Writing articles is a big part of many online business models. It’s one of the cheapest ways to attract attention from potential customers and the search engines. Cheap doesn’t always mean easy, however. Getting inspiration for your articles is often a major challenge.

I have a lot of sources that I use. I won’t get inspiration from every technique every time, and sometimes it’s just flat out a case of writer’s block, but having a few ways to find something to write about really helps.

Write Ideas Down When They Happen

I really have to get better about this one. Article ideas come about at the most inconvenient times. Carrying a little notebook and pen makes it possible to catch some of those inconveniently timed ideas. You still aren’t going to easily catch the ones that come while you’re driving down the freeway, but it’s a help.

Some people like to keep a notepad and pen by their bed too. A light up pen can be a great help, so you don’t have to turn on a light if inspiration strikes in the middle of the night. My kids are a bit young for that one to work well for me. My youngest is great for scribbling on all paper within reach, with whatever writing materials she can find, and they will usually wander off with her.

I’m great for coming up with ideas when I can’t possibly write them down even if I were behaving better about it. Same syndrome as remembering I need to call someone at 11 at night, I suppose.

Read

If you need inspiration, read. Then read more. Read every chance you get, and it doesn’t all have to be about your niche. Sometimes the things you read outside your niche for pleasure will inspire ideas you can use for your business.

You can read articles written for other sites in your niche, but don’t copy them. You can take a point and expand upon it in more detail, or do a better job of explaining the information. If I’m inspired by something in someone else’s writing, there’s one of two ways I will handle it. I may note the basic idea it gave me, and come back to it another day, so I’ll have a fresh perspective and not simply regurgitate what I just read. Or I may run with it immediately and credit the other article as appropriate. You want to keep your ideas as your own, and give credit where credit is due.

Reading forums related to your niche works as well. So do sites such as Yahoo Answers. You can find out what questions people have about it, and write up the answer in an article.

The news is another great place to get ideas. What’s happening in the world? What’s new in your niche? How can you use that information?

Keyword Research

Keyword research can provide a number of ideas, and there are a few ways to go about it. You can type your keyword into Google and see what comes up on the instant suggestion list. You can use the Wonder Wheel search tool they provide in the list off to the left of your searches. You can use their AdWords keyword tool to find more keywords.

If you want to make your research a bit easier, I suggest using Market Samurai. I have it and love it. There are occasional frustrations with it, and it will take some time for it to come up with all the data (generating it takes time), but once you have the list, you might find something that will inspire you, or at least give you fresh perspective on keywords you might want to start targeting.

Site Statistics

Your website statistics are often full of inspiration if you just look at them. How are people finding your site? Any keywords you never considered? Any questions you could be answering in more detail than the page it originally landed the visitor on?

However things go for you, don’t just say you don’t have any inspiration to write. If you can’t write full articles, write titles. If you can’t write titles, research places you can find ideas. Don’t just let a lack of inspiration hold you back. There’s always something to do.

Things have been pretty hectic around my home lately. Finding time to work has been challenging, to put it mildly. Birthday parties, toddler with pneumonia (she’s fine now, thanks), life in general have combined to put a real dent into my working hours. It’s with a bit of determination that I’m writing this now, because I can’t leave my work undone for too long.

Whenever my life gets crazy, I try to remember how luck I am to be a mom working from home. Lots of moms want this but can’t get it. Sure it’s exhausting at times, frustrating many times, and not many people realize just how much work it all is unless they’ve done it themselves.

So I like to say moms who work from home are amazing for many good reasons.

1. They take chances.

Working at home is almost always a gamble. It doesn’t matter if you have a work at home job, telecommute or have started a business. It’s a risk.

Finding a legitimate way to earn money from home is a risk, whether it’s through finding a work at home job or starting a business. Telecommuting from a job you had before is a risk, as you’re less visible than if you worked in the office. You don’t know how things are going to go or if working at home will really work out for you on a personal level. It’s a huge change from working outside the home.

2. They combine child care with earning a living.

All moms work hard on raising their families, but working at home means you’re working where you live, and the kids are often right there. Not always, certainly, as they may go to school or you may even have them in daycare some of the time so you can be productive.

Many work at home moms have the children home with them all day, yet still manage to hold down their job or run their business. It’s adding your work hours onto the more than full time work of being a stay at home mom, and it’s challenging. It means a lot of late nights or early mornings to get something done while everyone else is sleeping. It’s figuring out how to distract the kids so you can work a while and making the most of nap time when they’re young enough for that.

But it’s also showing your children that you can be home with your kids and earn a living, or try to. It’s coping with the difficult times when the work just isn’t there or business has gone down, and showing your kids that you don’t give up.

Most of us don’t pretend that it’s easy every day because even when we enjoy the time with our families and enjoy the work, sometimes it all piles up and there’s no time for the fun stuff. Yet it’s still not worth trading for an outside the home job.

3. They’re showing working at home is real work.

For a long time, many people have considered working at home to be less than professional. It was something you did when the kids didn’t need you, more of a hobby than anything serious. Now moms such as Heather Armstrong from Dooce and Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, have shown that a serious, respectable business can be run from home. Less visible but frankly more important are the many moms running other kinds of businesses from home successfully and professionally.

Even more open minded managers are recognizing that moms can work from home, often more productively than at the office. It doesn’t work for all jobs, and many can only be partial telecommute, but it has been shown that telecommuting can be a valuable way to keep employees happy and productive.

There’s still a ways to go in many areas, as many people don’t realize how professional a home based mother can be, but the situation has improved from what it was in years past.