These are things to avoid if you want to be producing successful content that people will read, pass on and refer to.

1 Write a little. If you're just starting to create content you probably won't get it right at first. To get enough experience you must write a lot and very regularly. Producing a couple of articles that took you three days and a ten page report that took one month, won't really help you much. Not unless you write more and faster, that is. I'm talking about getting backlinks and traffic rather than producing major columns for your blog.

2 Read a little. Without reading a lot of stuff daily, weekly and monthly, you'll lack stimulation for your own content. You want variety of material in what you read, some in-depth reading of things you're interested in, as well as keepng up with your own topic.

3 You don't know what your readers want. If you can't find out directly, then use your imagination. Don't forget to simply ask them and regularly. You must know what's worrying them, what their biggest problems in your topic area are, what gets them interested and what keeps them reading.

4 You think your traffic should be exploding. You're writing such great content, you think, that peole should be falling over themselves to get to it and click to your websites. Unfortunately, there are those two things: competition and trust. Why would they be so desperate for your stuff when there's so much good writing aroiund anyway? Also, a few articles, no matter how good, aren't going to help people to trust you. You need time, lots of writing and unique or original content.

5 You're keeping back your best material. You plan to make money from your best stuff once you've got visitors' attention. But you won't have their attention unless it's good enough. In any case, you, the internet and the world will have moved on and you'll have other best stuff to use then.