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Are you the type of person who just sits down and writes a free reprint article until you've made all the points you want to make, or are you someone who is more strategic and has a specific word count that you aim for? Either approach is fine, but there are some general word count guidelines to keep in mind. Publishers have word count limits, both for the upper and the lower limits. Most publishers don't want an article submission that is so short that it ceases to provide adequate information, but at the same time they don't want an article that is so long that it's unlikely that readers will want to read the whole thing. In an ideal world, your article would contain enough information to make it valuable to a reader, while also not contain so much information that it would be impractical for someone to read it in a reasonable amount of time. Usually the lower limit is in the 400 word range, and the upper is somewhere over 1,000 words. That's a pretty big range, but there is a "sweet spot" within there that it's helpful to shoot for. A word count range of 600-800 words is an attractive word count for most publishers. It's not long or short in the extreme, so most readers would also find that length appealing. You might find it helpful to aim for that word count range when you start writing your article. Most word processing programs have a tool that will calculate the word count for you, so you can keep track of how you're doing as you go along. By shooting for a specific word count, it can help keep your article light, tight, and on target. It makes it easier to focus on what you really want to say, and it can help head off any temptations to get off topic. Suppose you've written an article, and it's gotten away from you in the length department, say in the 1,000 word plus range? If you've written an article that is extremely long, it's not necessarily a bad thing. One thing you can do is simply break the article into two separate pieces of content. One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that each article needs to be able to stand on it's own--you can't count on readers reading both of your articles. You have to assume that people will only see one of them, so each article needs to make perfect sense separate from the other one. You should also avoid indicating "Part 1" or "Part 2" in the title--that's unnecessary and could be confusing for a reader who only finds one of your articles. When you break a long article into two, you will probably need to do some finishing off--you need to write a new introductory paragraph for one of the articles, and a new concluding paragraph for the other one. Still, any effort you put into making your one long article into two separate but shorter ones will be considerably easier than trying to write a new article from scratch. If you happen to have written a very long article, it can be a great time saver to morph it into two pieces of content. Having the right length for your free reprint article is essential, because it impacts how many publishers might be interested in publishing your article. It also impacts how attractive your article is to readers. Writing with a word count goal is also a great technique for creating articles that are very straightforward and focused. It's simple enough to write with a word count goal in mind--do you? Steve Shaw is a content syndication specialist. Do you own a blog? Need content? Join thousands of other blogs and get free high-quality, niche-focused, human-reviewed content from quality authors sent on auto-pilot - and it's all 100% free! Get free blog content now.
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