Back Scratching Doesn't Always Make Money

As I mentioned on December 20th I am giving Squidoo a trial to see if it will:

(a) Make money in it's own right
(b) To see if it can generate traffic to my blogs
(c) To see if it can generate traffic to affiliate programs and thus make money

It's very early days to make any assumptions as yet. From what I have found out so far I think it will take at least three months to establish if Squidoo is a worthwhile project, as far as money making is concerned.

I've been attracting some traffic to my Squidoo lenses and this has come from:

(1) 47.2% - Referrals from my own blogs
(2) 22.8% - From Google search engine
(3) 18.6% - From within Squidoo
(4) 10.0% - Arrived direct, not sure how
(5) 01.4% - From Ask search engine

What is encouraging from the above is the percentage from Google. I have now created 5 Squidoo lenses but the search engine referrals are to only two of these. This shows that you have to follow the normal SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) rules and think about keywords and the like when setting up lenses.

A decent percentage has arrived from within the Squidoo community itself. In other words if you participate in commenting and ranking other lenses, and joining in on their forum, this will produce traffic in relation to the effort you put in but ...

... from a money making viewpoint is this traffic actually of real value? It's a little like everyone scratching each others backs. You scratch mine and I'll scratch yours.

Absolutely nothing wrong with this as it will boost your Squidoo rankings and standing within the community but ...

... if you are in Squidoo to make money then you won't make much from this particular direction - at least not as far as I can see.

I wrote a post back in April 2008 titled Regular New Blood Is Needed To Make Money. In this I wrote that, as valued as subscribers are, they don't really make you money. I feel it's the same when attracting Squidoo members to your lenses.

Of course it all depends why you are setting up Squidoo lenses or blogging. If it's just for fun then it's fantastic to get lots of stuff going on with other members and lots of back scratching.

If your mission is money making, however, I still stick to the principle that this comes from fresh blood via search engines and good links.

As with Dracula continuous new blood is required to keep your money making alive and well.

Anyway, just a few initial thoughts on Squidoo. The four most visited of my Squidoo lenses are:

The World Of Ponzi Schemes
Celebrities Photos and News
Everything Perry
Making Money With Free Blogs

Good luck and wishing ...

A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR
TO ALL
SUBSCRIBERS, READERS AND ADVERTISERS
Best wishes,
Mike

Can You Make Money With Google Groups?

Way back in November 2006, when I was trying out different ways to get traffic, I started a Google Group called Free Blogs 4 Money.

I wrote at the time that I did this because, "A strange thing happened yesterday. Someone mentioned this blog in a Google Group and this brought me in 76 visitors."

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Group wasn't really a success and after a couple of months I forgot all about it. I figured at the time that this was probably because I hadn't put in enough promotional effort.

Suddenly however, after all of this time, the Group has become active again and has 263 members. This may sound okay but most of the messages - there have been over 60 in the last 3 days - are rubbish, typical hyped up virtual spam.

It has got me thinking though as to whether there is any mileage in a proper run Google Group - for the purpose of money making and/or creating fresh traffic. The one I created is too overrun now to be worthwhile.

Has anyone had any success with a Google Group? Either running one or maybe just participating in a few? It would be interesting to know. Thanks.

Good luck,
Mike.

Squidoo Lenses: The World Of Ponzi Schemes / Making Money With Free Blogs / Everything Perry / Secret of Eternal Youth / Celebrities Photos and News

Seasonal Greetings!

Other Peoples Goals Make Money

Would you share your goals and desires with the Internet? If you would perhaps you may be interested in the website 43Things.

"Yes, but what use is all of this?" you may ask.

Well if you think about one of my pet themes, the one about how you should give people what they want (and not what you think they should or might want ... etc) then seeing what are popular goals and desires might just be useful.

For example the most Popular Goals on 43Things are:

1. Lose weight (32978 people)
2. stop procrastinating (24573 people)
3. write a book (22771 people)
4. Fall in love (22445 people)
5. Be happy (19819 people)
6. Get a tattoo (18184 people)
7. Go on a road trip with no predetermined destination (16992 people)
8. Drink more water (16949 people)
9. Get married (16474 people)
10.Travel the world (16414 people)

... and the most Popular Goals today are:

1. Drink more water
2. Fall in love
3. Lose weight
4. Write a book
5. Run a marathon
6. Learn Spanish
7. Be happy
8. Be more confident
9. Travel the world
10.Get a job

43Things could be useful for generating ideas about which type of products to promote, or maybe a niche for a blog, or an idea for an ebook. Though I'm not too sure about this obsession with drinking water!

Well I thought it was interesting anyway. And it's all done anonymously.

But why 43 Things? This is what they say:

People have known for years that making a list of goals is the best way to achieve them. But most of us never get around to making a list. 43 Things is great for that! Make a list on 43 Things and see what changes happen in your life. Best of all it’s a way of connecting with other enthusiasts interested in everything from watching a space shuttle launch to grow my own vegetables. So the next time someone asks you, "what do you do?" you can answer with confidence, "I am doing 43 things!".

Made your goals for next year? Are you going to drink more water for example!

Good luck.
Mike.

P.S. Just been looking at ClickBank and these are examples of some of the things to promote that could, perhaps, tie in with the Most Popular Goals:

Strip That Fat
Make Women Laugh And Fall In Love
Tattoo Me Now.
Attracting Wealth, Health, Happiness And Love
How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
How To Get Dirt Cheap Airfare Tickets

Money Making Test: Squidoo Lenses

With the New Year approaching I thought I needed something different to test, and I've decided on Squidoo. I dabbled with this a while back but got sidetracked onto something else without giving it a decent trial. This time, hopefully, I'll give it a proper money making test.

Why Pick Squidoo?
Firstly because it's similar, in many ways, to blogging. Secondly I've come across a few reports of people who have done quite well with the progamme. One in particular reckons to be making over $1000 a month - and that would be a worthwhile addition to my blog income.

What Is Squidoo?
If you haven't heard of it before it's all about creating single web pages on any subject you want, like a glorified big blog post. Squidoo call these pages lenses and you can have as many of them as you want.

On your page (lens) there are affiliate links, plus you can add aditional modules. All of these can make money. Squidoo distributes the income, from the 700,000+ lenses, in the following way: 5% goes to charity, they keep 45% and the rest goes to the lensmasters who build the pages.

There is also additonal money to be made from special eBay, Amazon, CafePress modules which can be added to pages if you choose.

Money can also be made by introducing new members to Squidoo, but there is more ...

Your lens or page can be used for virtually anything so it could be for promoting your own blog, products, business, affiliate programs etc. etc. If you can get traffic to your lenses they can be a useful promotional tool.

Okay here's three examples of Squidoo lenses I have just set up. They are far from perfect as yet, and need some editing, but it'll give you a general idea.

(1) Celebrities Photos and News: I'm using this mainly to try and get extra traffic to my celebrity blogs. As you will see I have been able to use RSS feeds so that a selection of my latest blog posts are on the lens.

(2) The World of Ponzi Schemes: I used this theme as Ponzi has been in the news recently following the massive fraud in the USA. The article I have published I wrote a year or so ago.

(3) Making Money With Free Blogs: The lens is to promote this blog. I've included an RSS feed but there is still a lot of work to do on the lens. I want to add a lot more information, but I'll do this gradually as and when I have time.

The people who make the decent money direct from Squidoo have hundreds of lenses and you could, of course, link these together so they produce traffic for each other. And don't forget the secondary income which can be made from your own affiliate programs and other stuff.

For example, you could use something like a ClickBank product, write an article about it and then use links to direct traffic to the main product sales page. There's lots of ways for which a lens could be used if you give it some thought

What Are My First Impressions?
It's very early days and I've only had about 145 hits on my lenses so far - hopefully this will grow considerably. What I have noticed is that, after just two days, I had referrals from Google, now that is a good sign.

There are lots of other ways to attract traffic to a lens. They have their own forum and I've also come across several websites especially for Squidoo lenses. I won't give details now as I can't say if they are worthwhile, as I haven't tried them myself. I'll get back to you on this.

On the Squidoo main page they write that you can, "Create your own page in 60 seconds.' This is slightly misleading. It's true that a page is ready for you pretty quickly but it'll take a while to enter the content, to grasp all of the things you can do with a lens and to get it looking as you would wish.

I'll leave Squidoo there for now and will do an update as soon as I can give a few more facts and figures as to how I have got on. I will add that it's not a get rich overnight progam, the lenses will take time to develop and quite a few will be needed to make decent money.

If you want to have a go as well here's the link: Squidoo. Let me know how you get on.

Good luck,
Mike.

Other reading: 40 Ways To get More Blog Traffic.

Make Money From New Year Resolutions

It's nearly 2009. Okay, I guess most of us know this, but the beginning of a New Year is a good time for promoting products - the right products that is.

Despite being skint after the Christmas holiday most of us start a New Year with great enthusiasm.

It's a time for New Year resolutions and setting ourselves targets and objectives for the year ahead. It makes sense therefore to try and make money out of this this buzz of excitement.

It is now time to plan for January, if we haven't already done so. What is it that people will be thinking about? Probably things such as making money, getting a better body, losing weight, giving up cigarettes, making new friends, romance, adult contacts and so on and so on.

So if we can fill these sorts of needs, with the right products from affiliate programs and the like, we could see a rise in our blogging earnings. Looking through my own records January 2008 was one of my highest earning months and I aim to make 2009 even better.

Now is the time to do our homework and prepare for January with the right affiliate programs and promotions applicable to our particular blog niche.

There is only one opportunity each year to cash in on the hopes and dreams which a New Year brings. Don't miss out!

Good luck,
Mike.

Your Own Money Making Space on the Internet with Squidoo. Have one page or hundreds of pages and make money from them! Set up your first money making page in about 10 minutes. Example page (lens).

Beware of Dodgy Money Making Schemes

There has been a lot of publicity regarding Ponzi schemes following the con by Bernard Madoff in the USA which run into billions of dollars. Even UK banks were sucked into the so called investment with HBOS losing £653 million, RBS £388 million and the Spanish bank Santander £2.03 billion. Unbelievable.

I wrote about the danger of Ponzi schemes way back in January 2007, see Warning: Beware Of Ponzi Schemes. The thing to remember is that 'if something looks too good to be true it probably is.'

This is why at the time I made a fuss about things such as Wealth ToolBox.

It's so easy to get sucked into these sort of schemes - as we've seen, incredibly, even banks are fooled. Be careful!

Good luck,
Mike.

Ad: FREE DATING WEBSITE. Get your own free dating website, with millions of members, and make some excellent commission.

Lessons From State Of The Blogosphere

There is an interesting but long report on Technorati called State of the Blogosphere. If you are interested in all sorts of blogging stats and information you'll most likely find it within the report.

For example, on the subject of How Bloggers Attract Visitors, these are supposedly the most popular methods, though I'm a little suspicious of the number one!

1. List your blog on Technorati - 83% of bloggers do this.
2. Comment on other blogs - 77%
3. List your blog on Google - 73%
4. Tag your blog posts - 68%
5. Link to other blogs and hope for reciprocity - 64%
6. Participate in a blogroll - 54%
7. Get listed in a blog directory - 53%
8. Produce content for other blogs - 24%
9. Pay for online advertising - 4%

Regarding number 4 on the above list, it's interesting that Technorati's Top 100 Bloggers use tags more than two times as much as the next 500 and 19 times more than the next 5000 blogs. This illustrates the importance of using tags for every posts, and using them wisely.

The Top 100 also update their blogs more frequently. The elite 100 have twice as many postings as the next 500 and 12 times more than the next 5000.

There are lessons to be learnt from this State of the Blogosphere Technorati report as it covers a wide aspect of blogging in general.

Regarding making money with blogs: for those with over 100,000 unique visitors per month, in the survey, they produced an average income of $75,000. This, however, was slightly skewed by some top bloggers who have over one million uniques each month and had a considerably higher income. A truer figure for this group of 100,000+ was a median annual income of $22,000.

You can see the full report here.

Good luck,
Mike.

See also: 40 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic

Ad: Get Ready to Make Money in the New Year with AdultFriendFinder and FriendFinder. Many people want to make new friends and contacts at the beginning of a New Year so big profits are possible. Join now, free, and be ready to promote 20+ websites.

Disguise Your URL

There are often reasons why it may be helpful to disguise the URL of something you are promoting. Perhaps with an affiliate program such as ClickBank where it may put off readers if they see it is a ClickBank product. Or maybe where the URL is very long.

For whatever reason there are a several ways by which a URL can be disguised. Here are a couple of easy to use free examples.

Suppose you have the following URL, which you want to disguise:

(1) http://seeker76.maverick66.hop.clickbank.net
/?tid=MAVMONEY

You could disguise it, via WhyLong.com, and it would become:

(2) http://whylong.com/469

Or you could use this one from tinyurl.com:

(3) http://tinyurl.com/5enuu9

All three links will go to the same product.

Or as another example, what looks better and is easier to handle:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470246677?ie
=UTF8&tag=celebinsid-20&linkCode=as2&
camp=1789&creative=390957&
creativeASIN=0470246677

or

http://whylong.com/470

Both WhyLong.com and tinyurl.com are simple to use and don't require any form of registration.

Good luck,
Mike.

Ad: Mirror CashBack - FREE £5! Earn CashBack on your everyday shopping. Over 2000 retailers. Join for free and get £5! Plus earn £5 for every friend you refer.

40 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic

The secret of making money with blogs is quite simple and can be summed up in one word: traffic.

If you get sufficient traffic / referrals / hits, or whatever you want to call them, you have the potential to make money.

But how do you get traffic? The first thing (1) is to do something every day, or at least on a regular basis, to try and get more traffic. To help with some ideas here is a list of 40 ways to get more traffic to your blog.

(2) MyBlogLog. Join MyBlogLog, list your blogs and if you wish put their widget on your blog - see example in right hand column of this blog.

(3) myLot. As well as making a little cash on this site it's also possible for members to list their blogs as well.

(4) Mister Linker This sort of thing is often frowned on by blogging purists but can bring in a few hits.

(5) Zimbio. I've had over 10,000 referrals from Zimbio. I use the 'automatic option' .

(6) Klik.Us. Doesn't work for everyone but my photo is on their first page and it brings me visitors.

(7) BuzzFeed. I've had over 25,000 referrals from this website.

(8) Mahalo. I've received about 1000 referrals.

(9) Wikipedia. I'm sure we've all used this website but it has also sent me over 5000 referrals. How? By being listed within the 'external links' on three or four celebrity pages - these are at the bottom of the respective pages. I'll leave you to fathom out how to do this!

(10) Technorati. Join and 'claim' your blogs.

(11) Images. Use images and photos in your posts. These can produce referrals from Google Images and also from other search engines. On one of my celebrity blogs this has brought me in over 350,000 referrals in one year.

(12) Wowzio. If you do use images in posts try a Wowzio widget - see example in right hand side column of this blog. I use these and get referrals.

(13) Videos. Publish videos on your blog. They don't have to be yours - use YouTube or whatever. These can bring referrals via Google Videos. On one of my celeb blogs this had brought me in 5000+ referrals.

(14) Keywords. Essential for getting referrals from search engines. Use them in titles and the body of posts but without overdoing it, as that would be considered spam.

(15) Long Tail Keywords.

(16) Emails. Use your blog address as a signature for every outgoing email.

(17) Forums - 1. Use your blog address in signatures on forums.

(18) Forums - 2. Participate on forums relative to your blog's niche.

(19) Subscriptions. Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog by using Feedburner or something similar. And make sure this is easily seen on your blog.

(20) Traffic Exchanges. Websites such as Blog Explosion, Blog Soldiers and Blog Mad will bring you traffic. As to the quality of the traffic, that's debatable - but they can make the stats look good! Important Warning: Do not use traffic exchanges if you have AdSense on your blog, they are not compatible.

(21) Exchange Links with blogs of a similar niche to your own.

(22) Google Groups. Create your own Google Group, relative to the theme of your blog, and/or participate in existing Groups.

(23) Profiles. List your blog on every profile of anything you join. If there is ever an opportunity - anywhere - then enter your URL. Might not bring in much traffic but you never know who might just click on your blog.

(24) Blog Directories. Get listed within as many Blog Directories as possible. This doesn't bring in a volume of traffic, but the links are useful in other ways - such as PR.

(25) Comment on other blogs. You mostly get at least the blogger returning your visit and sometimes many more as well.

(26) Freebies. Offer some sort of freebie on your blog, maybe an ezine, ebook or some sort of blogging tool.

(27) Competitions. Run a competition on your blog and do a form of Press Release to other relevant blogs telling them all about it.

(28) Link Love. Give some link love. This is odd but by listing other blogs within a post this creates good karma.

(29) Make a list of other bloggers interesting posts, as a post, on your blog.

(30) Squidoo. Create some Squidoo lenses and use them for links to your blog(s).

(31) Blog Carnivals - 1. Join a Blog Carnival and have your posts, with links, listed on other blogs.

(32) Blog Carnivals - 2. Host a Blog Carnival on your blog.

(33) Articles. Write articles and submit them to the various article directories. You are normally allowed to include your link in a footnote following the article.

(34) Link Bait. Write a 'special post', something that has taken a while to produce and is of value to a lot of people. With luck this will be linked to by other bloggers.

(35) Ping. Regularly ping your blogs. This tells search engines and other services that your blog has been updated. ping-o-matic will ping your blog to lots of services.

(36) Free Classified Ads. There are dozens of places where you can place free ads. A few examples: craigslists, Kijiji, ClassifiedAds, US FreeAds, WebLeeg, EPage etc. etc.

And these only start to scratch the surface. Once you start looking and thinking about attracting more traffic you'll find dozens of more ways. I haven't, for example, even mentioned social media networks like (37) Facebook or (38) Twitter - there's a list of the main social networking sites on (39) Wikipedia.

and (40) ask other blogs to link to your posts!

Link to this post

<a href="http://mikesmoneymakingmission.blogspot.com/2008/12/40-ways-to-get-more-blog-traffic.html">40 Ways To get More Blog Traffic</a>

Good luck,
Mike.

Ad: Mirror CashBack - FREE £5! Earn CashBack on your everyday shopping. Over 2000 retailers. Join for free and get £5! Plus earn £5 for every friend you refer.

Money Making Top Ten Lists

I see that Yahoo have published the Top Searches for 2008 for various categories.

I often generally look at such lists - though prefer things like Google Trends - to find out what the hot searches are. I base some of the posts on my Celebrity blogs on Trends. Here is Yahoo's 2008 Top Ten

Yahoo Top 10 Searches For 2008
1.
Britney Spears
2.
WWE
3.
Barack Obama
4.
Miley Cyrus
5.
RuneScape
6.
Jessica Alba
7.
Naruto
8.
Lindsay Lohan
9.
Angelina Jolie
10
American Idol
The above shows how celebrities dominate the Internet, whether we like this or not. And, as I often write, we have to give people/readers what they want as opposed to what we think they may or should want. Keeping up with trends means more traffic - and there is even more traffic (and money making potential) if we can anticipate something about to happen or hone in on something on the way up.

Google have a list of Top Ten Product Searches. Again this allows us to promote what people are searching for and want - as opposed to what we think they may want.

Google Top 10 Product Searches
1.
Nintendo Wii
2.
Wii Fit
3.
iPod touch
4.
Xbox 360
5.
Nintendo DS
6.
iPod Nano
7.
Uggs
8.
Nikon D90
9.
Zune
10.
Digital Picture Frame
There are lots of search categories about that can help us decide what we are going to write about or promote. Another example is the Google Top 10 Video Games & Toys.

Google Top 10 Video Games & Toys
1.
Bakugan
2.
Guitar Hero World Tour
3.
Webkinz
4.
Gears of War 2
5.
Call Of Duty World At War
6.
Rock Band 2
7.
Elmo Live
8.
Wii Music
9.
Fallout
10.
LittleBigPlanet
If we look there is a heap of information on the Internet to help us find out was is really popular. Most of the main search engine's publish such stuff. It all helps to increase a blog's money making potential.

Good luck,
Mike.

Dissatisfied Customers Will Make Us Money

Here's some food for thought I read on CacheClosed.com. It's only a small part of an article but it describes how we, as money making bloggers, want dissatisfied customers! This is probably something different from the standard way most of us think.

We normally think that we want satisfied customers but if they are satisfied can we really motivate them to buy something? Here is a snippit from the article.

"Two things motivate all potential customers: a feeling of dissatisfaction and a desire for change. All good advertising creates a focused storyline with a singular message that stirs the emotional dissatisfaction in the audience and offers a solution that will initiate change.

Thank goodness people are insatiable for what's new and improved. We are a species motivated to constantly strive for more: more money, more power, more success, more stuff; and when we have more stuff, we want better stuff. We are in a constant state of desire. The advertisers job is to access that desire and push that motivational button so that the audience takes action.

The job of advertisers is to create dissatisfaction in its audience. If people are happy with how they look, they are not going to buy cosmetics or diet books; if people are happy with their old twenty-inch tube television they are not going to buy a sixty-inch LCD flat screen TV. If people are happy with who they are, where they are in life, and what they got, they just aren't customer-potential, that is, unless you make them unhappy.

Most cosmetic advertisements feature beautiful woman, igniting the promise that you too can look like a drop-dead glorious model if only you use their product. This approach is based on showing an ideal that the audience will undoubtedly be unable to stack-up against. The audience after seeing what they could look like, is no longer happy with what they do look like, and are now motivated to buy into the promise of change."

CacheClosed.com has some interesting stuff on their site - if you are dissatisfied with your lot that is! Go and read the full article.

Good luck,
Mike.

Ad: Mirror CashBack - FREE £5! Earn CashBack on your everyday shopping. Over 2000 retailers. Join for free and get £5! Plus, if you wish, earn further £5's for every friend you refer. (UK only).