Writing for the Web: Where to Get Article Ideas
BY RICHARD LOWE JR.
A friend and I were talking the other day about
writing. He liked to write, but even so his biggest problem was finding
things to write about. My friend was astounded at the volume of writing
that I do — at least one article and something as many as six, per day.
Where do I get all of the ideas from?
I, in turn, was astonished myself. Why on earth
would anyone have any trouble finding things to write about? In fact, my
main problem has been I have so much to write about that I often find
myself locked in a silent battle over which subject should be put on
paper first.
People find it even more amazing when I tell them
I try very hard to only write about positive events and provide helpful
articles. Only rarely will you find any of my writings containing
criticism, complaints or, worst of all, whining. Occasionally I will
write an article which recommends against purchasing a product, seeing a
movie, reading a book or visiting a web site, but these are the
exception.
The world is a huge, amazing, wondrous place.
Things are going on around us all of the time. There is so much good to
see and do all over the planet, so very many wonderful things going on
all over the place, that it's easy to find something to communicate
about if only you open your eyes and look.
One of my passions is the Internet. I've written
over 1,000 articles about all aspects of this massive communication
medium. Much of this is taken from my 23 years of experience in the
computer field, and the rest is from research, reading and, most of all,
questions from other people.
Although much of my writing is about the Internet,
I also find time to communicate about many other subjects as well. These
include relationships (marriage and romance), raising children, building
a career, handling office politics, current events, hobbies and history.
I have yet to find a subject which I don't have something useful to
contribute to other people.
How do I find so much to write about? Let me tell
you some of the ways: Many of my article ideas come from real life. For
example, I have a long and happy marriage, so I like to write articles
which help people with their relationships. I've also worked hard most
of my life, as have most people, building a career, which is another
area where I enjoy passing along tips to help others.
Question and answer sites — Sites like
askme.com and askjeeves.com are perfect places to visit once in a while
looking for ideas for articles. I visit and just scan the questions (and
there are thousands of them), looking for anything which looks
interesting. When I find something, I write an article.
Newsgroups — There are over 70,000
newsgroups. Most of these are worthless, but several thousand of them
contain useful information and varied conversations. Lurk in any active
newsgroup for a while and you should find something worthwhile to write
about.
Yahoo and DMOZ — Visit any big directory
site and you will find thousands of subjects to explore.
Yahoogroups and Topica — There are
thousands of email discussion lists available at these two sites. Sign
up for a few and get articles ideas from them.
There are many other places to look for article
ideas all over the Internet. I tend to avoid looking at things like
ezines, ebooks and websites for article ideas. Why? Because when I look
for article ideas I am not looking for answers.
What I tend to look for is questions. What kind of
questions are people asking? Is there a question which begs some further
analysis and a little more explanation than a simple sentence? It does
not matter if someone else has already answered, as my primary purpose
is not to provide raw information. My primary purpose is to help people
understand. You can find out raw information from any number of books or
encyclopedias, but finding out how to clean up the clutter in your
bedroom, well, that takes something different. That requires the
experience and knowledge passed from someone who has had to go through
the experience of cleaning many times, so many times that it has become
easy.
Interestingly, I've found that television is not
as worthwhile as one would expect for article ideas. Excluding a few
reviews, I've found television to be a vast wasteland, void of anything
but the most trivial or violent concepts in our society. The exceptions
are, of course, channels such as Nova, History Channel and Discovery.
So the next time you are trying to figure out
something to write about for your own ezine, web site or ebook, just
check out a newsgroup, elist or directory on a subject which you find
interesting. Sooner or later, you will get an idea and you can start
writing.
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of
Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free
articles to improve your Internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
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