When I speak to others about writing articles, I’m often told “there is just nothing to write about.

One of the top article writers on the web, Lance Winslow has written over 8500 articles in the last few years. So certainly there are topics to write about.

What field are you in? Do you sell children’s books? You could write about every children’s author both past and present. You could write about teaching children to love reading. You could write about the history of the binding of books.

Do you sell sporting equipment? You could write about every professional and college sport team out there. You could write about every athlete out there. Those two categories would keep you busy for months.

One of my favorite tips is to read message boards whose topic is the topic of your field. Read what folks are asking and what folks are talking about. If a question is asked, write about it. If one person has the question, I can guarantee others do too. If a specific topic is being talked about by a group of 5 people, I can guarantee there are plenty of others out there also talking about this topic.

Visit websites that cater to your market. What is being offered on those sites? Write about it. For example, when I visit other scrapbook sites, I very often see “themes” as a category. People want ideas on themes for scrapbooks. I see this over and over again. So, I’ve written articles on how to choose a scrapbook theme.

When I visit parenting websites, parents want to know how to institute discipline and how to develop routines. I’ve written articles on both topics.

Visit your local Borders and take a look at the trade magazines for your field. What is being talked about? What is making front covers? Write about it.

I believe articles should be short, precise and about one topic. Articles are not full length books. Make a goal to find 10 topics in your field that you can write about. Start with just the titles. Develop 10 titles for articles. Now start adding information about these topics. Next put it together into article format. You’ve now got 10 articles ready to submit.

Neither you nor I will ever hit the 8500 mark like Lance has, but we certainly can shoot for the several hundred mark.