A lot of people who start blogging these days do so because they want to make money from it. There has long been a buzz about this method of income generation, after all. It's not as intense as it used to be. But there are still many people with this aim. 

And because this is their main goal, and they've been reading heaps about how to do this, they often create blogs about ... how to make money from blogging! 

I'm sure that way back in the early days this was a good approach. There was huge interest in this subject and not that many people doing it. So you didn't have to be a super-export in the field to get some momentum going with it. And you could therefore make it profitable. 

But these days there are just way too many people doing it. And the top dogs in this niche have built up so much expertise and authority that they just become the go-to bloggers. They are not just kings of their niches, they're almost like emperors now!

Another reason that this particular niche is that it's full of sellers and promoters. They do buy stuff form time to time, but by definition they are much more keen to make money than spend it.

So, you shouldn't even start on this quest IMO. You'll never knock these guys off. It's best to choose a specific, unsaturated niche. One that you truly enjoy.

If you do that you'll "hit the ground running". You'll come up with lots of really good quality stuff with ease. Keep adding good quality posts being mindful of SEO and you'll gradually build up solid search engine traffic.

At the same time you should get cracking on social media. Again, you'll find it comparatively easy to build quality followings on Facebook, Twitter, etc because you have a passion for your subject, and you'll be enjoying all the interaction with others who share it.

And if you can find a niche that people follow primarily because of their own enthusiasm rather than a desire to earn income themselves that's another bonus. The means by which you start to make money from a blog like this may not be immediately apparent, but it will come to you eventually.

Here's a personal example: I have a keen interest in politics and have been blogging about it for years now. I've built up quite a profile with one blog in particular. I've long been meaning to monetize it, but never got around to it until recently. The reason was that I just blogged for the love of it.

But lately I've been working out how best to earn cash form it. The most effective method Promoting specific books in posts.

The key is to put the affiliate links into the body of the post, and make sure that it is relevant. Also, I don't put one in every post. I want the readers to know that I'm not just writing posts to make money. Im doing it because I love the subject. So they know it remains authentic.

I've found as long as I do this the sales trickle in. It's not much money, but it is consistent. And all I have to do is keep at it and my earnings from this method will continue to grow.

We all know that the key to success on social media, particularly Twitter, is activity. Engagement is the magic word. The more you engage, the more you benefit. Of course following good new tweeps, retweeting and mentioning others comes to mind here. Needless to say you should do this regularly. 

But you should also go further whenever you can. And by that I mean don't just retweet someone a few times, or say "good point" in a mention. Actually try to start conversations that go on for a while.

You've got to sense when this is appropriate. Just as you can't force someone to chat with you in a real social situation such as a dinner party, it has to develop naturally on Twitter, too. So, you find that many attempts will not bear fruit. 

But some will. And they'll keep recurring with the same people. You'll really stand out in their feeds as "top drawer" tweeps. And they'll often be happy to help you with retweets, etc -- especially if you do the same for them. 

If these people are influencers then the benefits are obvious. But even if they're not, they may well become influencers in time. And you can build your folllowings at the same rate and help each other out. It's these people who will be "the gift that keeps on giving". 

This is why it's so important to have a real, genuine interest in what you are tweeting about. You should also genuinely want to discuss it with others. And make sure that the people you try and engage in this way look like they will. That's why constant use of the site is important.

It's like when you are at a social event in the real world. You don't just talk to anybody. You mingle with the people who look attractive to you, who you know already, or who have heard about from others you know and trust. 

If you just go into it because you've heard that you should engage with others, but you don't have any real desire to, then it's pretty clear to others.

I know from experience. Often I'll get a tweet asking how my day was or something like that. Then I'll go to their stream and see they've been saying exactly the same thing to numerous others. It just rings hollow in my opinion. 

I know others might not feel this way. But I do think it's better to only mention someone when you really feel like it. That way, the odds of a quality conversation -- eventually leading to a lasting connection -- go right up. 

As I've mentioned before I've been using social media to promote affiliate products for a while now. Of course you can do this in pretty much any niche. But for me at least the best products to promote seem to be books.

Interestingly, they seem to be a bit easier to sell than ebooks. Clearly, people are still very fond of sitting down with a good old fashioned tome and flicking through the pages.

But traditional books can be expensive. Which is why online booksellers that offer them cheap, with preferably free shipping, are the most popular. Book Depository is one of these. It has a huge range of books with free shipping worldwide and a good affiliate program. Have been paid so I can vouch for it.

Blogs are a great way to promote books. Probably the most effective method is to write reviews of them and include your affiliate link in the post. Needless to say you should disclose the nature of it, and that if people buy it you'll receive a commission. And while it's best to review books you do generally enjoy, make the reviews balanced. Blog readers will appreciate a thorough, fair review that includes a bit of criticism. Such appraisals won't reduce the odds of them buying the books subsequently. Might even increase them, actually. 

While reviews are great, they're not crucial. You can just link to specific books in blog posts. As long as they're relevant to the content and good quality, people will click on those links from time to time. And some will end up buying. 

Social media is also a good place to promote specific books. But you should do this sparingly, and only after you've built up a substantial, engaged following. 

Twitter is ideal for this. Book titles tend to fit snugly into the 140 character limit. They also often have a lot of good keywords that you can turn into hashtags to make them more findable. And as long as you're not constantly posting them your followers will appreciate being pointed towards informative, relevant, interesting reads.

If you make a habit of engaging with your followers, then they're more likely to click on those links, too. That's because they trust your opinion. So, respect that trust, and only promote books that you have read or are pretty confident are good qaulity. If you just link to junk they'll stop clicking after a while. Some may even end up unfollowing you.

You should also engage with the authors themselves. Again, Twitter is a great place for this. Most of them are on the site anyway, and many are influencers with huge followings. So, they'd be worth following, retweeting and mentioning in any case. 

And if you do promote their books they'll be much more likely to notice you and follow back. They'll also retweet your links to their books from time to time. (This has happened to me a few time now.) Obviously they're motivated to do this for financial reasons. But it also reflects well on them. Your unprompted promotion of their work is social proof of their excellence in their fields, after all. 

It's well established that a reliable way to build your following on Twitter is to follow good people who are in your niche. Some will follow you back, no doubt. 

Of course you don't want to overdo this. But used in moderation it's not unethical. And it's certainly effective. 

The challenge can be to find good new people to follow, though. Of course you can look through various lists, and that works. But you can often end up following people who are comparatively inactive. 

With this downside in mind I think it's worth focusing on a different method. Instead of looking through lists follower and following lists. look at the individual tweets of your favourite influencers. You'll see that many of these have huge engagement, with lots of replies, retweets and favourites.

The retweets in particular are worth looking at closely. The retweeters are listed under the tweet itself. You'll find that many of these people are worth following. That's because they'll share your interest, since they are folling the same influencer as you. Also, you know they're active, and engaged. They're also not sitngy with the retweets. 

When looking at one of these as a potential tweep to follow, check his follower to following ratio first. If it's close to 1:1 then there's a reasonable chance he'll follow you back. 

I've been using this method lately and it is the most focused one I've found so far. 

Probably the best way to promote affiliate products is with a blog. Write quality content about a subject you love, build up search engine and social media traffic to it, then include links to relevant products within posts and commissions will surely follow. Needless to say, this approach takes quite along time. 

But there's a more immediate way of getting some affiliate cash, and that's by tweeting your links to Twitter followers. You can use this method for most programs, but I think that Amazon Associates is by far the best suited. This is because no matter what your interest you will find countless excellent books, videos and other products that your followers will find relevant and interesting.

And Amazon makes this really easy to do. When you log into your Associates account there's a little button that creates a link with your ID included. It displays a summary that will show the product image and description. 

Books are particularly good for this method. That's because the product pages are interesting reading in themselves. The titles automatically become your tweets, and these often contain keywords that people search for often on Twitter either on their own or as hashtags. The cover images displayed in the summaries are often striking, and give life to your Twitter stream. 

When choosing products to promote relevance is key. No point in tweeting links to computer peripherals to tweeps who are into opera.

Subject matter isn't the only criteria, however. If you have a lot of followers from your own country, as many Twitter users do, then you're sure to get some clicks and the odd sale if you tweet geo-specific titles with general appeal. For example true crime, sport, and fiction books can all be popular if they relate strongly to your country, or even city.

Keep an eye out for trending topics, particularly those with their own hashtags. You can often get a higher rate of clicks to products that relate somehow to a story currently generating a lot of interest. Obviously this approach can get a bit mercenary -- even ghoulish -- in some cases. So you want to be mindful of this. (You might want to avoid using mass murders, celebrity deaths, and similar events to generate income -- although I suppose that's what the mainstream media is doing anyway.)

And you don't want to overdo it. If you constantly tweet product links your followers will start to get annoyed and some will unfollow you. So I would say that one in ten on average is fair for most categories. 

I think you can make this a higher proportion when it comes to books, though -- especially if your niche is followed by avid readers. Twitter accounts related to current events and politics certainly apply here.

And no matter what niche you are promoting, always look for products that have some good reviews -- preferably from verified purchasers. You can be sure that you're recommending good products to your followers then. That helps build your reputation, which in turn makes it more likely that people will purchase after clicking on your links. So, don't just tweet a link to something just because it costs a lot and will therefore deliver a chunky commission. Make sure it's really good quality.

And on the subject of cost: Needless to say people are more likely to buy something on impulse if it's only a few bucks. This is why Kindle titles are idea for Twitter sharing. Sure, the commissions are small. But they come in more frequently than ones from, say, hardbacks and they certainly add up over time.

Social media is a bit like alcohol. It releases inhibitions. So people tend to do a lot of things that they wouldn't in real life ... Also, a lot of users see it primarily as a marketing tool. Many of these people are not remotely interested in interaction. They just want you to buy their stuff and that's it. The irony is that if they did embrace the interaction they would make more sales.

Because of these influences you get a lot of behaviour that is actually anti-social. Pretty depressing given the context.

Some people can't stand automated DMs on Twitter. But I think they're fine as long as they're just a thank you. But when they ask for likes, etc, that can annoy me a bit.

And it's not just the automated DMs. Sometimes they'll write you one referring to your conversation, asking you to do something for them or buy their services. They do it immediately, too. That smacks of desperation which really puts me off.

Another pet peeve is when someone you've just connected with on Twitter asks you a question like "How are you?" as if they want to actually start a conversation. Then you look at their stream and see they're doing exactly the same thing with everyone. They've probably even got some software to do it. 

I find that even more irksome because they clearly know engagement is key, but they're not doing it in a genuine way. So it's calculating as well as insincere.

I think the key element I find off-putting is selfishness -- people using these platforms to just say gimme, gimme, gimme! These are often minor things but they do accumulate and you end up with a lower threshold of tolerance for them. 

Recently, for example, some guy liked a comment I made in a Linkedin group discussion that referred to a post from his blog. So he sent me a message asking me to write the very same comment on the blog to beef up the interaction!

Another practice that gets my goat is when people go overboard with the cross promotion. They tweet you to a Google Plus update ... which sends you to a Tumblr post ... that points you to a Facebook page update ... that finally links to their blog post! Why not just send people to the post directly?

I know they're just trying to get their other profiles known. But doing it this way just wastes people's time and effort. 

I know I'm starting to sound like a bit of a grouch. But there are still more things that peeve me. Private Twitter accounts, for example. I often follow people back but not if they've got that little padlock icon. It seems petty and even a tad paranoid to me. If you were a whistleblower or a citizen journalist in some totalitarian country, sure. But not if you're just tweeting about stuff generally. Why such an intense need for control? 

Another biggie -- and one that I'm sure many people can relate to -- is being added to Facebook groups without your consent, often by people you've had little or no interaction with aside from the initial connection. 

Still on Facebook: I don't like it when people repeatedly suggest that I connect with their friends. Not so bad if I share an interest. But for personal, friendly connections it can get a bit OTT after a while. I feel like saying to them: Don't you get it? I'm not interested!

Another thing that annoys me on Facebook is when people like my page, then immediately say in a comment (or worse still, in a message) that they want me to like theirs. After a while, that gets a bit tiresome even when they're in the same niche as me. And if their page has nothing in common with mine, and I'm not interested in what theirs is about, that annoys me.

Basically, I won't like a page unless I'm interested in it. And I don't expect the owner to like mine back -- although of course it's always nice when that happens. But being demanding is just rude. 

I suppose that people do this because it does work for them and their numbers improve. But apart from the fact that this is pushy, it's always better to focus on quality over quantity (both in terms of content shared and the nature of the following itself).  

When it comes to these etiquette issues I think a good rule of thumb is that if you'd feel uncomfortable approaching people in a certain way in real life then don't do it on a social network!