Over time, those newsletters grew into 2 books, which are now available in ebook and print. I have a third ebook out soon to be in print and with more coming.

But where Internet played such a vital role in books is this:

I attended my first VA Festival of Book on a Saturday. I was going for "Self-Publishers" day because that's how I chose to build my writing livelihood. I had pretty much conceded that I was going to have to spend $10,000.00 to purchase 5000 of my own books and then figure out how to market them. (Did I have a clue of where $10,000 was coming from, No.)

What happened that day changed my book writing and goals forever. It was there, that I learned about "Ebooks" and Print- on-Demand. I knew heaven had arrived that day.

I knew I could submit my book which was technically a series of newsletters I had already written, to a Print-on-Demand Company for around $200.00. That book would then be available in community bookstores for order, as well as online bookstores.

I left there a changed and happy person ! I published my first print book which was already an ebook, and selling, and that book, "Manifesting 101 & Beyond" has a 5 Star Rating by an Amazon top 500 reviewer. I then put out my 2nd ebook, which then also became my second paperback book. I now have a 3rd ebook due out in print soon, with many other books in various stages.

All Print-on-Demand books were written by me on my computer. I then downloaded book to companies putting it in book form. The Proof came back for me to edit, over computer. Then within a short period of time I had one in my hands, and it was available all over country and Internet.

Things just kept growing. I then began phone and email consulting based on my 2 newsletters & Books: "Manifesting 101 & Beyond", and "17 Seconds to Wt.Loss". The number of participants and rates have increased over months. I have focus groups that I designed based on a "Vortex Application" of which also is an income stream for me. TeleSeminars and tapes, and books-on-tape are scheduled for next 3 months.

Folks buy more books as they participate in other services as well. And now I am entering realm of Radio, where I get to talk about MY BOOKS !

All of this is a pure expression of what I came to do and to offer. I love it all so very, very much.

And it all began when I was out of work, naive about computers, and lastly sending out newsletters when I did not know what I was doing ! (sj)

Newsgroups - There are over 70,000 newsgroups. Most of these are worthless, but several thousand of them contain useful information and varied conversations. Lurk in any active newsgroup for a while and you should find something worthwhile to write about.

Yahoo and DMOZ - Visit any big directory site and you will find thousands of subjects to explore.

Egroups and Topica - There are thousands of email discussion lists available at these two sites. Sign up for a few and get articles ideas from them.

There are many other places to look for article ideas all over internet. I tend to avoid looking at things like ezines, ebooks and web sites for article ideas. Why? Because when I look for article ideas I am not looking for answers.

What I tend to look for is questions. What kind of questions are people asking? Is there a question which begs some further analysis and a little more explanation than a simple sentence? It does not matter if someone else has already answered, as my primary purpose is not to provide raw information.

My primary purpose is to help people understand. You can find out raw information from any number of books or encyclopedias, but finding out how to clean up clutter in your bedroom, well, that takes something different. That requires experience and knowledge passed from someone who has had to go through experience of cleaning many times, so many times that it has become easy.

Interestingly, I've found that television is not as worthwhile as one would expect for article ideas. Excluding a few reviews, I've found television to be a vast wasteland, void of anything but most trivial or violent concepts in our society. The exceptions are, of course, channels such as Nova, History channel and Discovery.

So next time you are trying to figure out something to write about for your own ezine, web site or ebook, just check out a newsgroup, elist or directory on a subject which you find interesting. Sooner or later, you will get an idea and you can start writing.