How Can I Ensure That Readers Will Actually Read My Articles?

As an online article writer now with about 26,000 articles, I can tell you I often get frustrated, wondering if the article I just produced, that I spent over an hour on will be read by enough individuals to make it worth my while. Sometimes it's hit and miss, and sometimes it is actually the fault of the online article writer (me) for not presenting the best article title, or being able to grab the attention of the reader in the first paragraph. I've estimated that you have between 12 and 15 seconds to do that, or your online reader will click out.

Therefore, even if you have a really cool title, one which is compelling and grabs their attention, that still isn't enough. They will read or scan the first paragraph, and look down the page, if they don't find anything interesting, new facts of information, they will click out. The online reader does a lot of scanning and 12 seconds, they actually scan the whole page including the article which may be surrounded by advertising, or other links for them to click on. If they are not happy with the content of the article; they are gone - and they will not return, at least not to read that particular article of yours.

Now then, Dave Copeland had written an article in Read Write Web on March 16, 2012, it was an interesting piece titled "Best Practices for Writing For Online Readers," where he stated; "I have less than 30 seconds to capture your attention with this post." That was an interesting way to make a statement, as he was advising other online article writers exactly what it takes to hold the attention span of today's online reader who is surfing across the Internet.

Personally, I'm not sure that you have 30 seconds, Copeland may have overestimated, because in the Internet world 30 seconds is an eternity. Consider yourself if you will, how many times have you clicked on a video, realized that you had to put in 30 seconds of your time before the video played, and just said to yourself; "oh screw it, and clicked out," and you didn't even see if the video was any good or even know what it was really about, you were not willing to put in the 30 seconds. I'd say the number is more like 12 to 15 seconds as I stated above.

Still, whether it is 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds, or whatever it is, the point should be well taken, Dave Copeland, and myself are probably correct in our assertion that you have an extremely limited amount of time to grab the attention of your reader. And if you don't, they are not going to stick around. So if you're wondering; "how can I Insure Readers will actually read my articles?" The answer is you better grab their attention, have something worthy to say, and get it done quick, in the first paragraph, or they will not continue the process. Please consider all this and think on it.

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