I had a dream.

And it was a dream like every other Asian American college kid in US had – going to medical school.

So I took the MCATs (the test for medical school). I was in 99 percentile for math/sciences. English, i was somewhere near “habla ingles?” level.

No matter how hard I tried, i just sucked at English in general.

I mean, seriously.. who in their right mind uses the word “cognizant”, “surreptitiously”, and “ostensibly” unless you’re one big douche bag? F*cking ETS people.

My writing was worse. I remember my 3rd year high school teacher asking me if my family couldn’t afford Hooked on Phonics when I was a kid.

It don’t matter.

I might not be the best writer on earth, but hell at least 24k people came to my blog past 12 months (and growing).

So that brings the point.. You don’t have to be the best writer on earth to write blogs that people want to read.

But why on earth do people read my or any blog? And how do you get people to read yours?

Let’s look at this blog (Shoemoney.com) where I’m guest blogging now.

Bottom line: if people read your blog, your influence goes up.

If your influence goes up, your reader listens to what you have to say, even if it maybe business in intent.

I don’t claim to be blogging guru, or some social media expert…. but I do have the facts to back up my statement.

1) Case Studies

I recently wrote about how I started a “zero risk” business that paid both a salary & profit share. Call it a spark of genius out of sheer creativity or extreme hunger, I had to figure out a way to make money without having the enter the dreaded corporate world again.

That story wasn’t wildly viral, but it did get read by bunch of lead generation and direct response marketing people who were competing with my previous solar lead generation company.

If you’re not just a “wantrepreneur” who’s just daydreaming and are actually making things happen, the odds are that you have some stories that you can share about what you did.

It doesn’t matter if you failed or not.

People just want to know what was going through your mind and what you learned.

2) Go Against the Grain

There are lots of stupid people in this world, and sometimes, those stupid people do stupid things together.

My ex-girlfriend entered this USANA health competition (because her USANA associate friend asked her to) where they ask you to lose weight/get toned and at the end of the month, they ask you to take before/after pic and get judged in front of live audience. Of course, it was a ploy to sell their completely useless sugar water products. (2008 acai anyone?)

She worked her ass off for 2 months and lost about 10 lbs (she weighed 115’ish before).. so that’s about 9% of body fat. Not only that, she had some insane muscle tone afterwards. (But NOT because of their product, but because she gave her best every day running, stretching, yoga-ing, lifting weights, etc etc.)

USANA is a network marketing company, and so of course, their associates entered.

I swear to god.. some of these jokers just basically sucked in their still-fat tummies and claimed that they lost weight.

(This is not from USANA, but illustrates the point).

How was the winner picked? By the how loud the audience claps.

Of course, who happened to be in the audience? Uplines, downlines, family, and friends members of these people that sell for USANA and happened to be in the competition.

The one person who ACTUALLY lost any kind of weight (my ex-gf) had only ME to cheer for her (her “friend” didn’t even show up).

So in the end, one of THEIRS won. And I blogged about how ridiculously childish this USANA competition is and that no one with 1/2 a brain should enter this thing, let alone spend money on it.

Granted my blog has nothing to do with weight loss, but I get shit tons of traffic on my blog about people looking for information on USANA… along with USANA associates sending me hate comments.

So if you do engage in this tactic, remember that this CAN backfire

• don’t use this tactic too often because you’ll just be known as the guy that makes just enemies, not friends.
• start fight with someone whose audience is the one you want to draw in because not all traffic quality is the same

3) Explain Really Tough Concepts

Online advertising is HARD.

I remember Facebook ads had only CPC and CPM.

Then they went crazy and added all kinds of ad options, and all the permutations that come with it.

CPC/M, optimized CPM, mobile only, feed only, interest targeting, audience extension, FBX, blah blah blah.

If you’re new to online advertising, this is confusing as hell. If you’re an expert in something, why not share what you know?

I wrote a blog post about the difference between CPC, CPM and optimized CPM, and Google gives me lots of traffic on that post, and i get quite a good number of email optins on it.

(past 7 days)

Curious..

What types of blog posts that you’ve seen that have worked well?

Share your ideas in the comment box below