100 Articles on Wizzley: 10 Tips for a Great Wizzley Experience

My journey on Wizzley has been one of discovery. I have put in a lot of time over the past year and a half, and have learned much. Here are my main tips for more traffic and sales.

I wrote a very long tips article in December, and lost it when my external HDD crashed. So before I give you any other tips, here's an extra tip to begin with: back up your work often. Note that you can also save your work in the Drafts folder here on Wizzley until it’s ready to be published.

I have more extra tips, but first let’s give Google an idea of what this article is about. So here’s a little about the ten tips I promised. Keyword phrases matter. So does Pinterest, a blog, and other social media. Wizzley writers can help you get more visibility, too. They can also teach you about things that work for them in terms of traffic and sales. Wizzley is one of them, and Jo tells you in her book how she made it work for her. Zazzle is another, and you can check Pam’s (Dustytoes) pages to see how she makes real money with it. I love Zazzle and am trying to make time for it. More about it below. Wizzley writers can also teach you things you’ll come to incorporate into your life away from the computer.

I enjoy writing on Wizzley. I’ve also sold some items through Amazon and Zazzle. Not much, but enough to show me that it can happen, and not only at Christmastime.

I’m also getting more and more visitors. At the time of my writing this, I’ve had 31,750 unique visitors since August 2, 2012, when I published my first article. I wrote the majority of my articles in bursts, mostly between August and September 2012, when I got started, and then between November 2013 and the first half of January 2014, as I was rather busy these past two years. Had I been more active here on W., I would have gotten, no doubt, more traffic. I also didn’t promote my articles enough through social media. More about all this below.

That said, here are some of my tips to make your time on W. great in terms of personal development and financial rewards.

Live, read, and write, in that order

© Mira at Wizzley

But First, Some Extra Tips

I’ll start with extra tips 2, 3, and 4, and then move on to the 10 tips about making your trip on Wizzley more enjoyable.

Extra tip #2: Live a little. Writing is hard work. If you want to enjoy it, you have to take breaks now and then.

Extra tip #3. Bring some of that life back to Wizzley. If you write a review of an Amazon product, tell people about how you use that product. Don’t just give them a list of some of the product’s features. You may sell either way, but if you add a personal touch you will enjoy writing sales articles. I do. And I try to make them about things that interest me. An article on the cheapest items on Amazon, for instance, has turned into a piece about some of the cheapest jewelry on Amazon, and from there, about the symbolism of dragonflies, owls, etc.:

Some of the Cheapest Jewelry on Amazon under One Dollar Can Make Cool Christmas Gifts

Extra tip #5. Continue to enjoy your life as your Wizzley articles mature and your income stream picks up speed.

Remember to chase butterflies Mug

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10 Tips for a Better Wizzley Experience

And now here are the ten tips to get you started on Wizzley on the right foot, and make your journey better if you’ve been here a while but feel you haven’t gotten enough benefits out of the experience.

Show them your dreams

(reading a lot on the site will help).

1. Start writing. Anything. You’ll figure out things as you go.

(Reading a lot on the site will help.)

I see many people sign on and don’t write anything for months. I wonder why that is. While you do have to produce good writing (and your first five articles are vetted before they go online), your writing skills, no matter where you are on your journey, will develop as you grow as an online writer on Wizzley. So just start writing.

There’s only one thing to consider at first: whether you want to be a niche writer or one who writes on several topics.

While many people find that niche writing is the thing that builds authority online and brings in more cash, there are others, including Jo, the most prolific author here on W., who started with niche pages (well-documented history articles) and then branched into other areas (in Jo's case, movie reviews, the paranormal, culture & society topics, and all sorts of sales articles). Which brings me to #2.

2. Read Jo Harrington’s book A Writer’s Guide to Wizzley

This goes for both beginners and people who have been here and while and written a bit. Last time I checked (see her latest tips article – after 550 pages), she had had 589,504 unique visitors. Which is quite amazing. As is the fact that for all of 2012 she wrote, on average, an article a day.

All her hard work is leading to traffic which benefits us all here on W. According to Alexa stats, cited by Jo, people read 8.9 articles in an average of 13 minutes when they arrive on W.

How did Jo make it? You’ll figure it out after you read her book. It takes a gamer’s approach, planning, and commitment.

Jo's book in paperback

A Writer's Guide to Wizzley: Learn how to make a living w...

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Jo's book in Kindle format

A Writer's Guide to Wizzley

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3. Use images and, if possible (it’s easy to), videos as well

Images make your article more Pinterest- and Google-friendly. Try to give your .jpg or .png image files descriptive names (e.g. herastrau_park_bucharest_winter.jpg). This way people who search for images only on Google Images have a chance of finding your article.

Don't give up what you want most

© Mira at Wizzley

Images also help your page place better in search results. Only if you use all the alt tag / description field right, that is. As Jo points out in her Tips after 550 pages article, this alt attribute also makes your page accessible to sight-impaired people.

Then there’s social media. You can get lots of visits from Pinterest if you build up a following there. It takes time, but eventually people will be clicking through to read your articles. The more photos or other pictures you have in your article, the better. You can pin them all on Pinterest after you publish your article. So can other people on Wizzley if something in your articles appeals to them enough to warrant the extra step of pinning a few images.

4. Make your page StumbleUpon-friendly

Stumble Upon indexes your pages using the first images it finds on them. Make sure you have a nice, representative image right after the intro text. If you don’t, it will pick the first image in your sidebar. You don’t want that, because that's the thumbnail of another article.

5. Use social media, and not just for yourself

I’m guilty of using Pinterest mostly for myself, but I will try to set aside some Pinterest time to go back to articles I’ve read and pin them onto my boards.

On the other hand, I have used my blog to promote some articles I read here.

I don’t do Facebook or Twitter myself (only Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and a Wordpress.com blog), but Jo does that and more, and her traffic shows it.

I would do more, too, but that would take away time and concentration from my writing as well as from designing on Zazzle. But I did take Jo's advice and joined StumbleUpon. It's a great place.

There's a whole world of social media channels out there

Social media channels

Pixabay

6. Remember that Wizzley is a community and a place of discovery

Wizzley is not just a platform for your thoughts. It’s a place where we interact and grow together. Try to spend some time reading articles. And when you do it, be kind and leave a comment. It will help the article writer gain even more perspective on his/her topic, and it will also help you. Not only because the writer might go read one or two of your own articles, but because you may find yourself in an interesting conversation with the author and other W. people on that very page.

Here are some of the many things I have learned reading other people’s articles.

You may have noticed that I write about health. Well, I also picked a few tips from other writers here: things like ground flaxseed, which I now try to eat every few days, after reading an article of Katie’s, and sources of plant-based calcium, which I’ve reviewed thanks to authors like Sam, who wrote an article titled Where Do Vegans Get their Calcium?

I also started to think about getting Organic Non-Toxic Mascara
and Essential Orange Oil. (The latter has several important health benefits.)

I’ve also saved some great recipes:
Cambodian Recipes: A Seafood Fest from Kep
Pastitsio: Greek-Style Pasta Bake
Weird but Delicious Gluten-Free Alternatives to Spaghetti You'll Love
Best-Tasting Gluten-Free Pizza Crust Recipe
Pumpkin Cheesecake Deliciously Deconstructed
Traditional Christmas Almond Paste
Make Your Own Baileys

learned very interesting things about fairy tales and the color pink

nature and gardening:
Deer-Proof Garden
Vertical-container Gardening

music:
Tim and Jeff Buckley, Father and Son Musicians

history, society and culture:
A Brief History of Old London Bridge
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower

and added some great books on my immediate reading list.

I could go on and on.

7. Zazzle might be a good idea for you. It works well with Wizzley.

Zazzle is a site where you can custom-make 250+ product types, from mugs and T-shirts to flip-flops and jewelry boxes. You can then promote them on Wizzley. In fact, spending some time browsing and creating on Zazzle can give you ideas for many Wizzley articles.

I learned about Zazzle soon after joining Wizzley in August 2012, and yet I put it off for a few months. Then when I finally got started, I wasted a lot of precious time on designs that didn’t work very well. But that’s not bad. You have to start somewhere. I started with some photos of beanstalks because I was fascinated with the beanstalk plant I was growing on the balcony.

Here's what I do on Zazzle now:

And here’s what I do now with Zazzle items promoted on Wizzley:
Quote Mugs for Coffee Lovers
Cute Owl Always Love You Valentine’s Gifts

Whenever I write something, I try to add information that’s interesting and/or useful to the reader in some way, or to come up with a "fun" (a word I tend to abuse, but people do look for "fun" things) angle. As I do the latter, I also try to narrow down the topic much more than I did in my first articles here.

8. Most popular articles? Things that sell?

Memes sell. If you’re on social media a lot, you will know what they are. If not, you’ll learn about some of them by finding out about some bestselling Zazzle items.

Wedding-related products are also popular. I wrote an article titled Popular Wedding Dresses 2013 for Under $200, and received lots of traffic. Here’s what people searched for on Google (note that Google does not show keyword phrases users search with anymore; also note that Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines do):
george bridal amazon Study keywords for better traffic and sales
george bride reviews
George bride customer reviews
amazon wedding dresses and price under $200
amazon wedding dresses george bride
customer reviews about george bridal
david s bridal dresses and price under 200 dollars
david’s bridal gowns under $200
george bride wedding dresses reviews
reviews for george bride on amazon
wedding dresses 2013 under $200

So get a good title and subtitle, try to include a price in the title if possible, and get writing on wedding-related themes, I’d say. If you can pull it off. I don’t know enough about fashion to write the articles I’d like to write, but plan to learn more about both jewelry and fashion.

By the way, we have a Wizzley Weddings showcase page here on Wizzley, curated by nightowl (Anne Corcino). It’s always changing and you won’t find all the wedding articles on there, but if your article stays there for a while you’ll gain extra visibility.

Speaking of which . . .

Make money writing

Pixabay

9. Try to get your pages to 100%

Getting your articles to 100% (for those of you reading who haven't joined Wizzley yet, that's an internal ranking system) will make them more visible on Wizzley and to people who arrive on the site and browse around. I have paid attention to the advice Jo gives in her book and am trying to do just that myself.

If possible, get some Editor Choice Awards, too. They will bring in lots of visitors.

Read Jo’s book to find out how.

Also, try to keep your articles evergreen (another one of Jo’s pieces of advice).

A Writer's Guide to Wizzley

Wizzley is one of the youngest and brightest writing platforms on the internet today. Online livelihoods are made in writing articles there. Jo Harrington is one of its foremost...

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10. Read what other people on Wizzley are writing

I have touched on this idea before. Here I’ll add that people usually respond to what’s popular and/or sells, so if you see articles going in a certain direction, you may do well to explore that direction as well.

For more tips and good articles by other writers on this site, see my
10 Tips on How to Make More Sales Online page.

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That's all, folks

That's all for now. Time to enjoy the rest of my Saturday. See you at 200 pages.

Updated: 07/25/2018, Mira

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Comments

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Mira on 05/12/2015

Hope you enjoy it here. It's a good place.

CruiseReady on 05/11/2015

Mira - My thanks, too for sharing. I'm new here, and paying attention

Mira on 12/15/2014

Thank you for your visit. I am working now on a piece that will showcase some Zazzle items.

DerdriuMarriner on 12/15/2014

Mira, Thank you for sharing these helpful tips for writing on Wizzley. It's interesting to see the successful overlap between Wizzley and other sites, especially Zazzle.

Mira on 11/27/2014

Thank you, Sheila!:)