If we understand the residual power to make money with article marketing and are prepared to put in the leg work, one of the first questions we need to consider is where to get our inspiration to write articles that people really want to read.

One major problem with article writing is getting conversions, firstly in terms of someone clicking on your resource box at the end of an article, and secondly making a purchase of whatever product the article is designed to promote. 

Many new marketers make the mistake of assuming volume = traffic, and bang out dozens of crappy ‘airy fairy’ articles which fail to address a concern, interest or inquiry the reader has.  We’d all rather have 5 articles getting 1000 views and 200 click throughs a week than 25 articles generating half that much traffic.  We can do ‘more’ with ‘less’ by making sure our articles are relevant, and pique the interest of our readership.

So where do we go for some good info to base our articles on?

Forums should be our first stop.  Say we want to write an article on panic and anxiety attacks.  Do a forum search on panic attack, and there are around 1,750,000 results.  By visiting any one of those forums for just five or ten minutes we can see what people are talking about and what problems they have, and get a swag of recurring issues that people are talking about.  Finding the answer to any one problem or concern or interest can form the basis of an article. 

You can also find Frequently Asked Questions at FAQ.org and Groups.google.com or Yahoo Answers

I recommend trying to find at least a dozen questions (and the answers) and then set about writing each article with:

- An introduction stating what the article will cover
- A summary of the problem
- The solution
- A resource box leading to our opt-in page where we offer to show them more

Obviously do some keyword research to include relevant keywords in the body of our article to ensure SERP rankings and traffic. 

This is a great way to generate some sales when we discover a great clickbank or affiliate product we want to promote, and it’s dead easy and largely fool proof.