It's amazing how quickly free articles can generate traffic - my traffic sometimes triples within 24 hours of releasing a new article.

But if free articles are your main marketing technique, you may run into a problem - how to come up with new ideas.

Yesterday an interviewer asked me in an email: "How does someone come up with topic ideas? What do you do, for example?"

This was my reply:

The key to coming up with topic ideas for your articles is to be very aware of what you yourself are learning. As you know, e-commerce is a huge area and we're all learning new things every day. Every time you learn something new, write a short article about it. Because there are almost certainly other people who are going to have to learn what you just learned and your article is going to make it much easier for them to get that information.

The other thing to do is pay close attention to the questions people ask you. For example, I had a question last week from a man in the UK who wanted to know how to use articles to promote an affiliate link. So I answered his question and then wrote an article titled: 'How To Boost Your Affiliate Sales With Free Articles'.

You may notice that I'm using this technique here. Yesterday someone asked me a question and today I'm writing an article about it. It's that simple!

Here are five great ideas for your next article:

(1) Write a Book/Product Review

This is an endless source of new articles. Every time you see a new eBook, write to the author and ask if you can have a 'review copy' (this is also an excellent way to get free copies of the latest new eBooks).

Writing a book review is really very easy - just summarize the points that most impressed you. You can see some examples of book reviews at:

http://www.freezineweb.com/article41.html http://www.freezineweb.com/article44.html http://www.freezineweb.com/article46.html

(2) Do an Interview