ThisNext.com follows the spirit of Web 2.0, as a truly user-driven website that lists product recommendations of all kinds, shapes and sizes. Simply link back to any product, anywhere - on Amazon, Buy.com, Shop.com, your own website or blog - and include a mini-review and a "ThisNext" sticker, and you're done!

Overall, ThisNext is easy to use from your first visit. Upon signing up, you'll get your own user profile - be sure to include a profile thumbnail and fill out the rest of your fields. Remember, this is a social network - and others will be paying attention to you as an individual.

After creating your profile, start by making your first product review. You can find the "Recommend Products" link on the upper right, above the search box. You'll be taken to a screen where you can either paste a link, or drop the "Add to ThisNext" button into your browser bar.

Either way, ThisNext will "read" the page you chose and output its title attribute, with a list of all of the graphics that have been embedded on that page. Click on a graphic to select is the representation image of the product you are recommending.

Below this area, it will ask you to include a description of the product, and why you decided to recommend it. I've noticed that most, if not all of the members (even the seasoned ones) on ThisNext will typically include a brief but captivating 3-5 sentence description (no more, no less) of the product, and their opinion. The strategy here is to entice curiosity - and clicks!

ThisNext supports comma-separated tags. As usual, whatever tags you used are a part of the big picture - a massive collection of tags shared by everyone else who used them. Use tags to your advantage, as they'll serve as an additional search option for customers looking for certain items. I typically include both singular and plural versions of each tag I use, and I also try to think of other ways that an item could be described ("LP" as opposed to "record", etc.)

Another good strategy is to get your product recommendation into as many tag categories as humanly possible. Mix and match narrow niche-related keywords with broad keywords. So, put your shirt recommendation into "long sleeve shirts", as well as "cotton" and "green shirts."

Unfortunately, ThisNext does implement NoFollow - forget about link juice, and put all of your effort toward getting customers to click your recommendations.

This is my favorite part: ThisNext's whole "branding" schema includes those little dog-eared Web 2.0 stickers (you'll see them all over the site). Each product you recommend can have a sticker stuck on it, with whatever 10-character phrase you want. Stickers will then appear on the product image you chose from step 1, further adding some character to the overall picture.

Stickers appear on the product reviews you've submitted, on your profile's list of recommendations. It's not much, but definitely a fun away to draw attention to something. Think out of the box and use a funny or click-engaging word. For instance, the image on the left was from my recommendation of the Celestron Skyscout electronic telescope.

Now that you have your first review in the bag (reviews can typically be completed in under a minute!), take a look at the live version: under the title of your review is an indicator that states whether or not you were the first person to ever recommend that product. It's generally best to be the first - although, other people who have gone through all of the trouble of recommending something that's already listed on ThisNext have not completely wasted their time...they'll just be listed underneath the first person who made the recommendation for that product, in order of first to last.

At the bottom of the item's recommendation box, you'll see three ratings. ThisNext is particularly kind in the sense that there are no negative options: just "Smart, Funny, Useful." Finally, like any good social networking service, you can add other reviewers as friends.

So, where does Squidoo fall into all of this? That's coming up shortly...first, here's the part you've been waiting for: ThisNext is actually a very advanced affiliate marketing program. Click "edit profile" and look for the (very tiny) link near the upper left, that says "Enter your affiliate IDs (optional)."

Your options include Amazon Associates, Amazon.co.uk Associates, CJ (Commission Junction) and Performics. Simply add any of the IDs you have for these affiliate programs to the boxes, and you're done.

Now, any item sold through your Shopcast (a badge showcasing a single review that you can place on your blog) or List (much like an Amazon.com Listmania - a group of products you showcase) will be tagged with your affiliate program ID, giving you commission for whatever is sold. Also, you'll make a commission when or if someone else embeds your List or Shopcast elsewhere on the web (although I can't imagine that would happen very often).

Unfortunately, this does not seem to include items sold directly through your recommendation. However, link to your Squidoo page as the link-to page of your recommendation, and you'll funnel traffic to it! (just make sure the product you're promoting actually is for sale on your Squidoo landing page).

A little trick I found out is that you can actually include an affiliate-tagged link at the end of your product review:



Add your affiliate-tagged link on the right side box. If you're an Amazon associate member, you can use this tool to create affiliate-tagged links from anything on Amazon. As an affiliate marketer, you know how important it is to get as many cookies out there as possible!

Lastly, you can watch people buying things live on ThisNext's live shopping world map, which is rather addictive to watch.

These are the basics of adding recommendations to ThisNext.com - try it out for yourself, and take a look at the many other options the site has (such as the RSS feed for your account!). Use it to your advantage, and get your Squidoo shopping pages out to this audience of shoppers and social networkers!