This is a guest post by Jessica Wagner
Anybody who takes their blogging seriously doesn’t need to be told about internet memes and their influence on web culture. In fact, many of the more famous memes found on the web owe their popularity to the relaying nature of links through blogs. But maybe you’ve just started out on your blog writing adventure and aren’t too sure what a meme is. Trust me, you’ve seen one before.
An internet meme is any image, video, phrase, concept, or personality that takes on a cult status online. Typically they’re found on humor sites and forums, where they often originate. One of the most popular meme genres is “LOL Cat”, which is simply a series of photos of cats caught in interesting poses or actions with white font text bordering the image, often conveying a phrase the cat in the picture is “saying”. If you still don’t know what a meme is, search for “lol cat” on Google and spend the next ten minutes laughing.
Now that you’ve gotten your giggles out, consider the ways in which getting familiar with memes can boost visits to your blog. These images and videos are some of the most widely searched for entities on the Internet. Perusing sites where “fresh” memes are being created everyday is a great way to familiarize yourself with the latest laughs. Catch one before it catches on and your blog could be a hotbed for traffic.
Internet memes are becoming their own subject to study. You can research the history of the already established volume of existing memes, and read more about their individual creation by visiting sites that categorize them. KnowYourMeme.com is a great place to start.
So how does a blog make money with memes? Like any other way of making money with a blog, it’s an incredibly elusive feat, but pairing your day-to-day musings up with widely popularly images and videos is a great way to get the ball rolling. You’ll never know until you try.
The added bonus of most memes is that they’re often created anonymously via sites like 4chan.org and reddit.com, and are therefore copyright-free. You can use as many as you want without worrying about being emailed a cease and desist letter.
Blog success is simply a matter of popularity. In order to achieve financial success via blogging, you have to understand that in order to be found, you have to associate yourself with what’s being searched for. For those who don’t take the content of their blogs too seriously, even if they take their blogging itself seriously, nothing could bring more people to visit than making memes your mission. Give it try. You have nothing to lose besides a belly full of laughs and empty space on your blog.