Collecting Ideas For Your Online E-Book Business

If you're going to have a successful online information marketing (e-Book) business, you have to have something to market, and usually that something begins in the form of an idea. Ideas can be like fireflies on a hot summer night. You never know where they're going to be when they light up, and you can only hope that you'll be in the right place to catch it when it comes your way. But unlike fireflies, you can greatly improve your odds of catching the random great idea by preparing for it and being ready to catch it at any time. Once an idea flits through your cranium, you've got to do something with it or it will die before it gets out of your head. You may feel like you don't have enough ideas, or at least that you never have any ideas worth marketing. But realistically, most people have more and better ideas than they give themselves credit for. Usually the problem is that you don't realize when a usable idea is going through your head. You can't let any ideas slip by without recording them, because you never know which one will be the big one. That's why you have to catch them on the fly as they happen. If you don't, then they will probably be gone forever. You might think that you can keep them in your head and remember them later, but if you're like most other humans on this planet, something will come up before the end of the day that will bump that million-dollar idea off the top of the heap. Then before you know it the most important thing rumbling around in your head is your grocery list. You need a way of harvesting or collecting your ideas as they happen. I usually carry a small notebook around with me wherever I go. Of course you need a pencil or pen too! Or, you could join the 21st century and keep your ideas on a palm or pocket pc or one of the many small electronic devices that's all the rage these days. Each method has it's advantages and disadvantages. The benefit of the electronic method is that once you've jotted your ideas down you can easily transfer them to your workstation or laptop without having to type them all in again. One word of caution, though...keep your batteries fresh (or charged), and keep your device synced so you won't lose all those great ideas. The benefit of the paper method is obvious...no batteries, no back-ups, and no operating system to learn. Personally, even though I'm a big fan of technology on my desk and in my home, I've found that I'm quite the luddite when it comes to electronics that I have to carry around. So for me at least, it will always be the pen and paper. Once you get in the habit of jotting down all the ideas that come through your head, you'll be surprised at how many ideas you actually have. Granted, most of them won't really end up going anywhere, but like everything, it's a numbers game...the more you have, the better your chances of coming up with a winner. Even the princess had to kiss a lot of frogs before she found the prince! Sometimes your ideas will come faster than you can jot them down, which is frustrating, but you have to look at the big picture: at least you're recording some of your ideas now, which is way better than how it used to be. You'll find that ideas began to come more easily, because now you're on the lookout for them. Common everyday occurances that used to just slip by unnoticed can become the catalyst for the next idea that might just be the big one. Plus, once you're in the habit of paying attention to your creative side, you might find that sometimes multiple ideas will begin to ping-pong around in your head and synthesize into a single winner of an idea. And after all, isn't that what it's all about...catching the million-dollar idea? Till next time...Success to you! -Ted