Writing Highly Technical Articles

[dustinrasener]

I am interested in writing a number of deeply technical articles about various aspects of writing software (i.e. programming). Does anyone have any experience writing this kind of deeply niche article? Do your articles sell on Constant Content? What are you able to charge? I have read on these forums that those articles requiring research or deep knowledge of a topic can sell for more. Is this true in your experience?

I am interested to hear from anyone who writes articles requiring deep knowledge of a technical subject. Thanks for your help and input.

Dustin

[Sharion]

Wow, nobody answered you yet. I'm not sure I'm your best reply but lacking any competition for answers, I'll give it a go.

I've written a couple of semi-technical articles. I'm more knowledgeable than many on the subject of taxes and have written a few articles in that area, some very simple and at least one that was more complex, involving taking a heavy subject and putting it into words anyone could understand. That article sold for full rights.

That said, more tax articles sold that were more basic and cheaper by other authors.

I don't determine price by subject matter. I charge by word count. Only if I've spent way too much time on something to sell it for the word count price I've set will I charge more. I've chosen a word price that is consistent with *some* of the authors here and that generally pays me the hourly rate that I make in my day job.

One article, not a technical article, took me so long to research that I didn't even bother to put a full rights price on it. I felt it would have been too ridiculous a price so I simply chose a usage price and offer it for usage only.

To me, if you're able to write knowledgeably on a heavier topic without a lot of research, your bonus is to be able to charge a normal price on something that took you less time to write, thereby making more. Also, it puts you above as you probably won't have a lot of competition. Plus you might eventually find a private client who needs your type of expertise on a regular basis.

Will they sell? I'm not the best person to answer that one. I'm still pretty green here. Articles I think should sell quickly, don't. Articles I didn't expect to sell at all, sold. I haven't figured it out yet so I write what comes out, usually based on something I'm experiencing or researching in my own life.

Recently I revamped a bunch of my websites (I have several) using Wordpress. Guess what kind of articles I started spitting out

[jak]

I can't really answer your question either as I am definitely not a techie. I suggest you search for similar technical articles here and look at their pricing. Also click on their authors to look their portfolios and how many sales they've had. Might give you some idea

[LostLogic]

I currently have an article request in the system asking for highly technical articles on WordPress. I'm not sure if you were referring to C, C++, VB, or if you were meant languages primarily used online, such as PHP or ASP. However, I would be highly interested in articles explaining how to modify WordPress (without editing core files). I don't have any particular modifications in mind, if I did - I'd have written the article myself. I've seen many sites with tutorials on how to code something in WordPress and it consists of nothing more than a 1 line introduction then 10 lines of code. Although it may be practical and enough to help the person reading the article, it doesn't help the website rank very well in search engines. I always try to have a minimum of 250 words (excluding code) in everything I write. For example, you can explain what the code does, set up a scenario explaining how it may be used, and finally explain how the code works.

I'm not sure how well technical articles (in general) would sell, but I'm certainly keeping my eye out for some good, well written, technical articles on WordPress.

[Celeste Stewart]

I think there's a place for highly technical articles. I recall a customer wanting super technical SQL articles a year or two ago. Tutorials do fairly well here, too. Keep your focus narrow and specific such as "How to Create a Table in HTML." As far as commanding a higher price, yeah, if you can articulate a technical concept in easy-to-understand terms, you should charge more for your technical articles than you would charge for articles like "How to Mop a Floor."

As LostLogic says, the code examples don't do well for SEO. Plus, an article consisting primarily of code could be rejected on CC due to duplication.