There are times when I want to write an article to send out to promote my web site (or for my newsletter) and an article idea pops right into my head and then it's easy. Other times I'm stuck for anything to write about at all! Here are a few ideas to help get those article ideas flowing again and to get you "unstuck"!

I don't know what it is, well I do, but some articles really stink but they still get read more than articles that are great but just with a poor title or subject matter.

Your article can be as professional as possible, but if people don't find the subject of your article interesting, or the title of your article interesting, no one will read it.

So how can you come up with article ideas constantly that are powerful and profitable? Here are 10 resources I use everyday....

Internet News Sources

The Internet is the best place to find article ideas and news sources are just one avenue you can use.

Breaking news issues is a great way to come up with article ideas. If you are in an industry (like technology) that is always breaking new ground, writing articles on late breaking news really makes it look like you are up to date with what's going on. You can literally become an expert on a subject by borrowing from other experts.

If you don't get newspapers to your door here are a few online resources to help you with this.

http://www.cnn.com
http://www.time.com
http://www.internet.com
http://www.f---edcompany.com - (Crude Language)
http://www.reuters.com - One of the best
http://www.cnet.com
http://www.news.com.au

Watching Tv

This isn't only limited to news channels either. Have you ever watched those corny tv infomercials?

They are full of great ideas for articles. If you've been living under a rock, you wouldn't know this, but there is a product selling on TV called the "Ab Swing" and it's going great guns.

It's basically for lazy people who want great abs by watching TV and swinging on a weird contraption. Whether it works, I don't know, but there's an article idea right there. Actually, there a thousands of idea's, but here a few.

11 Ways To Get Great Abs While Watching Tv
5 Ways To Build And Tan Your Abs For Summerv Everything You Wanted To Know About Absv Why Females Have Trouble Defining Their Abs

Magazines/Newspapers

Let's say your business is on some aspect of horse's. What you should do is subscribe to as many horse related publications as you can. Find out what other people are writing about and write something similar.

Alexa.com

I can usually come up with 150 to 200 product/web site ideas a day with this trick and I can tell you now, hardly anyone is using it. People know bits and pieces of the whole idea, but not to the extent I'm about to show you.

For instance, I was looking to create a product in the skiing field and I had the front end product idea, but I also wanted some backend product ideas, so this is what I found out.

I put a few skiing related phrases into Google looking for sites who might like to joint venture with me and sell my first product, and I found . I then went to Alexa to find out how much traffic they were getting and I did a search on the Alexa site. You can see the results here....

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/related_links?q=&p=Det_W_t_40_M1&url=http://www.ifyouski.com

Then if you go down the page, you will see what other people who went to ifyouski.com purchased on the topic of skiing AND other information about what sites are linking back to the original site. It also showed me a list of sites that people visited after visiting ifyouski.com. How accurate all this info is, I don't really know but it's been useful.

What's Hot Websites

This is a simple one, but why not write about what's hot! Find a hot subject related to your business, write about it and make it look like your ahead of the rest with your knowledge of the latest happenings. This works really well with technology as it's forever changing.

Here are a few websites you might like to visit.

http://www.100hot.com
http://www.hot100.com

Another good idea is to go to wordspot.com and look at their weekly top 200 searched for words on the Internet.

Online Polls

If you want to find out exactly what people want, why not ask them?

http://www.oneminutepolls.com

This software will allow you to poll people for certain questions. For example, lets say you have a customer list or prospect list and you want to know what they want to read about, well this is what you do.

You set up a poll with 4 or 5 article ideas and they vote on which one they want to read. This software will then give you the results in order of most voted for to least voted for and you can work your way down the list like that.

You could even ask ezine owners if you could send your poll out to their lists and you will share your results with them in exchange for the free ad. This really works well.

Online Forums

This is the holy grail for article ideas. People are actually asking questions in these online forums, so why not answer them with an article. You can even post a link to your article or post the entire article on the message board/online forum without it looking like a blatant advertisement.

If you are looking for a list of discussion boards and news groups, here is a list of the better known ones.

http://groups.google.com - The best by far
http://www.forumone.com
http://www.corenews.com - Very good
http://www.deja.com

Most Searched For Keywords

Another goldmine of ideas here. There are places on the Internet that show you what the most searched for keywords that are being used. What this means is, you can basically see how many times someone put a specific search term into a search engine.

These places below usually allow you to see the top 100 keywords of that week or month. Any of those keywords would make perfect article topics since they are already hot. I do recommend you sign up for http://www.wordtracker.com. This is one of the most essential tools online for anyone apart from Alexa.com.

http://www.goodkeywords.com
http://www.wordspot.com
http://www.wordtracker.com
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Best Selling Books

If the book is selling well, there is no doubt an article on the same subject wouldn't do well either. The top ten lists at places like http://www.amazon.com will show you exactly what people are buying online.

Of course, you will probably have to get past the fiction section and go straight for the non fiction section.

Other Peoples Articles

And last but not least, other people's articles.

If someone in your industry has already written a great article (and you can tell they are great articles for the simple fact that A) you like it and B) it's all over your favorite publications that you read) why not expand on the topic. Most times people are very vague with their articles and leave a lot out, so why not concentrate on one small area of what the other article touched on.

Becoming a niche market writer is probably the best way to go!

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