Having created over 50 Lens on Squidoo I ‘m starting to get a feel of how to succeed and make a little money. Once again it’s the opposite of what you think, you have to create lens that genuinely interest you, provide information that you wish to share, you cannot fool Squidoo or Google for long. There is no hobby too obscure, so go ahead be creative and publish things close to your heart. Of course there are Squidoo and SEO tips that you can employ but in the end as usual “Content is King”. In any case Squidoo is gradually suppressing overtly commercial Lens. See my Lens here squidoo.com/thesuccess or go one better and join Squidoo for free here
Mild-mannered Martin Avis has a huge following in the UK with his Kick Start newsletter and now organizes regular London Lunches for Internet Marketers. These are usually held in the Strand Palace Hotel for a maximum of 30 people. People travel from Holland and Cyprus just to come. Many of the UK big names join these lunches. I attended today’s September meet and renewed acquaintance with Kevin Polley, and Pearson Brown and met Sarah Staar (note that I avoided Rising Star pun). In fact you don’t get time to meet everyone, but you always learn something new with these face to face meetings. I was telling everyone about a new tool I’m using to massively increase my productivity called Action Enforcer learn more by clicking here
The secret is to constantly blog, to comment on other people’s blogs to join Web 2.0 websites such as Squidoo, Twitter, Facebook. To do this without looking back, without worrying if anyone is likely to read it never mind buy a product, you are like an author writing a 500 page book not knowing if they will ever sell a copy; boy do they get depressed and so will you.
You must be authentic and interesting writing about things you are enthusiastic or knowledgeable about. You must continuously experiment and join new collaborative sites. You must get back links from other sites. You must be keyword conscious, you should know about SEO without being obsessed by it. You must learn how to write compelling copy. You should learn to think commercially to always have a link to a product that readers can buy ie a payload, doesn’t matter how unlikely it might that any one should buy. While learning from others you must also at some stage go your own way and have faith in your self, take the less traveled path!
If you do all these things consistently eventually the Great God Google will start sending you traffic, and eventually you will notice that certain things earn a little money, you should pursue these and see if you cannot enhance sales. We are all seeking perfect Passive Income Streams but in my experience you have to keep your blogs and websites up to date, keep applying TLC (Tender Loving Care) .
So what’s the Secret of Making Money Online, well it’s good old-fashioned elbow grease!!
Two things that are currently working for me are Neobux and Squidoo
19% of My Traffic comes from Entrecard, plus it’s an easy way to learn what other related blogs are up to
A colleague I respect recommended RedGage.com and so I joined. RedGage is an Aggregator website which allows you to link or collect all your diverse web activities. I linked in my YouTube videos, my FlickR photos, my best Squidoo Lens and my Blogs, and then I forgot about it. But then I started getting traffic , and comments and all from Redgage, so I logged back in and found I was actually earning a trickle of revenue. Now I got really keen when I won their daily raffle of $25 without knowing I’d even entered , if you fact you do this by simply visiting their site that day.
Anyway once again it shows the importance of “You Have To Be In It to Win It” , I took the trouble to join (and I join so many things that turn out to be a waste of time) but this time I hit lucky! Another useful Passive Income Stream .
Join Redgage which is totally by clicking Here and get more traffic for your blog!
Namecheap.com seem to be the de-facto best domain name website company. They are cheap and provide a control panel which allows you redirect your domain names whenever you want. So I use Namecheap for domains and HostGator for my webspace.
You might ask why keep them separate, well it just gives you more control.
In 2005 I attended a Frank Garon seminar on Internet Marketing and was bowled over by the possibility of selling information products on the Internet that required no warehouse space, no inventory, no delivery costs, boy did I want some of that.
Well 4 years later I am finally getting somewhere I nearly make an affiliate sale or earn some other online income everyday; but what a struggle to get there. I was an eBay Powerseller, I sold second hand books on Amazon. I started blogs, mailing lists. Now I make money from Adsense, from Squidoo (hooray for Squidoo), I get affiliate sales from Amazon and eBay, occasionally an affiliate fee from a product I’ve blogged about. So in addition to Adsense where I earn a couple of dollars a day, I am making an average of one affiliate sale a day. See the crazy number of things I’ve tried here at idiots guide to making money online
I’m certain I could have got this far much quicker, but I can’t be told by others how to do things I have to do things my way, I guess that’s the best way in the end , stop listening to all the contradictory advice from the Gurus, but as I say it’s been tough and still doesn’t impress my nearest and dearest!
My next success stage will be to be to have something really sell like hotcakes, I am sure this will happen soon as this business rewards momentum, ie the more successful you are the more successful you’ll be.
What I find psychologically difficult is doing all that work without seeing immediate reward/encouragement even though I know that’s how it is. Just keep going don’t look back! What is your story?
It’s coming up to the time of the month when Squidoo pays out, so I’m nervously awaiting the moment when the Blue Screen appears with my earnings details. Most of this come from my top 4 or so lens, that earn $2 or more monthly but there are quite a bunch that earn me 8 cents monthly. You may not be terribly impressed but I’m hoping that this will be a series of perpetual passive income streams, and heck I mostly do them for fun. My lens do go up and down though in popularity so it’s not always the same ones that pay out.
Here are a few that are currently successful :-
squidoo.com/Routemaster-Bus
squidoo.com/creatingideas
squidoo.com/Salt-Pipes
Squidoo is a marvelous way of earning a little cash from your hobby, sport, favorite film or book, your religious belief, your town or club, or anything that interests you, I just wish I’d got started even earlier and a bit more good news I’ve got my first active affiliate!
Join Squidoo for utterly free here
Well not a real bus, a model bus it’s a Double-Decker Bus Collectible Collector Car from the Mattel Hot Wheels Collection which I promote on my Squidoo Lens about the Legendary Routemaster Bus I earned a 60 cents affiliate fee for this, but this is money for nothing as I wrote the lens for fun. Any way I always get a thrill from any affiliate sale. Squidoo is really starting to serious little earner for me! If you by any chance you haven’t tried Squidoo then join here for free
Your home office needs to isolated physically and psychologically from the rest of house, ie a garden shed a cellar or attic otherwise you will find yourself being drawn into family squabbles, hunts for missing items etc
Ideally your partner should not be full-time employed so that they can do the basic chores, shopping etc (This may appear selfish but you need to be working)
You must work fixed hours, not always end up working at midnight.
Pitfalls:-
You have no colleagues to cheer you up, no peer pressure to make you stay at your desk.
I am after 7 years giving up home working it seemed to get more difficult as time went on.
Before I started I was told of one home worker who put a suit on every morning, kissed his wife at the door, walked round the block and entered his office by a side door, the instructions to his wife ‘I may be in the house but as far as you are concerned I’m not there, so you have to deal with any domestic emergency/incident’
Another who would not even open the door if his kids forgot their key.
Sounds tough and cruel but it’s the only way it can work!
