Creating Original Content for AC is Harder Than I Thought! My Solutions for a Common Problem

I joined AC in June 2009 and I figured I had enough random obscure stuff in my life to write about. I mean, I'm pretty weird compared to most people. How many people do you know that use cloth toilet paper? Or use sea sponge tampons and cloth pads? Or breastfeed toddlers? Or use Feline Pine cat litter? I guess I'm not so unique after all because every singe one of those topics has been written about by AC sources long before I ever heard of AC. So, what's a source to do? I've come up with several solutions to my problem.

Solution #1: Write about it anyway. Lots of other people wrote about it anyway, so why don't I? For me at least, I don't want to write about it if other people already have. Even if only one or two other people have, I still ditch the idea. Like the sea sponge tampons. I figured there was no way that there'd be an article about them, but there are six. Six! Six articles about something as obscure as sea sponge tampons! Sure, that's only 0.000004414436088897914% of all AC articles, that's still 0.000004414436088897914% more than I'm comfortable with. I'm not good at sharing: I want all the PVs for myself!

Solution #2: Write about it in a different way. This one has worked for me a few times. I've found lots of good "How To" or "Do's" articles but there aren't that many "How Not To" or "Don't's" articles out there. I'm perfectly okay with telling people how not to do things and what not to do. In fact, I'm pretty darn good at it.

Solution #3: Write about something I've wanted to know. I've Googled a lot in my time. I Yahooed before that and AOL Searched before that. While the internet seems infinite, I've actually run into a few topics I found very little about. So I think about those topics, double check AC to make sure no one has beaten me to it already and I go to town.

Solution #4: Write a review about two common things that no one has written about together before. There are plenty of articles about the Nintendo wii and the Xbox 360 here on AC, but there isn't a single article comparing the two and declaring one better than the other. Just like I don't mind telling people what not to do, I don't mind telling giving them my opinion either.

Solution #5: Write a review about a very new product. New products come out every day. So on the rare occasion that I buy something new to the market, I'll check AC and if I'm the first, I'll write about it. If someone else already has written about it, I refer back to Solution #2 and/or Solution #4.

Solution #6: Write about totally random crap. I've seen those kinds of AC sources and you all know who they are, the ones that pull the most random crap from out of nowhere and write an article about it. That's not my style, though. I'm not going to write about why parting your hair on the left side of your head is better aesthetically on Fridays. Sure, I want a lot of content but I don't want a lot of craptent. What's the point of publishing content for money if almost no one is going to read it? I save my craptent for my blog.

Solution #7: Write reviews about products that I wanted to read reviews of before I bought them. I don't like to spend my money on products that I don't know much about so I look for reviews for just about everything before I buy. I buy some pretty weird stuff sometimes and there aren't many reviews out there. So I look around my house until I find something somewhat obscure yet with a definite crowd of people that would buy it. Most of what I've come up with so far my are daughter's toys. Odd.

I've managed to write quite a few articles so far but not nearly as many as I could've if people hadn't already had my ideas. I'll keep plugging away and wracking my brain for original ideas, I'm sure there are at least a few more in there somewhere.