Word has come down that there is now a limit to the number of Amazon and eBay modules you can use on Squidoo. The limit is now 10 Amazon modules and 5 eBay modules. That's it. That includes the sidebar Amazon feature.
There are a number heated discussions going on over at Squidu (the Squidoo forum) that if you are interested you should take a look at:
There is a new limit for Amazon and eBay modules
Systems for making better lenses - new OFFICIAL update
According to what I have read, if you have Squidoo pages that currently have more than the limit they will not be affected BUT you will not be able to add more to those pages and if you delete an Amazon module you won't be able to get it back. These older pages are in effect, "grandfathered" and you can continue using the same number of Amazon or ebay modules on THOSE pages. Any new pages will have the limit imposed. That goes for Giant Squids as well as new people on Squidoo.
You can read the official announcement at the SquidBlog: Systems for making better lenses. Like many, I can see the positive and negative effects of this decision - faster loading times (which Google values) versus the potential loss of Amazon revenue from Squidoo pages that are primarily sales pages.
As several people mention in the forum, It is never a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket. I will continue looking at HubPages and other sites like Xomba, SheToldMe and Best-Reviewer with renewed vigor. Squidoo remains one of my main priorities, but not my MAIN priority. Even with these limited being imposed, I would highly recommend anyone looking to make money online to cast a serious eye towards Squidoo. Especially if you are just starting out with Internet marketing.
I just wonder what other changes are being planned. One lensmaster at Squidoo said they understand that we have to play by Squidoo's rules, but it would be nice to know what the rules are before the game starts, not right in the middle. Going forward I will continue with my longterm building of pages on Squidoo but I will be looking elsewhere to shore up my online presence.
Is $2000 Per Month Possible On Squidoo? One Webmaster Can Say Yes It Is
That's quite a claim! According to the powers that be at Squidoo, one person has indeed made $2000/month at Squidoo with their most recent payout. It wasn't me unfortunately, but I think I know who it was (but I won't say for their own privacy).
The most recent payday at Squidoo saw many people state that it had been their best ever (myself included) and on the Squidoo forum (called Squidu) there is a thread where those who like to discuss making money online and earning at Squidoo post about the news that one of us has passed the $2,000 a month barrier just with Squidoo earnings. You can find the thread here: $2000 per month on Squidoo?.
Like most, I would like to get my online endeavors working well enough to generate an online income like that and I can see down the line that it may be possible for me, but it will take a LOT of work. There are a lot of webmasters who are candid about their income earned at Squidoo and elsewhere if you look and there are many excellent tutorials on many aspects of making money online with Squidoo and elsewhere that are readily available on Squidoo. I really feel that being on Squidoo is akin to being in a sort of "online marketers school" because of the amount of information available for new people.
The most recent payday at Squidoo saw many people state that it had been their best ever (myself included) and on the Squidoo forum (called Squidu) there is a thread where those who like to discuss making money online and earning at Squidoo post about the news that one of us has passed the $2,000 a month barrier just with Squidoo earnings. You can find the thread here: $2000 per month on Squidoo?.
Like most, I would like to get my online endeavors working well enough to generate an online income like that and I can see down the line that it may be possible for me, but it will take a LOT of work. There are a lot of webmasters who are candid about their income earned at Squidoo and elsewhere if you look and there are many excellent tutorials on many aspects of making money online with Squidoo and elsewhere that are readily available on Squidoo. I really feel that being on Squidoo is akin to being in a sort of "online marketers school" because of the amount of information available for new people.
Record Payouts At Squidoo: Also A Personal Best
Yesterday was PayDay at Squidoo and I was very pleased with the results of the work I had been doing. At Squidoo you are paid usually around the 15th of each month and most find out by logging into Squidoo and going to their dashboard where the infamous Blue Box appears stating how much you were paid.
I have broken down how people on Squidoo get paid in previous articles so I won't go into a lot of detail except to say that one of the methods of making money online at Squidoo is by how your webpages rank against those of other Squidoo members. There are about 2 million pages on Squidoo these days (only about 650,000 when I started 2 yrs ago!) and some are REALLY bad while others are top notch work. I would suggest you visit as many of the better ones as you can to find out the level of quality of the best ones.
In order to make money through Squidoo Lensrank, your webpage needs to rank at about 85,000 or higher. That is not always easy, but as always, the cream rises to the top. The Lensrank scale is divided into 3 "Tiers":
Tier One: Pages ranked from number 1-2,000.
Tier Two: Pages ranked 2,000-10,000.
Tier Three: Pages ranked 10,000-85,000.
That is the webpage's average pagerank over a month's time. You can find out what your page's lensrank is by going to the stats page on you dashboard for each of you webpages. Because there can be a lot of fluctuation because of traffic, sales and other factors, your page may move up or down in the lensrank scale. If you've made a page and it floats up into the top tier for a few days (good job!) but then slips back into tier 2 or 3, it will be your average rank for the month that your Squidoo pay will be based on.
Also, you are paid monthly on Squidoo but there is some delay in when you will see any money in your account. We were just paid on December 15th for our Lensrank (and sales) from October. So if you had been on Squidoo for some time and had some successful Halloween pages that ranked well, your earnings for October were paid this month. November will be paid in January and December will be paid in February.
The payouts for this last payday were of course based on your average October Lensrank as follows:
Tier One: $24.98
Tier Two: $4.25
Tier Three: $0.21
Added to that are InfoLink payments which were paid out as follows:
Tier One: $5.80
Tier Two: $0.99
Tier Three: $0.05
There is also the possibility of getting some Chitika advertising payments:
Tier One: $0.17
Tier Two: $0.03
Tier Three: $0.00
So, theoretically for each ranking webpage you could have made money on Squidoo as follows:
Lensrank + InfoLink + Chitika
Tier One: $24.98 + $5.80 + $0.17 = $30.95
Tier Two: $4.25 + $0.99 + $0.03 = $5.27
Tier Three: $0.21 + $0.05 + $0.00 = $0.26
And that is not including any sales you may have made through Amazon, eBay or other affiliates. On a personal note, this was my highest ever payout from Squidoo and I am quite pleased with the results I have been getting with the website and look forward to next month's payout and especially February's which will include Christmas sales. I am pretty sure it will be a personal best as I have already done 4 times as much in sales this December compared to last year.
If you want to take a look at the Squidoo Forum posts for those people talking about their Squidoo earnings, here's a link: Squidu Forum
I have broken down how people on Squidoo get paid in previous articles so I won't go into a lot of detail except to say that one of the methods of making money online at Squidoo is by how your webpages rank against those of other Squidoo members. There are about 2 million pages on Squidoo these days (only about 650,000 when I started 2 yrs ago!) and some are REALLY bad while others are top notch work. I would suggest you visit as many of the better ones as you can to find out the level of quality of the best ones.
In order to make money through Squidoo Lensrank, your webpage needs to rank at about 85,000 or higher. That is not always easy, but as always, the cream rises to the top. The Lensrank scale is divided into 3 "Tiers":
Tier One: Pages ranked from number 1-2,000.
Tier Two: Pages ranked 2,000-10,000.
Tier Three: Pages ranked 10,000-85,000.
That is the webpage's average pagerank over a month's time. You can find out what your page's lensrank is by going to the stats page on you dashboard for each of you webpages. Because there can be a lot of fluctuation because of traffic, sales and other factors, your page may move up or down in the lensrank scale. If you've made a page and it floats up into the top tier for a few days (good job!) but then slips back into tier 2 or 3, it will be your average rank for the month that your Squidoo pay will be based on.
Also, you are paid monthly on Squidoo but there is some delay in when you will see any money in your account. We were just paid on December 15th for our Lensrank (and sales) from October. So if you had been on Squidoo for some time and had some successful Halloween pages that ranked well, your earnings for October were paid this month. November will be paid in January and December will be paid in February.
The payouts for this last payday were of course based on your average October Lensrank as follows:
Tier One: $24.98
Tier Two: $4.25
Tier Three: $0.21
Added to that are InfoLink payments which were paid out as follows:
Tier One: $5.80
Tier Two: $0.99
Tier Three: $0.05
There is also the possibility of getting some Chitika advertising payments:
Tier One: $0.17
Tier Two: $0.03
Tier Three: $0.00
So, theoretically for each ranking webpage you could have made money on Squidoo as follows:
Lensrank + InfoLink + Chitika
Tier One: $24.98 + $5.80 + $0.17 = $30.95
Tier Two: $4.25 + $0.99 + $0.03 = $5.27
Tier Three: $0.21 + $0.05 + $0.00 = $0.26
And that is not including any sales you may have made through Amazon, eBay or other affiliates. On a personal note, this was my highest ever payout from Squidoo and I am quite pleased with the results I have been getting with the website and look forward to next month's payout and especially February's which will include Christmas sales. I am pretty sure it will be a personal best as I have already done 4 times as much in sales this December compared to last year.
If you want to take a look at the Squidoo Forum posts for those people talking about their Squidoo earnings, here's a link: Squidu Forum
Added Wayne Gretzky And Some Rookies Webpages
Most of the Squidoo pages about hockey that I have made in the past have not ranked well or got much traffic or made much in the way of sales - I do get the odd NHL jersey sale, but they don't really generate much in the way of online income to justify the amount of time I spend on them, but I don't care. This is one area that I just enjoy and whether or not these pages make any money is not important to me. It's just the fun of creating something you like.
I have webpages about some old school hockey players that I grew up idolizing (like Bobby Orr, Maurice Richard and Gordie Howe) and a bunch of others from the present day as well as players who have retired in the last few years that I just enjoyed watching play in the NHL. I also have one about Sidney Crosby that I like. These ones were all made about 2 years ago and they are usually in tier 3 and get a little bit of traffic, but the vast majority of my hockey pages are way back in the lensrank but that's not important to me.
I'm happy to update them every once in a while and add any new information I dig up on the players but I guess those webpages I have made not for the money. I know some online marketers probably shutter at the thought, but those pages are for me and the few others who really like hockey.
I would suggest that if you are on Squidoo (and other revenue sharing websites) that you add some webpages about people, items and topics that appeal to you. You may not make much in the way of online income, but you will be paid back many times by your enjoyment of your hobby.
Here are the hockey pages I have recently added if you want to take a look:
PK Subban (Montreal Canadiens)
Cam Fowler (Anaheim Ducks)
Sergei Bobrovsky (Philadelphia Flyers)
Taylor Hall (Edmonton Oilers)
And of course, Wayne Gretzky. There probably are not too many webpages about these rookies, but there are thousands about Gretzky and his exploits so I'm not expecting tier one for that page. There are some really good pages on Squidoo about Gretzky, but I finally decided to have one of my own.
Like I said, make some pages about what - you - love. Forget about making money and just have fun. It will make your more important work that much more bearable if you have some topics online that you like working on.
Reassessment At HubPages: Enhancing My Efforts To Generate An Online Income
I have been working on Squidoo for quite some time and came to a realization that I was limiting my online success by sticking with just one platform. I have had an account with HubPages for a long time but never really bothered to give the site enough attention. It's funny how something so obvious suddenly occurs to you, that you are leaving a great opportunity to make money online or offline untapped. So, as far as HubPages goes, I'd like to tap that.
No, I am not foregoing Squidoo. Squidoo is like a comfortable pair of slippers to me. I know how to use the website and I enjoy working with it and my experience with them (and the people there) has been profitable and will hopefully continue to be profitable.
My income from Squidoo continues to flourish (no, I'm not about to retire and live off my Squidoo residual income - I wish) and I see it increasing as time passes. I am seeing the result of a lot of work starting to pay off and it may just be because it is the Christmas season, but I keep seeing new highs as far as earnings and traffic to my Squidoo pages. The good thing is that it is not just one or two pages but broadly based.
Traffic is flowing to a lot of my Squidoo pages and I am seeing money for lensrank, Amazon, eBay and the other affiliates I use. It has been a lot of work to get to this point and it will be a lot of work to STAY in this position and to keep getting better. That's why I am looking hard at Hubpages right now.
Right now I am in "lurker mode" checking out the competition, reading lots of hubs, learning everything I can about how the website operates and going through the forum over at HubPages. The HubPages Forums are SO much better than they were when I joined HubPages 2 years ago and are very active, which I like to see. You can learn a lot by reading what peoples' impressions are of a website by combing through its forum. One of the suggestions I give anyone starting at Squidoo is get your butt over to the Squidu forum and READ everything.
At the forum: Read, read and read some more
I haven't had a chance to really look for a lot of tips and suggestions posted by HubPages member yet, but I will shortly. If you go through the Squidoo forum, you will find a wealth of tips, tricks and most importantly, TUTORIALS on how to do almost everything from creating Squidoo pages as well as using basic HTML and formating your work.
If you are new to Internet marketing, you can find out everything you need to know about making money with Squidoo and how to apply that knowledge elsewhere. Even if you are not new to marketing online, it's a good idea to see what's there. No one is an expert in every aspect of online marketing and if you are not learning, you are falling behind or soon will be. If you disagree, and think you know all you need to know to succeed, why are you reading this blog? I'm doing okay thank you very much, but I know that there are people out there doing much better than I am and many are willing to share their expertise.
My Plan For A HubPages Expansion
I am doing okay on Squidoo, but like I said, I have been leaving money on the table by not looking beyond the safe comforts of Squidoo and so, I plan on grabbing a bunch of pages over at HubPages.
There are several people who have posted in the Squidu forum about how they are doing with HubPages including dollar amounts (remember what I said about reading EVERYTHING at the forum?) and I think I have enough skill to generate another source of income with that website. I have ideas for some Hubs that would actually complement my Squidoo pages and help broaden what I'm doing as far as gaining a stronger position in some niches. And I can work on some new niche ideas I've been turning over in my mind. You always hear "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Well, it's time to get some new baskets, add a few chickens to the roost and start feeding them some fast-growth chicken feed.
Other Areas I Am Working On
Besides planning on moving some of my focus to HubPages, I have been checking out several other areas that look intriguing. I have written about Xomba, SheToldMe and Best Reviewer before, but I really think these revenue-sharing sites may prove to be another source of Adsense income as well as generally complementing my Squidoo pages and eventually my HubPages.
They are starting to drive some traffic around my blogs, Squidoo pages etc and I am seeing an increase is revenue. Not more than a trickle at this point, but enough so that I should alert you to these sites. Like I said, they help get people to your various websites, blogs or what have you plus they do actually generate some adsense earnings which is nice.
Adsense has never been a major money maker for me but the results I am seeing from these sites are starting to catch my attention. Some are do-follow back links and others are not, but they are getting people onto my pages and then I am getting some of them onto my affiliates pages. That alone should get you thinking about joining them.
I have some referral links on this blog, but you can always Google them and check out some reviews, but the best reviews you can make is to use them yourself. If they don't work for you or me, I would just drop them and move on. But right now it seems getting backlinks (any backlinks) is what helps get your pages noticed by people and the serps, and if you can get backlinks and traffic PLUS make a little money, that sounds like a win-win.
There are a number of other revenue sharing sites I am rummaging around and after I test them out a bit further I will post something about whether they look good too.
In the meantime, my main focus will be to consolidate what I am doing with Squidoo, make some moves on HubPages and see how it goes.
No, I am not foregoing Squidoo. Squidoo is like a comfortable pair of slippers to me. I know how to use the website and I enjoy working with it and my experience with them (and the people there) has been profitable and will hopefully continue to be profitable.
My income from Squidoo continues to flourish (no, I'm not about to retire and live off my Squidoo residual income - I wish) and I see it increasing as time passes. I am seeing the result of a lot of work starting to pay off and it may just be because it is the Christmas season, but I keep seeing new highs as far as earnings and traffic to my Squidoo pages. The good thing is that it is not just one or two pages but broadly based.
Traffic is flowing to a lot of my Squidoo pages and I am seeing money for lensrank, Amazon, eBay and the other affiliates I use. It has been a lot of work to get to this point and it will be a lot of work to STAY in this position and to keep getting better. That's why I am looking hard at Hubpages right now.
Right now I am in "lurker mode" checking out the competition, reading lots of hubs, learning everything I can about how the website operates and going through the forum over at HubPages. The HubPages Forums are SO much better than they were when I joined HubPages 2 years ago and are very active, which I like to see. You can learn a lot by reading what peoples' impressions are of a website by combing through its forum. One of the suggestions I give anyone starting at Squidoo is get your butt over to the Squidu forum and READ everything.
At the forum: Read, read and read some more
I haven't had a chance to really look for a lot of tips and suggestions posted by HubPages member yet, but I will shortly. If you go through the Squidoo forum, you will find a wealth of tips, tricks and most importantly, TUTORIALS on how to do almost everything from creating Squidoo pages as well as using basic HTML and formating your work.
If you are new to Internet marketing, you can find out everything you need to know about making money with Squidoo and how to apply that knowledge elsewhere. Even if you are not new to marketing online, it's a good idea to see what's there. No one is an expert in every aspect of online marketing and if you are not learning, you are falling behind or soon will be. If you disagree, and think you know all you need to know to succeed, why are you reading this blog? I'm doing okay thank you very much, but I know that there are people out there doing much better than I am and many are willing to share their expertise.
My Plan For A HubPages Expansion
I am doing okay on Squidoo, but like I said, I have been leaving money on the table by not looking beyond the safe comforts of Squidoo and so, I plan on grabbing a bunch of pages over at HubPages.
There are several people who have posted in the Squidu forum about how they are doing with HubPages including dollar amounts (remember what I said about reading EVERYTHING at the forum?) and I think I have enough skill to generate another source of income with that website. I have ideas for some Hubs that would actually complement my Squidoo pages and help broaden what I'm doing as far as gaining a stronger position in some niches. And I can work on some new niche ideas I've been turning over in my mind. You always hear "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Well, it's time to get some new baskets, add a few chickens to the roost and start feeding them some fast-growth chicken feed.
Other Areas I Am Working On
Besides planning on moving some of my focus to HubPages, I have been checking out several other areas that look intriguing. I have written about Xomba, SheToldMe and Best Reviewer before, but I really think these revenue-sharing sites may prove to be another source of Adsense income as well as generally complementing my Squidoo pages and eventually my HubPages.
They are starting to drive some traffic around my blogs, Squidoo pages etc and I am seeing an increase is revenue. Not more than a trickle at this point, but enough so that I should alert you to these sites. Like I said, they help get people to your various websites, blogs or what have you plus they do actually generate some adsense earnings which is nice.
Adsense has never been a major money maker for me but the results I am seeing from these sites are starting to catch my attention. Some are do-follow back links and others are not, but they are getting people onto my pages and then I am getting some of them onto my affiliates pages. That alone should get you thinking about joining them.
I have some referral links on this blog, but you can always Google them and check out some reviews, but the best reviews you can make is to use them yourself. If they don't work for you or me, I would just drop them and move on. But right now it seems getting backlinks (any backlinks) is what helps get your pages noticed by people and the serps, and if you can get backlinks and traffic PLUS make a little money, that sounds like a win-win.
There are a number of other revenue sharing sites I am rummaging around and after I test them out a bit further I will post something about whether they look good too.
In the meantime, my main focus will be to consolidate what I am doing with Squidoo, make some moves on HubPages and see how it goes.
Two Sites You Can Make Money With: Xomba and SheToldMe
Although Squidoo is my priority, I have been snooping around other sites looking for other ways to make money online and two that I have done some work with might be something that you might also be interested in. The two sites are SheToldMe and Xomba.
Both sites offer adsense revenue sharing for writing short articles or blurbs. Of course I thought "Yeah, right. Just write something and you will get paid quickly?"
I went through both sites fairly in-depth reading the articles of others and seeing if they had potential for earning a few dollars or not. Reading about the success of others got me interested, but not entirely convinced. It is easy to write about "How I Made XX Dollars With No Effort!" etc but the model both websites have set up appears legit. So I thought I would take the plunge and see what was what. I'm glad I did.
I started making money right away, pennies, yes, but that was with very little actual work. I sound like a bad ad don't I? That's why I haven't written about the websites before - I wanted to test them out over a period of time and see if they do deliver. They do deliver.
If you have a blog or are writing elsewhere you can get some links back to your own site or simply link to other sites you find interesting enough to write a 50 word blurb or bookmark about. I have done this and I am pleasantly surprised.
Like I mentioned, Squidoo is where I do the bulk of my writing and this blog where I talk about my adventures and what I am doing over there. I am not about to leave Squidoo because it provides most of my online income through lensrank, and various affiliates. BUT...
Even in the short time I have been working on these two other websites I am seeing results that make me want to reassess the time I spend at Squidoo (a lot) and start giving my work at the other websites a higher priority. These are links to where you can sign up with the websites:
shetoldme.com
xomba.com
You should check them out and if you think they are an option for you, you might want to try them out. To be honest, I can see the income I could be making with these two sites rivalling what I make on Squidoo and I have been working on Squidoo for over 2 years. Although I won't divulge what I make with Squidoo, I've dropped some hints in this blog. One piece of advice that many online marketers will tell you is that you need to diversify your income and not have all your eggs in one basket. I'm pointing you to a couple of extra baskets.
Also, for full disclosure, the links above that take you to the websites are referral links, meaning that if you do sign up that I will get credit for signing up a new member. Using Xomba as an example, you will get half of the Adsense money from clicks and Xomba gets the other half. If you signed up by following my link, 10 percent of Xomba's half would be directed to my account, but your share of the Adsense revenue remains unaffected. I don't forsee making much if anything as far as getting people signed up, but if you sign up other writers/bloggers, you would also get that 10 percent. There is no "downline" shenanighans to worry about and no pyramid aspect. If you want, rather than using my links, just Google either website and sign up that way. All I'm doing is saying hey, you can make some money with these sites. The rest is up to you, but I hope to see you over there.
Both sites offer adsense revenue sharing for writing short articles or blurbs. Of course I thought "Yeah, right. Just write something and you will get paid quickly?"
I went through both sites fairly in-depth reading the articles of others and seeing if they had potential for earning a few dollars or not. Reading about the success of others got me interested, but not entirely convinced. It is easy to write about "How I Made XX Dollars With No Effort!" etc but the model both websites have set up appears legit. So I thought I would take the plunge and see what was what. I'm glad I did.
I started making money right away, pennies, yes, but that was with very little actual work. I sound like a bad ad don't I? That's why I haven't written about the websites before - I wanted to test them out over a period of time and see if they do deliver. They do deliver.
If you have a blog or are writing elsewhere you can get some links back to your own site or simply link to other sites you find interesting enough to write a 50 word blurb or bookmark about. I have done this and I am pleasantly surprised.
Like I mentioned, Squidoo is where I do the bulk of my writing and this blog where I talk about my adventures and what I am doing over there. I am not about to leave Squidoo because it provides most of my online income through lensrank, and various affiliates. BUT...
Even in the short time I have been working on these two other websites I am seeing results that make me want to reassess the time I spend at Squidoo (a lot) and start giving my work at the other websites a higher priority. These are links to where you can sign up with the websites:
shetoldme.com
xomba.com
You should check them out and if you think they are an option for you, you might want to try them out. To be honest, I can see the income I could be making with these two sites rivalling what I make on Squidoo and I have been working on Squidoo for over 2 years. Although I won't divulge what I make with Squidoo, I've dropped some hints in this blog. One piece of advice that many online marketers will tell you is that you need to diversify your income and not have all your eggs in one basket. I'm pointing you to a couple of extra baskets.
Also, for full disclosure, the links above that take you to the websites are referral links, meaning that if you do sign up that I will get credit for signing up a new member. Using Xomba as an example, you will get half of the Adsense money from clicks and Xomba gets the other half. If you signed up by following my link, 10 percent of Xomba's half would be directed to my account, but your share of the Adsense revenue remains unaffected. I don't forsee making much if anything as far as getting people signed up, but if you sign up other writers/bloggers, you would also get that 10 percent. There is no "downline" shenanighans to worry about and no pyramid aspect. If you want, rather than using my links, just Google either website and sign up that way. All I'm doing is saying hey, you can make some money with these sites. The rest is up to you, but I hope to see you over there.
Variation On Silly Bandz: Wacky Ringz ~ The Next Big Thing?
Okay, why didn't I think of this? It seems so blatently obvious - you have Silly Bandz, which are simply silicon bracelets that have been a crazy fad for at least a year or more. How come no one thought: hey, if the like the bracelets, maybe they will like rings too! We can call them "Silly Rings" or Wacky Rings.
And so it goes... another great idea for a fad passes you by. But I did make a new webpage for them on Squidoo called Wacky Ringz: The Newest Silly Bandz Craze. The page was just published and I am already getting some traffic. The best part about this rings is that they are so inexpensive - you can load up on them which is probably a good idea if you collect silly bandz.
You can also take a look at the Silly Rings
available over at Amazon if you like.
And so it goes... another great idea for a fad passes you by. But I did make a new webpage for them on Squidoo called Wacky Ringz: The Newest Silly Bandz Craze. The page was just published and I am already getting some traffic. The best part about this rings is that they are so inexpensive - you can load up on them which is probably a good idea if you collect silly bandz.
You can also take a look at the Silly Rings
available over at Amazon if you like.
New Challenge: Taking My Worse Performer And Making It One Of My Best
During the 2-plus years I have been on Squidoo, I have made over 200 webpages. Some perform nicely, always getting traffic, making sales and helping to generate a monthly income for your truly. That is one of the main reasons I am so active on the website. There are other webpages that for whatever reason have sunk to the bottom of the heap, unnoticed and unloved by Google and the other SERPs. I have one that I built around September 2008 that sank faster than a rock tossed into a murky pond. It didn't really catch my eye or that of others on the Internet. Eventually it settled to the very bottom of my Squidoo dashboard, with a terrible LenRank of over 457,000 - well out of the running for any money and bypassed by all including myself.
Someone posted on the Squidoo forum that they wanted to do something called the Tier One Challenge (that's a link to the forum). What people are trying to do is take one of their under-performing webpages and try to make it a Tier One. To make it into Tier One, you need to have a LensRank of under 2,000. That is difficult even for experienced folks at Squidoo and for webpages that are especially well-written. If your webpage does have a LensRank of between 1-2,000 average for a month, you are eligible to receive the Tier One payout of usually around $20-$30 (not including any sales your page may have generated) so it can be quite lucrative to have as many pages in the Top Tier as possible. The problem is you have many thousands of others trying to do the same thing. There are some people who consistently have 20 or more in the top 2,000 while there are also others who have never had a single page make it. So this is an especially difficult challenge to accomplish.
So I read the challenge and several of the responses. I looked at my dashboard for a likely candidate and as my eyes ran down the list on my dashboard, right at the bottom was the perfect choice - my webpage about Scotty Bowman. It was sitting there - glaring at me from neglect - with a LensRank of 457K. It had never made a cent and had little to no visitors since I had first published it 2 years ago. This was the perfect challenge as I had been promising myself that either I would get this page up to the Tier 2 level (LensRank 2001-approximately 10,000) or I would delete it. And even though it had under-performed, I cannot delete some webpages.
First of all, who is Scotty Bowman? I imagine you are asking. He is actually quite well-known, especially in ice hockey circles as the winningest coach in National Hockey League history. Over his 27 year coaching career Bowman's teams won the Stanley Cup 9 times. He coached the Montreal Canadiens, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. Bowman has had an absolutely stellar NHL career and deserves much praise which he does receive. Being a hockey fan myself (I have dozens of great pages on teams and players at Squidoo you might want to check out) I created my page about Bowman when I first started at Squidoo. Looking at it 2 years later, I can see many flaws in it which contribute to it's poor showing. Lets take a look at the stats for the page:
Created in September 2008, it received no visits from September 2008 until August 2009. NONE! That should have been a red flag for me to fix it, but I was busy creating new pages and working on those that were more successful. I would "get to that Bowman page later."
Here are the visits to the page from September 2009 until September 2010:
September 2009: 1 visit
October 2009: 1 visit
November 2009: 4 visits
December 2009: 2 visits
January 2010: 0 visits
February 2010: 2 visits
March 2010: 3 visits
April 2010: 2 visits
May 2010: 6 visits
June 2010: 2 visits
July 2010: 6 visits
August 2010: 2 visits
September 2010: 3 visits
So nothing as far as visits for the first year and 34 visits for the 2nd year. Time to fix this page.
What I've done is to start re-writing the content and adding more to flesh out the story of Bowman's career. There are a lot of side stories that tie in to many of my other hockey pages about individual players and teams on Squidoo which allows links to those pages where I can add to these secondary pages and add even more detail and increasing the original content across all my Squidoo pages. By making this one page stronger with my own original content the related pages become somewhat stronger as a by-product meaning more acknowledgement from Google and the search engines that "Hey, here's some content about this subject found no where else and it is relevent to what people are looking for" and bringing more people to my pages. More visitors means an enhanced opportunity for those people to buy things or go through my other pages and come back.
Just with adding more content, the LensRank of my Bowman lens has jumped from 457K to it's alltime high of 67,731. That is of course a long, long way from having a LensRank of 2,000 or better, but this little experiment won't be a success overnight. It will require a lot of work on my part - that's one reason why I am writing this post, which will help promote the page as well as my efforts on promoting it.
I am continuing to add new content to the Bowman webpage and working my HTML skills to try to make it even more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Even if you have excellent content, presentation can go a long way in making a webpage a more enjoyable experience for your visitors. If you do have a minute, I would appreciate it if you could take a look at the webpage, here's a link: Scotty Bowman.
Also, because this challenge is getting attention from several different people on Squidoo, many are trying to get their webpages to rank - you can read all about it in the Squidu forum. One person actually created a new webpage just for this challenge and that can be found at Tier One Challenge where you can check out the other people submitting pages to this challenge.
I will be updating regularily about results and my actions taken to make the page better. One thing you may notice if you do read the posts in the forum thread is that I have included the webpage in my signature which will help by giving the webpage another backlink. That's yet another reason to be active in the forums.
Someone posted on the Squidoo forum that they wanted to do something called the Tier One Challenge (that's a link to the forum). What people are trying to do is take one of their under-performing webpages and try to make it a Tier One. To make it into Tier One, you need to have a LensRank of under 2,000. That is difficult even for experienced folks at Squidoo and for webpages that are especially well-written. If your webpage does have a LensRank of between 1-2,000 average for a month, you are eligible to receive the Tier One payout of usually around $20-$30 (not including any sales your page may have generated) so it can be quite lucrative to have as many pages in the Top Tier as possible. The problem is you have many thousands of others trying to do the same thing. There are some people who consistently have 20 or more in the top 2,000 while there are also others who have never had a single page make it. So this is an especially difficult challenge to accomplish.
So I read the challenge and several of the responses. I looked at my dashboard for a likely candidate and as my eyes ran down the list on my dashboard, right at the bottom was the perfect choice - my webpage about Scotty Bowman. It was sitting there - glaring at me from neglect - with a LensRank of 457K. It had never made a cent and had little to no visitors since I had first published it 2 years ago. This was the perfect challenge as I had been promising myself that either I would get this page up to the Tier 2 level (LensRank 2001-approximately 10,000) or I would delete it. And even though it had under-performed, I cannot delete some webpages.
First of all, who is Scotty Bowman? I imagine you are asking. He is actually quite well-known, especially in ice hockey circles as the winningest coach in National Hockey League history. Over his 27 year coaching career Bowman's teams won the Stanley Cup 9 times. He coached the Montreal Canadiens, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. Bowman has had an absolutely stellar NHL career and deserves much praise which he does receive. Being a hockey fan myself (I have dozens of great pages on teams and players at Squidoo you might want to check out) I created my page about Bowman when I first started at Squidoo. Looking at it 2 years later, I can see many flaws in it which contribute to it's poor showing. Lets take a look at the stats for the page:
Created in September 2008, it received no visits from September 2008 until August 2009. NONE! That should have been a red flag for me to fix it, but I was busy creating new pages and working on those that were more successful. I would "get to that Bowman page later."
Here are the visits to the page from September 2009 until September 2010:
September 2009: 1 visit
October 2009: 1 visit
November 2009: 4 visits
December 2009: 2 visits
January 2010: 0 visits
February 2010: 2 visits
March 2010: 3 visits
April 2010: 2 visits
May 2010: 6 visits
June 2010: 2 visits
July 2010: 6 visits
August 2010: 2 visits
September 2010: 3 visits
So nothing as far as visits for the first year and 34 visits for the 2nd year. Time to fix this page.
What I've done is to start re-writing the content and adding more to flesh out the story of Bowman's career. There are a lot of side stories that tie in to many of my other hockey pages about individual players and teams on Squidoo which allows links to those pages where I can add to these secondary pages and add even more detail and increasing the original content across all my Squidoo pages. By making this one page stronger with my own original content the related pages become somewhat stronger as a by-product meaning more acknowledgement from Google and the search engines that "Hey, here's some content about this subject found no where else and it is relevent to what people are looking for" and bringing more people to my pages. More visitors means an enhanced opportunity for those people to buy things or go through my other pages and come back.
Just with adding more content, the LensRank of my Bowman lens has jumped from 457K to it's alltime high of 67,731. That is of course a long, long way from having a LensRank of 2,000 or better, but this little experiment won't be a success overnight. It will require a lot of work on my part - that's one reason why I am writing this post, which will help promote the page as well as my efforts on promoting it.
I am continuing to add new content to the Bowman webpage and working my HTML skills to try to make it even more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Even if you have excellent content, presentation can go a long way in making a webpage a more enjoyable experience for your visitors. If you do have a minute, I would appreciate it if you could take a look at the webpage, here's a link: Scotty Bowman.
Also, because this challenge is getting attention from several different people on Squidoo, many are trying to get their webpages to rank - you can read all about it in the Squidu forum. One person actually created a new webpage just for this challenge and that can be found at Tier One Challenge where you can check out the other people submitting pages to this challenge.
I will be updating regularily about results and my actions taken to make the page better. One thing you may notice if you do read the posts in the forum thread is that I have included the webpage in my signature which will help by giving the webpage another backlink. That's yet another reason to be active in the forums.
My Latest Pages On Squidoo: Disney Fairies, Canadian Stamps, Coins, Betty Boop and Vampires
I've been so busy cranking out some new webpages on Squidoo, I've neglected to update here, so I thought I had better list my latest efforts.
Dress For Success Like Sheldon Cooper From Big Bang Theory
Disney Fairies Books
Must-Have Books For Coin Collectors
Stamp Collecting For Canadians
Cute Betty Boop Bobbleheads
Kotobukiya Statues
True Blood: A Guide To The Sookie Stackhouse Story
Quite a list! Most of this group are in Tier 3, although the Big Bang Theory one is in the 2nd Tier right now. It is mostly about the t-shirts worn by Sheldon Cooper (Emmy winner Jim Parsons) on the show. He favors lots of superhero-type of clothing - including a Flash uniform lol. One of my own personal favorite shows right now so I love being able to update this webpage.
I like the Disney Fairies
webpage and it ties in nicely with the Tinker Bell calendar webpage I've had for some time. The "Stamp Collecting For Canadians" is another fun topic (well, for me anyway) where I get to write about another of my geeky hobbies and show some of the newest and oldest Canadian stamps. With a little elbow grease I think it will drift into the top tier as well, but that will take time and a lot of promotion to get my fellow stamp geeks to give it a peek.
Both the Betty Boop page and the one about the Kotobukiya statues are fun topics too. Betty Boop has a number of bobble heads with the lil sexy flapper in various guises. I'll be adding to this page and trying to add more about her. As any comic book/graphic novel fan would attest, the Kotobukiya figures are really something cool. Lots of excellent detailed work goes into this Star Wars figures and Marvel/DC superhero figurines. A little on the expensive side for me, but I know people love them and are becoming more and more collectable.
As far as collecting things goes, like most stamp collectors, I am also interested in coin collecting and added the "Must-Have" coin guides because it is another area I plan to expand into. Coin collecting is a fascinating area and I look forward to updating this page from time to time.
The last one listed is about the television series True Blood, starring Anna Paquin. It was a super-hot topic mid-September and I thought I would capitalize on that by putting an episode guide on Squidoo. It needs more work and sits around the 100K mark in Lensrank, but as season three of the vampire series just ended, it will have time to purcolate before season four kicks in mid-2011. By that time I think it will be something that the rabid fans of the show will love.
Beyond those (and I'm sure I am forgetting several new webpages), I have several more in my pipeline that will be up soon. I am doing a challenge where you have to do 5 new webpages for Squidboo on Squidoo with a Halloween theme. It is a little late to be capitalizing on the spooky season by creating new Halloween lenses, but you can still get new webpages to rank well if they are really good. Plus - don't think in the short term - create great Halloween pages NOW and work to get them that much better for Halloween 2011, 2012, 2013...
There's room for more at Squidoo and the Internet - tons of traffic is actively searching every aspect from Halloween costumes to pumpkins to decorations. Get your pages up now so you can have the best up in time for next year. And don't forget about Christmas which is steaming towards us yet again.
Dress For Success Like Sheldon Cooper From Big Bang Theory
Disney Fairies Books
Must-Have Books For Coin Collectors
Stamp Collecting For Canadians
Cute Betty Boop Bobbleheads
Kotobukiya Statues
True Blood: A Guide To The Sookie Stackhouse Story
Quite a list! Most of this group are in Tier 3, although the Big Bang Theory one is in the 2nd Tier right now. It is mostly about the t-shirts worn by Sheldon Cooper (Emmy winner Jim Parsons) on the show. He favors lots of superhero-type of clothing - including a Flash uniform lol. One of my own personal favorite shows right now so I love being able to update this webpage.
I like the Disney Fairies
webpage and it ties in nicely with the Tinker Bell calendar webpage I've had for some time. The "Stamp Collecting For Canadians" is another fun topic (well, for me anyway) where I get to write about another of my geeky hobbies and show some of the newest and oldest Canadian stamps. With a little elbow grease I think it will drift into the top tier as well, but that will take time and a lot of promotion to get my fellow stamp geeks to give it a peek.Both the Betty Boop page and the one about the Kotobukiya statues are fun topics too. Betty Boop has a number of bobble heads with the lil sexy flapper in various guises. I'll be adding to this page and trying to add more about her. As any comic book/graphic novel fan would attest, the Kotobukiya figures are really something cool. Lots of excellent detailed work goes into this Star Wars figures and Marvel/DC superhero figurines. A little on the expensive side for me, but I know people love them and are becoming more and more collectable.
As far as collecting things goes, like most stamp collectors, I am also interested in coin collecting and added the "Must-Have" coin guides because it is another area I plan to expand into. Coin collecting is a fascinating area and I look forward to updating this page from time to time.
The last one listed is about the television series True Blood, starring Anna Paquin. It was a super-hot topic mid-September and I thought I would capitalize on that by putting an episode guide on Squidoo. It needs more work and sits around the 100K mark in Lensrank, but as season three of the vampire series just ended, it will have time to purcolate before season four kicks in mid-2011. By that time I think it will be something that the rabid fans of the show will love.
Beyond those (and I'm sure I am forgetting several new webpages), I have several more in my pipeline that will be up soon. I am doing a challenge where you have to do 5 new webpages for Squidboo on Squidoo with a Halloween theme. It is a little late to be capitalizing on the spooky season by creating new Halloween lenses, but you can still get new webpages to rank well if they are really good. Plus - don't think in the short term - create great Halloween pages NOW and work to get them that much better for Halloween 2011, 2012, 2013...
There's room for more at Squidoo and the Internet - tons of traffic is actively searching every aspect from Halloween costumes
to pumpkins to decorations. Get your pages up now so you can have the best up in time for next year. And don't forget about Christmas which is steaming towards us yet again.
Changing One Webpage To Appear More Businesslike: How I Did It
I published a webpage about books on Squidoo called Current Bestselling Books. It is a new page, just created this September 13th, so the traffic is very slow. This has given me time to re-define the webpage to be a more pleasant experience for any visitor. It's not the prettiest of pages but I think it will do for now. One good aspect of making pages on Squidoo is that you have so many options as to the layout of your webpage you can make your page almost to any design you can think of. But within the module system Squidoo has set up.
I have chosen to highlight a number of books available on Amazon.com. The page itself is more like a bookshelf that I place books for sale and either people buy that book or another or they move on to other websites. A very simplistic view, but you should try to look at it from that perspective. On your Squidoo webpages you provide visitors with the same options - stay and buy or go ("thanks for stopping by! Tell your friends about my website" I yell as you leave.
My plan is to have a note about each book which will give the page a bit more stickiness rather than just having the books themselves all lined up. Having short reviews should help get the page indexed by the search engines and by updating frequently, there will be some positive movement in the PageRank. This obviously won't happen overnight because this is a very competitive niche. I have no illusions of this page making a ton of money over night. It doesn't work that way - you have to put in some work beyond just putting your page on the Internet.
You have to look at what any visitor to your webpage is looking for. Hopefully if someone has come to my page I am hoping they are looking for a book to purchase and or just to brouse the selection. You can have your selection remain static, or you can go in and change things up. New items, move some that are not getting any clicks out or demote them to a different area of the page. You haven't removed the item, but simply placed it in a less conspicuous place - thereby freeing up room for other items to be shown. Just your basic retail.
That's what I'm doing and the updates help bring in more people to check out the page. Currently it is mostly fellow Squidoo people and the occasional person from search engine traffic. Obviously if I am going to make this page any kind of success, I need to increase the number of visitors. One of the things I am doing is writing this blog post showing how I am actually working to make this page succeed. Another is having my webpage's address in my signature when I leave messages in the forum at Squidoo. It's called the Squidu Forum and you will learn a lot about making a great lens on Squidoo by going and reading as much as you can. The go back again.
Also I posted in the "Critque My Lens" section of the forum and some people gave it the thumbs up that they liked it. Those were from people already on Squidoo. Those not on Squidoo can't say they like the webpage except in the comments section at the bottom, which are always appreciated. If you think I'm missing something let me know so I can address it.
Finally I am looking for backlinks that will help the page rank a little. This means moving a little closer to the top of the heap when the search engines which means - more traffic, more sales, more success - which is why we're here. I will be reporting on how this little project progresses.
I have chosen to highlight a number of books available on Amazon.com
. The page itself is more like a bookshelf that I place books for sale and either people buy that book or another or they move on to other websites. A very simplistic view, but you should try to look at it from that perspective. On your Squidoo webpages you provide visitors with the same options - stay and buy or go ("thanks for stopping by! Tell your friends about my website" I yell as you leave.My plan is to have a note about each book which will give the page a bit more stickiness rather than just having the books themselves all lined up. Having short reviews should help get the page indexed by the search engines and by updating frequently, there will be some positive movement in the PageRank. This obviously won't happen overnight because this is a very competitive niche. I have no illusions of this page making a ton of money over night. It doesn't work that way - you have to put in some work beyond just putting your page on the Internet.
You have to look at what any visitor to your webpage is looking for. Hopefully if someone has come to my page I am hoping they are looking for a book to purchase and or just to brouse the selection. You can have your selection remain static, or you can go in and change things up. New items, move some that are not getting any clicks out or demote them to a different area of the page. You haven't removed the item, but simply placed it in a less conspicuous place - thereby freeing up room for other items to be shown. Just your basic retail.
That's what I'm doing and the updates help bring in more people to check out the page. Currently it is mostly fellow Squidoo people and the occasional person from search engine traffic. Obviously if I am going to make this page any kind of success, I need to increase the number of visitors. One of the things I am doing is writing this blog post showing how I am actually working to make this page succeed. Another is having my webpage's address in my signature when I leave messages in the forum at Squidoo. It's called the Squidu Forum and you will learn a lot about making a great lens on Squidoo by going and reading as much as you can. The go back again.
Also I posted in the "Critque My Lens" section of the forum and some people gave it the thumbs up that they liked it. Those were from people already on Squidoo. Those not on Squidoo can't say they like the webpage except in the comments section at the bottom, which are always appreciated. If you think I'm missing something let me know so I can address it.
Finally I am looking for backlinks that will help the page rank a little. This means moving a little closer to the top of the heap when the search engines which means - more traffic, more sales, more success - which is why we're here. I will be reporting on how this little project progresses.
It's Almost Time To Start Thinking About A New Wall Calendar - Sexy Options?
Fall is actually just days away and Halloween and then Christmas will be upon us before we know what hit us, so to get a jump on the end of the year, you might want to take a break to look at some of the 2011 sexy wall calendars that are already available. The latest calendars always feature hot women in various states of undress (do I sound like I'm complainin'?) and the new ones are pretty good.There's Megan Fox calendars featuring the beautiful star of the Transformers movies, some with shots from the film. Fox just peers out at you all year long with a new photo of gorgeous actress with that come hither look she's patented. She had several calendars last year and offers several more for the coming year.
Also, there's the Maxim calendar 2011 with bikini-clad models to keep you warm during the cold winter months. Another Favorite is the Penthouse Magazine 2011 lingerie wall calendar which is according to Amazon - the big seller so far this year and judging by the cover, I'd have to agree that it looks like a winner. Penthouse has another hot wall calendar in their Penthouse Girl + Girl 2011 Calendar which appeals to any red-blooded male and not just your average Howard Stern fan. Not just one pretty girl each month but two for the price of one? Um, thank you lol.Completed A Monster Quest On Squidoo & Added Aly Michalka To The Mix
They added a new series of features to the website that award prizes of sorts for completing new pages, checking out the work of others and generally improve the quality of the webpages appearing on the site. One of these "quests" that I was given as a level 28 Squid, was to review 15 different webpages (not mine) and publish a new wepage preferably in the category of "Pop Culture & Celebs", "Movies & TV" or "Entertainment". I chose to do mine about Alyson Michalka, who stars in the new television series Hellcats. The show is about a law student forced to become a cheerleader due to problems with her scholarship.
Michalka herself is quite pretty and multi-talented (she's released songs with her sister Amanda) and sang in the movie Bandslam that came out last year. The webpage was created just the other day and is already generating traffic. Plus, I received 1200 points for completing this quest which pushed me further up the list as far as levels go.
Helping To Keep Up With The Current Bestselling Books
Yes, another new Squidoo webpage by yours truly. This one is about the Bestselling Books being sold by Amazon. I think that this page ties in with the one I did awhile back about Graphic Novels as well as the about Books For Children. The children's book webpage actually ties together a bunch of individual pages about Encyclopedia Brown, The Boxcar Children and several other webpages that needs to be updated again soon.
The new page is more adult oriented with books currently on the various bestselling lists as well as some others that have slipped off the list but are still good sellers.
The new page is more adult oriented with books currently on the various bestselling lists as well as some others that have slipped off the list but are still good sellers.
Just Received 1,000 Votes Of Approval From Facebook Visitors On My Squidoo Page
The traffic tapered off but the webpage still gets a fair number of visits and leapt into the top tier at Squidoo, but is now slipping back into Tier 2 which is still much better than I had expected the page to be doing at this point.
I actually had over 2,600 visits on one day and they all seemed to be coming from Facebook and many were giving the page their approval my clicking the blue Facebook "like" button. I know there are some other pages that get traffic like that all the time, but it was surprising to have one of my pages sort of go viral on Facebook.
The nice thing is that now other people at Squidoo are finding the page and leaving comments and giving it the thumbs up. It's basically a webpage with a number of videos showing various punk bands from the 1970s-90s and people can vote for whichever songs they like - they don't have to choose just one, they can vote for all of them if they want or just vote for whichever band's songs they like best.
Also a lot of people left messages pointing out that certain songs were missing so I added those songs to the list which now is over 200 videos. It's almost like a massive playlist of songs and videos for all the great punk songs and bands and you can take the list for free as a widget and add it to your website or blog if you want.
Still surprising that the webpage had so much success at drawing traffic so quickly.
Just Added Another Webpage ~ All About Halloween Bobble Heads
that my nephew gave me that I think is cool. Basically it is a knight in black armor missing a leg and arm with blood splurting out from it's severed limb. That is humoring because I am a HUGE Monty Python fan and insisted on seeing the movie when it came out in the 1970s.I just checked on Amazon to see if they had any listed, but no Black Knight, although they had one of the Knights of Ni (they ones who say Ni and are soooo terrifying and in desperate need of a shrubbery).
But back to my bobblehead webpage. It's called Halloween Bobble Heads and one of the bobbleheads is the Linda Blair from The Exorcist in the picture. Pretty creepy right? There's a ton of others that are all good fun and many folks do collect them, but I don't think I could have that freaky Linda Blair one in my house - I'd feel like it was staring at me lol. Here's some others that you can check out:
I don't know if these "head knockers" are good sellers or not, but they are fun and should give me at least a tier 3 ranking and maybe a 2nd tier rating for October if I'm lucky. But the ranking isn't what I'm totally interested in. What I'm thinking is Halloween in 2011, 2012 and so on. As this page ages, and gets more links it will gain more credibility with the search engines and just Halloween enthusiasts in general. The bobbleheads are just a fun item and the page won't need a lot of work and ties in with the post I did about the Santa Bobble Heads webpage I put together.
I'll report back when I see how the page does. Now I have to get back to work! Enough of this "blogging" business. I have webpages to build!
List Your Favorite Squidoo Pages In Slinkset Directory
You can list your page on Slinkset.com and give your webpage a little bit of backlink juice. Sure, it won't automatically push your work onto page one of Google with this one little link, but it is free and takes a short amount of time to put your page in the directory.
You can add your Squidoo pages to the Squidoo Lenses (you have to join the site which is free) and then click the "Submit" button and input your pages information. And there it is - instant backlink. I did it for some of my Squidoo pages (like my Jellycat and my Calendar Frames and Holders pages). Because visitors to the site can vote for those links they like, I've been lucky enough to get a couple of votes for my Jellycat page.
One other cool thing is that you can also create your own group. You can have an open group - where others can submit links they like or just a closed group where you have just your own page choices.
Here's an example of a closed group I created:
The Best Music Sites On The Internet
It is just a group of links to various music sites that I happen to think are the best on the Internet. No one else can add to the list, but they can vote if they want.
The Squidoo group is an example of an open group. Two open groups I have created are Christmas and The Best Calendars. The Christmas group is for all things Christmas-related and the calendar group is just where I put some of my calendar webpages. You can add to them or vote for them or start a new group all your own.
As I said, this won't immediately give you page one of Google, but if you have little or no traffic to your webpages on Squidoo or on Hubpages or elsewhere, it could be because the mighty Google or Yahoo don't think your pages are relevent. Finding more backlinks is one step to getting more love from the search engines and this is one way to do it. Just don't try to flood all your webpages with a ga-zillion backlinks all from directories like Slinkset or it will look like spam and that can be worse than no links at all.
If you know of any other good directories where you can get backlinks from, leave a note in the comments section below.
I Finally, Grudgingly, Made A Harry Potter Webpage
I think I am probably the last person to have made a Squidoo page about J.K. Rowling's infamous series of books about the boy wizard Harry Potter. Don't get me wrong - I have actually read all the books in the series (except for the last one so don't tell me what happens) and I've watched all the movies. It just seemed that everyone and their mom had been cranking out Harry Potter this and that lenses on Squidoo and elsewhere that it seemed kinda pointless to join in. There are still 2 films to go in the series with one out this November as the first half of The Half-Blood Prince with the last Potter epic coming in 2012.
The reason I think that it is a good idea to do a webage about the Harry Potter books is that the series has legs and will likely continue to sell for decades to come. I don't know if I'll be around for that but maybe my webpage will be and I'll get a sale here or there lol.
I'm still avoiding the topic of the Twilight series, which I don't believe has as much meat on it's bones as the Potter books. I haven't bothered reading any of the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer (yes, that's a link to the Twilight series) and I haven't bothered to watch any of the movies. They are reputedly just really bad, but I won't comment further as some 12-year-old Team Edward stalker may flame me.
The Potter webpage is a pretty bare bones affair but if you want to take a look, it's Harry Potter Books In Order. And I just noticed that the page is my 200th at Squidoo. How illustrious to make a page unlikely to be found by the most rabid Harry Potter fan or probably even Google. Still I can always add to it and make it that little bit more enticing.
The reason I think that it is a good idea to do a webage about the Harry Potter books
is that the series has legs and will likely continue to sell for decades to come. I don't know if I'll be around for that but maybe my webpage will be and I'll get a sale here or there lol. I'm still avoiding the topic of the Twilight series, which I don't believe has as much meat on it's bones as the Potter books. I haven't bothered reading any of the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer
(yes, that's a link to the Twilight series) and I haven't bothered to watch any of the movies. They are reputedly just really bad, but I won't comment further as some 12-year-old Team Edward stalker may flame me. The Potter webpage is a pretty bare bones affair but if you want to take a look, it's Harry Potter Books In Order. And I just noticed that the page is my 200th at Squidoo. How illustrious to make a page unlikely to be found by the most rabid Harry Potter fan or probably even Google. Still I can always add to it and make it that little bit more enticing.
How To Make A Million Dollars & No I Don't Have An eBook To Sell You
To me, there are two basic ways to make one million dollars:
1. Have one person give you one million dollars.
2. Have one million people give you one dollar.
Two simple choices, but both have their good points and both have some drawbacks. First of all, with choice number one, you have to find a person who has one million dollars and who is willing to let you walk away with that one million dollars. There are a lot of rich people in the world but finding one who will part with their cash no strings attached is highly unlikely. If by chance you do find some of these people, send them my way.
The second choice is actually just as difficult. Just walk up to a stranger and ask them to give you a dollar. Most likely you will get a snide comment for your trouble and be told to move along and stop bothering people. You will get the odd kind soul who will give you a dollar because they will want to help you out. That's the interesting part. A single dollar is obviously not held as tightly by people as a million dollars would be.
That's why I am in online marketing. You can provide a simple service to hundreds, even millions of people every single day and some will provide you with a dollar - or a nickel or a penny - for your trouble. It is difficult to be found on the Internet and elsewhere, but if you increase your online presence one step at a time, by providing solutions to people you will see some money start to trickle in.
Basically with affiliate marketing, you are a bridge helping people find what they are looking for and you can collect a toll for guiding people across to the place they want to go.
Right now it is early September and many people are online, looking for information about this or that celebrity, or wondering what they will wear for Halloween. Some are already shopping like crazy for Christmas, while others are relaxing and considering a trip. There are a million different people all searching online for a million different reasons. That's why you need to concentrate on building up your online presence.
You can try 2 different methods to make money online - you can try to dominate a niche or sector of the online world, like Amazon does with books, or Google does with online advertising, or you can do more of a hit and run kind of operation. By that I don't mean doing anything illegal or unethical, I just mean having a small or tiny operation that generates a small amount every day or so.
To begin, you won't likely be able to stand astride the Internet like a collossus because there are a lot of very big companies and individuals already in place. Trying to immediate dominate any money-making portion of the Internet right off the bat is like asking one person for a million dollars - it's not going to happen for you, unless you are extremely lucky or innovative or both.
What you need to do is to work on a daily basis to generate some income from your online marketing and affilate work. It may be just pennies a day or you may see nothing at all. You will think this is not worth your time and you may want to give up and try something else. You need to picture your goal of one million dollars or whatever your your goal is and take small steps to reach that goal. You will fail at times and you will have some successes, and you need to press on.
From personal experience I have had both successes and failures, but last month I made enough to cover my monthly mortgage payment. That took a lot of work and I think of it as a high water mark, but it is just one step to achieving financial independence.
I was in the position of just starting out and making zilch for a long time but I kept at it and preservered. Some may laugh thinking that all I have made is mere pocket change, but to others, that pocket change would be a small fortune. That goal of one million dollars is now a little bit clearer, a little bit nearer. It is still out of reach, but I am heading in the right direction and sooner or later our paths will cross.
Like I said - I don't have a system to sell you or any eBook. I guess the only system I can promote is that you work every day, try to improve, keep growing, take any failure as a temporary pause and keep moving forward. Every day you will have small rewards and setbacks, but if you continue to work at it, you will see your own goals drawing nearer.
1. Have one person give you one million dollars.
2. Have one million people give you one dollar.
Two simple choices, but both have their good points and both have some drawbacks. First of all, with choice number one, you have to find a person who has one million dollars and who is willing to let you walk away with that one million dollars. There are a lot of rich people in the world but finding one who will part with their cash no strings attached is highly unlikely. If by chance you do find some of these people, send them my way.
The second choice is actually just as difficult. Just walk up to a stranger and ask them to give you a dollar. Most likely you will get a snide comment for your trouble and be told to move along and stop bothering people. You will get the odd kind soul who will give you a dollar because they will want to help you out. That's the interesting part. A single dollar is obviously not held as tightly by people as a million dollars would be.
That's why I am in online marketing. You can provide a simple service to hundreds, even millions of people every single day and some will provide you with a dollar - or a nickel or a penny - for your trouble. It is difficult to be found on the Internet and elsewhere, but if you increase your online presence one step at a time, by providing solutions to people you will see some money start to trickle in.
Basically with affiliate marketing, you are a bridge helping people find what they are looking for and you can collect a toll for guiding people across to the place they want to go.
Right now it is early September and many people are online, looking for information about this or that celebrity, or wondering what they will wear for Halloween. Some are already shopping like crazy for Christmas, while others are relaxing and considering a trip. There are a million different people all searching online for a million different reasons. That's why you need to concentrate on building up your online presence.
You can try 2 different methods to make money online - you can try to dominate a niche or sector of the online world, like Amazon does with books, or Google does with online advertising, or you can do more of a hit and run kind of operation. By that I don't mean doing anything illegal or unethical, I just mean having a small or tiny operation that generates a small amount every day or so.
To begin, you won't likely be able to stand astride the Internet like a collossus because there are a lot of very big companies and individuals already in place. Trying to immediate dominate any money-making portion of the Internet right off the bat is like asking one person for a million dollars - it's not going to happen for you, unless you are extremely lucky or innovative or both.
What you need to do is to work on a daily basis to generate some income from your online marketing and affilate work. It may be just pennies a day or you may see nothing at all. You will think this is not worth your time and you may want to give up and try something else. You need to picture your goal of one million dollars or whatever your your goal is and take small steps to reach that goal. You will fail at times and you will have some successes, and you need to press on.
From personal experience I have had both successes and failures, but last month I made enough to cover my monthly mortgage payment. That took a lot of work and I think of it as a high water mark, but it is just one step to achieving financial independence.
I was in the position of just starting out and making zilch for a long time but I kept at it and preservered. Some may laugh thinking that all I have made is mere pocket change, but to others, that pocket change would be a small fortune. That goal of one million dollars is now a little bit clearer, a little bit nearer. It is still out of reach, but I am heading in the right direction and sooner or later our paths will cross.
Like I said - I don't have a system to sell you or any eBook. I guess the only system I can promote is that you work every day, try to improve, keep growing, take any failure as a temporary pause and keep moving forward. Every day you will have small rewards and setbacks, but if you continue to work at it, you will see your own goals drawing nearer.
Two New Webpages: Santa Bobbleheads & Lego Bionicle Toys
The Bionicle webpage is interesting because it covers a fair bit of territory in the Lego Bionicle franchise. Lego has been making bionicles since around 2001 and recently announced a temporary end to production of the popular toy line.
It has been a somewhat profitably series for Lego as they produced dozens of different editions of the robotic toys every year and three movies were made about the series. There's even a burgeoning graphic novel industry surrounding the line which will continue for the foreseeable future.The Santa bobblehead itself is really kind of cute and it's the type of thing my mom and sisters would probably snap up just as a Christmas decoration. The webpage also features some others from the animated Christmas special including Rudolph of course, the Bumble, and Herbie the Dentist elf - although for some reason they've named him "Hermey". I'm pretty sure it should be Herbie because that's what we've always called him around our house. Plus there's a nice Frosty The Snowman bobblehead to round things out. Unfortunately they don't have one for Yukon Cornelias or for the Burl Ives snowman narrator, but perhaps that's in the books for next Christmas.
Surprising Surge Of Traffic To My Webpage For Jodie Sweetin Baby News
One of my webpages is about the actress Lori Loughlin, who currently is on the television series 90210 as Debbie Wilson the mother of Annie Wilson (Shenae Grimes) and Dixon Wilson (Tristan Wilds) but who was also on the 90s hit series Full House, as Becky Katsopolis. This morning I checked and the webpage hat almost 2,000 visitors last night and another 200 more this morning. I of course thought there must be some kind of an error, but checked Lori Loughlin in Google news and nothing seemed to warrant a spike in interest. Hmmm...
So I checked my stats and found that most had come to my webpage under the term "Jodie Sweetin Lori Loughlin" and that's when I clued in that people were swarming to my Lori Loughlin page looking for information about Jodie Sweetin having just given birth to her child, a baby girl named Beatrix Carlin Sweetin Coyle or "Bea" as her father has called her (mom & baby doing nicely I hear). Sweetin was also on Full House playing Stephanie Tanner for the 8 year run of the series. The little girl has an older sister
On the webpage there was just the briefest mention of Sweetin, but somehow all these people stopped by to check it out. It does go to show you that you can get traffic at Squidoo and elsewhere from very unexpected sources and just about anything can trigger a wave of Internet interest. The traffic will likely give the page a bump in popularity at Squidoo for a short period and then it will probably settle back into it's usual ranking.
But it does make me want to add more info about Sweetin on the webpage. I'm pretty sure there is a Squidoo page or two about her and I'm hoping whomever wrote those pages gets a similar bump in traffic.
Another New Webpage: This One With A Country Music Flavor
I just finished publishing a new Squidoo webpage, this time it is about country music, specifically about the best country love songs. The link will take you to the page if you want to see my list of the Top 100 of all time. Obviously the choices are my own so feel free to disagree with them and comment at the bottom of the page (or comment on this blog post).
As always seems to be the case, I'm not 100 percent happy with the page, but as I am always editing my work, I will be adding to it and adjusting as needed. The list has many of the top country stars of today and yester-year, with just about everything from Dolly Parton singing I Will Always Love You (I've always preferred this version to Whitney Houston's screaming, over the top version), back to some Hank Williams, with LeAnn Rimes, Faith Hill (of course) and many others. I think it is a pretty good list, but any improvement you can suggest would be appreciated. If there's any unforgiveable omissions, make sure you let me know and I'll get them added.
As always seems to be the case, I'm not 100 percent happy with the page, but as I am always editing my work, I will be adding to it and adjusting as needed. The list has many of the top country stars of today and yester-year, with just about everything from Dolly Parton singing I Will Always Love You (I've always preferred this version to Whitney Houston's screaming, over the top version), back to some Hank Williams, with LeAnn Rimes, Faith Hill (of course) and many others. I think it is a pretty good list, but any improvement you can suggest would be appreciated. If there's any unforgiveable omissions, make sure you let me know and I'll get them added.
List Of Best Punk Rock Videos
You can also add punk rock songs to the list. There are at least 100 great punk anthems listed, but if you find one missing, just add it to the list and vote for it. You can vote for more than one song at a time.
New Webpages About Pretty Little Liars
Just prior to the television series debuting in June, I put a webpage up at Squidoo about the popular book series Pretty Little Liars by author Sara Shepard and almost as an afterthought I included information about the cast of the new series.
Surprise, surprise, as that webpage is now my top page on Squidoo and will likely move into the Top Tier fairly soon. This was almost a throwaway webpage and it's turned into the most popular on my dashboard. You can find it at Pretty Little Liars. It's even knocked my previously most popular webpage about AnnaLynne McCord from the top spot.
Because of the success of this page, I decided to add some more pages about the various castmembers:
Lucy Hale
Ashley Benson
Shay Mitchell
Troian Bellisario
Tammin Sursok
Each of these pages go into a little more depth about each actresses' career with video clips etc. I doubt that they will do as well as the main webpage, but you never know. I didn't think that the page on AnnaLynne McCord would do as well as it has for so long.
The Pretty Little Liars page has actually had some sales as well, so there's a nice little addition to my bottom line. The series just won another award, the Teen Choice Best Summer TV Show and Lucy Hale also took home an award at the same ceremony. All this will no doubt attract some more traffic to these pages.
Surprise, surprise, as that webpage is now my top page on Squidoo and will likely move into the Top Tier fairly soon. This was almost a throwaway webpage and it's turned into the most popular on my dashboard. You can find it at Pretty Little Liars. It's even knocked my previously most popular webpage about AnnaLynne McCord from the top spot.
Because of the success of this page, I decided to add some more pages about the various castmembers:
Lucy Hale
Ashley Benson
Shay Mitchell
Troian Bellisario
Tammin Sursok
Each of these pages go into a little more depth about each actresses' career with video clips etc. I doubt that they will do as well as the main webpage, but you never know. I didn't think that the page on AnnaLynne McCord would do as well as it has for so long.
The Pretty Little Liars page has actually had some sales as well, so there's a nice little addition to my bottom line. The series just won another award, the Teen Choice Best Summer TV Show and Lucy Hale also took home an award at the same ceremony. All this will no doubt attract some more traffic to these pages.
Back At Squidoo With Fiery Determination
I have been reviewing my Squidoo webpages and updating all those that needed a thorough makeover. I once again have allowed them to stagnant a bit as I worked on other online activities, but I am back again with a firm determination of purpose.
I am looking forward to the next several months at Squidoo as I plan on a major rollout of a bunch of new webpages based on the ideas I've accumulated over the last several months. My earnings from the website dipped a little because of the lack of upkeep, but that portion of my online income will likely bounce back with some diligence. This year I plan on being ready for the upcoming Christmas season unlike the last 2 years where I left everything until the last minute. It may be only August, but keeping an eye on what I had hoped to accomplish after the last holiday season, I still plan on adding to my Xmas lenses. I do have a number that I started publishing last January and will be expanding considerably this holiday season and doing much, much more to increase my presence online at Squidoo and on other similar websites.
I don't want to show my hand too early, but the number of webpages I have on the Squidoo website will likely double from the current 184 published pages (yes I said double). It is not that my plan is to pump out dreck and terrible webpages and try to get more income with quantity. These are some pretty good ideas that I have if I do say so myself and I see my income at least doubling as well.
Recently I was able to earn enough online to cover my mortgage payment and if the effort I bring to my online activities is increased, I can see down the line that I may eventually be able to do this fulltime. Wouldn't that be sweet? Actually working for myself? Right now the income I get from my Squidoo activities alone won't cover my expenses, but taking other online stuff into account and with enough effort I won't need an outside job. SCARY, but also exhilarating.
I am looking forward to the next several months at Squidoo as I plan on a major rollout of a bunch of new webpages based on the ideas I've accumulated over the last several months. My earnings from the website dipped a little because of the lack of upkeep, but that portion of my online income will likely bounce back with some diligence. This year I plan on being ready for the upcoming Christmas season unlike the last 2 years where I left everything until the last minute. It may be only August, but keeping an eye on what I had hoped to accomplish after the last holiday season, I still plan on adding to my Xmas lenses. I do have a number that I started publishing last January and will be expanding considerably this holiday season and doing much, much more to increase my presence online at Squidoo and on other similar websites.
I don't want to show my hand too early, but the number of webpages I have on the Squidoo website will likely double from the current 184 published pages (yes I said double). It is not that my plan is to pump out dreck and terrible webpages and try to get more income with quantity. These are some pretty good ideas that I have if I do say so myself and I see my income at least doubling as well.
Recently I was able to earn enough online to cover my mortgage payment and if the effort I bring to my online activities is increased, I can see down the line that I may eventually be able to do this fulltime. Wouldn't that be sweet? Actually working for myself? Right now the income I get from my Squidoo activities alone won't cover my expenses, but taking other online stuff into account and with enough effort I won't need an outside job. SCARY, but also exhilarating.
I Made Enough Money Online This Month To Cover My Mortgage Payment!
Yes, I did it. For the first time I actually made enough money online through various websites and programs to actually cover my mortgage program. One thing: I do not have any "How I Did It" program or ebook or anything that I am trying to hawk. I am not trying to sell you anything. I've just been working hard and slowly getting more and more each month coming in and now I thought I would just brag a little.
Yesterday was payday at Squidoo, one of the websites I am on and the payment I received from them put me over the top. I started on Squidoo back in July 2008 - hey, 2 years ago this month! Squidoo allows you to publish web pages (called lenses), that contain links to various other websites like eBay, Amazon and a myriad of others that allow you to be paid when visitors to your pages click on a link they find intriguing. You can just write up a page and publish it and forget about it, but unless it is timeless content that others want to link their pages to, your page will slowly drift into the backwaters of the Internet and you will probably say that "Yeah, I tried Squidoo. Doesn't work." That is not true. As in most things, put in the work and you will see results.
As I mentioned, I started at Squidoo in July 2008. I received my first payment in about 2 months time. A whopping 8 cents. I smiled and thought "Meh. That's all well and good, but how can I make more money online?" I started looking at more and more other pages on Squidoo and went to the forum they have on the website for more answers. On the forum there were many in the same boat as myself, just starting out and pretty much clueless about how to make Squidoo work. But. There are others who have been on the website far longer and who have gathered a fair bit of knowledge about how to draw visitors and make sales. I read and re-read all I could on the forum and went to many of the top pages at Squidoo and tried to figure out how I could get some of my pages to rank highly.
If you can get your pages to rank highly, like in the top 2,000 pages, you can make money almost automatically. Look through some of my other posts on this blog to find out about that aspect. Then a lightbulb went off. Hey, why am I fighting to get all my webpages in the top 2,000? EVERYONE is trying to do that and if I just try to get money for a high ranking, there's a limit to how much money I can make. Don't get me wrong. There is a nice chunk of money to be made from getting placed in the top 2K of all Squidoo pages. This month each page in the top tier made was about $26-$27 each! That is not too shabby. Well worth striving to get some pages in the top level of Squidoo.
But if you want to make even more, work on driving traffic to your pages and highlighting products and other stuff people are looking for. You can make money doing this. If a dolt like myself can, than anyone else can to.
Anyway, after making eight cents on my first payday from Squidoo, I decided to start making more Squidoo pages. I did and my payday jumped up to $10. Yea! Not a fortune, but money coming to me for my own effort - every month! This was like found money. I started making even more pages and the amount I got from Squidoo increased again and again. There are some at Squidoo who make far more than I do - check in the forum, one of the top Squidoo people claims to have hit $10,000 with this month's payment from Squidoo. Amazing.
All this from doing what we love - talking to other people about what we like. I am very satisfied with how I have done so far at Squidoo, but hearing that others have made as much as ten thousand dollars, I think I will re-double my efforts yet again. If they can do it, I can do it - and so can you.
Just Got Paid By Squidoo
Just received notification of Squidoo paying me for my work. My payment was down a bit from previously, but that is just a reflection of my neglect of my pages on Squidoo. I haven't been updating or creating new content for a couple of months because I've been working on other ventures. But I have kept an eye on how my various pages were doing and had noticed a steep decline in visits - visits actually dropped to a third of what they were back in December. Since the start of the month of June, I've seen a rebound, back up to about 70% of last December's numbers but I know I can do better.
Several lenses that always are in the top tier have had their visits dry up and I've seen a corresponding drop in their ranking. So I need to get back at work to get them back into their rankings and pump up their visits as (of course) this means and increase in pay from Squidoo as well as an increase in SALES which is where the real money is.
Several lenses that always are in the top tier have had their visits dry up and I've seen a corresponding drop in their ranking. So I need to get back at work to get them back into their rankings and pump up their visits as (of course) this means and increase in pay from Squidoo as well as an increase in SALES which is where the real money is.
Just Got Paid By Squidoo! A Record For me
Ya just gotta love Squidoo. I just checked my Squidoo dashboard and spotted that I had just been paid and it is a new record for me! Twice what I got last month and THAT was a personal best. I thought that my Christmas payout was sweet, but this was totally unexpected.
I've been on Squidoo since August 2008 and slowly have built up the number of webpages I have over there and experienced a corresponding increase in money going into my pocket. Really, KEEP AT IT - you will eventually see a nice return if you put in the work.
My top lenses earned $20.96 total EACH! - $16.47 for the ad pool plus another $4.48 from the Infolinks payout. Second tier pages got $2.80 plus $0.76 each for a total of $3.56 and the bottom tier gave $0.18 total. This doesn't include amounts earned from sales from Amazon, eBay and the other revenue modules available to lensmakers. I just created a new page today and obviously I want to get back and make more. It's like "create a page and give yourself a raise."
I've been on Squidoo since August 2008 and slowly have built up the number of webpages I have over there and experienced a corresponding increase in money going into my pocket. Really, KEEP AT IT - you will eventually see a nice return if you put in the work.
My top lenses earned $20.96 total EACH! - $16.47 for the ad pool plus another $4.48 from the Infolinks payout. Second tier pages got $2.80 plus $0.76 each for a total of $3.56 and the bottom tier gave $0.18 total. This doesn't include amounts earned from sales from Amazon, eBay and the other revenue modules available to lensmakers. I just created a new page today and obviously I want to get back and make more. It's like "create a page and give yourself a raise."
17% Drop In Squidoo Traffic
During the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, I've noticed a significant drop in traffic across all my Squidoo webpages. Seventeen percent! Quite a drop actually, but in line with what I expected. I am unsure if other Squidoo lensmasters have experienced a similar drop over the past seven days, but I did read in the Squidu Forum that a bunch of people were having this problem about a week ago.
I do think that my own traffic will bounce back fairly soon (as it always returns to about the same level and then increases still further with publication of more of my Squidoo webpages. Several of my established pages experienced drops in visitor traffic, while others have seen an increase. New pages keep getting found by the internet and I see pages that were made a week or two previously with 10-20 visitors each over the last seven day period.
Over all, although the have been a drop in traffic, more is coming in and I can see this increasing. Each bump in traffic a particular lens receives bumps that lens up the Squidoo Ranks. I have a bunch floating around in the 3rd tier (and I seem to be getting a lot landing in these money tiers), that adds to my bottomline as far as getting money on Squidoo. As each lens generates it's own traffic, there's a better opportunity to sell related items from the webpage, while the visitor hopefully enjoys my content. As always, SALES are where you will make money online at Squidoo.
I do think that my own traffic will bounce back fairly soon (as it always returns to about the same level and then increases still further with publication of more of my Squidoo webpages. Several of my established pages experienced drops in visitor traffic, while others have seen an increase. New pages keep getting found by the internet and I see pages that were made a week or two previously with 10-20 visitors each over the last seven day period.
Over all, although the have been a drop in traffic, more is coming in and I can see this increasing. Each bump in traffic a particular lens receives bumps that lens up the Squidoo Ranks. I have a bunch floating around in the 3rd tier (and I seem to be getting a lot landing in these money tiers), that adds to my bottomline as far as getting money on Squidoo. As each lens generates it's own traffic, there's a better opportunity to sell related items from the webpage, while the visitor hopefully enjoys my content. As always, SALES are where you will make money online at Squidoo.
St Patrick's Day Theme Added To Squidoo Themes
All you have to do is go to the edit screen on your webpage (by clicking "Edit" from your dashboard or "Edit Lens" from the published view of your lens), look for the "Themes" button at the top on the right and by clicking that button you are provided with a bunch of theme choices. If you want to preview each of the different choices, click preview on each choice. Just click the "X" on the preview pop-up. If you find one that meshes with your content, like if your lens is about the life of St Paddy, or ghost castles in Ireland or provide information about how to celebrate St Patrick's Day, just click the radio button (the little circle) beside where it says "St Paddy's" then click "Apply."
You do have the choice to make this choice Global, meaning all your lenses will be changed over to this one particular theme, but unless you have all your Squidoo lenses covering just Ireland and Irish topics, it might look a little odd. Personally, I never use this option.
It's just one of many options you have to personalize your webpages on Squidoo to match with your topic. Just about all major holidays have a corresponding theme and more are being unveiled all the time to help lensmasters.
New Squidoo Theme: Thanksgiving Released
Here's a link to what the valentine's theme looked like if you missed them. New Squidoo themes get released periodically based on upcoming holidays to allow lensmasters to craft their pages and take advantage of the visual themes available.
Payday Today At Squidoo! Best Month Ever!
Ad Pool: $16.47 - $2.80 - $0.14
Info Links: $3.22 - $0.55 - $0.03
That's what each of the 3 tiers received:
1st tier is those webpages ranked at Squidoo from 1-2,000. They received $16.47 from the combined adpool PLUS a further $3.22 from the Info Links revenue for a total of $19.69/lens in the top tier.
2nd tier (2,001 to about 8,500) received $2.80 in adpool revenue along with $0.55 from the Info Links for a total of $3.35 for each webpage ranked in the second tier.
3rd tier (8,501 to about 80,000 or so) received $0.14 in adpool revenue plus another $0.03 from the Info Links for a total of $0.17.
Along with the money made online at Squidoo
through the ranking system, we also received money from Amazon and eBay and Cafe Press sales made during December. Your goal should be to try to increase this revenue as much as possible rather than relying on that generated by LensRank because it has a greater upside. For myself, this is the third month in a row that my online money generated from Squidoo has increased and the amount was the most ever. If you're thinking that you would like to give Squidoo a try, just sign up here:
JOIN SQUIDOO
All it costs is a little bit of time. There's tons of tutorials and a great forum for asking questions and very helpful people who have already gone through the start up stages. If I can make money online at Squidoo, just about anyone can, so give it a shot!
Sudden Deluge In Vistors To Squidoo Page From Yahoo
I've written about this before, but I'm surprised when it happens. I created a new webpage on Squidoo and published it a week or so ago. Traffic has been sparce to say the least. Maybe one person every day or two. Until today when suddenly there's a lineup to get in. I check my stats fairly regularly like everyone else does and earlier today there was 2-3 visitors to this page over the last few days. I go away and come back and suddenly there over 100 people visiting the page, 99% from Yahoo, with no Google traffic at all. I just went back and it's up to 109 since I started writing this post.
How in the world do I harness this? If I could bottle it I'd make a fortune from internet marketers lol. It does show about a third are clicking out which is also good because that might mean some sales. One good thing about a sudden influx of visitors is that there should be a nice bump up in the Squidoo rankings, which means that when Squidoo pays out for lensrank for February (2 months from now), I might see a tidy little bonus depending if the page can maintain this higher rank. It will be a day or so before the higher rank is reflected on my dashboard.
I'm not quite sure how I tickled the belly of Yahoo, but they seem to be quite pleased with my efforts. Hopefully the traffic will continue pouring in and doesn't stop as suddenly as it started. Now if I could only entice the mighty Google to show me some love...
How in the world do I harness this? If I could bottle it I'd make a fortune from internet marketers lol. It does show about a third are clicking out which is also good because that might mean some sales. One good thing about a sudden influx of visitors is that there should be a nice bump up in the Squidoo rankings, which means that when Squidoo pays out for lensrank for February (2 months from now), I might see a tidy little bonus depending if the page can maintain this higher rank. It will be a day or so before the higher rank is reflected on my dashboard.
I'm not quite sure how I tickled the belly of Yahoo, but they seem to be quite pleased with my efforts. Hopefully the traffic will continue pouring in and doesn't stop as suddenly as it started. Now if I could only entice the mighty Google to show me some love...
Olympic Pins: The Next Big Sporting Event At The Vancouver Olympics?
I've published a webpage all about the most current collectible Olympic pins
for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Basically it is a catalog of all the 350 pins produced for this year's winter olympics. Actually, the page is incomplete as I am still adding much needed information about these highly sought after trading pins. Like most I enjoy watching the Olympics and have noticed that Olympic pins always grab a bit of the spotlight during each olympic year. I am a collector of many things but I haven't ventured into the arena of pins with an olympic theme yet, although I do own several label pins that I've accumulated over the years. There are many rabid fans of memorabilia from the olympics and there is a thriving market for these pins and being someone who loves seeing collectibles I've decided to make a Squidoo page about the hobby. It is called Collecting 2010 Olympic Trading Pins if you would like to take a peek. The page has had some interest from visitors but is not really ranking or registering with Google or Squidoo, but that's fine. The page is still relatively new and needs a lot of work.
The problem with Olympic pin collecting is that there are so many pins to collect! There are 350 official 2010 Olympic pins from this Winter Olympics and the hobby covers all the past Olympiads and new pins are already appearing for the 2012 Summer Games in London. So the problem arises that there is only so much information that can be put on a single Squidoo page. A catalog of 350 of the most recent olympic trading pins leaves little or no room for descriptions about those from the past which are more valuable and sought after and the cool pins coming out now and in the run-up to the London games.
If you plunge into a field like collectible pins and memorablia, you find out how truly massive it is and how difficult it is to cover as much ground as possible. In order to be found by the avid collector is hard at best and almost impossible for such a new webpage so close to the current Olympiad. But I've decided to publish anyway. The way I look at it, by giving collectors a site that plays to their interests over time the page will get stronger and found by those with an interest in pins. The webpage itself will get re-written again and again with new information collectors will find interesting and expand. As time passes, Google will see that the page has some authority in the field and give it a bump in the Page Rank. By adding to the page and providing links to other pages of interest to pin collectors they will hopefully keep coming back to the page. Or maybe it will just crash and burn.
That's what I think is good about Squidoo pages. You can produce a page that is just okay and improve on it and expand on the topic covered either on the page itself, or by making more pages covering more facets of the topic and eventually you will have a vibrant community of pages that are all visited with some regularity by interested visitors. Of course, I could just end up becoming a collector myself and begin writing about a topic I've fallen in love with. Let's see where it goes...
