If you were to take out your phone and Google ‘Are we living in a digital age?’ it, after harvesting various personal information about you to sell, would reply ‘yes’. You pay your bills online, you socialise online, you even date online, so it makes sense that there are a lot of way to also make money online. Long gone are the days when you had to work a 5 hour night shift at the local pub, practising your best smile in front of drunk people you deeply hate. Now you can have a better, more fulfilled life and make money off of it by approximating the emotions that people want to see; unbridled joy and occasionally heavily contextualised sadness, through a screen. We call this blogging!
The not so new way of making money that people love to hate and everyone seems to take advantage of, blogging has taken the internet by storm: from fit people promoting the latest kale smoothie, to the travel bloggers who “share only memories and leave nothing but footprints [and a toxic cloud of smugness]”. With the sheer pervasiveness of blogging, it might seem difficult to get out there and show the world what an interesting, exciting person you are; so here are 5 steps towards becoming a successful blogger. Throw that degree away! Here lies the secret to your future!
1) Build An Attractive Page:
Your homepage needs to be on point because it is the internet and looks are everything. Make sure people know you are an amazing human being who only eats organic wholefoods and does yoga every morning before sipping on a smoothie made from banana peels defecated by gorillas (fair-trade of course). Do that by making the header image a collection of photos of you in your cotton yoga pants weaved by blind Cambodian nuns while saying 100 Hail Mary’s. Insert a link to the site where your viewers can buy those yoga pants, because unbridled consumerism is the way forward. You can also put a photo of the strawberries you bought at a local store that you took while contorting yourself on the table to get a good angle, but that in the end tasted like shite, overpriced shite. It’s all about what people see first, so by no means should you be honest! Pray to the god of filters and good lighting and make the best out of that smartphone of yours!
2) Write Catchy Posts:
Find inspirational quotes to litter your page with.
Make sure you use keywords like: zen, peaceful, successful or balanced. Talk about your day by saying how happy you were to see a sunset, or how beautiful your latest trip on a cramped, poorly serviced bus to suburban Dublin was. Don’t forget to blow it out of proportion! By no means should you say that your allergies kicked in as you were starrng into the sun: say that the beauty of another day dying brought tears to your eyes. Your new sneakers didn’t give you blisters that made you curse the day you were born, they carried you to the heights of emotional fulfilment.
Also keep it short. Nobody goes on the internet because they love to read.
3) Create A Facebook Page:
This is for previews of your upcoming posts, random photos to show how perfect your life is and hashtags! Do not forget to use hashtags for everything! Bought a new dress online? #flawless #bodyconfidence #starvingrightnow. Went to a fancy cocktail bar? #nightwiththegirls # mojito #willbecryinginmydrinklater. You get the gist. Make sure the hashtags really show how amazing your life is and how other people should follow you to escape the misery of their own existence. Also don’t forget that social media is all about appearance, so go pray again to the god of filters and good lighting! If needed, sacrifice a family member to them. Remember! The closer they are to you the more good will you will earn with the god of filters and good lighting! #nopainnogain.
4) Advertisements:
You have your blog, your posts, your social media. What you need now is to get some money out of it. And the best way to do it is through advertisements. Because who doesn’t love the aggression of a million pop-ups when you’re trying to find out what are the best seafood restaurants in Howth? To make sure that your readers really enjoy them, make them related to the article: writing about the latest holiday destination? Throw some Ryanair adds. Talking about skincare? That’s the spot for the latest Dove product. Describing your latest date? Throw in that add for the STD clinic. It’s all in the strategy and after you get enough traffic, the advertisers will be technically throwing themselves at you.
5) Forget That You Are A Human Being:
No risk to your health or even your life is greater than the thrill of bagging that perfect skyscraper selfie.
When you become a blogger you need to be 100% committed to your craft. “Pics or it didn’t happen” will become your mantra. Everytime something exciting happens you will think of how to best phrase it for your blog. It doesn’t matter that you’ll probably lose a few friends on the way because you will probably be the most obnoxious person on earth. If they cannot understand that this is your path, they are not true friends. You will forget that emotions other than poor joy and perfection exist and you will focus on making your life look as perfect as possible. Go forth and conquer!
Cristina Florescu