Now that it's nearly April, will publishers still be on an improvement kick or will they have moved on to new topics? Let's look at April 2012 to see which categories were popular this time last year: beauty, nutrition, travel, fashion, medical, online business, marketing, health and lifestyles, sports, and fitness. You'll notice some overlap between the two months as well as a few new categories that were popular last April.
Using these two lists as a guide, articles about beauty, marketing, travel, online business, health and lifestyles, sports, fitness, nutrition, fashion, and medical topics are likely to be popular in the next month or so. But let's not stop there. Let's also look at what customers are actively searching for. Sign into your account and click on Writing Ideas followed by Search Topics. Here you'll find a list of recent searches along with popular search topics over the last three months.
For example, recent searches related to content planning and content strategy suggest that a customer is actively looking for articles about content marketing. If that's a topic that interests you, you can do your own search to see what comes up.
In this example, only 12 matches appear for the term "content planning" and only a few would be appropriate for a site or blog focused on content marketing. Whether the original searcher purchased all of the other good ones or not, this quick search shows us that there's a need for articles about content planning. Keeping in mind the popularity of both the marketing and online business categories, writing articles on this topic could be a smart content strategy of your own.
Keeping an eye on the recently sold list is another way to get writing ideas. In fact, Constant Content changed the name of the "recently sold" page to "writing ideas" for that reason. Take a look at the screenshot below. Someone just purchased an $80 article on fitness (one of the projected top-selling categories for April). Another person bought an article on dating (which was listed as a recent search term in an earlier screenshot).
Articles about mobile devices, broadband, insurance, and energy have all been selling well and are likely to continue to be popular. A recent order for hundreds of articles on mobile devices and energy have largely depleted the catalog on those topics. We currently have a standing request for credit card and insurance articles.
In addition to exploring Constant Content for ideas based on popular categories, searches, and recent sales, think about the future. Spring topics will likely be popular for a little longer, soon to be replaced by summer topics. For example, imagine a blog focused on gardening. It's likely too late for articles about planting tulips. However, with the heat of summer right around the corner, articles about irrigation, weed control, shading plants, and harvesting summer vegetables would be timely. The same applies to other businesses. Articles about filing income taxes will have an extremely short shelf life. Meanwhile, articles about what to do with a sudden windfall (such as a large tax refund) or summer jobs for teens might be appealing to webmasters running personal finance sites.