Can you monetize Facebook wall posts?

[Da Man]

According to some people (like Jacob), as long as you are able to do something that other people enjoy, you can probably find a way to get paid for it. So I was thinking about this, and I got to wondering about whether or not I could monetize my ability to post interesting links.

A lot of my friends say that the links and articles I post on my Facebook wall is really interesting. Even acquaintances that I haven't talked to in years would message me out of the blue and thank me for it. I know this is probably something that a lot of people are good at, but gosh darn it I'd really like to think of a creative way to make some cash. Unfortunately, for the life of me, I can't figure out a way to monetize this!

Do you guys have any creative ideas as to how to monetize this "skill" (if you can call it that) or maybe this is a dead end?

[cowstash]

One way to make some money would be to (occasionally) recommend items that have affiliate links, like Amazon for example. If you have a good eye for cool stuff and your friends see what you're posting as useful, you could make a few bucks that way. I think Kevin Kelly does this well with his Cool Tools blog, but that's him curating things that he knows that like-minded people would also think are neat and he makes a little bit when they go out and buy them as well.

I would say otherwise you'd have a hard time hitting up friends for money to provide a curating service that they can probably find elsewhere for free (plus Facebook doesn't have a way to charge for people to read your wall posts).

[Silvie]

Not sure you can do it on Facebook, but you can do this on Twitter. I know there are companies that pay you to post interesting links/content.

Check out http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-get-paid-for-your-time-on-twitter and http://paidpertweet.com/. I'm sure there are more options if you do a little more research.

[matchewed]

It's essentially becoming a "content" creator for things like buzzfeed or cracked. The ability to find interesting links is less the skill and you would have to develop writing ability and be able to craft a story or theme around the links.

[arebelspy]

It's essentially becoming a "content" creator for things like buzzfeed or cracked. The ability to find interesting links is less the skill and you would have to develop writing ability and be able to craft a story or theme around the links.

This.  The geekologie guy is a pretty humorous writer (for a certain sense of humor) on top of interesting links.

But essentially you could set up your own link content service/website.  The tweets/wall posts would direct them to your site, which would direct them to the third-party link.

Probably not a ton of money in it, unless you became really good at it/popular, but that's totally possible.  I do think you have to have the writing ability to give each link a solid paragraph, and not just have a ton of random links ala Fark or something.