Before you even start writing an article, obviously you need to select a niche and do your research. I started out in the Forex robot niche, because I'm an experienced Forex trading systems developer and I had a good starting understanding of how everything works, what people basically want and how to identify good programs to recommend. It's best if you start out with something that you're passionate about, or something you have a lot of experience in, or ideally both. If you totally have zero experience in a niche, then you're going to have a hard time writing for it.

Here's my "formula" for writing an article, and if you can write one article doing this, you can write hundreds. I start out with my keyword research, I use the WA keyword tool to find 2 or 3 keywords that have less than 500 quoted results in Google. Typically these are the keywords that have a high article score as well. Next, armed with my keywords, I open up Rapid writer and key in my keywords in the phrases to watch area. Rapid Writer requires you to have a campaign name and article name before you start writing, but don't get stuck here, just name it campaign 1 and article 1 and you're good to go.

To generate ideas for my articles, I'll normally just enter my keyword into Ezinearticles' search and see what pops up at the top. I'll read 3-4 of the first articles that catch my eye, and from this little exercise I'll have my article idea. What this does for me is that it helps me form an opinion on something. It's hard to just come up with something from scratch, but it's easy to read something, have an opinion on it, and write a response whether you agree, disagree, if the previous writers have missed something, if you can expound on that line of thinking, etc. Don't worry if you are short of ideas after 3-4 articles, just keep reading more, or pick another keyword if nothing comes up.

Another great outlet I use to get ideas for my articles are Forums. You can find the popular forums in DMOZ.org by looking under Chats & Discussion Boards for that particular niche. I tend to frequent the beginners section of the forums a lot, because beginner questions are the easiest to answer and they are often the most responsive and hungry to pay for a solution. Again, what you're looking for is a question or an issue that will trigger an opinion that you can write about.