Surfing the Net to come up with interesting ideas is my passion. And the mnemonic SCAMPER (a term first coined by Alex Osborn) has always been one of my secret weapon for further brainstorming.

If you are not familiar with SCAMPER check the table below. As an info publisher or product creator this can be your absolute best friend whenever you are short of ideas.

So keeping the above in mind let’s see how we can connect the dots
between the Internet resources to come up with possible product ideas.

For this example we will use the website www.mygoals.com as a resource.

MyGoals have hundreds of goals, people want to achieve, divided into subcategories. Inside each sub category there are some ready-made goals. Each set of goal have it’s own subset of obstacles and solutions. We will use those two along with SCAMPER to come up with Info product ideas!

For sake of example I’m using the Goal: To Write and Sell a Screenplay.

Before doing anything else, I’ll visit Amazon and type the words “screenplay” and see if there’s any related product in the market. This will help me know whether there is a market for “screenplay writers”.

As presumed, several books are being sold at Amazon directed to the target market: “wannabe screen play writers”.

Good….keeping in mind the SCAMPER formula and looking at the products returned by Amazon, I can later find several topic/ ideas that can be adopted or combined for my own product.

I also try the same search in Froogle and several products are returned here too.

Hmm…looks like a hot market.

Now let’s go back to mygoals and check what they have to say.

The first obstacle mentioned in the Goal: To Write and Sell a Screenplay is” I need a story idea”.

That’s a definite problem for the would be screen writers …they need story ideas. So…can I provide a solution?

How about a ‘Story Idea Prompter’ software? The software will prompt a storyline every time a button is hit. Possible? Definitely…. I file this idea as Idea #1 in my Idea notebook.

Next as I move on I find mygoal’s suggestion to read about Georges Polti and 36 dramatic situations. Being published in 1868 this is sure to be in public domain, and I may get more ideas (even Story Idea for prompter’ software i.e Idea #1 .So let’s file this also …we need to do a bit of research work in the public domain)

Ok, next we find the obstacle:”I don’t know if the idea is marketable” This is another potential problem for the wannabe screenplay writers and mygoals suggestion is to subscribe to several movie Industry magazines.

Aha …another light bulb goes on!

Why not create a special report by compiling the movie industry Magazine searching the Internet with a short description of each, their Subscription schedule and the subscription price.

It could be a very valuable collection for the ‘wanna be screen writers’

Ta -da! Idea #2 for my idea file.

Let’s see if we can come up with more ideas.

As I read on I find another obstacle mentioned: “I don’t know where to sell my screenplay” and as a solution they mention first create a list of agents.

Looks like a candidate for another ‘compiling resources’ type of report - this time agents details…but they mention existence of two such directories already…so may be I’ll leave this idea.

Or Wait!

Can’t I combine it with one of my previous idea to give even more value to my product? So I’ll not discard the idea now, not at least in the initial stage so there goes my Idea #3 in the notebook.

Now is there anything more I can think of?

Wow definitely ! The next topic is Query letter.

Instantly rings a bell in my mind….

Remember SCAMPER? You have seen several ‘Instant sales letter Generator’ kind of product in the internet marketing community. Isn’t it?

So why can’t you adopt it to ‘Instant Query Letter Generator!! This is definitely worth filing under Idea #4

You will find ample query letter samples to use as template searching the Net and that definitely will be great product for those who have trouble writing query letters. Hire a programmer and get going.

Or even better…

What about a complete service using all the ideas generated so far?

That could be an even more valuable service for the screen writers. There goes Idea #5 in the notebook!

As you can see, these are the ideas that came in my mind just looking at one of the goals and thinking of SCAMPER formula.

So what’s stopping you?

From now whenever you come across interesting websites, think about this article and the SCAMPER formula….and I’m sure now you will be able to come up with even more ideas.

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