you go, you don’t want all your blog posts to be about reviews and be filled with affiliate links because Google doesn’t like that.
You want to include at least some articles that don’t have any affiliate links.
So far, most of my articles don’t include any affiliate links because I’m just looking to create the best resource for my readers.
That’s the mindset you should have when writing articles, you don’t want to just think about money, you want to think about your readers too.
You should have at least 30% — 40%of your articles be information articles that aim to address a question or teach readers how to do something.
The rest of the 60% — 70% of your articles can be about articles that intend to make you money.
Final thought
I hope I have given you some good ideas about what articles you should write to increase your monetization opportunities with fewer articles.
You see, it’s not necessarily about how many articles you write (although that can contribute to how much you earn as well) but what you choose to write.
If done right, you only need 200–300 articles to bring in $5000 — $10,000+ per month consistently.
It all started with selecting the right thing to cover on your blog.
