?Starburst' your core topic by using a keyword checker to suggest areas of interest. Also just sit for a few minutes and jot down ideas as they come to mind. For example, ?Horse'. What do I like / dislike about horse racing, horse racing meetings, famous jockeys, horse racing tips, horse racing betting, horse racing results, online horse racing, horse racing courses, horse racing training, horse race training techniques?.



Try to imagine what answers your readers need solved in your area of choice. You can get a quick idea of this by dropping into some forums and see what questions are being asked, and what areas have a problem to be solved.

Once you have this done, take a break and relax for a while. Go get a cup of your favourite beverage, and then when you are ready come back and start answering your questions and expanding on the ideas that you have written down. A great help at this stage is just to make rough notes, keywords if you like to remind you of your train of thought as you address the items. You could even use speech to text software or a PDA digital recorder at this point.

Next, you have a choice at this stage. You can either move on immediately, or you can put this worksheet to one side to use later, and perhaps go on a make another worksheet on another article topic.

The reason for this suggestion is that Article Directories are not keen on an author submitting more than two articles a week, as this allows everyone to get their fair share of submissions in and ?approved' without too much delay. In fact some of the top Internet Marketers only submit on average two articles in a month. Taking this approach will always give you a few ideas in store, so when you do sit down to actually write your article; the most difficult part is done. Sometimes you will find that you will be able to create two articles from the one worksheet.

When you come to actually write it, do so in a natural manner just as if you were talking to someone in front of you and advising them how to proceed in a step by step manner. Use interesting and lively language where possible, especially in the first paragraph which is sometimes picked up by RSS feeds and included with the title on the publishing site. Get keywords in there if you can, (though your lively introduction may not always allow you to make the best use of keywords).

Finally finish the article with a summary, or some words of wisdom and encouragement where possible, and check that you have at least 400 words written, (the minimum for most submissions).

It has been said that ?Failing to plan is planning to fail', but with a little planning writing an article doesn't have to be the mountain it appears to be. I think it was Socrates who said that, "Action equals knowledge." Don't major on the minors, just make a start. You'll arrive at the finish before you know it.