Marketing Made Profitable
21 Days to a More Profitable Blog Tutorial > Day 11! Craft a post about niche lust
(Morning! I’ve been up since freakin’ 1am! Wheee! NO, NOT WHEEE….I wanna sleep! WAH!!!!!
Oh well, these things happen – if you can’t sleep, might as well blog. 
)
Good morning intrepid soul! I’ve been up now since, oh golly gee, 1am? and finally gave up trying to sleep next to my warm cozy husband and figured I might as well be productive.
How has life been treating you? Yesterday was great here in the Ling Household – my youngest child insisted on sparring at karate and my oh my, is he getting better and better! It used to be, he’d stand there and get knocked down faster than a toddler scarfs down an ice cream cone, but now he’s actively fighting back. Whoo hoo! Still has lots of ways to go, mind you, but the spirit is definitely there.
And for me…after giving up sleep as The Impossible Dream, I checked my feedreader, commented at Dream Day, When Family and Friends Don’t Understand ProBlogging, and am now starting the day. Wheee!
Of course, that brings me to:
Today is Day 11 of my series, 21 Days To A More Profitable Blog!
And for today, I’d like to talk about…
LUST! PURE UNADULTERATED LUST! Mua ha ha!
You know what ‘lust’ is, right? ‘course you do – it’s the emotion that suffuses your very being when you spy…..Blue Mountain coffee that is residing ELSEWHERE than in your coffee cup! The horror!
Or perhaps, it’s the teeth-gnashing agony you experience when you gaze upon a Gold Plated iPhone only to realize….it’s not yours.
I know, I know, it’s a difficult emotion through which to work…but hey, that’s the joy of being a grownup. Right?
Seriously speaking though….think now on your particular blogging niche. I’ll bet there are items that inspire the most passionate lust within your readers! For example, if you blog about trumpets, a gold-plated Monette trumpet (which retails for about 10K) is something guaranteed to catch and hold undying attention.
Weird Al says it best! Even if it’s not the most expensive doohickey available, the nostalgia factor alone….well, words don’t do it justice. Watch below:
Back to lust! And if you’re blogging about, oh, hmmm, Hollywood gossip, celebrity mansions would certain rate right up there as something lust-inspiring too!
What’s that? You blog about telephone insulators instead? Talk about Twiggs insulators or a 22K insulator found in New England….and you’ll have your readers sitting on the edge of their chairs, dreaming of their own future Big Hunt and Find.
What’s really cool about lustful niche objects is that you can craft a blog post about them, and then incorporate eBay affiliate goodies for similar items that are available today! Folks visit your page, read about the goodies, get all hot and bothered and then realize OMIGOSH I CAN BID ON SOMETHING LIKE THAT RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!
Gotta love impulse buying!
And here’s how to do it.
Before You Begin – Go to eBay and search for your niche.Let’s say that you blog about, oh gee, vinyl records (you know, those things that are round but NOT CDs and have cute little etches in the them? Things that were developed by Thomas Edison? Quarter-inch thick records? Thingees like:
Search for
and then sort by
Look at what’s returned….are any of the auctions lust-worthy? I confess, I know next to nothing about records (except they’re round and they’re NOT CDs and they have cute little etches in them and…) but if you are experienced within the niche, you probably can tell what items would be of interest to your audience.
Click on the item about which you want to write, highlight the URL, and press <CONTROL> C (that copies the URL to your computer memory).
Now that you have something tangible, get thee hence to
Step 1 – Log in to your eBay Partner Network account and select Tools | Link GeneratorFirst select Custom URL. Then you will highlight the Custom URL field and press <CONTROL>V (thus pasting in the auction url) like so:
Make sure you click on the Campaign Name field to select a campaign. Next, when you click on Generate Link, you’ll be provided with the affiliate code you can use. Copy and paste that to a notepad file so it’s at your fingertips for later.
Speaking of later, move now to:
Step 2 – Write a blog post about the item.It’s really not difficult to do at all – I just did one this morning for my Insane Luxury series. You can see it at Insane Luxury – 17K 1954 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top Guitar – click on the picture of the guitar and see to where it goes.
You can either focus your blog post about the item specifically as I did, or simply write up a story about similiar goodies in your niche.
When it comes time to monetize your blog post, add the direct affiliate link you saved in Step 1. I generally will entice people to click on the link by adding compelling text like (see MORE here! or you KNOW you want to click etc.).
The thing is, though, the auction in question will end sooner or later…and you really don’t want to have dead links on your site. To round out your lustful blog post, close with:
Step 3 – Add an Editor Kit to the bottom.I wrote a lot about this over at Make money with the eBay Affiliate Program – Part 1 – Unlearn What You Have Learned. Instead of using the text links, you’ll use the Editor Kit , select a size that works for you, and copy/paste that into your post. Revisit 21 Days to a more profitable blog – Day 8! Add eBay to your sidebar for complete hand-holding.
NOTE! When you paste the Editor Kit code in your blog, you MUST switch the view to SOURCE or HTML. It will NOT work if you fail to do this.
And voila…you’re done. You’ve blogged about something that would be of wonderful, targeted niche lustfulness for your readers…and chances are, they’ll click off your site to learn more about it (human nature and curiousity being what it is).
Nice, eh?
And that brings me to:
In closingIn today’s lesson, you learned how to find an eBay auction item about which you can craft a monetized blog post.
And of course (you really didn’t think I’d close a post without this now, did you?) an opportunity now arises!
(remember, there’s no such things as problems in real life – just misunderstood opportunities)…..
HOMEWORK - That’ s eBay…what about Amazon?
Can you think of a way to add Amazon like the above?
Thus, until tomorrow! (and don’t forget, if you think any of your friends would benefit from these tutorials, please do share them! They’ll thank you for it…guaranteed).
Enjoy,
Barbara
#BEGIN highlights of this blog writing post:
Beginners make money blogging tips: Search on eBay for a lust-generating niche auction item, and craft a blog post about it.
Intermediate and/or Advanced make money blogging tips: Add the Editor Kit to round out your post.
#END highlights of this blog writing post
Like this post? Please feel free to tell your friends and Digg It – I very much appreciate your time!
ps – speaking about making money with affiliate programs, you might be interested in:
"Hey there, thanks so much for stopping by! If you
enjoyed this article, please do feel free to tell your
friends about it or use those nifty neato social icons
above to spread the word. I love sharing great info,
and would really appreciate it...thanks!"
-- Barbara Ling
I can feel my mind expanding. It hurts!! This way of thinking about things is probably natural to you now, but it certainly isn’t to me. Find an auction to affiliate with, then write a post about it so that readers will take part (and hopefully win). Is that right?
That’s part of it…the other part is to showcase items of unique interest enough that people will visit eBay (thus setting your affiliate cookie) and become interested in bidding on said item (or something similar).
Hope that helps!
Barbara
Hi Barbara,
I just recently signed up for eBay. There’s lots to learn, but this post explained the linking part so well.Â
Thanks for sharing. I’m sure I’ll be back when I start adding links.Â
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Be Inspired By Nothing
Genius…..niche eBaying in reverse.
The rest of the world is trying (unsuccessfully) to skirt the rule that says you can’t link FROM eBay to another site, when they could very easily link from their site TO eBay.
Genius I tell ya, good job
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Opening Links: Same Window or New Window – Which Do YOU Prefer?
@Dennis – Thanks!Â
Barbara