2008 September | Affiliate Blog Online

Archive for September, 2008

What is Squidoo and How Can I Make Money From It?

Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 7:02 am

Squidoo is a website that allows anyone to add a page of content on any topic they like. It’s free to join and free to create pages and for those who have had no experience with websites or blogs then Squidoo is the quick and easy alternative.

Squidoo is made up of thousands of pages with each page called a lens. A user can create as many lenses as they like – in fact, Squidoo encourages it. Each lens is unique to a particular subject although it is not like Wikipedia where only one page can be created on any one topic. With Squidoo the same topic can be written about on multiple lenses by different users.

Each page of content, or lens as we will now refer to it as, is solely edited by the one user who is known as the lensmaster. It essentially becomes their lens to do with as they wish as long as it is within the boundaries of Squidoo’s terms of use of course.

Each lens is made up of modules, although to anyone looking from the outside in, the lens looks just look any other webpage on the internet. To a lensmaster however, modules are the building blocks of their lenses.

To create a lens a lensmaster needs to add modules to their page. Each module serves a different purpose. For instance, there are text modules, eBay modules, Amazon modules, list modules, Guestbook and Link modules, Youtube modules, just to name a few. The lensmaster can choose any of these modules from a huge list and when selected the module is added to their lens from which they can then edit to suit their needs.

Once a certain number of modules and content have been added to a lens it can be published for all the world to see.

How Can I Make Money with Squidoo?

Squidoo has internal money making methods which can be set up simply by adding a module. Once you add these modules you edit it them to add products.

Some of these modules include:

Amazon module
eBay module
Cafepress module

You can also make money from royalties which are paid on a monthly basis by Squidoo. This won’t be much and I usually donate mine to the charities which are set up within Squidoo.

Another way to make money with Squidoo is by referring people to sign up. When they make $15 through their lens then you receive a $5 payment.

These methods will not make you a lot of money. The big dollars actually come from adding affiliate links to your lens. This is what makes Squidoo so special as they allow you to add these types of links. You can use Clickbank, Commission Junction, Linkshare or any other affiliate network to get product links for your lens.

We’ve put together a 7 Day eCourse that teaches you how to create a Squidoo lens from start to finish. It’s free so it’s not going to cost you anything and you can unsubscribe at any time. Sign up here…

Google Chrome: The New Internet Browser

Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 12:56 am

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Last night I noticed a new link below the Google search box inviting me to download Google Chrome – the new browser from Google. Of course, I had to try it so away I went and clicked on the link.

I’ve been using it now for a few hours and so far so good. I don’t mind it but there are a few things that could be improved on but then I guess this is still in Beta so we shouldn’t get too picky about it just yet.

The browser is set up in much the same way as say Internet Explorer and Firefox with the standard tabs across the top, a search bar and a toolbar with your favorite links.

What I like is that the top search field acts as both a search field and the address field where you type in your urls. This saves on a bit of window space.

The standard home page for Google Chrome is set up quite differently to Internet Explorer and Firefox. I must admit that so far I quite like it. It pretty much displays six of your most visited pages for easy access. It also lists your most recent bookmarks.

What I don’t like

I use Google.com as my main search engine but it keeps defaulting to Google Australia since that is where I live. For my internet business I need to use google.com so having it default to Google Australia just doesn’t work for me. I can’t edit the default search engine and alhough I can add Google.com to the list, it won’t allow me to change it to become the default search engine.

What this means is that I just won’t use it.

The other thing I noticed was that it doesn’t show the standard Home button on the toolbar. I had to go find this in the options and add it. In my opinion, this should be a default as it is standard for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

In all I think Google Chrome has potential and knowing Google they will do everything they can to make it the best it can be. I like it but because of the search engine defaulting issue previously mentioned I know I won’t use it.

How to Use Yahoo Answers to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 12:46 am

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Yahoo Answers is as the name suggests, a website created by Yahoo to enable people to ask a question and get a multitude of different answers from other people. The questions can range from ‘How do I convert 6 kilograms into pounds?’ to ’How can I make money online?’

Apart from the fact that Yahoo Answers is useful in that someone can get a question answered in super quick time (often within minutes) it is also useful for internet marketers to drive traffic to their blogs or websites. I actually use it to send traffic to one of my Squidoo lenses and also straight to a merchant using an affiliate link. Yes, that’s right, you heard correctly, you can in fact add affiliate links. Now you’re probably all going to rush on over there right now and starting answering questions but stay with me here as you will have more success if you go about it in the right way.

What Not To Do:

First of all, we are not here to spam Yahoo Answers. The site has been created to help people out by answering their questions so by just spamming them you are missing the whole point of the site. Only leave a response if it is valid and related to the question.

I see time and time again where someone has asked a question and the person answering either provides a totally unrelated response just to promote a product or they don’t provide a response at all and just include an affiliate link or a link to their website. This is not going to get them anywhere. You need to give a little in order to get.

You will also get a ‘thumbs down’ response from other users if you leave a response that is considered to be just spam. I learnt early in the piece after I had left a response that someone considered to be just a bit too close to being spammy and it got the thumbs down real quick, so keep this in mind.

Another common problem with Yahoo Answers is where spammers actually ask the questions themselves. They may do this for two reasons.

Firstly, they want to advertise their website in the question – now that’s okay if you have a legitimate question about your website but many just do it to get traffic to their site and nothing more.

Secondly, they may have two logins for Yahoo Answers so they ask the question under one login and then answer the question using their second login. This enables them to promote their product or website in the answer without having to wait for a relevant question to come up.

We want to avoid these techniques and focus on providing value. In the long run you will have much better success. So in order to use Yahoo Answers effectively and to drive traffic to your site you need to do the following:

Find relevant questions:

If you want to promote your website you need to find questions that relate to your website topic. There is no point answering a question about ‘how to train my dog’ if your website is about ‘making money online’. Use the category menu to find topics that relate. Of course if you have a valid answer and are also a dog lover then there is no reason why you can’t participate in answering a dog training question. I am just pointing out that if the purpose is to promote your money making website, then you want to reach the people that are interested in your topic.

Provide relevant answers:

Your answers don’t have to be long but they need to be relevant to the question asked. Don’t just provide an answer that focuses on your website or a product. Focus on the question being asked and answer it to the best of your ability.

Provide useful answers:

Ensure that the answer you provide is going to help the person asking the question. If it isn’t going to help them in any way then don’t bother answering. Go for quality rather than quantity. You will have much more success this way.

Add Your Link:

Yahoo allows you to add a link and you can even get away with adding an affiliate link but ensure it is relevant to the answer. The content that the person will see when they click on that link should be highly relevant to their question. In other words, it must help them in some way.

For instance, if someone asked a question about how to teach their dog to sit you could answer as follows:

I find that the best way to teach a dog to sit is by using food rewards. I taught my dog to sit in about 5 minutes using this technique. Basically you hold the dog treat in your right hand just above the dog’s nose and then move your hand back behind its head. Your dog will automatically sit when you do this right.I have created a video on my website that demonstrates how this works if it will help. The link is here:- http://www.a1-videodogtraining.com

(Note: this link is just one I made up to give you and idea on how to write a response).

Remember that your answer will not only be read by the person asking the question but potentially by hundreds of other readers as well. Yahoo Answers ranks well in Google so just one answer can bring you quite a bit of traffic over a period of time. So make it a relevant useful answer and you are more likely to get people clicking through to your website.

What is RSS?

Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am

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I have to admit that it has taken me a long time to get my head around RSS. I’m not sure why really because it is actually quite simple. When I first came across RSS I didn’t even make an attempt to try and figure it all out which is not like me at all. Normally I like researching things to find what they are all about. Well, eventually I had to do something since I had multiple blogs that all have the little RSS icon prominently placed at the top of the page, so it was about time I figured out why.

What is RSS?

RSS is a way of providing your updated web content to your visitors and for them to see the updates in an easy to view format.

The acronym RSS stands for a number of different things depending on who you ask:

- Really Simple Syndication
- RDF Site Summary
- Rich Site Summary

So, lets say for instance that you regularly visit six different blogs on the internet. Each day you go to each site via your bookmarks and you check to see if they have added anything new. This, as we know can be very time consuming as you have to wait for each page to load and then check if they have actually added anything new since your last visit. It can also be annoying if you check daily and nothing new has been updated.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could access all the latest posts for your favorite blogs in only the one window? Well with RSS you can do just. The RSS feed from each of these blogs can be organized in such a way that they can be fed to you to you in an easy to read format.

Get Yourself an RSS Feed Reader

To view all the latest updates from your favorite websites on the one screen you require an RSS Feed Reader (aka Feed Aggregator) which will allow you to view your favorite blogs or websites content in an easy to read format.

You can get a reader from a variety of sources. I use Google Reader as it is free and comes with my Google email account but there are plenty of others available. Click here for a list of readers. You will need to choose one and follow instructions to get it up and running but believe me it’s just so much easier to use Google Reader.

Here is what my Google Reader looks like:

Once you have the reader up and running all you need to do is add your favorite blogs or websites. To do this you require the RSS feed URL for each website you want to add. Usually you can find this by clicking on the RSS icon on a blog or website. It will look like this:

You can see this on my blog at the top right of the screen. Once you click on this you will be taken to a screen where you should see a link that lets you subscribe to the feed. It will differ depending on the feed being used.

You can also subscribe to a websites rss feed from within the RSS Reader itself.

Bear in mind that the Reader itself will not always show the full blog post or update. In general, you will receive the title of the post plus a description of the post. If it interests you then you click on the link to view the full post.

So that is what RSS is – a nice and simple way to provide updated content to your readers and a way for them to receive notification that you have made updates to your site.