Deadlines are Important
When you are looking for content to go into your website, time tends not be an issue.  Obviously you want to add the initial content as soon as possible, but additional content can be added in your own time.  This is not the case when you are producing a regular news letter or eziine.  For these items it is similar to producing a newspaper or magazine with a deadline to meet.  Missing a deadline is a major blow to the credibility of your site, in the same way that regular and consistent publication dates build trust and anticipation.  Many readers will create a separate folder for your newsletters and any irregularity in dates will be pretty obvious.

Inspiration to Order
So now you have a problem, you can’t wait for inspiration, you have to create it! The secret of the successful ezine publisher is not to get into this scenario as writers block can be frightening and stop you from creating anything other than a blank screen.
First you need to appreciate that inspiration can neither be made to order, nor does it flow consistently.  Some days ideas will pour out of you, whilst other times it is hard to even sit at the keyboard. So the secret is to store up the ideas when they arrive and use these on the days when the screen is blank.  You don’t need to store finished products, but instead think more in terms of a scrapbook.  This scrapbook will contain snippets of text or keywords that you uncover during the creative times. I find that great sources of snippets are those phrases, sentences and paragraphs that you edit out of articles as being off target or too detailed.  These can easily form complete articles in their own write.

Many Peices Can Make a Whole
If you are really short of material, then instead of trying to send out one single article, why not create a set of individual snippets.  Your readers may also like the idea of several smaller ideas for a change.  Each idea can backed up with a relevant product or promotion and so an ezine consisting of a  set of small ideas can probably support a greater range of promotions.  Don’t get carried away though because the smaller text backup will weaken your sales for each product.  You can see this taken to the extreme where ezines consist of a just headings each of which is followed by one or more product links.  I don’t know how successful these are, but they seem mostly associated with spam mail which deals in millions of targets.

Start at The End
Another good source of inspiration is to start with the products that you might potentially promote.  Read about what the product does and how it goes about it.  Then step back and think about what problems the product is solving.  The problem, or opportunity that you find can then form the basis of the article.  Put yourself in the position of the potential buyer, and imagine how they are currently operating.  Describe their current work practice, if you can identify with it, then cast your mind back and describe similar scenarios from your experiences.  This allows you to write in the first person and allows the reader to empathise with you.  Once you have described the problem or opportunity write about what is required to resolve it.  The bottom line will be that you are describing how the product works.  The conclusion then becomes a simple sales line that suggests that this product might be sensible solution that could solve the problem and make life better.

Your Own Snippet Goldmine
Even if you don’t have enough material in its own right, you will certainly have enough to form a snippet.  So where are you going to store these golden nuggets of information?  The obvious answer is to create a simple folder marked ‘ideas’ and dump it all in there.  The problem you will quickly realise, come with accessing and cross referencing this goldmine of information, so that that you can easily put together material when inspiration is having trouble reaching you!
So what is the simple sales line for this article?  I couldn’t finish without suggesting a product that could help you to manage your snippets, URLs and edit bits etc.  I wouldn’t be fair on you, would it ?   So todays recommended product is - DocsPDLite. This is a shareware text management system and the Vista version has just been released.