Collecting Ideas (Part 3)

EzineArticles (and other article directories)

I bet you'd like know the secret to creating content for your own membership site super fast, right? Then, how about a bit of really good news...

ALL THE RESEARCH HAS BEEN DONE FOR YOU!

You just need to know where to find it and the first place I go looking is EzineArticles.

http://www.ezinearticles.com

EzineArticles has thousands of articles that can provide content for your product.

We're not talking about copying other people's work (that's illegal) but you can by all means take the main points from an article and re-work them as you create your own content.

Lets start out with the EzineArticles homepage. Scroll down to the bottom of the left sidebar until you find the search box with “Advanced Search” link.

 I'm certain that, to boost revenue, EzineArticles wants people to use the Google search box that is strategically placed at top center of the page. Unfortunately, that's not the search box we need. To use EzineArticles' Advanced Search, you'll have to scroll about halfway down the page.

Once you're there, you should see a box on the side of the page about halfway down that has a search feature.

Click on the “Advanced Search” feature and it will take you to a screen like this:

All you have to do then is type in your search term in the box and it will return all the articles in the EzineArtcles database.

Try to use the exact phrase of your main keyword for instance I typed in “photography studio equipment” and received 286 results.

Now, you don't have to read every article, but here's what you're looking for:
1. an interesting headline – I found one that read “Photography Equipment – Five Key Pieces You Can't Do Without”. That sounds like a headline I can use with modifications
2. an effective headline – What's the difference? #1 is what's interesting to ME. An effective headline is one that's interesting to EzineArticle readers. You can tell what headlines interest viewers by scrolling down to the bottom of any article and you'll find: “This article has been viewed XXX time(s).”

The “Photography Equipment – Five Key Pieces You Can't Do Without” article was posted on December 10, 2008 and has been viewed 333 times (as of this writing). Which means this headline is interesting enough to draw viewers in at a rate of roughly 1 a day – pretty good in my book.

When I'm using this method, what I'll do is:
1. click on an interesting headline
2. skim through the article
3. if I like the content, I'll print the article (or bookmark it in a special folder)
4. if the content doesn't excite me, I'll just copy the headline and paste it into a word document that will become my “headline swipe file”

If you want more ideas than you get from EzineArticles, you can do the same research using other article directories like:

http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.searchwarp.com