By Joan Magat
March 30, 2016
Writing effective copy is challenging, but following these guidelines can help you craft engaging and impactful content that resonates with your audience.
Online readers crave quick access to information. Lengthy titles or articles can overwhelm visitors, causing them to click away. Keep your copy concise and to the point. Capture attention from the first sentence with a compelling, direct opening that hooks readers and encourages them to keep reading.
Avoid overly complex language. The goal is clarity, so make your message easy to understand for everyone. Simplicity doesn’t mean “dumbing down” your content—it means ensuring your message is accessible to a diverse, global audience. Steer clear of jargon or local slang that may confuse readers.
Begin with a general overview to attract a broad audience, then gradually delve into more specific details as the article progresses. This way, readers can engage with the content at their own pace. Those seeking in-depth knowledge can stick around, while others can move on when they’ve gathered what they need
Web copy has entirely different principles to print copy. Digital content needs to cater to both readers and search engines. When adapting print materials for the web, avoid simply copying and pasting. Instead, focus on restructuring the content with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Read this blog post about SEO best practices.
AVOID:
DO:
A clean, professional website design builds trust with your audience. People will judge a website by its appearance and won't trust websites that haven't had sufficient effort put into their appearance. Ensure that your site uses a consistent and well-structured format.
Large chunks of text can intimidate readers. Use the following techniques to make your copy more inviting and easier to digest:
Don’t limit keywords to titles alone - integrate them naturally throughout your copy. Pay attention to keyword density in headings, subheadings and body text. This helps your content perform better on search engines while keeping it relevant to your audience’s interests.
While SEO is essential for driving traffic, always prioritize writing for real people. Engaging, readable content will keep visitors on your site longer and encourage them to return. Search engines may guide people to your page, but high-quality content is what keeps them there.
Typos and grammatical errors can undermine your credibility. Always proofread your work carefully, but don’t rely solely on yourself—ask a friend or colleague to review it too. Fresh eyes can spot mistakes you may have overlooked, ensuring your copy is polished and professional.
Write about what you know. Your content will be more valuable and engaging if it’s rooted in your own expertise. Authenticity resonates with readers, and those who share your interests are more likely to engage with and support your work.
Write in your natural voice. Aim for a conversational tone that feels personal and relatable.
Book a demo and see everything that's possible with SubHub.
Book a demoIn another blog post, we explored reasons why membership website owners should provide a good amount of free content on their sites.
We came to the conclusion that free content has many benefits, all leading to the ultimate price of a website visitor becoming a member. But what will convince them to cross that free line into paid territory?
In this post we’re going to look at the free/paid content issue from another angle:
First, it's important to realize that they may not be willing. There are so many news sources on the internet, web users can always find free alternatives for general news. They don’t even have to look very far as the aggregation news sites pull it together for them. And that’s just for news articles.
With the plethora of AI tools available now, anyone can have a detailed article at their fingertips on just about any topic. ChatGPT and Bard (Google’s counterpart to ChatGPT), for example, can scrape up tons of content on any subject in a matter of seconds.
This saves all kinds of research time that previously would be been spent combing Google results, typing various searches into a Google search query, going to various information sites like Quora.com, and checking out YouTube’s search engine for videos on the topic.
So now that it's fairly easy to find free content on any subject, most people probably just do that, right?
Think again. Research shows that at least 65% of internet users have paid for online content. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2010/12/30/65-of-internet-users-have-paid-for-online-content
But why? We've come up with 5 compelling reasons why users will pay for online content.
Doing that kind of research, even with the advantages of ChatGPT, Bard and others like them, still requires time.
Let’s not forget that the idea behind a membership website is to provide information, knowledge or expertise on a recurring basis. That means that as a membership website owner, your potential customer is going to have to go through all the search and research options regularly to be able to access the same or similar content that you can provide with no time or effort on their part. By providing a paid option that doesn't require the research on their part, you will be saving your clients time, and as we all know, time is money.
Farm experts GrowingForMarket.com know this very well. As a seasonal online publication, they are saving their members many hours of time and effort to find the latest growing information and tips available for each growing season.
This might be the number 1 reason why people are willing to pay for free content. Let’s say you’re looking to take up a yoga practice. You could go online and search on Google or YouTube and find millions of search results showing you a multitude of different poses and types of yoga. Where do you start? Which kinds of yoga are for beginners? Which style should you adopt? What if you’re looking for specialized styles like yoga for seniors?
You can sift through all that, or you can sign up for an online yoga class with an expert like Cheri Schultz of inspireencourageempower.org and be guided through a series of yoga routines that fit your schedule and your strength level, simply by signing up to a low-cost recurring subscription. Which sounds better?
People will pay for content that is not available elsewhere on the internet. Or content that is not available in the way that you have packaged it. If you have a “secret” or little-known approach to building wealth, you may have something completely unique to offer. Even the most determined researcher can spend hours on ChatGPT, or researching on Google and not come up with the specific ideas that you have to offer. A few dollars per month may very well seem like a small price to pay for recurring content that they can’t get anywhere else.
People will also pay to be part of a community. Quite often, you’ll find website owners offering a course or membership-based subscctipion to content, with access to other members as a bonus. It’s great to have the perspective of yourself as the website owner, but let’s face it, you’re not always going to be available. And your members’s peers will 99.9% of the time be happy to help other members if they can.
So don’t be afraid to charge members for access to other members. This kind of community also offers a safe haven for people who may not want to post on a public forum, but feel comfortable asking questions among a closed group of like-minded individuals. SubHub clients like mylifestylerescue.com are doing just that by encouraging members to interact on the built-in forum on their websites.
Finally, there is something that people will always pay for - personal one-on-one access to the expert (that’s you!). High-end business coaches can charge thousands of dollars per month for personal coaching. A membership website is ideally suited to offer premium services like individual coaching - at a premium price.
There are many ways of going about it:
It’s true that people won’t pay for content on the internet if they can easily find free alternatives. But the catchword there is “easily”. Easy means with little effort, little time, and no money. Even with all the search and AI options available, it still takes time and effort to research a topic, eliminate what isn’t useful, find a way to utilize the valuable information, and put it into practice.
If you can provide all these qualities in a neat package at a reasonable cost, you will be way ahead of the game.
Put simply, monetization describes the process of generating revenue from online content.
Current popular avenues for monetizing content include advertising on google ads, youtube or facebook/instagram. Retargeting via Facebook and Google offer even greater potential for income by generating leads from visitors who have been on your site but haven't clicked that call to action button.
Other income streams are through selling products or digital content as store items (you can do this on a SubHub membership site as well), or joining an affiliate program. (You can start your own affiliate program with a membership site also - even more profitable than joining someone else's!)
Many content owners focus on one of these revenue streams and run with it. However, the most successful online publishers drive multiple revenue streams from their content.
A membership site can generate multiple streams of income by offering several different avenues of monetization. You can sell physical or digital products, generate recurring income, offer an affiliate program, and benefit from online advertising and retargeting.
At this point, you may be asking
One of the keys is to create valuable content. The most successful online entrepreneurs know how important is it to understand and deliver content that's targeted to their audience in a unique way. Social media is of course one of the most effective ways to a following. But at some point, the question becomes "How do I monetize this?"
A membership website may be the answer.
To find out, set up a free trial of SubHub's platform and give it a test drive. It's free for 14 days.
Ready to transform your knowledge into an online business with a membership website but don’t have the time or skill to build it yourself? Our design service could be the solution.