Tips for Suite101 Success

[yes_that_anne]

Asking, not offering. Except I will say that, so far, using the Idea Generator List has really paid off for me.

That said, what works for you guys? Does adding images really help? What about allowing or disallowing comments on an article - does it make a difference? Getting approved to write for Google News - yea or nay? And any other secrets you see fit to share.

Thanks!

[BurnCEs]

"Suitelore" on the forums there is that loading up your piece with images and using keywords in the captions helps get Google ranking juice and the hots from the Google image search engine. I always try to add at least one image, maybe two. I can't say I've noticed much of a difference between PVs on single or multi image articles.

I use the Google Adword tool for keyword research and find that's fairly effective. You need to really keyword stuff the headline, intro and sub-heads, too.

News pieces are great for getting a big PV spike but they do die down into background noise pretty quickly. I'm told that the punters are less likely to click on the ads for news pieces than regular articles, too.

If you have more than 50 pieces up there, you can register for revenue reports on individual articles now. I haven't seen these yet but the stats will be a real boon for finding out which pieces pull in the cash and where you need to concentrate to get the money shot.

[Natch]

Last time I checked my stats, the one article I had written based on keywords suggested by the Suite101 Idea Generator was among the two or three least popular articles of about 12.

[CE_ClueBat]

You must use the google keyword tool for suite articles, or you will earn nothing.

Tech, business and marketing are the moneymakers. Other people make money, but those are the obvious high CPC earners. It takes time getting started, but if you get the SEO down, you will make money there.

Read the forums. The forums help you understand what to do.

I only add one image, but lots of people have said adding images has helped.

Always add 1-2 keyword phrases to the title and a DIFFERENT 1-2 keyword phrases to the subtitle section.

Write short, 75-100 word paragraphs with bold headers. Use keywords in the headers. Link out (your references) using keywords for anchor text. So, lets say your article has the keyword phrase "my red widgets" and you link out to a .edu as your reference. Link "my red widgets" with your link.

Try out news, but read the guidelines. Basic guidelines are that the news must have happened within the last 72 hours, and it must be dated. Always have a reference, and no bullet points in news. That's basically it.

You need patience with Suite. It really is crap pay at first, but it's worth it if you can keep going. It's the only site I've kept up with, and I'm finally making a day's pay worth. I know, not much, but it's one day I'm not at DS and I write CC and Suite articles. And technically, I can write nothing and still make that pay.

[Patrick]

Cluebat - so how many articles do you have up? And what are the daily averages for your top performers, as far as views are (if you don't mind).

I'd do tech articles, but, from what i can see, part of the thing i'm going for is longetivity. I tried a couple of news articles. Yeah, they're cool for a big hit, but they go down pretty fast after that.

[CE_ClueBat]

The trick with news is to find something newsy but somewhat evergreen.

My stats are a little skewed right now in a good way. I make about 4,000 PVs a day (less on weekends) but two articles are almost half of that. They are both kinda newsy, but a bit evergreen.


I have 300 articles up. I have over 50 articles that sometimes don't get any hits at all. It's why I say I wish someone had helped me in the beginning. They are mostly my first 50 articles. My average per article though is about 10-15 PVs per day for each article, but of course, that's skewed because of my top 2.

Suite sent out a report to all the Featured Writers, and I chat with a couple of them. It seems that most people have high earners on a few articles and others do nothing. Some are absolutely 0 income. They say your top few articles will do 80% of your income. I can see where this is probably true after being there for a while.

I am basing my comparison with 20 DS articles, so maybe my income is 2 days for some people...maybe 3? I have lots of bills, so I'm a slave to the beast. I almost quit there several times. It really is a difficult place to get started, so I don't blame people for getting pissed and leaving. Most people create a strategy for themselves that is a combination of what they read in the forums and what they like to write.

I recommend staying away from SEO articles. I've spoken with one of the girls who does really good at Suite and her SEO articles don't do well at all. Neither do mine. I guess it's just too competitive.

Tech is a bit of a beast, because (as I'm sure you know) it's very competitive in several areas. You can find lower competition, though. For instance, hard drive recovery and drive recovery in general have huge CPC values, but the competition is just too high. Suite lost its rankings after Mayday. They still do well, but you used to be able to write in competitive areas and still draw traffic, but not so much anymore. Not in tech anyway.

[Patrick]

300+?!! Awesome.

Yeah, that's what I figured the way to make the cash there. I've got one article that's doing 70+ each day, then most of the others are between 5-7 or so. But this month I'll actually make enough to pay a utility bill. With Suite, you become your own mini-Demand Studios!

I wish they let us ass RSS feeds and other bells and whistles like Hubpages. And the site design really sucks. But you cannot argue with their Google placement.

There's a couple of other interesting points in writing with Suite, if you're considering it....

1) One of the things that Google uses to rank pages is the age of the article. So as you keep writing at Suite, your older articles will start to move up in the search rankings because of age.

2) After a year, the articles are yours again. So, if you write just 1 article a day, by the end of the year you'll have 365 articles generating income. Then, as your articles start to roll over to a year old, you can sell them to other sites.

The article editor has no bells and whistles, but that means it is - a la the Stray Cats - Built for Speed. The editors in HubPages and BrightHub drive me friggin' nuts.

[CE_ClueBat]

That's great advice, Patrick. 70 PVs for evergreen is really good. I think the overall opinion is about 10 PVs per article is decent. Also, don't forget seasonal articles. Seasonal articles will keep you from losing money during the holidays, and Suite ranks really well for seasonal articles.

Also, thought I'd throw it in -- each editor kinda has his/her own rules. I'll tell you that the tech editor always wants at least 2 outgoing links either to other Suite articles or to high PR sites. He is one of the editors most people complain about. I think he's harder on new people, but he leaves you alone after you write in his section. Also keep paragraphs to 75 words. He's picky on that too.

For health, always have at least one .edu or .gov site reference. Health has gone through a lot of editors. Currently, the editor is on maternity leave and the horticulture editor has taken over. The current stand-in editor is very very lax.

Mia is a stickler too, but she's very nice. She's more focused on making your article more SEO-friendly.

They say Irene is the toughest editor (education). She's only flagged me once, so I don't know. I hear she's a beast though. Have a reference if it isn't the typical common sense education stuff.

Never had a problem with the food editor and the travel editor is totally cool (she's on my facebook).

When you get flagged at Suite, it's nothing like DS. Don't worry. They aren't going to delete your article unless you do something dumb like plagiarism or just complete shit. It's nothing like DS. I've let flags sit for weeks. I hate them, but they aren't terrible. It's just tedious like linking or finding a reference.

[fuckermcfucksticks]

I have been with suite since April of last year and I only wrote one article lol.

When I first started writing, I did the noob thing and wanted upfront payment only, so Suite, Examiner and Hubpages were left out. I think I had a total of 5 rev. share articles between the 3 companies. The best was examiner though, I made about $5.00 in one day, but the article, for some reason, died off after that one day. Last night I made a plan, I will write two Suite articles per day at night for the next few months and see what happens.

It seems like a lot of their auto writers aren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch, so I think I can drum up some $$ with my auto articles. Maybe even spin a few DMS articles... Hopefully I can see some income from this and pull further from DMS's grasp.

ETA: The two articles I wrote last night took me from 6 page views to 16 page views. I guess that is a good start... We will see...

[CE_ClueBat]

That's good! You can also get keyword ideas from DMS. You'd be surprised how many Suite writers go through the DS queue to find topic ideas. lol Just be careful not to choose terms that are too competitive. DS can go for highly competitive terms and get away with it.

I also use Helium for topic ideas.

btw, helium upfronts have gone up since they changed the system.