Abaminds

Here are more 22 lists you can get ideas from:

10 Life Lessons Learned While Camping by Ad Tracker -Lessons #1 and #8 might inspire some cooking-related stuff. Lessons #2, #5 and #9 could give you some nice ideas if you belong to the self-improvement niche. The whole post shows you how to turn an (apparently) ordinary event into content for your blog or site.

100 Ways to Personally Conquer Chaos at Work by Judy Martin – Despite being mentioned in the article’s title, “work” isn’t exactly its actual focus. It doesn’t take too much imagination to apply most of the post’s lessons and concepts to niches like spirituality and personal development. Many of the items listed just give you basic ideas without teaching you how to achieve the desired results (see for instance items #3, #13, #38, #63 and #95). Therefore you could research their respective how-tos and then write your own articles, or even e-books.

How to prepare for Christmas by Ajay – The 3rd suggestion might give some ideas to fitness-related site owners (”How To Get Fit For Christmas” comes to mind). Many webmasters could start a sort of campaign based on the 7th list item.

3 Things I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now by Stephen Hopson – This amusing post ends in a question. Answer it with your own post — or maybe shoot a video response and upload it to YouTube. In any case, this could be good material for both personal and niche sites. Also pay attention to the stories told in the article. There are questions in two of them. By imagining possible replies you could have more nice ideas, and I bet those would be perfect for humour blogs.

What you think is what you see: 4 Ways to stop negativity by Holli Jo – The author  illustrates some abstract concepts with a simple yet highly effective practical example — read the second paragraph to see what I mean. It would be great if you came up with more practical examples and real life situations to explain the 4 lessons taught in that post.

The Quitter’s Checklist by Em Dy – I confess this title misled me. I expected either a motivational article — to persuade people not to give up — or an ironic post meant to poke fun at quitters. As you’ll see, this post actually deals with another issue. That doesn’t mean you can’t write articles that meet one of my original expectations. Just make sure to create a new title. You may also read Em Dy’s list and write posts elaborating more on each item. Some of them — the 2nd and the 6th, for instance — would make good forum discussions, so keep this in mind if you are a moderator, admin or simply a member who wants to start new interesting threads.

5 Things That I Believe To Be Lies by Krizza – Another great source of forum threads is here. The article’s title itself could be used as a new topic. It’s also good for interviews, personality tests and surveys. All list items are very thought-provoking. The last ones might give you enough reasons to fill a whole book, especially if you are interested in religion. If parenting is your thing, you’ll certainly want to discuss #3.

3 Ways to Bring Back the Joy to the Holidays by Karen Lynch – I believe items #1 and #2 to be more inspiring than the final one. The former could prompt you to write something like “How to Feed Your Soul in Ten Steps.” The latter could you make you write an article about the opt-in and opt-out concepts. Or maybe two articles. Or even a whole series, who knows?

5 reasons (not) to drink coffee by Lodewijkvdb – This post mentions two medical researches in which women have been partially or totally ignored. Feminists — and pro-equality men — may want to discuss this subject. If you play in niches like health, science and medicine, you can research how usual (or not) such practise is. For some reason, I feel that humourists — especially the ones more inclined to mock the corporate world — might take some interesting ideas from the two lists in that article…

Form a running habit with seven easy steps by Shane Magee – See how well-structured this article is. The author makes good use of quotes, everyday situations and common sense to convey his message. Consequently, we have a post that is both motivational and practical. I advise you to study it and try to apply its effective style to an article aimed at your niche, no matter what it is. Alternatively, you can follow the post’s tips and report your results after some weeks. It would be good for sport-related sites and personal blogs or podcasts.

5 Surefire Ways To Increase Comments On Your Blog by Vijay – You could write or podcast a response to this article from a commenter’s point of view. Or you could debate whether those tips work in your niche or not.

100 Ways To Promote A Startup by Jason Drohn – Do everything (or at least most things) that the author suggests and write a book explaining exactly the ups and downs of each tip. Do everything again — just switching to a different niche — and repeat the process. Choose yet another niche and repeat again. In a few years you’ll have created a complete marketing series.

10 Ways To Work Through Your Workout by Gal Josefsberg – Are you a podcaster looking for more listeners? Read this list’s 3rd and 5th items. Both might give you some promotion ideas.

9 Ways To Achieve Success in Life by Adebola Oni – Item #5 is rather controversial. Many might argue that listening to (some) critics may actually help you achieve success in life. The discussion of this topic would fit in several types of forums and blogs.

5 Crash Course Tips in Viral Marketing by John Murch – A post that (nearly) all content producers looking for more traffic could read and discuss. The techniques mentioned by the author might be debated on a webmasters forum or mailing list. You could evaluate the tips’ effectiveness and/or suggest other tactics, preferably niche-oriented ones.

Top 23 Motivation Tips, Tricks and Tactics from the Blogosphere by Mike Ambrose – I like the kind of research the author did in order to build his post. It’s the sort of thing that most bloggers could do too. Why don’t you try? Appart from it, you’ll see that many (if not all) of the topics listed in the article are good creativity sparkers, as they deal with things that most of us can relate to. As an example, you could try something like “How to Reward Yourself After Completing a Task.”

5 Blogging Ups, 5 Blogging Downs, and 10 Blogging Tips by Albert Foong – It could also be named “How to Publish an Off-Topic Article on Your Blog And Make Your Readers Thank You For That.” I’m serious: the post is off-topic indeed, yet it was well-received by the author’s readers. Study this case and see if you can try something similar on your site.

150 Funniest Resume Mistakes, Bloopers and Blunders Ever by Jacob Share – If you don’t get too distracted laughing at all those mistakes (like I did), you’ll see just how many things you could do based on this post: article series, videos, comic strips, illustration series, forum threads… you name it.

Six Savvy Reasons Why You Should Travel Light by Sheila Beal – Since I’m a non-native English speaker, there are several expressions I’m not familiar with. “Traveling light” used to be one of them. When I first read this article’s title, for a brief moment I thought it dealt with the possibility of using light as a means of transportation. Naturally, this made me think that the author should be crazy. Well, I hope this little confession of mine will give you some (humourous) ideas. Regarding the article itself, I must highlight an interesting tactic employed on it: ending most tips by explicitly stating the benefits one would get from them. Bloggers and non-fiction writers could try this as a way to improve their pieces.

12 Wordpress Editors you can choose by Karthik – Leverage this post by starting a blog editor review series. Don’t simply write superficial reviews; go for in-depth analysis of features, hidden gems, advantages and limitations. Add several screenshots to your posts. Alternatively, make video reviews.

17 POWER Tips For StumbleUpon Beginners by Dr. Mani – This article’s structure may come in handy for beginning bloggers and/or for those struggling with blogger’s block: create a very basic list compiling common-sense knowledge about a popular topic, and enhance each list item by linking to longer posts published on other blogs. I’ve done it myself (on another blog) and the results were great. It may work for you too.

10 Ways to Survive the Writers’ Strike by Cynthia Boris – A pretty inspiring post, for several reasons: it turns a current news issue into a piece that will be amusing even after the news get old; there is humour in it; some tips sound rather absurd, but all of them are perfectly doable. Therefore, it’s a good read for bloggers and writers who want to improve themselves. Besides, by following some of the post’s tips you’ll have a lot to write or podcast about — see #2 and #7.

More inspiring lists will be analysed in the last part of this series. Don’t miss it; subscribe to Abamind’s feed. *hint, hint*

Posted on December 16th, 2007 by Karen Zara
Filed under: Ideas and Inspiration | 6 Comments »

One of the easiest ways to get new ideas is to read what others have written. You can create your own content by responding, debating, following up, complementing, improving or twisting those reads. Note that this is completely different from stealing or copying someone else’s ideas. What I propose is an honest and traditional way to find inspiration. Or do you think that each and every piece of creative work available in the world is the result of entirely original ideas?

This post itself isn’t based upon a fresh concept. Far from it. You certainly have read this kind of tip other times, on other places (and it’s very possible that you’ve tried it yourself). As you can see, I’m applying my suggestion to my own article. And I won’t stop here: I plan to link to recommended sources of inspiration in a regular basis from now on. This way I’ll be producing new content for Abaminds while showing you where to find ideas. Of course I’ll always give credits and free links to my sources — and you should do the same.

Let’s get started by seeing which ideas we can take from 66 articles submitted to Litemind’s Lists Group Writing Project:

5 Ways To Win A Blog Contest by Erz – You could debate the tip about expectations (do you think it is a “too humble” way to see things?). Or the next tip, about big contests not necessarily being better than smaller ones. If you’ve ever hold a contest, the whole post might give you some food for thought, as it’s been written from an entrant’s point of view.

5 Reasons Why I Bought a Domain by WishBoNe – Do you relate to any of the author’s statements? Could you add other reasons to the list? Could you write a list of 5 reasons why one shouldn’t buy a domain?

Twelve Days of Classic Country Christmas by Scott – Good topic for music-related sites and for personal blogs, for more than obvious reasons. Do you like (or dislike) any of those songs? Would you replace any list items for other pieces? What if you compiled some links to related music videos?

A Tester’s Dream – 5 steps to revive a Rejected Bug! by Debasis Pradhan – Make no mistake: despite dealing with software testing, this article’s tips can be easily related and applied to several niches, such as business, marketing, writing and work. If you can draw, you may create a comic strip about a bug report.

My Five Wish-list Classes I Would Enroll In by Al – Speaking of comic strips, the fist item on Al’s list could give any artist plenty of inspiration. But all items are very inspiring and suitable to various niches, like humour, fiction writing, education (in a pretty heterodox way) etc. A short film based on that wishlist might be very cool.

The Top Ten Internet Business Ideas by John – I know many people who don’t think #4 is a good idea and some who’d say #7 is a waste of time. If you belong to one — or both — groups, why don’t you write an article to express your opinion? Another option is to take each list item and discuss how sites in your niche could benefit from them.

Lovecraft & Cthulhu Christmas List by Cullen Bunn – This is a very original Christmas wishlist, and shows you how to apply a supercommon practise — gift lists in this case — to a very specific niche. Create your own niche-centric list. Or use this list as a basis for a review series. Of course, if you do it you’ll have to purchase (or borrow) at least some of the products listed. It might be well worth doing if you’re into creepy stuff, and most especially if your site or blog can host this kind of content.

10 Productive Ways for Moms to “Relax” by Neena – The final tip is very, very good. A mum could easily try this and then blog about the results. If she truly enjoyed it, she might end up starting a new blog on the subject, and/or writing an amusing book about the experience. Tip #9 could also give parents — or anyone who takes care of children — enough ideas to fill an entire blog or site.

100 Motivators for Informal Learning by Marcel Ackermann – Among all of 100 items, which ones would actually motivate you to learn things by yourself? Would you be able to come up with even more motivators, as suggested in the final item? Alternatively, you could take the 100 existing items, divide them into groups and then write articles discussing each group. Note, for instance, that many of the motivators deal with self-confidence and even vanity. What do you think about it? If your site belongs to educational niches, how could you use those motivators to help teachers and/or students?

My Top-10 Personal Development Blogs by Marco – The idea here is the most obvious one: create your own list of personal development blogs. Since there are much more than 10 of them on the Internet, you won’t find any difficulties in creating a totally different list, especially if you decide to focus on lesser-known sites. Another obvious idea would be writing detailed reviews about each blog listed on Marco’s post.

Thirteen Reasons Why WordPress is Superior To Blogger by JHS – If you are a huge Blogger fan, could you write a good response to this list? Same goes for other blog platforms’ supporters. In case you’re a happy WordPress user, you can always write a bigger list of reasons for this.

Top 7 Paid Review Writing Mistakes You Can Avoid  by Prince John – Do you publish paid reviews on your blog? Read this list, analyse your own reviews, see if you are guilty of any of those mistakes and then blog about your honest self-analysis.

List of Classes by Priscilla Palmer – This is the blog meme Al responded in his post (see above). The difference is that Priscilla took a more serious approach. You could take the meme and respond it as it is, or twist it a bit (maybe a lot). What if you listed five classes you’d like to teach?

5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password by Aseem Kishore – Are you truly bold (or crazy)? Then lose your admin password on purpose, try one of this post’s tips and the blog about the results. If you’re not that bold (or crazy), create a fictional character who is and shoot/draw/write a comedy about his/her attempts to recover lost passwords.

10 Things To Consider Before Acting As Your Own Contractor by Shawn Van Dyke – This is another post that could inspire you to produce a comedy. However, if you want to take it seriously, try to be your own contractor. I guarantee that after such an experience you will have enough material to write a whole book, no matter if you succeed or not.

100 Things To Write A List Of 100 About by Kotsengkuba – This list is already too challenging, so I won’t add any suggestions this time. Just read Kotsengkuba’s post… and good luck if you try to write about the proposed topics.

100 Things to do Before I Die by Joseph Gibbs – Those before-I-die lists are very popular nowadays. You can always write your own. Or draw it. Or even create a game out of it.

7 Seven tips for students to success by Xoel Cardigan – If you’re a moderator at a teen forum, mention this list and wait for the reactions. Besides teen-related sites, this post may also be relevant to niches like parenting and education. Humour, of course, is another natural option.

5 Ways to Become the Perfect Idiot by Lori – Do ways #4 and #5 ring a bell? I bet many of you said “yes.” And most women — especially the married ones — would also agree with #3. You can expand on those subjects. Or on the whole list, as there are certainly much more than 5 ways to become a perfect idiot.

100List – 100 Things I can do to make more money by Dj Wright – There is a lot to be debated about this list (with 100 items, what would you expect?). Many writers might argue the profitability of #13, #14 and #15, among others. Conservative ladies and gentlemen may dislike #17 and #85, while others would admit that both are profitable indeed. Internet marketing gurus would say that #58 isn’t necessary — as long as you buy their products, of course. As you can see, there are many sources of ideas inside this post. You could even try all of the tips (that would be really, really hard to achieve, but who knows?)  and then report the results.

Your Top 10 Inspirational Quotes by Sparky – Great for those who play in the personal development niche. But I can easily see how a humourist could twist all those quotes.

Get out of debt Quick: 7 Tips by Tejvan – Tips #3, #4 and #5 would drive many people desperate. That might be a good plot for a fictional video. *smirks* And depending on your niche, you may have good reasons to write articles in response to this one. For instance, if you own a site or forum about cars, why don’t you try to prove #4 wrong (if you can)?

Six Simple Steps to Remembering and Living the Abundant Life You are Meant to Live by Anita Pathik Law – Since this post is rahter abstract, you could try to translate it into practical things that one could do to achieve the same results.

13 encouraging questions by Isabella Mori – Each and every of these questions could inspire a whole new article, for they are very inspiring indeed. You could use them to create content for niches such as personal development, family and parenting, dating and relationships, work, religion and spirituality, just to name a few. And if you own a personal blog, this article is definitely something you’ll want to write about.

The second part of this series is coming soon. In the meanwhile, feel free to share your own suggestions on how to explore the posts listed above.

Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Karen Zara
Filed under: Ideas and Inspiration | 10 Comments »

Among the 67 articles submitted to Litemind’s Lists Group Writing Project, these are my favourite ones (in no particluar order):

- 18 Tips to Become a Productive Blogger by Monika Mundell -> The tips are presented in a logical order and some are rather unusual.

- 12 Wordpress Editors you can choose by Karthik -> What this article lacks in originality is compensated by its usefulness.

- Best 101 Lists by Pearl -> Meta-listing at its best.

- 13 encouraging questions by Isabella Mori -> Not only encouraging, but also thought-provoking.

- 15 Tips to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by CSS -> A good example of how to turn a personal problem into blogging inspiration.

- 100 Things To Write A List Of 100 About by Kotsengkuba -> Very inspiring.

- 50 Ways to Start a Conversation by Dee -> This list would be of great help for most people.

- 26 ways to change the world by Chris -> Things that everyone should keep in mind.

All participants were entitled to vote for at least 3 articles, but I just had to pick more. And I had to leave many good posts out of my final list, otherwise I’d end up voting for all of them (except for mine, of course).

My next post will contain links to all entries, plus tips on how to use each of them as sources of content ideas.

Posted on December 3rd, 2007 by Karen Zara
Filed under: Group Writing Projects | 3 Comments »

I’m sure you’ve seen this trick many times: someone writes a headline such as “Don’t Read This!” or creates a banner that reads “Don’t Click Here!,” causing several people to do exactly the opposite.

Curiosity killed the cat and may make you waste your time on something that isn’t even remotely worth it. Yet those sentences work. So I’d like to propose a simple two-step exercise:

1. Think about the kind of content that can be titled “Don’t [insert action here].” It could be an article (”Don’t Read It”), a video (”Don’t Watch This Video”), a podcast (”Don’t Listen It”), a thumbnail that leads to a certain image (”Don’t View This Pic”)… anything you are able to produce.

2.  Now create some content that can be titled like that, but do it in such a way that your visitors won’t feel fooled. Don’t let it be a waste of their precious time. Make them feel rewarded for their curiosity.

Why would you wish to try this? Because if you pack some high-quality stuff under a don’t-do-it title, chances are some of those curious visitors will be so glad at their discovery that they will return to your site. And next time they hit your pages you won’t have to play tricks again, for you’ll have already won their trust. Just make sure that you won’t disappoint them, of course.

If you ever put this little idea into practice, please let me know. I happen to be a quite curious person. Yes, it means I’d want to find out what you might have hidden under a don’t-do-it headline.  *hint, hint*

Posted on December 2nd, 2007 by Karen Zara
Filed under: Ideas and Inspiration | 4 Comments »