Make Money Online - A Concise Action Plan

Our strategy to achieve a high success in niche marketing requires basic computer skills. The good thing is that you probably already have these. Below is a list of online sites we will use as our tools. The proper use of these is key in achieving our goal of creating an automatic cash stream.

Free Software Tools We Will Use
www.Google.com
www.Yahoo.com
www.SiteToolz.net
www.Squidoo.com (no need to click, you're already here)
your favorite word processor
and optionally your favorite graphics program

Click here to get a one page summary of these tools. It outlines key features we will be using. Don't worry, there is no cost and no signup.

Do you want to watch a Squidoo introductory video? - Click
Do you need help with basic Squidoo Lens construction? - Click
Do you want to learn more about the hierarchy of Squidoo "modules"? - Click
Do you want to have a "cheat sheet" of HTML codes to use in your Lenses? - Click
Do you want to learn what "keywords" are and why they are important to us? - Click
Would you like to know how autoresponders can help you? - Click

Beware offers for products that claim to divulge the "secrets" that will make you rich.

A project evolves from a need, to a goal, to a plan of action - your strategy. You have already realized that you have a need (or at least a desire) for money. Having arrived at this lens, I will assume that you have defined your goal of making money in niche marketing. That makes your development of a plan of action your next step.

Your Recommended Strategy in Six Steps

1 - Assess Your Personal Skills Inventory
2 - Select A Single Niche Market for Your Campaign
3 - Select Keywords to Target
4 - Select Good Quality Affiliate Products
5 - Create Your First Lens
6 - Create Multiple Lenses for the Same Niche

Step 7 is the best one of all. Watch as money gets deposited into your account. This step requires no extra effort so we haven't included it in the strategic plan. But you will sure enjoy experiencing it.

Starting with Item 1 in your Strategic Plan, work through each each item in the list to completion. Refer to the modules below for guidance.

(1) Writing - You don't have to be Ernest Hemingway, but you do need to be able to string words together into cohesive sentences. Spelling and grammar do matter. Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise. If your writing is a weak spot in your arsenal of skills, do the best you can, then get someone to go over it for you.

Do not put anything sloppy or poorly worded out there for the world to read. If you do, you will lose all credibility with the people you hope to influence.

Avoid starting sentences with "So," and "Well,". Keep your sentences short. Minimize the use of adjectives and adverbs. Avoid cliches. Make sure that you don't overuse some particular word. And don't make wild claims that your reader is unlikely to believe. Spelling must be perfect. Grammar should be near perfect, although some artistic license is allowed for effect.

Use some of these words in headings and the first sentences of paragraphs: absolutely, you, unique, new, now, powerful, guaranteed, easy, money, cash, huge, giant, gigantic, crammed, truth, wonderful, greatest, bargain, outstanding, exclusive, blazing, limited, popular, stunning, profit, secrets, special, superior, discover, amazing, warm, proven, tested, proof, reliable, latest, wierd, sensational, promise, and genuine. More potent words including electrifying, shocking, explosive, blockbuster, colossal, and their ilk should be used carefully. They easily smack of unsupported hype.

Many of your competitors WILL be publishing poor quality lenses and articles. Make sure to capitalize on this and use it to your advantage. It's not difficult to create exceptional work. Do it and you will get an immediate competitive advantage over those who do not!

(2) Graphics - Having graphics software and the skill to use it is nice, but not an absolute requirement. There are free sites where you can download clipart. Again, however, discretion is a virtue. Don't overdo the clipart thing. Try to stick with images that go together when used in a single lens. Don't get too cutesy. And do be aware that most images you'll see on other websites are protected by copyright. You cannot legally just copy them to your hard drive and use them.

Most Squidoo modules allow you to upload one image from your computer directly into the lens. This is easy and requires no special computer knowledge. The downside is that you cannot specify the placement of the image, and it will probably be limited in width to 128 pixels.

To have more flexibility, you will want to use some simple HTML code to place graphics into your lenses. These graphics must be hosted on some other computer (i.e. Squidoo won't hold the images for you). Thus, your HTML code will reference the image from another site. Most people use places like Flickr and TinyPic.com to host the images they place in their lenses. If you have your own website and can FTP (file transfer protocol - the techie way of moving files from one host to another) the images, that will work, too. We'll talk more about this in the final module, "Creating Your Lenses".

Free Tools:     FileZilla FTP --- Trellian HTML Editor --- SplashUp Graphics Editor

A lot of thought should go into this step. If possible, choose a niche that you are knowledgable and interested in. However, don't choose a difficult or inactive topic just because you are already involved in it. Remember that your primary goal is to make a profit. That must supercede all other factors when selecting a niche. More important than having expertise in a niche is the choice of an active one.

If you have a driving passion, but it's just not in a busy niche, use that topic as a jumping off point. Let it steer you to similar niches that might be more dynamic. Venture off on tangents. Look for other market segments that might appeal to the same type of visitors. In all cases, seek a niche where people already want to buy. Then you simply need to market to them effectively and provide a good solution. This online article, Finding Your Niche, describes precise ways to do this.

Your selection of a niche will be coupled with your selection of keywords for that niche.

Your goal is to find a niche that has a reasonable amount of activity but a small number of competitors. This clearly takes some research. Start with a big topic like "PC repair". Then, drill down to the specific niches within. Maybe "easy PC repair" or "home PC repair" or even "old PC repair". Use the search and analysis tools in www.SiteToolz.net to find a somewhat obscure little niche that receives good search traffic, but results in a small number of hits (for that keyword phrase).

The most profitable and active niches will involve personal needs, how-tos, and vanity products. Position your lens so that you attract visitors who are looking for the solution you offer. You want buyers, not tire-kickers.

Note the MicroNicheFinder link below. That is an affiliate link for a product that I know can help you. How do I know that? Why else would you be reading this lens? It's a great solution for a need you have, I have done you a service by finding and recommending it, and I will get a commission when you buy it. Find your own favorite niches and do it the same way!

This free website gives you links to a variety of free internet marketing
and SEO tools. The "Trends" button will give you valuable info needed to
select a hot niche.


For $67, this one is a bargain. It is arguably the best tool of its kind
available. Not required, but I sure do recommend it. I use it personally, everyday.

While selecting a niche was important, selecting your keywords is crucial. This is possibly the single most influential item in your plan. Because your lens needs to be found in Google and Yahoo searches, the selection of keywords can be the choice between success and failure.

Your goal is to find keywords that are used to find your niche topic, but they are not so popular as to produce a huge number of search engine hits. It does you no good to be on the 23rd page of a Google search for a highly popular keyword/keyphrase. No one will find you. It is immensely better to be on page 1 for a more obscure search term. That is the kind of keyword you will put in the title and headings for your lens.

Keyword popularity must be considered in two ways. First, from the viewpoint of people doing the searching. But you also must consider popularity in terms of the number of sites that are optimized for a particular keyword.

You want to find a keyword/keyphrase that hangs in a profitable balance. That is, you want to use keywords in your lens that are searched for a lot, but are found in relatively few webpages in a Google search.

Click here to learn more about this concept of keyword popularity. It's an important subject.

If this is your first niche market project, I recommend that you start out with the free tools. Click the "Keywords" button on www.SiteToolz.net and you will be given options for several. Be aware that none of these tools is 100% accurate. Use them to determine trends and general conditions. Don't expect to operate on the raw numbers precisely.

Be diligent with your keyword research. Try to come up with a list of your best three keyword/keyphrases. They will become the central point of your internet marketing efforts.

We will use free tools to choose keywords to target, but I highly recommend you consider something more advanced when you decide to ramp up your second campaign.

WordTracker is a professional grade site. It carries a premium price, but if you're looking for the best tool, this is probably it. Recommended if you plan on heavy niche market activity.

First of all, you need to understand what an affiliate product is. These are products that are produced by others and offered for sale on the web. By signing up with them as an affiliate, you will be given account numbers and links to their products. You place those links in your lens. When someone clicks on your link and goes to their site, their software recognizes your account number as the referrer. If the person then makes a purchase at that site, you automatically get a commission. It's really just that simple.

Your goal is to find good quality affiliate products for your niche market.

There are several ways to find suitable affiliate products to promote in your lens.

1 - Search Google and Yahoo using your keywords. In the results, find sites that sell products and have an "Affiliates" menu option somewhere. Click that and you will be instructed how to apply. After applying, you will be given some HTML code. Copy this and paste it into your lens module. It will appear as the link to the affiliated site.

2 - There are a number of websites that specialize in affiliate marketing. One of the more popular ones is ClickBank. If you join one of these you can search for products you wish to promote. Then, copy and paste the code generated for that product into your lens.

3 - Consider specialty sites like Amazon. They have easy to use affiliate programs. Squidoo, in fact, has a built-in Amazon module. This is the easiest way to get Amazon online and working for you. Squidoo will split the commissions with you, and probably gets a higher commission rate than you would as an individual. Thus, splitting the commsion with Squidoo versus setting up your own affiliate account might be a perfectly good idea for you. (Note that Amazon refers to their affiliate program as their "Associates Program".)

Don't be afraid of the copy/paste part. You don't even need to know what the copied HTML does. Just grab it and plop it in. The link with your embedded affiliate account number will show up in your lens, ready to go to work for you immediately.

Once you have gathered the list of keywords and keyphrases you are targeting and registered for your affiliate product accounts, you are ready to create your first lens.

So far, everything we've done, your competitors are already doing. This is the place where you leave them in the dust.

It is crucial that you search for and analyze existing lenses that will be competing with yours. Identify their strengths and weaknesses. Watch for techniques that might be effective. Whatever they do, you MUST do better.

By the way, this is also an excellent time to discover new affiliate products for your own lens.

Lens Folder URL

When you create your new lens, try very hard to work one of your keywords into the URL name. This is the part that appears where these red x's are: www.Squidoo.com/xxxx

Try to keep it as short as possible, but still contain one of your keywords. It is all right to have hyphens in this folder (i.e. subdirectory) name.

Lens Title

Next, work your main keyword/keyphrase into the lens' title. Again, keep it relatively short. You do need to make it sound compelling AND still contain your keyword, so this is something on which you need to apply very careful consideration. Look at the titles of existing lenses. Which ones have the highest rank? Try to see if there are words in their titles that helped them get there. If so, you use similar words. Look at the power words listed up in the earlier section of this lens on "Writing".

Lens Content

This is such a large subject, we can only skim over it here. For more information about basic lens design, including ways to insert graphics, take a quick detour to www.Squidoo.com/squidoo-bible

If you are a Squidoo beginner, please watch this 5-minute video: Introduction to Squidoo

Lay out your modules on a piece of paper first. This will force you to put more planning into it. There is too much temptation to just wing it when you are facing a blank lens template. Take your time.

Make sure to sprinkle your keywords (and paraphrased keywords - the search engines are really smart) throughout your discussion. Don't overdo this (a practice called "keyword stuffing"). Use them, but use them naturally and only when appropriate.

Don't just drop in your affiliate links. Hopefully you will know enough about the products that you can discuss their benefits to the reader. Look at it as if you are saving the reader some time by giving them a short product review. Even just a couple of sentences can suffice. But always be honest. Don't make bold claims that the product cannot support.

Squidoo has a lot of specialty lenses. Polaroids, duels, polls, talk bubbles... Avoid all that nonesense. Except in certain special cases, they'll simply distract the reader from your message. Remember, you aren't trying to impress anyone with your flashy creativity. You are trying to convince them to click!

Completion!

Once your lens is completed, go back and reread it several times. Try to find friends to proof read it for you. Weed out all the misspellings and other goofs. Then, take a break and relax. Come back later and go over it again. Tweak it and make it even better. When you finally have it ready, cut it loose to the world. A good start is to go to the SquidU forum and ask for critiques from people. Not only can they help you, if they like your creation, they might even help spread the word.


Use this free tool whenever you make significant changes to your lens.
It will notify a number of blog search services about your updates.

To really supercharge your sales, consider tying an external website to your Squidoo lens. Either use your lens to feed traffic to the external site, or route traffic from it to your lens.

WordPress is the premier website/blog tool for internet marketers. It's easy to learn, but just like your lens, you want your WordPress site to be exceptional.

This video course provides possibly the quickest way to learn WordPress. And not just learn it, but learn it well! The 60-day money back guarantee makes this one a no-brainer. Get online with WordPress quickly and with zero risk.





Do you have your own eBook to sell? If so, you will certainly want to have a great looking box shot or ebook cover graphic like the one above. Here is the software you make it with!