One of the reasons most people join Squidoo is that it can be a money-making opportunity. If you start experimenting with Amazon, you can open up an almost limitless area for generating your earnings from Squidoo. Or, you can rely on trying to keep all your lenses in the top tier (that would mean having a lensranking of over 2,000), but even if you write the most compelling content that keeps visitors coming back for more, you will find you have to keep updating your lenses all the time just to keep your top spot. Squidoo is growing at an exponential rate and with more great lensmasters joining up and each creating more and more compelling lenses, your work could start slipping down the lens ranks, meaning less earnings.
Use Amazon (and other methods) to increase what you can earn from your lenses. You can use Squidoo's Amazon module and you can also join Amazon.com's affiliate network and make even more. Just remember that just because you've plugged in Amazon products, you probably won't generate any sales. You need to work at it, cultivate it, and find what works for you and your visitors.
Here are some good tips on increasing what you can earn from Amazon:
1. Make lenses that will attract people in "buy-mode"
If you create a lens, try to think about how a visitor will react to it. If your lens was made so that you can point out something the visitor wants, show them the product they want. As an example, if you do a lens about "What Is Foot Fungus?" you should include products like foot powders, remedies and the like that are available from Amazon. You could review products that people need to cure foot fungus. People checking out a lens about a targeted topic like fungus are there for a reason: they want to know how to fix their problem. Provide an answer, and make a sale at the same time.
2. Link to products that are related to your topic
Just about the same as above, but what I mean here is that you would want to include other products that relate to your main topic. Using the same example above about foot fungus, you might have a link to specialized socks that alleviate their problems. You could use that to guide some of your traffic to your other lens about funky socks, which could lead to slippers, shoes, dresses, and just about anything else! Obviously not all of the traffic looking for foot fungus cures will go to your lens about socks, but some might - and a link from your socks lens might draw more traffic to your lens about foot fungus.
3. Sell more than just books
Amazon is a bookstore first and foremost. They are where people go when they are looking for great books. BUT. They also sell a multitude of other products! Avoid being too myopic and avoid just trying to sell books. Amazon is where people go first for books and you will hamstring yourself if you try to sell just books. There are millions of sites selling books on the Internet and you will be lost in the shuffle. Try selling some of the countless other products Amazon offers. Combine some sales modules with your great content and you will find yourself beginning to see more sales.
4. Link to products other customers like
Don't try to sell stuff that people don't want. Your visitors won't want to buy your Family Guy DVDs if they're looking for the latest New York Times bestseller (unless maybe there's a biography about Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane on the list). If you do sell books, try to link to Amazon's best rated products that relate to your topic. If your lens is about the latest best-selling detective novels, then sell them! Look for the ones that readers have judged as the best of the best and include your own reviews and offer your visitor a way to buy it now from Amazon.
5. Build more content!
Finally, BUILD MORE CONTENT! If you want to have just one or two lenses where you sell a few items, great. If you want to have money rolling in so you can retire, good luck, but you will need a lot more lenses on a variety of topics. You will need to make a sale her and a sale there on each lens. If you can generate $1 from one hundred sites each day, that's $100 a day or $36,500 a year. To do that is really hard and time consuming, but if you can do even a fraction of that (let's say 10 cents a day) you will be much better off today than you were yesterday.
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