Make Money With Squidoo

First off squidoo (www.squidoo.com) is a website with an easy
interface designed for anyone to setup a free one topic webpage
on a topic of their choice. An interesting thing here is that
they share revenue with their content creators as well some is
given to charity.

On this page information is displayed with user generated “Lenses.”
These are single pages that highlight one person’s point of view,
recommendations, or expertise.

The users who create these lenses are called lensmasters. Its the
lensmasters job to fill in the wholes on the topic of choice. In
exchange for this the lensmaster can receive up to 50% of the
revenue for the advertisements views from their lenses. So you can
already see that being popular on Squidoo can pay off.

Since Google likes Squidoo, its pages get indexed rather quickly.
They often find their way to the first page if content is well
written and the lenses gets enough hits.

If you are in an affiliate program a great idea is to write a
review about your program or product and create a lens around it.
In this review you would give valuable information that allows
the reader to get much wanted information about your program or
product. Within this review add links to where the product or
program can be purchased. This of course would have your affiliate
link in it so that you would get credit for the sale.

There are many ways to promote your lens. I’ll name a few here
for you. The first and maybe most obvious would be to social
bookmark your site. Social bookmarks allow you to share and save
web pages publicly or privately with tags that make them accessible
to readers looking for similar content.

You can also create more than one lens and link them together. This
allows viewers to see more of you and will also provide good backlinks.
Submitting a press release will also create the more buzz for your
lens. Blogging about your lens can also bring those much needed
backlinks as well.

These are only a few of the ways that you can promote your lens.
Believe me the list goes on and on when it comes to promoting your
lens. What is of greatest importance to consider when writing a
lens to promote a program or product is not to sound like your
pitching. The best way to keep from doing this is to offer objective
comments that the reader can ultimately draw there own conclusion.
This not only allows them to make up their own mind but it will
keep them engaged in your article.

First of all what is twitter? This may be a review for some but here it goes. Twitter is quite simply a social network based on one question, “What Are You Doing?” The goal is to keep people up to date with what you are doing at the time. You get just 140 characters to express what you are doing at the time, thus making the process very stream line and to the point.

These little updates can be posted in a number of ways from Instant Message to Email. When a message is sent its called a tweet. My research has revealed that over 2 million users are on twitter tweeting away. This means that there is a chance that some of these “Tweeters” may be looking for something that you have to offer.

Now to get into the real reason your reading this article. How to get those followers? To be effective in your twitter campaign its necessary to have followers. Followers equal traffic which equal sales. I’m going to give you three ways of getting people to follow you.

If you already have a group of people that are consuming your content ask them to follow you on twitter. This could be those whose subscribe to your videos, read your blogs, your MySpace or Facebook friends and your autoresponder list. Anywhere you have gathered a group of people on the net. You can also a link in your forum signature to follow you on twitter. Your results may not be 100% but do this anyway.

Way number two would through a search on twitter. Twitter is like your favorite hang out where people come to talk about the lastest and greatest. Use the search to see what conversations that you can join that are already in progress. As long as your response is coherent and goes with whats going on most will follow you. (http://search.twitter.com)

The final way to get people to follow you is to follow others that you deem intelligent. Those that you respect and have something to say that is worth listening to. You can follow people who are following those people as well. Most will return a follow with a follow.

So you can see that the ways are pretty simple. All it takes is a little of time and you can be on your way to having a pretty good following. No pun intentded. Like anything else be persistant and you will begin to see the results that you are looking for.

First of all what is twitter? Twitter is quite simply a social network based on one question, “What Are You Doing?” The goal is to keep people up to date with what you are doing at the time. You get just 140 characters to express what you are doing at the time, thus making the process very stream line and to the point.

These little updates can be posted in a number of ways from Instant Message to Email. When a message is sent its called a tweet. My research has revealed that over 2 million users are on twitter tweeting away. This means that there is a chance that some of these “Tweeters” may be looking for something that you have to offer.

So in pops the big question. How can I use Twitter to help me market and drive traffic to my website? First we want to warn you that this can be quite addictive. You may find yourself being very unproductive updating people on your days activities. So stay focused. Make sure your getting your message across and getting traffic to your moneymaking sites.

The goal is to get people to “follow” you. Having content that adds value to the community makes people want to follow you. This also causes people to click on your link to get more of what your talking about. Setting up your tweet with enticing information and adding a link to get more is how you can get traffic and also set yourself up as an authority.

Your first source of clicks with twitter is through your “Bio.” Here you can descibe yourself and then add a link to your favorite moneymaking site.

Another source of clicks is through a tool that you setup to interface with Twitter. www.tweetlater.com allows you to send out a personal tweet message to anyone that follows you automatically. So if your away from your computer etc you can have this message sent to them thanking them for the follow also having your link in this message often induces a click through.

The final source of traffic is through the tweets themselves. Adding a link here may be the most effective. People that are following you will tend to click on these link more readily and over time as well. Don’t worry about long links twitter (at the time of this writting) uses tinyurl to truncate your longer urls.

So by adding value and knowing where to put your links to your site you can see that having twitter as addition to your online marketing campaign can give free traffic and make you money.

Now to your opening statement. This statement is going to establish authority, so this is important. Something like “Hey this is (your name) and I’m the creator of (Website).” Something like this positions you in as the person to follow and to know. Another way of creating this is to tell why you created your profile. For example, “Hey this is (your name) and the reason why I created this profile is to help feed working 9-5 and let them know there is an alternative to the daily grind. I know how you you feel I felt the same way you but I found the Internet was the best place for you me build wealth and I’m here to show you how to get started.”

Next would be your background. Here is a list of the things that you should include. Where your from, some of your old jobs, your hobbies, sports you enjoy. This allows you to create something in common with those who are viewing your profile. If you get stuck ask some friends to help you out.

We now establish a problem. The normals are lack of time and money. But we want go even deeper than the norms. This is where you will get into your own problem that you may be trying to solve yourself. Be specific and personal. Let’s say your looking for leads for you business. “Businesses on the net can be extremely hard if you can’t get qualified leads. I know all about this because……(Tell your story).” This is where the prospects will relate to you. They may be having a similar problem. Being personal and specific does all of the sorting for you. If they can relate to your story then you may have the right person. Your not going to be able to relate to everyone this is not the point. The point is relating to those who relate to you. Your story is going to automatically sift through all the wrong people for you.

So their in agreeance their feeling your story. This is where the solution comes in. So at this point you throw in a statement like. “All of this changed when……..” Then you tell them about your business and what it has done for you. Make sure that you tell the truth. If you have not made any money yet tell them about how  excited you are about what your doing and how it has changed your life.

This part is what bring all of this together. Its your call to action. Something like, “This is why I created this profile to network and work with like minded people to get the word out……., so go to www.blah.com or give me a call at 555-555-5555, I’d love to chat and here your story.

Hopefully you see how incredibly powerful this can be. Put this into action and see what type of results that you get.

Since the space in a kitchen is limited and there is a proper place for everything so to
is there a proper place for your blog post. When it comes to categories less is more.
That being said you should focus on one category per post. This gives you a permanent
storage location for your post. If the post can go in more than one category it may
be worth posting in both but that’s a judgement call.

When someone comes to your blog they should be able to navigate through your blog
using the category that you set up. Not having categories means that at some point
the information that you have written will not be located easily. This will lead to less and
less views do to no navigation.

Now lets see how they correlate to your tags. Tags should be used as a compliment to
your categories. Meaning that they should be a deeper level of description. Like color
coding a certain section in a book. This basically highlights a certain topic within
the book itself but it does not represent the entire book. For example your book may
be about flowers where as the section highlighted my be about how to care for a
certain flower.

The best example may be the Table of Contents. This gives your navigational directions
for which to get to certain topics within the book. This would be your categories where
as the details on a certain page would be the tags that you use to describe that particular
section in that chapter.

So how do you choose your category name. Well most people will start out thinking in
terms of a series. You may want to use a broad stroke to encompass topics that fit the
larger description, like Business, and Financial. If your blog is more specific then you may
want to consider a breakdown within the scope of your topic. Meaning if your blog were
about cars maybe your categories would be the types of cars, sedans, sports cars, coupes
to name a few.

Being to specific may not the way to start off simple because you may not have enough
post to put in all the categories. Staying with broader categories will allow you to have more
content in that category. A category can be a full subject that you explore with post after
post. There really should be no limit to the amount of post for that category (relatively
speaking). You can have more post under “computers” than you may have under “Apple
G4.” Not to say the “Apple G4″ posts could not fill a harddrive but still in comparison
“computers” will still win out.

When naming categories think from your visitors perspective. Ask yourself does the category
properly describe the information that it contains. Your reader should not have to navigate
to your post to know what information lies within the category.

Within a blog tags allow authors to add free-form tags to a post, along with
(or instead of) placing  the post into categories. For instance, a post may
display that has been tagged with “concert and tickets”. Each of those
tags is usually a web link leading to an index page listing all of the posts
associated with that tag. The blog may have a sidebar listing all the tags
in use on that blog, with each tag leading to an index page. To reclassify a
post, an author edits its list of tags. All connections between posts are
automatically tracked and updated by the blog software; there is no need to
relocate the within a complex hierarchy of categories.

So in layman’s terms these tags can be used to find your article when the words
you used to describe your topic are typed in a search engine or within the
blog search tool. Very simple concept but really needed when your looking to
be notice. What’s important here is to use descriptive words that shed light
on the subject of your topic.

For example for this article I chose, blog, tags, how to, meta, spiders, SEO,
and keywords. Tip: no matter where you use your tags blog, website, youtube,
if your not sure what one to use remember the internet is an open book, just
look for an entry close to yours in subject to get some ideas.

Once you have created you username and password, login. Now its not to obvious what to do from here but in order to get your blog started you have to click on “registrar a blog.” This is located right below your welcome greeting. Once in just think of a name. If your online to do business its best to take this opportunity to brand yourself and give your blog your name.

After this go to “My Dashboard” and click on “Design.” At this point its up to you to choose a theme that fits you best. Brainstorm for awhile before looking at the designs this will help locate a theme quicker. What I mainly thought about was the colors and layout that I like. You don’t to go to far out there with your design, this may to take away from your overall goal of providing a cohesive environment for people to locate the information.

Next choose a blog template. Then in the upper right hand corner click “Activate (template name)” to apply the new template. Check it out by going to “yourname”.wordpress.com. One great thing about wordpress is that you can have as many blogs as you like.