Clinton Skakun

Some bloggers are dead set against monetization. They think it taints their content and ruins trust with their readers. I’m no expert but beg to differ:

1. Put more valuable time in blogging, create better content. If you could replace your income blogging, or even just replace a few days a month with the cash you make from your blog, it would be fair to say you could spend more time writing valuable content(and less time working.) Lets say you spend 10 hours writing and drafting a blog post. How many people have that much time unless they don’t have to work?
2. Get you more serious about blogging. If you’ve been blogging long enough, you’ve probably had times when you wrote up a blog post and published it off, later regretting the sloppy errors you made. Monetization demands a little more attention. Would you read a blog, that asked for money, and had sloppy content?
3. It takes little effort, if you already have the traffic and the dedication. It’s really simple, just copy the strategy of someone else who has a successful blog(successful in terms of helpful content and makes money) and if it doesn’t work, try a new approach.

I’d love to hear your opinion!

I’m not the first person to come to when it comes to find your blog niche. Though I wanted to put in a word on the topic.

In my experience finding what you want to write about and who you want to write for is more of a process than an event.

It takes time and experience writing on certain topics until you find what you really love to write about. You don’t have to be a writer, but more of a communicator and a publisher.

I personally write really well when I know when I’m writing about. That statement might seem way too obvious to put in print, though it’s very true. Ever try starting a blog post about a topic you didn’t know a lot about and on top of that, didn’t really care about it? You didn’t feel inspired and didn’t feel that you could articulate well.

Unless you’re a professional writer who has years of experience writing about everything and anything you’ll probably have to start blogging about things that actually interest you and get you excited. There’s nothing worse than a blog post that makes you spit dust. Even a controversial post or one with opposing views can be rich and insightful and you even a thing or two about them. Why? Because the blogger had some great ideas and inspiration, and on top of all that s/he really cared about who was reading it. So many only advice for finding you niche in blogging is:

1. Start with what excites you.
2. Expand as you go and see if you can include other interests.
3. Blogging is about publishing content and communicating, you don’t need to know how to write. You need to know how to communicate.

Like I said, I’m not a professional consultant or an expert, and this is my experience.

Road of No Return movie download

Photo Credit: ktelqueen

When was the last time you actually bought something after seeing it advertised on TV?

• The Age of Stupid dvdrip
  
  Broken video

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie trailer

Probably not in some time!

When was the last time you saw a commercial advertising a tooth bush or Aunt Jemima’s Muffin Mix and then ran to the store and bought it?

Maybe never!

How many advertisements really catch our attention, unless they appeal to hunger or our sex urges?

And if those ads did catch your attention, can you even remember what they were about?

…If you hang onto things that have less and less of a place in this world, you eventually die along with them…

Photo Credit: LOLCats

1. Write about other people/start-ups/businesses

While back I wrote a post about Maynas Eric Chua called Maynas Eric Chua on Building Trust Mask of the Ninja dvd Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia video The Hustler download . About an appearance he made on Singapore News TV station. I knew Eric for a while on Twitter and he was quite an inspiration, as well as one of my first users on my startup, PutFeed.com. I thought, what a great way to add value to my blog as well as send some hits his way. Eric is in the top 3 Twitter users in Singapore and has over 30,000 followers. This guy deserves a post written about him:)

2. Guest Posts

You may not be the most popular person in the world. But you may know a few other bloggers who have connections. Ask them to write a quick guest post on your blog. Chances are they will send hits to the post they just wrote via Twitter or FaceBook, thus giving you more publicity and some credibility in the blogging community. You become open to your Guest’s network, and hey they might know tons of people. It just opens up more opportunity plus adds some fresh ideas to your blog.

3. Interviews

Interviewing is another great way to gain credibility and to give others some publicity. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs, lawyers, brokers, real estate and web design experts that would be glad to participate in an interview. This shows that you have some connections in the blogging community and once again, opens up your blog to the networks of other people.

There are a few ways to undertake an interview:

• Video(post them on YouTube and other video sharing sites)
• Plain old blog post
• Podcast

(You decide the rest, be creative)

4. Ping Other Blog Posts

This is a great way to get ideas for new blog posts and add value to other blogs at the same time. When you see a blog post you like and that you could add some thoughts to, write your own blog post and ping them back(using the ping url). They will love you for it whether you agree or disagree with their views. The fact that you took the time to respond to their post is a sign of appreciation.

5. Stay Connected

Americanizing Shelley move

With all the great online and desktop tools we have the ability to stay connected with our community in half the time we used to. Stay connected with people in your niche by doing the following:

• Subscribing to their blogs
• Posting comments to their blog posts(people love it when you post sincere comments)
• Tweet their blog posts and let them know that you are by adding their @username in the tweet.
• Share their blog posts in your FaceBook statuses.
• Connect them with other people in your network.
• Share your own blog posts with them after you’ve added value to their blogs.
• Send a personal e-mail to new blog posters thanking them for their contribution. Give them the chance to reply.

If you stay connected with people they’ll return the favor and send some blog comments or recommendations your way. The rules are, ONE. be sincere, TWO. Add value before expecting others to add value to you.