Writing is hard.
But so is creating anything after you’ve been doing it for a while. You’ll eventually run low on ideas and need a little boost.
Ask any successful creative person what they do when they run out of ideas. They will tell you that the key to making it look easy is having a system and using tools.
And an Idea Machine is one of the most important tools in their kit.
Have you ever run out of ideas?
It’s a miserable feeling.
You sit down with your fresh pad & pen and start tapping yourself on the head:
“Think, think, think.”
Doing the dishes, laundry, and mowing the grass all seem like better options than just sitting there so you put down your pen and get up.
Idea Machines
What the hell is an Idea Machine?
An Idea Machine is something you can use to help you create new ideas.
A collection of successful and inspiring tweets, articles, or blog posts.
The largest online retailer in the world where the customers tell you exactly what they want and need.
A website that lists software products and services that have been created and released to the world.
A website that lists proven successful websites that are for sale.
And it’s all this info is free for the taking.
The magic isn’t in the info itself, it’s in what your brain does with it once it has been exposed to it.
Homegrown
You can spend some time and build your own.
The easiest personal idea machine is your Gmail account. When you get an idea send yourself an email. Read an interesting tweet or article? Send yourself a link. Tag these emails as “Ideas” and put them into a special folder. When you’re running low on ideas, scan through that folder and see what jumps out. Your brain will take over allowing you to get back to work.
Amazon
Use Amazon’s advanced search feature to poke around in their database of books.
It is a free, publicly available idea machine that so many writers don’t even think to use.
Search on some of your favorite topic keywords.
Use the search results to feed your brain.
I use book titles as input into my headline generation process.
A book that is performing well on Amazon has had the title fiddled with and fussed over by the author and potentially an editor.
Scan the titles and ask yourself the following questions:
What titles jump out at me?
Which ones just lay flat?
The jumpers are keepers.
Save them and use them for inspiration.
User reviews on Amazon are gold.
Ignore the 5-star reviews, most of them are fake (paid reviews).
The 4-star and below reviews are pure gold. Not many companies are paying for shitty reviews on Amazon (at least for now, but will eventually change), so they are the only ones that I think are real feedback. Read with a suspicious eye though.
Amazon reviews provide years of user feedback that you can use to craft articles that people are dying to read.
How do we know they are dying to read on these topics?
Because they are telling us so right there in the review.
Read them and find the pain points.
ProductHunt
The software developers love Product Hunt.
If you’re a developer and struggling to come up with a product idea, head over to Product Hunt.
Look at what’s trending.
Go to the sites, sign up for newsletters, get in their funnel, follow them on Twitter, and find out what they are doing to attract interest.
Use the product. What do you like? What do you hate? What can be done better?
Some of the best products on earth do one thing well.
Flippa
Flippa has been around and is the #1 site on the web for buying and selling websites, blogs, SaaS, Google AdSense, and affiliate sites.
Most of them are already making money.
If you are an experienced blogger/internet marketer, you can buy a site to save some time. Then put your energy into boosting its performance. Then flip it or keep working on it as part of your portfolio.
I spend a little time on Flippa every week looking at what has sold.
I also use it to discover niches that I can use to build starter sites that I later sell.
What I’m Watching
Stumbled across Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 this past weekend. It isn’t great, but it was entertaining. I remember 1999 like it was yesterday. The bands, the music, the culture. But by 1999 I was married with a baby and focused on work as opposed to partying. Glad I didn’t attend in person. What a shit show.
What I’m Reading
I might be the only person on earth at this point that hasn’t read Atomic Habits by James Clear. If you don’t know James’s backstory, he’s an insanely successful writer and newsletter publisher. He suffered an injury in high school that temporarily derailed his baseball ambitions. Adopting a series of “tiny habits”, he clawed his way back and had an incredibly successful collegiate baseball experience. It’s great so far, I now see why so many people have fallen in love with the book. Like sitting with a friend and listening to him talk.
I read and respond to emails. Reach out any time.
Thanks for reading, hope you have a great week.
Travis
I finally made it here! Have you heard of “Second Brain”?
https://youtu.be/vs8WQh2k-Ow
Also, you might like Empire Flippers: https://empireflippers.com/marketplace/
I dug into flippa but decided it wasn’t for me because I’m not a writer and wouldn’t enjoy creating the copy. There’s definitely money to be made there though. I’m following Jen Leach on Medium and she has some interesting personal stories about flipping sites on both Flippa and Empire flippers.
So I found my niche to gain financial freedom. Am building another that is less service oriented and hoping to spend the winter working on it.
Glad I finally made it here!