Rewrites are useful tools for squeezing a little extra income out of your work, but it is important to rewrite for 100% originality if you wish to find a market for the work. It takes less time and effort to rewrite than to pen an original piece and you can use rewritten original pieces as PLR articles or as revenue share pieces on sites like Helium or Associated Content.

Rewriting is also a useful technique for new writers who wish to understand copywriting and content writing. By reviewing and rewriting many pieces, new writers gain an understanding of style, structure and voice that would otherwise be difficult to develop on their own.

The Three-Word Rule

When performing rewrites, be sure you make the new piece 100% original by never keeping any string of three adjacent words intact. It is often easy to go through and replace every third word with a synonym, but this is not always workable. Rewriting only with synonyms creates a flaky piece at best. Such articles will not generate any additional revenue for you. Read the article carefully and rephrase whole sentences or paragraphs where needed so the piece is coherent and sensible.

Incorporating New Ideas

During a rewrite, it is likely you will come up with a thought that presents a new angle for the piece. Rather than reworking the entire article, write the idea down below the article and then fit it in wherever it fits best before your final proofread. This adds originality without taking too much of your time.

Dealing with Unalterable Text

You will sometimes come across a paragraph listing several items that you cannot alter because they are scientific terms, or titles of books. When you run across this, simply re-order the words or phrases and drop one or two if you can. You can also re-order the list and add one or two. Remember, the rule of thumb is never to leave a string of three words intact. Sometimes you have to bend the rule to say “three unchangeable phrases.”

Outsourcing Rewrites

I sometimes hire other writers to do rewrites for me when I am too busy with original work. I then sell the pieces when I can. If I pay someone to rewrite, I need to be sure I am getting $10 to $15 for the piece elsewhere; otherwise, it is not worth my investment. Because it does not pay much, I only seek revenue share from pieces I have rewritten myself.

Exclusive versus Duplicate Content

It can be frustrating for writers trying to produce new and fresh content for websites regularly. Since this is how many writers make their living, it is an important issue. It is hard to image that any author has one superb, search-engine-friendly article in her every day. Whether you decide to keep your content published only on one site or publish duplicates depends on your goals, your time frame for achievement, and your own abilities.

Do I Have To?

One could argue the web is so vast that one good article published on ten websites is unlikely to be viewed twice by a person in the same day. The companies buying content would disagree, however. When original content is in demand, the website displaying that content gets all the traffic. The webhost that paid for the content wants all that traffic. This is why exclusive rights and unique rights are more valuable than usage rights and elicit a higher sale price.

Know Your Rights

So what does that mean, “usage rights”, “unique rights” and “exclusive rights”? These are three types of licensing for online content. Usage rights allow the purchaser to publish content wherever she sees fit as long as the author gets credit for the writing. Unique rights allow the buyer to publish wherever she wants and prevent other webhosts from buying or using the same content. Exclusive rights give the buyer the right to use and publish the content, even to change the content however they please. The writer does not get credit for the article.

Search Engines and You

Online writing pays only a fraction of printed publications, and writing an original article that produces good traffic is no easy task. For these reasons, it should only be fair that writers be able to publish the content in several places without penalization. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. The reason: SEO (search engine optimization).

Web crawlers search the net and give lower rankings to sites that have duplicative content. This could shoot a writer in the foot if the article is published in too many places. However, the web is vast. An article published in five places should not damage a ranking much if the content is good. There is certainly enough traffic to go around with more computers going online everyday.

What to Do, What to Do…

If you need to make money now, publishing on several websites is a good choice. Especially if your article is one that just came to you in the middle of the night and you don’t know how the public will receive it. Understand that you may only make a few dollars on each website, but with all the eyes on the web, good writing should make you at least a few dollars. There is the potential that you will get lucky and make good money through your several revenue streams. In addition, your name will be all over the web, increasing the rank of sites that show your content.

The Middle Road

Unique rights will make you a little more money up front, but you lose the chance at any advertising revenue your piece might generate. That stinks if you sell your article for $50, and then the buyer turns around and makes $1,000 from the traffic your article produced. On the positive side, your name will still be credited to the article, increasing your presence on the web.

You Rock

If you know you have an unlimited supply of quality original content that people will search for online, there is no reason not to sell exclusive rights. Your article should sell quickly for a couple hundred dollars and you can move on to the next piece. Once buyers become familiar with your work, you should be able to land a regular gig. If you are this writer, Constant-Content, a site where you can sell original content not yet published, is your best friend.

Taking the High Road

If you decide that your abilities are up to the challenge, and you can wait for big success, you should sell only unique or exclusive rights for your content. When doing this, it is important to write the articles on topics requested by buyers to increase your sales. This is because an idea that arrives in a flash of genius is unique to you. The chances that a corporate bigwig will come looking for an article on your subject, exactly when you wrote it, are slim.

Just Do It

No matter which road you choose, always remember to focus on writing content that will be helpful and useful to your readers. Write from your heart and give generously to your audience. In the end, good writing sells itself.