Ok, it's day one of my Squidoo Challenge. What is my challenge you ask? To be earning $4000/month from Squidoo by the end of 2007.

I have no preconceived notions about Squidoo's potential, just that it is possible to earn money by using this site.

Today I purchased Social Networking on Squidoo by Tiffany Dow. Please swing by her lenses here: Tiffany

Let me explain a bit further about my "challenge". I completely understand that I will not likely generate $4000/month from Squidoo revenue, but my goal is to make a residual income directly on Squidoo, and drive $4000 a month worth of business to my website.

About my website: Outlaw Motorsports is an offline store that sells aftermarket Hot Rod and High Performance parts. The business was started in September of 2001 and has had a website since day one. However there has never been any revenue generated from the site. I had experimented with Microsoft's BCentral shopping cart, and ebay's ProStores. Neither did much for sales. My problem was generating traffic.I could have been GIVING away parts, but no one knew it!!

So about 3 months ago I stumbled upon this thing called Internet Marketing. I learned so much that I became overloaded! After months of research, I finally realized that I needed to pursue my original plan...to find a way to drive traffic to the store's website. So here I am on Squidoo.

I also like to do graphic and web design, and have a company called Outlaw-fx. This site is designed to target Internet Marketers and local small businesses trying to get online.

I will update this as often as I can, sometimes too much. But I will always let you know where I stand in this challenge. I will have another entry today.

Keith

Ok. After a brief break for the night, I am back at it. I plan to bounce around and look at other lenses and get an rough idea on what they are doing. I noticed that when I logged in this morning I was still at the bottom of the barrel for ranking. I added an RSS blog and submitted this url to Google and now all of a sudden I jumped up 3000 to 12,003 as of this writing. Probably a coincidence though. However I'm sure the more I add and tweak the better my rank will become.

Once I get a good feel for the site, I will begin working on my lenses for my website...

Ok! I got my first lens started for my website. I also began work on redesigning my site. That part is still hidden but you can see it here: New Home

The link to my new lens is here: Outlaw

Well it's early morning of day 3 of my challenge. I know I'm updating too much, but I eventually plan to cut back to every other day.

As of this morning, "The Squidoo Challenge" Lens had hit 866 Rank. Big jump from 12,003 of yesterday!

The Outlaw lens also jumped a bit as well, about 3000 in rank. As I do more I will update, just wanted to share..Will update more later today.

D3: Ok, here we are at day 3. I really didn't do much yesterday, as it was NFL playoffs, so I vegged out on the couch for a change.

This lens has now jumped from 866 to 362!! My Hot Rod lens jumped from 3000 to 1200(approx).

I want to clarify the purpose of this challenge. I plan to generate the money through mt website, not through Squidoo. The TRAFFIC from Squidoo will be responsible for the money.

This is all hinging on me updating my site and adding a shopping cart to it as well, so I have a lot to do.

More later...



I just figured out how to insert a picture into a lens and have it linked to a site! Pretty cool stuff.




Another test with an animated gif.

D4: Day 4 arrives! Learned a few things yesterday. I also discovered a way to use Squidoo to make some cash even if you don't have a website. It does require owning a domain name though. I plan to test the theory sometime within the next 2 days and I will post my results.

As for my website(outlaw) I haven't done too much. I have a partner in this and I'm waiting on him to decide what he wants to use for a shopping cart. There's an application that is a little pricey, but is industry specific and will more than likely be the way we go. People are looking at the lens though and I'm now in the top 10 for "Hot Rods". I don't want to add too much until I decide the direction of the business. I guess sometimes when you have too many irons in the fire things get bogged down.

With Squidoo just changing the stats, this lens went from 362 to 190 in ranking. The Outlaw lens only moved about 50 in ranking. But that's ok, I really haven't done anything major with it.

Another thing I have been doing is accruing some lens names for when I'm ready. I see more and more lenses each day being started, and as the popularity of Squidoo takes off, lens names will be a rough commodity.

That's it for now, back to work...

Keith

PS: I just noticed I was #7 for the tag "internet marketing". Yippee.

Well Day 5 of being a Squidoo member has arrived. Where am I? Well this lens itself is now ranked in the #146 position. Not much of a jump, only about 50 spots. I anticipate it getting much tougher to move up from here on out. The Outlaw lens jumped into the top 1000, but I didn't even touch it yesterday, so that's to be expected.

However, I am #5 for "internet marketing" (a 2 position jump from yesterday). This is more important to me than anything. I also am #3 for 'hot rods" on my Outlaw lens. Not too much competition there though!

Not too bad for a newbie! My goal with this lens is to continue to add to it each day, but the updates will really about what I will be doing with my business lens. I am ready to start working on that one today or tomorrow the latest.

I received a few jobs for my graphic business so that has me tied up a bit, and I am still waiting on my partner to get back to me on the Outlaw Motorsports site. Looks like he found the right shopping cart, so that will really speed things along!

D6: Is Here. This lens seems to be doing well. I haven't really done anything that I consider special to help the rankings, but it appears to be moving right along. Now at #134. I am more concerned about my keywords though. I am #3 in "business" and 5 for the phrase "internet marketing". Not to shabby!

I actually lost a bit on the Outlaw Lens, but I also didn't do anything either.

I use a link in my signature at a forum I frequent, but really that's it! I try and sign guestbooks on lenses I like as well, but I have not really done much more than that.

I signed up for a friendly competition here on Squidoo yesterday. About 10-15 of us from a popular message forum will start brand new lenses on Saturday, and whoever has the highest ranked lens after 30 days is the winner. Just what I need, another challenge(lol). I always knew I was challenged....

As far Outlaw, the shopping cart that was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread for my niche turned out to be a dud. Looks like it isn't any better than the rest or them out there. They made it sound like all the pics and descriptions of the items we would be putting in the cart were already there(kind of like Amazon. You type in the code and the pic and description pops up if it's been used before). So now I have to research some alternative carts. Urrg! This delays progress. I'm sure this won't be the only snag along the way!

Keith

I have been busy, so I missed a couple of days worth of entries here, and have done absolutely nothing with the Outlaw Lens. I have been patiently waiting on my partner to get the shopping cart deal ready. I have re-done the site, so now it's just a matter of getting the cart done, and then promote!!!

I will keep you updated as this progresses, but time has been tighte lately...