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Greekgeek's Five Goals for 2011

Ranked #602 in Squidoo Community, #74,754 overall

Success on Squidoo and Beyond

Like many Squidoo members, my primary goals are financial. This was not always the case. Until August last year, I treated Squidoo as a hobby, a place to write about my passions. Then it became a job. My 2010 goal was to earn $500/mo by year's end. Update: Success! My Nov payout was $538.

I will have to earn almost four times that much to meet my 2011 goals. Since Squidoo payouts keep going up (see chart of monthly payouts), it may be possible. I will have to expand beyond Squidoo. I may be setting my sights too high, but I want to try.

I've set these goals because I want to lay a financial foundation so I can write full-time (if I wish) and still have money coming in to pay the bills.

DEC 29, 2011: I failed almost every goal. Ack! Yet I still made more progress than if I hadn't had the goals at all. Despite numerous Squidoo setbacks, I more than doubled Squidoo earnings, and I'm beginning to get some traction with Amazon Associates ($100/mo) and other intermittent sources of income (Zazzle, Cafepress, AllPosters, Hubpages, ~ $11/mo).

#1 Primary Goal: Earn $2000 / month Online

With Squidoo and Other Online Endeavors

Greekgeek's Squidoo Money Squid$2000/month is not easy, especially without joining the affiliate marketing programs most of our top earners use to supplement Squidoo income. To date, only one person on Squidoo has earned $2000/month solely through Squidoo payouts (Ad Pool plus commissions on paying modules like Amazon). I suspect that person is one of our few members with 1000+ lenses.

I probably will find that my final payouts for the year 2010 were about $450/month. Obviously, I have a long way to go.

How to Understand Your Squidoo Earnings / Stats

Monsters Are Nice, But They Won't Pay the Bills

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#2 - Squidoo Goals: 500 lenses, $1500 / month

That's a Tall Order

my Squidoo Dashboard Jan 2011

Top of my My Squidoo Dashboard Jan 7, '11
(Click to Enlarge)

1) Add 300 new lenses. As of 1/1/2011, I have about 200 over my various accounts.

12/29/11: FAILURE. I added 168 Squidoo lenses and 51 Hubpages hubs (I started diversifying due to some problems with Squidoo). My total lenses are 386, bringing my total articles to 437. Major setbacks in March thru May -- the loss of page breaks in lenses, major changes to the lens Bio Box, the loss of Squidcasts, and of course all of Google's Panda updates -- meant I spent several months doing damage control instead of creating lenses. Also, it's just not possible for me to create more than an average of 4 lenses a week and keep updating old ones.

2) At least 100 should be sales lenses. I'll be adapting tips from Tiffany Dow's 52 Week Challenge and Prosquids for tips.
12/29/11: FAILURE. I added 48 new sales lenses. ProSquids disappeared.

3) Convert most of my existing Amazon modules to Amazon Associates, either using SquidUtils Amazon widgets or my Amazon Module Hack.
12/29/11: DONE. Major setback in June: California Amazon Associates was terminated, so I had to change all my links BACK to Squidoo links, then change them all BACK to Amazon when we were re-activated in October.

4) 20 consistent Top Tier lenses. By the end of 2010 I had about 8-10. This goal may be unrealistic, but hopefully I can at least get to 15.
12/29/11: FAILURE. Despite having much more traffic, clickouts, and sales than I did a year ago, Squidoo's changes to the lensrank algorithm in May (loss of fan clubs, favorites as ranking factors and increased weight on the "freshness factor") means I now have 3-5 tier ones.

I am not ruling out affiliate marketing programs, but my goal is still to write on what I love and make money doing it, rather than to seek out money-earning products and market them (which is more lucrative, but not how I wish to spend my time).

Progress Reports

One Small Step at a Time...

My Squidoo Stats

KEY:

  • Each date is the end of a week; the figures are for the week before.
  • The tier figures for end-of-month (green bar) are averages. The rest are totals.
  • Figures are my Greekgeek + niche account(s) combined.
  • Starting at the beginning of April, I converted a small second niche account that had been supporting server costs for a forum where I used to be a member to another account for me, for profit.


UPDATE August 2011: Squidoo Surprises (major site changes forcing me to update/change huge numbers of lenses), the great tier crash of June, and the cancellation of the Amazon Associates program in California have made the 500 lenses/$1500 a month goal impossible. But progress is being made:

Greekgeek's Squidoo Earnings

#3 Create Effective Zazzle Store: $500/Month

Also a Tall Order

I was a Cafepress shopkeeper for years, but closed my premium shop and stopped supporting Cafepress after they screwed over CP Shopkeepers in 2009.

I started moving designs to Zazzle. My usual username was taken, so I chose Mythphile. I haven't gotten the shop organized yet, but have already begun making sales. About half my designs are Greek-related; the others are original cartoons or geek humor.

I think I'll set a goal of adding one product a week. More is better, but at least one.

A Few of Greekgeek / Mythphile's Zazzle Designs

Greek god Apollo T-Shirt
Greek God Apollo
by Mythphile
Buy Now

hellas Greece T-shirt
Hellas / Greece T-Shirt
by Mythphile
Buy Now

It's All Greek to Me Tee Shirt
It's All Greek to Me Tee
by Mythphile
Buy Now



12/29/11: FAILURE. I haven't yet learned to juggle article-writing and stores. However, my Amazon Associates was up to $90 by October despite having NO Amazon Associates at all from July through Sep, so that may be an alternative-to-Squidoo for next year.

Total Squidoo and Affiliate Sales Earnings 2011

For Zazzle Shopkeepers

HTML Templates to Display Zazzle Products WITH Referral Codes on Squidoo

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#4 Personal Goal: Healthy Habits

Exercise and Diet

Dance Dance Revolution for Playstation 3I don't have great food habits. I'm wary of diet plans, but I am at least going to keep fruits/vegetables around the house to snack on, and try and reach for V-8 instead of a soda.

I'm also going to try to exercise 30 minutes a day. Outdoors when I can, but probably a lot of the time on my Playstation Dance Pad, the ancestor of the Wii Fit that a lot of people use today. (In fact, there's also Dance Dance Revolution for Wii).

AUGUST UPDATE: I've bought a Fitdesk and am having some luck keeping to an exercise schedule with it, so far.

December 2011: PARTIAL SUCCESS! I was exercising half an hour nearly every day in October and Nov, thanks to the bike, until I threw my back out putting up Christmas decorations. I was also eating a much more healthy diet by the end of the year, cutting out soda, cutting way back on carbs and fried food, and cutting out dessert/snacks. Still not enough fruit and veggies.

#5 Personal Goal: Establish My Mythphile Blog

Post Once a Week

OlympiaMythphile is my blog on my main passion: ancient and world mythology. It's time to start treating it as a professional magazine, publishing one article a week. I've monetized it with occasional Amazon Associates book recommendations and publishing it in Kindle format, but I don't want to over-commercialize it.

12/29/11: PARTIAL FAILURE. I couldn't manage to post every week, which makes it a failure as a Kindle blog. However, I did write some interesting posts throughout the year. It's still a hobby rather than an established, professional part of my work.
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