Use Your Squidoo Lenses for Making Money

I'm overwhelmed by this new, strange looking layout, where do I start ?

Well, like in most things, just start at the beginning, and just get a feel for how things work. I have to admit, one of the reasons for me taking so long (several months) in getting my first lens done, was because Squidoo was new and I really just didn't feel like putting the time in to learn yet another new interface. That was a BIG mistake on my part.

However, I can promise you, once you get just a few, very simple procedures down, you'll be going at it like a seasoned veteran.

One of the many great things about Squidoo is it's simple, intuitive interface. It was obviously well thought out and implemented. You don't really invest a lot of time just figuring out how you want to get your message out there, but you can spend your time actually doing it.

Will I start making money immediately ?

Honestly...probably not, but just keep in mind that every minute of every day that you spend creating and updating your lenses, you'll be making an investment to your future earnings.

To go from nothing, to having a money-making online venture normally requires a major effort and usually a lot of money. You can leave out the money part with Squidoo.

Also, you can put up the next Amazon, but if no one knows you're there, you'd may as well have a blank page up. So you're talking paid advertising, at least initially. Squidoo will be a slower to get a lot of traffic, but if you keep building lenses, keep them updated, and doing the things to help generate traffic, there will be a snowball effect.

You'll soon see how excited all the Squidoo users are, and it's because of the opportunities that Squidoo offers...ALL FOR FREE.

Before finding Squidoo, I signed up with another company that has a similar system, but it's not free. It's a great deal of very high quality tools and information, but not free.

I can see the possibilities of Squidoo, and I only wish I hadn't delayed my progress several months by not getting some lenses online right away.

I can't help but think, had I found Squidoo just after it was started, I may be working from home by now. :D

If you've looked into making money online, you've heard the term Niche by now. That's because finding a Niche, preferable something you know and love, will be your primary path for generating an income using Squidoo.

For example, one of my niches is the Guitar. Although guitar is rather broad, there are many smaller niches...classical guitar lessons, Fender Amps or maybe vintage Gibson guitars, if that's what you know and love. You get the idea.

When you have different ideas relating to your niche, you can start another lens, blog or both about it.

Also, many people have more than one niche. Remember the diversification idea ? Keep that thought in your head. You'd be surprised at the amounts of money I've seen people make on a very small niche, especially using PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising.

If there's a market for something, and the supply is relatively low, there's a lot money to be made. That's the ideal niche.

Also, don't limit yourself. Squidoo is an awesome resource, but you can also have an eStore setup to sell affiliate products, with a link from/to your lens of course. I'm an eBay affiliate and have a few stores set up targeting my niches. Just keep adding content (original/fresh) and it will continue to grow in the organic search results.

Also, post in forums and put links in your signature, if it's allowed of course.

There's so many different techniques for generating traffic and making money, that it's practically limitless.

Probably the best advice is to read, read and then read some more. There's many people out there that make money online by just telling people how to make money online.

I've added another section in this lens on some of my favorite sites that offer information on affiliate marketing and other things that I found useful. Hopefully they'll be helpful to you also.

I've included some links here to sites that will let you see the most current popular searches and trends online.

These are all well known sites, but don't limit yourself to just these.

Google Trends
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
WordTracker Free Keyword Suggest Tool
Trend Hunter
eBay Pulse
Microsoft Keyword Forecast Tool
Trellian Keyword Discovery

Here are some other ideas to find niches:

1. Magazines (current issues, not Dentists office issues)
2. Look Around - what are people 'in to', obviously everything iPhone or wii is hot, but maybe a bit broad for a niche. However, certain accessories might be great.
3. Your Kids - What toy do they want for Christmas or their Birthday ?

There's a bazillion niches, and there will always be new ones popping up everyday. Some people have the niche of finding niches for people looking for niches...whew.

I'll include the links only so you can go have a look for yourself. These are ALL proven, legitimate, useful products or services.



XSitePro is awesome. Now at version 2 (XsitePro2) it is my website building tool of choice. I needed something that would do everything I needed, but at a decent price. Dreamweaver would do it, but it was too expensive. Plus, XsitePro2 doesn't have the steep learning curve of Dreamweaver. Check it out, you'll be glad you did. I love it.

Site Sell Site Build It! (This just may be one of the best complete resources online for setting up a real, long term Internet business)

BANS (Build a Niche Store)

phpBay Pro (WordPress Plugin)



Register and Make Sure You're Accepted into the eBay Partner Network BEFORE You Purchase phpBayPro or BANS!!

eBay Partner Network




Affilate Networks







Should you decide to sign up with any affiliate networks, you can then list any products or services that you choose to promote on your lens(es).

It's as easy as cutting and pasting the HTML from the offer into your lens.

SquiDirectory - A categorized Squidoo directory featuring an interesting variety of different subjects ranging from arts and literature, shopping, and eco friendly tips, to vehicles for sale, travel, and everything in between.

If you're new to Internet Marketing you'll probably want to stick with some free methods to make money, at least at first.

If you haven't ran across it yet, there's an excellent eBook by a fellow Squidooer. She goes by Pot Pie Girl, her name is Jennifer and she has some great techniques for generating an online income.

It's called One Week Marketing Plan and it uses Squidoo as an integral component to her marketing.

I highly recommend it.

I can't overstate the importance I place on a WordPress Blog

I believe every online marketer should have a Blog. I chose WordPress because it seemed to be more popular at the time (and probably still is). I made a good decision.

If you haven't had a look yet, you should. First off it's free. You will want to set up a hosting account so you can run anything you want on you blog, whatever plugin etc. WordPress.com, although free, doesn't allow this complete flexibility.

Speaking of plugins...in case you're not familiar with plugins, they're basically smaller programs (scripts) that are 'plugged' into the host program (WordPress). These small plugins will let you customize you blog to be so much more than just a place to post.

I mentioned the phpBay Pro (WordPress Plugin) previously, and it's great. It lets you (after signing up with the eBay Partner Network), list eBay auctions on your blog. You can simply enter them as a post, or a page. By creating a page and then setting up a link to the page via Widgets, stripping some code from the theme, and you have what looks like a custom eStore...not a WordPress Blog!! It's awesome.

To Get A Fully Functional eBay Affiliate WordPress Blog with a Shared Hosting Account, Here's What You'll Need

For hosting, I use both BlueHost and HostGator. These are two of the more popular companies, and I can promise you that they're both top notch. Of course you only need one. I just like having hosting in two different geographical locations.

Next you'll need the phpBayPro plugin. It's available at phpBay.com. There is a fee, but when I bought it you got lifetime upgrades. I believe it's still that way, but check first.

If you want the store look, but don't want to have to mess with modifying a theme, you can use BANS (Build a Niche Store). It comes with several layouts, and there's other free ones available around the net.

It's also customizable, it's a matter of changing the color values in the CSS file to change the colors, and there's even some free online programs for doing that. BANS is very easy, and a proven option also.

If you chose to go with either of these scripts and your own hosting, email me and I'd be happy to help you get things going, at no charge if you would just buy through my links here.

You could get started very inexpensively by getting phpBayPro, a hosting account, and WordPress with a free theme and a few other free plugins.

I'm sure you probably know, but with shared hosting, you can have virtually as many websites as you want. The only additional cost is the domain registration for each.

With the cPanel control panel software, you have WordPress and many, many more free software packages available to you. Everything from CMS, forums, shopping carts, stats, image galleries and more.

There's an ever increasing list of social networking sites, but none is hotter than twitter, in my opinion

Unless you'll computing from under a rock, you've heard of twitter by now. I won't go into detail, but I will say...GET AN ACCOUNT if you don't have one.

Just by signing up and allowing myself to be seen by other users, I started getting a steady stream of followers right off the bat.

Every time you have a profound thought flow from your fingertips, all of your followers will get it immediately.

Just think of the advertising potential there!!

twitter

Obviously you'll want to get as many incoming links to your lenses as possible. One of the best ways to get the links (and traffic) is by writing articles, and submitting them to article directories.

The king daddy of all the article directories is EzineArticles.com . It takes a while to get a number of articles 'out there,' but after you start getting some published, it will pay off.

Go Articles is also another decent site to submit your articles to. Make sure to include links in your bio (author's info) box back to your Squidoo Lens.

Another profitable idea is to include a link to a domain that you 'own', and then have it redirect to one of your affiliate links. (You can't use an affiliate link directly in your EzineArticles articles.

GoArticles, and many of the others do allow affiliate links.

It's relatively easy to set up a lens, a blog, or various other sites or pages on the Internet. There's literally billions of rarely viewed pages online to prove it.

There's so many different methods of generating traffic that I'll be doing a lens specifically on that topic. So stay tuned. I'll have a link here when it's finished.

In the mean time, there's some common sense procedures that I use whenever I complete a lens in order to start getting some visitors.

Generally, when I think traffic, I think tags (keywords), content and links...not necessarily in that order.

Don't just add Amazon, eBay and other monetization modules to your lenses, add something your visitors will find useful or entertaining. When you have something of quality on your page, lens, blog, site, whatever...it will be reflected in the bounce rate, click-throughs, purchases, all the stats.

Make sure you use keywords or tags strategically in your module titles, subtitles and even in the body of your copy. The search engines are becoming more 'intelligent' on a daily basis. Don't try to fool them by putting up anything in hopes of getting visitors just to make your statistics look good.