Most writers have found themselves staring at a blank piece of paper, or a blank screen and feeling a bit of panic in the pit of their stomach because they can’t think of a single thing to write. The goal of this article is to make sure that you never find yourself in that position ever again. Let’s take a look at a few ways to create a never-ending flow of article ideas.

This article is written on the premise that you will be writing keyword optimized articles for the purpose of article marketing, but the tips on idea generation can really be used for any kind of writing projects.

Plan Ahead
Keep a list of keywords that your web site is focused on, and update this list every week. When you are ready to begin writing, consult this list to get the ideas flowing.

Capture Ideas
Use a small notebook that you carry with you everywhere to jot down ideas that strike you throughout the day. Better yet, jot down these thoughts in your PDA or smart phone and then email them to yourself. If an idea strikes and you don’t have your notebook with you, call and leave yourself a voicemail message with as many details about the idea that you can come up with.

Create a Swipe File
Open a Notepad or word processing document and use this to capture snippets of copy, headlines, graphics–anything that inspires you or gives you an idea to write about. Keep this open while you are writing so that you can take down those quick things that occur to you as you are working on other writing projects.

Brainstorm Article Titles
Come up with a list of titles for articles that you want to write articles for. Copy good titles that you find into your swipe file to inspire you.

Use Mind Maps
Mind mapping is a fabulous way to prime your brain’s creative pump. You simply write a keyword in the center of a piece of paper. Draw a circle around it and jot down thoughts related to that word or idea and draw lines from the keyword out to the related words. Visit mind-mapping.org to find an endless supply of mind mapping and creativity resources.

Try any of these techniques that appeal to you and you will never again face the terror of a blank screen. Keep adding to your swipe file and use the mind mapping technique and you will exponentially expand your productivity.

Evelyn Bourne is a freelance writer who specializes in creating compelling Internet content from SEO articles to blog posts, eBooks and special reports. Guess what? She is available for hire. You are invited to visit http://contentcreation.wordpress.com to find out about how she can create content for you.

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Article marketing is really one of the best ways to create free quality, targeted traffic to your web site. There are plenty of people out there who would love to make use of article marketing, but they are not confident in their writing ability. The goal of this article is to encourage you to give article writing a try because if you can speak clearly enough to be understood, then you can write an article. Let’s get started.

The purpose of your article is to share a bit of useful information about your web site’s topic, product or service. You will write your article using the keywords that you want searchers to use to find your site. In order to accomplish this, the first thing that you want to do in preparation for writing your articles is to gather your list of keywords.

For each article you will need a primary keyword and a secondary keyword. For example, if your topic is weight loss, then you might use your ‘long tail’ keyword as your primary, such as “weight loss tips for diabetics” and the secondary might be “weight loss.”

An article should follow the basic structure of: 1. Introduction, 2. Body, 3. Conclusion. You want to tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them what you have to say and then tell them what you told them. You want your readers to come away from your article feeling as though they benefitted in some way from having read it. The article is your opportunity to share your expertise with your visitors in hopes that they like what they find and decide to click through to your site to find more good information.

To begin, type your keywords at the top of the page and then begin to do a bit of a brain dump. Write down everything you know about your topic as it comes to your mind. Get a friend to ask you questions about your topic and write down their questions and your answers. We are not concerned right now with structure, but simply with getting what’s in your head on the page. When you have a few notes written down, type your keywords into your favorite search engine and take a look at what comes up. Peruse a few web pages with articles written around your keywords to get some fresh ideas. Jot down some more notes. Keep searching until you have found enough information for your article.

Choose three main points and then fill in those points with the information you came up with. Finally, write an introduction for the main points, and a conclusion that summarizes your article and wraps everything up.

Next, you want to create a title for your article. The title should contain your primary keyword, and it serves as the headline for your article. Make sure that your article delivers on the promise made in your headline. Clarity trumps cleverness when it comes to titles because it will be read both by human eyes and search engine spiders.

The last thing you will write is your article’s resource box. This is where you share a link to your web site where your visitor can find more great content like what they see in your article. If you do a search on “article resource box examples” you will find some good inspiration for creating a good resource box for your articles.

See? That wasn’t so bad was it? If you followed these steps you now have a completed first draft of your article. Now go through and do a spell-check and grammar check. If you have MS Word, you can find these items under the ‘Tools” menu.

Don’t stop there. Go ahead and write some more articles and jot down some ideas for additional articles so that the next time you sit down to write you will not be facing a blank screen.

Evelyn Bourne is a freelance writer who specializes in creating compelling Internet content from SEO articles to blog posts, eBooks and special reports. Guess what? She is available for hire. You are invited to visit http://contentcreation.wordpress.com to find out about how she can create content for you.

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For those who are looking for a way to use their writing talents to make money writing online, ghostwriting articles and ebooks and short reports is a great way to get started. I have been ghostwriting online for about three years now, and I have found it to be a good way to put my writing skills to work and earn some cash.

By way of explanation, ghostwriting is simply the practice of writing content along with the publication rights to it. Although the ghostwriter writes the article, ebook, report, etc., the client who hires them puts their name on the piece and can claim authorship of that work.

Writing is something that I enjoy, and whether I am writing for myself for one of my own sites or for a client I always put forth my very best effort. I have been doing some article marketing for myself, and I write a metric ton of articles for clients each week, so I try to keep up on what’s happening in the world of article marketing. I was listening to Dan Ho’s interview with Christ Knight of ezinearticles.com last evening and I could feel my hackles being raised by the way they were talking about ghostwriters. I guess I should not let it bother me so much because I know that my work is always original, but I sort of felt like they were not presenting ghostwriters in a very favorable light by saying that you should never trust them, etc.

Articles are no magnum opus. They are pretty simple and straightforward to write. I like writing articles because they are quick to write, and I enjoy learning about new topics and finding creative ways to get the client’s message across using their keywords and creating value for the reader. With my education, training and years of practice I know that I am always improving the level of my writing. I agree with Dan and Chris that PLR should be used on your web site and not submitted to ezinearticles as if it were your own original content.

Here are some things that I took away from that interview:

The need to create a ‘work for hire’ agreement to give to new clients when I begin working with them. I have only been asked once to sign a notarized NDA for a client who was paranoid beyond belief about their keywords. For the most part I have not used work for hire agreements, but I will going forward.

It became clear that I need to write and submit far more articles than I have been writing. Although I joined the 100 Articles in 100 Days marathon, I had to drop out because almost as soon as I joined I got a flood of new client writing assignments and I was not able to keep up with my personal articles along with my client work. I am working daily to keep up a healthy volume of writing.

Re-purposing existing content into new articles is a great way to come up with more articles without needing to write them from scratch.

In closing I will just say that ghostwriters provide a valuable service, and there are plenty of honest ghostwriters out there who have integrity and operate in an ethical manner. (Dare I ask if you have hugged your ghostwriter today?

If you are a writer looking to make money writing online, be sure to write lots and lots of articles and submit them to the main article directories with links back to your blog. You’ll get a nice stream of targeted traffic and all the work you can handle.

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