How to Organize Your eHow Articles

I like to have things organized. It makes me feel productive when what I’m working on has a place to land when it’s finished. Using an organizing system for my eHow articles is perfect for keeping information at my fingertips. The more articles you write, the more you will need to keep track of how those articles are performing. In addition to the excellent tools eHow affords its writers, this article organizing system will give you the satisfaction of a job well done, and the freedom to fully engage in hassle free writing.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Computer
• Printer
• Microsoft Office Excel
• Adobe Acrobat
• eHow Articles

1. Create a New File Open the Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet program and create a new file. If you do not have Excel, you can take a test drive for free (see the link in the resources for more details), or use a word processing program like Microsoft Word. Excel is better for this organizing system because of its functionality, plus you can use as many columns and rows as you need.
2. Microsoft Office Excel Allow one column for each category of information you wish to record. I use 23 columns (19 for article data and 4 for spacing between columns). You can adjust each column to fit your content.
3. Create Column Headings Give your columns the following headings: a) number (start with #1 for the first article you write and publish; then number each subsequent article); b) Article Title, c) URL (this can be copied from the bar at the top of your browser); d) RSS Feed URL (located under your member information on each article page. Click on this and copy the URL from the browser window); and e) a column for each bookmark submission (Digg, Google, Stumble, etc).
4. Get RSS URL Add additional columns each time you find a new submission source (pingomatic, Yahoo, Propeller, Social Poster, etc).
5. Enter Date of Each Submission Place the date in the appropriate column so that you can keep track of each article submission.
6. Adobe Acrobat Make the heading for your last column “copy” to record the date you made a copy of each of your articles. Click on the “print article” link in each article; then “save as” from the page icon in your browser and give the file your article name. Of course if you can’t live without a hard copy of your article, you could always print it out. One creative solution is to make a pdf of your article if you have Adobe Acrobat software, since it uses the print function on your computer.
7. Spacer Columns Place spacer columns according to your preference to give your spreadsheet an uncluttered and clean look, and to make the information easy to read and access.
8. Spacer Rows Insert 1-2 empty rows after each group of 10 or 25 articles and repeat the column headings if you desire.
9. Back Up Your Work At least once a month, back up your spreadsheet to a data CD, DVD, flash/jump drive or external hard drive for safekeeping.

Tips & Warnings

• Have some fun with this. Think of creative ways you can organize information related to your articles.
• Read other eHow articles for article submission tips, strategies and how to make money writing articles.