Glowleaf

What to write?

The tabula rasa problem

Tabula rasa, a blank slate. It means a fresh start, but here I am talking about the problem of looking at a clean sheet of paper for hours. More commonly known as writer’s block.
It’s a usual problem, and it happens to all writers. As an internet marketer, you probably have 5-10 websites, on various niches, which need a constant update of content. One of the tips every starter guide to affiliate marketing is “pick a niche you are passionate about”, and this is the reason. Its simply boring to come up with content for a subject you don’t care about.
For example, I don’t play poker. I don’t even know the rules well enough. It is very difficult for me to keep my poker sites up to date. The fact that they are profitable is the reason I push myself to work on them, but its always a burden.

There are a couple of ways to overcome writer’s block, and get your creative juices flowing again.

Google alerts. They are very easy to set up, and very useful. What it does, is simply mail you once a day every new topic on the net containing your keyword. When you sit down to write content, just check out the posts, and you will surely have enough news of the niche to discuss.

Stumble Upon, and other social bookmarking sites. Checking the new articles on a related tag, will show you what other people are writing, and more importantly, what people find interesting on today’s news around the niche.

Youtube videos. Animated images can easily inspire you, and a quick search on your niche can give you lots of ideas.

If your sites are quickly going out of control, or taking up too much of your time, you can outsource the content creation part. You can find writers on:

• Elance
• Wickedfire
• DigitalPoint

There, you will find many people offering writing services, in various qualities and prices. I suggest that you don’t just pick up the cheapest offer. Outsourcing is all about minimizing overhead, and clear communications are worth much more than a percentage of cost. Also, quality articles can bring traffic for months, if not years. One great article is worth much more than 10 crappy ones.

You can also try the ContentSolution service. I never used it so I cannot comment on its usefulness.

Here stops the basic advice, on to more advanced stuff. Proceed at your own risk.

This will not be useful to most people, because most people simply do not think that way. My mind can work backwards as well as forwards, and many times I create something from a single phrase or picture. Not many people are good at reverse engineering, and I am one of those few.

EDIT: I finally found the article I wanted. Its called the snowflake method. Check it out for another explanation of this technique.

My technique is working from the opposite way. What I usually do, is download bundles of something, like photographs or website templates. I browse through them, and when something clicks, I make notes on what article this image could be in, or what kind of website the template could dress. After I finish, I usually have 20 new ideas. Its basically brainstorming, but throw in information overload as well.

Then I categorize the ideas, based on how easy I could make them, how much money it could cost, how viral the idea is, and other factors depending on the subject.

After that, I just pick the best idea, and start shaping it, expanding it. I ask myself basic questions. Why, how? Its not rocket science, anyone can train himself to do that.

For example, the idea for this post came to me as I was staring at a blank Word document. I was brainstorming article ideas, and it came to me that people usually have problems writing content.

Other times, I look at a picture, and build an article around that picture. In case you didn’t notice, I am talking about starting to write an article before even having the subject of the article.

Before I became obsessed with Wordpress, I used to download bundles of Template Monster templates, and browse through all of them. All the templates are beautiful and professional, and I just browsed through them back and forth, jotting down ideas. Ideas for sites came to me, and as I said earlier, I arranged the ideas according to some stats, and started working on them. I have many sites that I created that way, most are mini sites, many more are abandoned or not working anymore. Some are still up. I do the same now with wordpress themes.

Basically I say “Wow, this is a beautiful theme. What kind of site can I make that will use it?”

Someone might ask at this point, shouldn’t you worry about keywords, profitable niches etc when creating a site? My answer is NO. Inspiration is a good thing, and makes you productive. When being inspired, you can do 5 times more work than when you work on projects that have good income potential. The best part is that it does not feel like work. How long has it been since you stayed up all night working passionately? Well, I work like that all the time.

Yes, surely many of those projects will fail. But you will still feel proud about them. And internet marketing has taught me that the most bizarre projects work.

I will sum up the technique here.

Information overload works the same as silent meditation. Instead of clearing your mind from any thoughts, you fill it with sensations. Browsing quickly through a lot of content, and I mean a lot, can get you in a semi-trance like state, which allows your imagination and creativity to pour out.

To get to that point of using this technique, you will need a serious background on internet marketing.

The only way to break the rules, is to know them inside out.

What do I mean by that? When you know how everything works, when your experience allows you to evaluate a keyword or a campaign without checking a keyword tool (and getting close to the actual results), plainly when you become an expert at it, then you can do this technique.

You must not waste thoughts on how to code this, how to do that, is there a plugin for that etc. You must already know all of those things, and just focus on the creation of the idea.

You need to have a variety of tools and techniques already mastered, and just make the idea a reality.

I am sorry, there is no easy way to explain it better. And I know its not for everyone. If it does not work for you, just forget about it.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Stumble it!

written by Glowleaf