What’s Your Blogging Story?
May 31, 2010 Posted by MelvinThis is a guest article written by Melvin Dichoso
A lot of you guys may easily notice this. Most of the famous and popular bloggers do have one thing in common, they have a compelling story to tell. They leverage that story and what ends up happening is that people start following them and consider them as an authority.
The make money online blogging hype has gone down a bit for the past few years. I remembered way back 2007 where almost every new make money blog was started every second just because of how people were told it’s a goldmine. Obviously, it isn’t and right now people started realizing it. They either quit blogging about that topic or moved to a different industry like freelancing or affiliate marketing.
A lot of people don’t realize this when starting their own blog but the days where you can start a blog as an experiment and go out as you were learning is long over. People have gotten tired of hearing the same shit all over and over again. I guess that people realized there’s really no point of following someone try and make money while doing it with no experience whatsoever.
There are over a billion blogs right now and hundreds of thousands talking on the same topic so the chances of us, getting noticed doing blogging from scratch is almost nil. As a reader can we really consume 100 blogs about technology? no! People follow blogs for a reason and if you don’t fit into that, you’re not gonna get read.
What’s your Story?
Back to the question above, do you know that almost all bloggers got popular not because they’re bloggers but because they have good stories to tell? It’s surprising not a lot of bloggers realize this. In this niche, bloggers like shoemoney, yaro starak, and many others don’t really blog for the sake of getting popular blogging. Instead they leveraged their story and that started getting perceived as tons of good value for their readers. The result? they’re experts now.
And how about the owner of this blog Tyler? Well if you’re following him for quite some time you would see that he used to be making a lot of money brokering domain. Now that is an experience that he used to build this blog. Apart from that Tyler also does affiliate marketing, and manage lots of content-related websites and forums. That experience puts people from ordinary bloggers to authority.
Stories really are a good way to catch people’s attention since it adds that personal touch (voyeurism) that surprisingly most bloggers don’t focus doing. Intercepting that fine line between credibility, experience (being qualified to talk) and good skills of presenting that story to the majority is an absolute recipe for success.
Marketers didn’t Invent Story-telling, they just perfected it
This is an uber famous statement from one of the books of Seth Godin. I’m sure if you’re into this niche you can relate to it a lot. A lot of the super famous internet marketers like Frank Kern, John Reese, Rich Schefren and etc. are making so much money because they tell good stories! Im not saying their lying but it depends on how you look into it.
Im not a marketer, I’m a blogger. Sure you are and I am too but as we get more and more into this information-overload era, the line between a blogger and a marketer becomes thinner. I mean all these rich-ass bloggers don’t really make money blogging, they make money selling. Either it’s their product, or a private forum or other people’s product, it doesn’t take a lot to see that in order to succeed as a blogger, you have to pitch yourself well, you have to market competently, and of course you have to tell good stories to your potential customers.
As I end this post I’d like to ask you some questions. What’s your story? What makes your story so enticing that it can get people interested on paying attention to you. Or do you even have a story to tell? If you don’t have, maybe its time to evaluate yourself. Maybe put yourself in the position of your readers (if you have) and ask yourself, “what’s the reason Im following this guy?”.
This post is written by Melvin Dichoso who blogs at MelvinBlog Dot Com where he shares all his thoughts in the industry. He is also giving a free eBook called Blog Marketing for Fame which is all about marketing your blogs competitively.
I don’t know that you would call it telling a story in the case of blogging about your expertise. However, some people that have interesting stories about how they built their business could.
Good post overall Melvin!
I think this post raises some very good points. And you are definitely right, if a blogger can’t tell stories, no one is going to stay interested. Information can be presented easilly enough, but it’s when it is related to real people, and real life experiences that it takes life.
yep. and oftentimes the main reason why most bloggers don’t have readers is that they don’t have any interesting story to tell..
I thinking telling a story is the earliest way to attract peoples’ attention. If you do not have your own story in your blog, people are unable to differentiate you from the whole bunch of bloggers out there.
I guess my problem is who would want to hear my story? I feel like there really is a TON of “make money” blogs.
Thanks for the guest post. Good stuff.
Good Post Melvin
Im not a blogger since my blog would start out with lots of posts then die out slowly lol
I’m in the same boat. I know I wouldn’t be able to keep any kind of writing momentum going. In time I would run out of topics to effectively cover and my post frequency would drop. Running a consistently updated blog does take a lot of perseverance.
Hi guys,
I started blogging because I was trying to get some referrals for my PTC sites. Needless to say I was not that successful. But as I read some of these big time Bloggers blogs I’m learning a lot from them. So maybe I will become very successful at making money online. HOPEFULLY!!!
Kind regards,
Sam
X
I started blogging when I wath on Tv that I could make money on the internet.
When I write a post, I try to tell our readers an event or something that happened to me recently and I smoothly connect it to the discussion or technology I want to write about. Plus we also create series where we feature the experiences of other persons.
I don’t have a compelling story myself, but in the beginning when I first read Tyler Cruz’s story of how he started up his blog it connected with me, which is Why I’ve followed him since. We are talking about 3 years ago for me.
Good post, some interesting points and statements made.
Indeed, the key to success is “how to stand up from the crowd”.
You are correct the “make money online” vertical is way over-saturated. The key is to stand out as you said.
In the ‘make money online’ niche it also takes a lot of credibility too. If you can’t convince people you are making a lot of money online yourself, why would they bother reading your advice. The people who jumped into this niche with little experience ended up really lowering the whole niche’s credibility. Now to earn trust you often have to go out of your way to report at least estimated earnings or show fancy things you have bought with your money.
Your right about that. You definitely need to have some credit to back you up in this vertical.
I’d love to start a personal blog but I cant imagine who would want to read about me moaning about my lot in life lol
i think most of those blogs mentioned are empty, fluff. and more people starting to realize it.
Nice Guest Post Melvin. Since I am currently in the process of the whole “Story” I can’t quite tell it yet till I am there. Then everyone will hear 🙂
I just start my blogging journey… I wish I could get there someday… Soon!!
Ђέ^⌣^ђέ:);)Ђέ^⌣^ђέ
Anyway, Great article Melvin…
One of the early marketing lessons I learned from my mentor was the need for story telling. As a former biological researcher, my training was on technical writing but never on story telling. So, there was a shifting that was required.
Thanks Melvin and Tyler for this interesting post.
Jose
Reading this post one more time, I realized that it is also a good idea to make blog posts stand out by interviewing people within the same niche.
Some people may see interviews as being common and traditional. But we can’t deny that people always have a good story to tell, and we can let them share it through our blog.
Thanks for this post Melvin. I recently realized that I do have a compelling story that interests readers. Now I am trying to learn how to monetize that. I have already learned a lot by following your website over the years Tyler. Congrats on your success and thanks.
Hey you’re welcome. I appreciate that this post is beneficial to you.
Reading this post one more time, I realized that it is also a good idea to make blog posts stand out by interviewing people within the same niche.
Some people may see interviews as being common and traditional. But we can’t deny that people always have a good story to tell, and we can let them share it through our blog.
Hey Tyler, thanks for posting this guest post on your blog. I really appreciate it and hope I can do some more in the future. 😉
My blog is a sheer challenge to myself to see if i can get it to rank for some of the less competitive terms. With this goal I am keeping myself motivated.
However, some people that have interesting stories about how they built their business could.
I guess like everyone else has said – as long as you have a point of difference to talk about that makes your blog stand out and you have something of value to offer then there will always be people wanting to read.
Now to earn trust you often have to go out of your way to report at least estimated earnings or show
Well I started blogging because I’m passionate about reading and writing.I launched my blog one month back & I’m working 20 hours a day since then.Will do the same for the next 6 months or so,until the blog can really stand on its legs.
I think although we can learn a lot about making money online by reading other people blogs and stories, everyone should find their own personal way of making money. Because as we have our own unique story of starting the blogging career, we certainly could have the same thing for money making online.
Reading this post one more time, I realized that it is also a good idea to make blog posts stand out by interviewing people within the same niche. 😉
I’m a story teller. I learned from the best of them!