Sob stories always sells. The human heart, I believe, is by nature a compassionate one. Only that sometimes there are those who cleverly manipulate this virtue for selfish reasons. Monetizing is one of them.

This strategy of plying on another’s good heart is now used by internet marketers to sell their products. Their sales pitch starts with a story (and always a picture) of how depressed and downtrodden they were a few months ago even suicidal but ‘look at me now’, the very symbol of success. The story will go on and on to tell you how much you are going to miss out unless you buy their product.

I saw this strategy used by some marketers from Singapore and the US. Nothing wrong with making money but somehow there is this little uncomfortable feeling that it is not right. Any contrarians out there?

Have a Nice Weekend

In earlier posts (check the links below, I made mention that one of the ways of monetizing our blog is through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a tool where we take a product that we like then put a link to that product in our blog or post. Readers can click on that link which will direct them to a pitch or sales page. Supposing a reader who reached this site this way decides and executes a buy of the product, you as the one who put the link there gets a commission from the sale.

I have thought much about this strategy. As you can see, I do have them here on this page. The right column shows two books which I recommend. I have found them good and helpful. The first by problogger is the one I am reading now and the other is a book based on the dharma teachings of the Dalai Lama.

I place them here simply because I have read them and believed in them. They make very low commission, 4%, but I don’t mind as I feel good to recommend them to people.

Which brings me to our topic of affiliate marketing.  My main qualm with this blogging strategy is centered on the fact that in our eagerness to make some money online, we sacrifice detail. Most of the sales pitches which we may find in clickbank or in chitika do not reveal very much except an attempt to convince us how crucial it is for us to buy.

If we have no experience with the product, our readers may believe that we have and it pass muster. This is what makes me wary of using affiliate marketing. For example, I noticed a top selling feng shui ebook which from the excerpts looked impressive but as I have not read it, I would rather not recommend it given my own held belief of what feng shui is all about.

This is something to consider. What do you think? Am I wrong to feel this way?

http://www.mixedjar.com/good-book-bloggers

http://www.mixedjar.com/short-blog-ideas

http://www.mixedjar.com/money-blogging

I must admit that I knew about this book. Only that I never got round to reading it. Considering that I was spending so much time on my previous blogs, I finally yanked it from a friend and no regrets.

Inside are heaps of info and the style is easy and friendly. I will quickly and briefly mention some.

1. What to blog if you want readership

The authors teach that it is better to be a niche writer ie write on focused topics. The Technorati top 100 are mostly niche blogs. For you and me, it goes that we would do better than try to cramp all we would like to blog about into one single blog.

If you are one of those who have so much to write then it is better to do so on multiple blogs with each catering to a particular subject of interest. This means that if you blog on golf and football, then have two blogs, one on golf and the other on football.

2. Blog on what you have Passion for

This has to be true. If you blog on something which you have no interest, then what are you going to do 3 months from now?
I think you believe this. There have been times when I cross a blog and find that it contains a few posts and that’s it. Likely the writer ran out of stuff to write. The fire died.

3. The blog has to be Unique and Useful

The blog you are embarking on should have something to offer otherwise those who stumble on your blog will go elsewhere.
Then again, what is unique need not necessarily be useful. Useless stuff are what they are and readers will not visit your blog again.

This book also contains lots of useful links we could research. There are many more useful tips, too much for me to mention here.

If you cannot lazy to find it in your regular bookshop (which is unlikely) you can click on this image (pardon the fuzzy image)which would take you to amazon.com or you can go there direct.

ideas

Now that you have signed up for a blog, what’s next?

Maybe like me, you started a blog because you have so many ideas brimming inside your head.  Ideas that you are dying to share with whoever cares to read them. You also have lots of time on your hands. This is wonderful for you will never run short of ideas to write.

There are of course many things that will need to know. The first naturally would be your topic must be something which will be of interest. Assuming someone does bump into your blog, they are not going to pay scant attention if you write gibberish. Believe me; those who do pop in have the attention span of a goldfish. They come and will click out within seconds if the first line does not attract them. So, be warned-write something catchy and interesting.

It is sad but interesting that the big items are sex, scandals and politics. There are no shortages of celebrity glamour blogs. Examples are jezebel, perezhilton and justjared. On fashion you have sartorialist and luxist. A Lifestyle blog I like is habituallychic authored by Heather Clawson for its beautiful shots of New York and her musings on books.

If you are not a famous personality, which goes for the great majority of us, then you could blog about your talents. You could be a great engineer so you can blog about engineering. You could be a marketing expert then you can blog about selling or advertising. You love cats which makes popular blogs. You may have a unique and interesting hobby which could be your main theme. You can write on politics (but be careful not to slander), real estate, movies, religion, technology…the list is endless!

But don’t ever blog about what you do in the morning, what you had for lunch unless you are Jack Bauer.

The times are bad and with the economy of the US reportedly expected to do a double dip and not show much until 2011, it is no wonder that making money blogging is becoming fashionable.

Am I jumping in? Yes, I’ve jumped in some time ago by using blogging on blogspot. That was even before chedet. Actually it was not about making money but more of a release of a thought of sharing stuff that I’ve learnt and found useful. Being not so junior anymore, it was like believing there are some experiences that could be shared.

Those blogs covered tips on topics on health, feng shui, metaphysical, travel along with loads of useless facts! It was much later that Adsense was added but more because I wanted to get a feel of new things. Encouragingly, there were some money there though nothing much to shout about.

Lately I paid to learn but sad to report that it was not up to my expectations. It left a little sour taste, in fact. But what the heck.

Let’s get on with what I wanted to say. If you are keen in trying out blogging as a way to make some loose change for coffee, read on. But be warned, the change is really loose, well, as far as I am concerned.

For the newbie, the easiest and fastest way is to start like this

1. get a computer

2. get an internet connection

Since you are reading this, we assume you have these 2 pre-requisites.

3. sign up for a blog.

You can use yahoo but I find blogger.com (click on this blue color and it will take you there)easiest and friendliest. It is cheap so cheap it is free.

4. go in. Select new post and you are there.

The rest  is quite idiot proof. Promise.

How do those big guys really make money? There are many number of ways. The ones I know are from affiliate marketing, selling online e-books, advertising, paid to write and endorsements. Online shops don’t really count cos there is a physical product like amazon.com but some grew from blogging.

Let’s look at affiliate marketing. Out there there are many set-ups that act like middlemen selling products  and e-books. Let me show how it works.

Here are three products

A             an e-book teaching you how to make money blogging

B             a tool or software to make writing blogs easy

C             an e-book teaching affiliate marketing

You see those blue highlights. IF you click on them blue highlights up there, it will take you to what they call a ‘pitch’ page. It acts as a sales pitch enticing you to buy their product. They are usually very boldly written which does not come as a surprise cos it is intended to highlight, to persuade, to sell not the other way round.

If you like what you see and continue to make a buy, then the blogger makes some money. In this case if you buy, I will earn some money.

It’s easy, yes?

The trick is to get to know how to go about that. I am not savvy but let me compile some stuff and then I shall share them here.

Seemingly these are three of the popular blogs going around cybersphere. Check them out.

www.gofugyourself.celebuzz.com

www.bryanboy.com
www.mrjam.typepad.com
www.boingboing.com

The names of hilarious owners of the first blog deserve special mention. They are  Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan.