How to Come up with Article Ideas

There are some days when you wake up and sit at your computer to work online when you can write about 20 different topics. Other days you can not think of a single idea to write about. I am writing this article to help me and anyone else on how to come up with ideas to write about. This article came out of a comment I received on one of my blog posts and because one day I just could not figure out what to write. This should be a learning experience for both you and me. Through brainstorming and browsing articles on the internet I cam up with a good solution:

Write Down Topics You Like:
So the first thing I usually do when I am thinking about writing articles online are subjects I like. This is very easy because if you are human you know that you like certain things more than others. Maybe you like to write about basketball, bugs, computers, popular culture, fashion, or what ever else you LIKE to talk about.

Write Down The Subtopics of These Topics:
Once you have your topics try and think of subtopics that you could write about. This is good because you can increase the amount of articles you write and have a focused article which will rank higher on the search engines. Say you want to write about basketball; you could divide that into topics about how to play good defense, shooting from the three-throw line, dribbling, being a team player, how to practice layups, how to shake a defender...There are so many subtopics you can think about writing for your main ones. It may take a bit more time but you will benefit from doing this.
 
Write Down Topics You Want to Know About:
Everyone wants to know about something sooner or later. Think about some topics that you want to learn about but never did. You could be killing two birds with one stone with this method. It can be something as easy as 'how to have good table manners' to 'how to mod a computer desktop.' What ever the topic might be, you will have to do some research on it if you want to make your article any good. You don't want to take too much time on researching or you will have no time writing the article. You should spend about 20 to 30 minutes researching a topic and then start writing. As I stated above, you can even write about subtopics of the subjects you have picked.

Use Google Trends:
If you are really running out of ideas you should give Google Trends a try. It is a program on Google that will show you a list of the top most searched topics of the day and any day previous to that day. The search engine topics will fluctuate throughout the entire day and may drop off at any time. That is why it is so unpredictable and some topics may never be high on the search engines the very next day. So in a way, some of your articles may be a one hit wonder which is not ideal if you want to make residual income online.

Question: How do you come up with ideas for your articles?