If youre going to have a successful online information marketing (e-Book) business, you have to have something to market, and usually that something begins in the form of an idea.

Ideas can be like fireflies on a hot summer night. You never know where theyre going to be when they light up, and you can only hope that youll be in the right place to catch it when it comes your way. But unlike fireflies, you can greatly improve your odds of catching the random great idea by preparing for it and being ready to catch it at any time.

Once an idea flits through your cranium, youve got to do something with it or it will die before it gets out of your head. You may feel like you dont have enough ideas, or at least that you never have any ideas worth marketing. But realistically, most people have more and better ideas than they give themselves credit for. Usually the problem is that you dont realize when a usable idea is going through your head. You cant let any ideas slip by without recording them, because you never know which one will be the big one.

Thats why you have to catch them on the fly as they happen. If you dont, then they will probably be gone forever. You might think that you can keep them in your head and remember them later, but if youre like most other humans on this planet, something will come up before the end of the day that will bump that million-dollar idea off the top of the heap. Then before you know it the most important thing rumbling around in your head is your grocery list.

You need a way of harvesting or collecting your ideas as they happen. I usually carry a small notebook around with me wherever I go. Of course you need a pencil or pen too! Or, you could join the 21st century and keep your ideas on a palm or pocket pc or one of the many small electronic devices thats all the rage these days. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. The benefit of the electronic method is that once youve jotted your ideas down you can easily transfer them to your workstation or laptop without having to type them all in again. One word of caution, thoughkeep your batteries fresh (or charged), and keep your device synced so you wont lose all those great ideas. The benefit of the paper method is obviousno batteries, no back-ups, and no operating system to learn. Personally, even though Im a big fan of technology on my desk and in my home, Ive found that Im quite the luddite when it comes to electronics that I have to carry around. So for me at least, it will always be the pen and paper.

Once you get in the habit of jotting down all the ideas that come through your head, youll be surprised at how many ideas you actually have. Granted, most of them wont really end up going anywhere, but like everything, its a numbers gamethe more you have, the better your chances of coming up with a winner. Even the princess had to kiss a lot of frogs before she found the prince! Sometimes your ideas will come faster than you can jot them down, which is frustrating, but you have to look at the big picture: at least youre recording some of your ideas now, which is way better than how it used to be.

Youll find that ideas began to come more easily, because now youre on the lookout for them. Common everyday occurances that used to just slip by unnoticed can become the catalyst for the next idea that might just be the big one. Plus, once youre in the habit of paying attention to your creative side, you might find that sometimes multiple ideas will begin to ping-pong around in your head and synthesize into a single winner of an idea.

And after all, isnt that what its all aboutcatching the million-dollar idea?

Till next timeSuccess to you!

-Ted