The first step in writing an article is finding a topic or subject, something to write about. This might seem to be a huge task, but it does not need to be. There are many different avenues to finding a topic. The ability to use them will help you overcome your fear and enable you to start developing ideas for writing article.

One avenue to finding a topic is to brainstorm. I used this method when I taught Sophomore creative writing classes in high school. It requires you to think of as many topics as possible, concentrating on compiling a list of ideas as quickly as posssible. Write these ideas down as you think of them. You can judge (quality) of them later.

Now that you have a list of topics, you will want to go over them and choose one you want to write about. Once you have chosen topic, your next step is to outline. This gives you an opportunity to record, organize, and evaluate your topic before actual writing. For example, you may start by choosing general subject "ezines." As you outline your article, you will need to find a part of general subject to write about. For example, from "ezines," you might choose one of following:

What is an ezine? How to publish an ezine Ezine Ads Ezine subscribers

Once you have chosen a specific topic on which to write, you should decide on reason or purpose for writing. A purpose for writing an article usually falls into one of four groups: to describe something, to tell a story about something, to explain something, or to persuade your readers to do something. For example, let us say you chose to write about ezine subscribers. You purpose for writing article may one of following:

How to obtain subscribers for your ezine. How to keep subscribers once you have them.

With your purpose in mind, you should write a sentence that states your main idea. When you are ready to start writing your article, you may use this sentence as topic sentence In addition, sentence will help you to organize your thoughts and ideas In writing about ezine subscribers, you might write one of following topic sentences.

The subscribers are life blood of an ezine. An exine and its subscriber base are two parts of a single whole.

So far, internet professionals have been able to narrow reasons to fear of unknown, extra work, no time, lack of trust, and 'pain-in-the-butt' factor. What does each of these mean and what can you do to ensure that you are getting as many sign ups as possible?

Fear of unknown. When a visitor fills out a form and clicks on submit button he/she has no idea where they will end up. Some forms redirect them to another website, some to a thank you page that leaves visitor hopelessly lost and others to an ERROR page. So why do some visitors hesitate to fill out forms? Fear of unknown.

Extra work. As a website marketer, I would like to know each of my customer's first name, last name, email address, telephone number, fax number, postal address, likes and dislikes and lots of other information. This way I can market to them more effectively. If I were to ask potential subscribers to my newsletter for all of information that I would like, do you think they would take time to fill out a 50 part sign up form? Not likely. It involves too much extra work.

No time. No one has time to waste these days. We don't have time to sleep, don't have enough time for kids, don't have time for spouse and certainly don't have time to fill out a form to receive a newsletter that we don't have time to read in first place.

So our challenge as internet marketers is to persuade our potential subscribers that this is 'must have' information that is easy to get, and doesn't take a lot of time to read.

Lack of trust. The internet is a faceless, almost anonymous way of doing business. You have to build a trust level with your visitor in shortest time possible. If your website has minimal information about you, your location, or your company and doesn't look 100% professional, it is hard to build up a trust level with your visitor. They are not sure what you will do with information that they give you. You have to overcome their lack of trust.