Revenue Sharing

If you’re publishing anywhere on the web that has some form of advertising on it, someone is earning money from your writing. Very few places make any attempt to share revenue they raise with you, which is why I’m such a fan of Squidoo and other social networks that allow you to publish content and earn money from doing so!

Recently I worked on a tutorial that showed squidoo users, and others, how to create an Ebay RSS Feed. Many responded saying thanks for the tips, though a few lensmasters who wished to share their revenue with squidoo and some who donate to charity via squidoo, who did not want to use this tool. I have just updated with a tutorial on how to include your squidoo campaign and custom id so that your lens gets the credit for earning commission.

Thinking more about why people wanted to share did make me realise that some were doing this just for fun, as an interesting hobby, and to raise money for charity. Others also seemed to feel that it is only fair to share with squidoo as they share with you through the monthly  royalty payouts. It may well be thin line between squidoo paying staff to continue doing a great job and the site deteriorating because they can’t afford to pay the staff, but until I see Gil turning up for work in a ferrari or Megan dripping in diamonds, I think squidoo is worthy of at least one or two modules on a lens that will earn them some money too!

Going Niche & The Top 100!

I’ve been slacking a little on squidoo lately, real life has kinda taken over and with Glastonbury in a couple of weeks and lots to do before then I don’t think this month will be very productive. Hopefully I’ll finish off a few half completed lenses and maybe make one or 2 newer smallish ones.

Well, since I last posted I made it into the top 100! Yes, the top 100 lenses overall, and has peaked at #5 in it’s category! I got quite a buzz out of that, being as it is the first time I’ve made it into the top 100 since starting on squidoo nearly a year ago. I had a few come close, but none really stuck, and those that did get high took a lot of work re-editing and adding content regularly. In fact it wasn’t even regular at one point it was almost obsession!

Then the light dawned on me! Why was I chasing after some arbitrary peer reviewed ranking? Because I wanted to be successful! Yes, but what is success? I thought quite hard about this for a moment and it came down to a choice of two things - Praise and respect of ones peers, and earning some money. Now I didn’t totally discount the first, getting some respect and praise from your peers is pretty important, but the primary objective had to be making money for me. So why was I bothered about spending ages tweeking my lenses to get a few points higher in lensrank? Well, I decided then that for me lensrank would just be something that held some mild interest and could be fun. Though not forgetting that lensrank does sorta turn into money when the revenue is handed out once a month, but this to me is just a small bonus compared with the potential of affiliate earnings.

So, what got into the top 100? I can hear you all muttering! The lens that did was not a commercial lens as far as I was concerned, it was a How-To Guide, which explained how to use Ebay RSS Feeds for Earning Commission. This lens is a couple of months old and only occassionally tweeked, yet almost since publishing it has been in the top 1000 overall, getting to the 150’s now and then. Why did it suddenly shoot up? Who knows! The traffic stats show me there is a few more visitors at the moment, but not an amazing leap. There’s no real big traffic from referrers, so it hasn’t been picked up by a forum, blog or website that’s sending large traffic volumes. It’s got no squidoo affiliate links, which is often cited as a surefire way of a jump in lensrank if any sales are made. The only thing I am seeing on the stats is a lot of people have starred it and favorited it, but not a significant leap, the only oddity is that a lot of traffic does not seem tohave a referrer and musthave then been bookmarked onto the viewers browser.

Maybe too much of an over analysis of the stats, but I do tend to get lost in them!

What’s this got to do with Niche?

Well everything above was more to do with getting a top 100 lens eventually! This bit is about Niche Marketing -

Having made the decision not to chase lensrank and to go for more esoteric articles that may not bring much traffic, but will hopefully convert a higher number of visitors to customers! So far this is working well, I’m earning probably 10-15 times more than what squidoo give me through their revenue sharing scheme. Though it did take me quite a few months to get to this position.

Where I’m really starting to have some success is by choosing a niche that hasn’t been covered on squidoo before. Banging together some info, pics, links and then adding some affiliate links to it. Theinspiration for these niches is quite random, sometimes a thought will occur to me whilst out shopping, more often though it is either something I’m interested in, or I find a new advertiser on one of the affiliate networs and decide ‘Hey, I can do a lens on this!’

Just the other day was a perfect example of the latter. Whilst looking at cj.com, I saw a new advertiser with an unusual name. So when clicking on it and discovering it was about selling surf fashion I applied and was accepted quickly. The end result was a lens about surf fashion and as well as the CJ advertiser, I could implant plenty of ebay modules too. The result was a lens about Boardshorts

I do intend to create more of these micro niche lenses in the near future, possibly choosing ones that will link in with previously created lenses. Whilst it may be only one or 2 sales a month from a lens, the more created, the sooner it is when everyday you earn a commission!

The most recent addition to my stable of Micro-Niche lenses was The Boardshorts Superstore, a lens about an online emporium selling a huge range of surf gear and fashion items.

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My First £10 A Week Squidoo Lens!

Firstly I must admit I haven’t been very active blogging about squidoo in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been a little busy. A holiday in Dorset and then working hard to pay for it!

One day I’ll get that the right way around!!!

Well, I started on squidoo to see if it could make some money/drive traffic to my website and have a bit of a creative outlet online. This was back in June 2007 Just after returning from Glastonbury. I created a couple of websites and blogs, in addition to my website selling books - The Book Garden. Realising that there was money to be made from affiliate marketing, I decided to spend some time learning the ropes.

Well, the websites gave me some basics in webdesign but I sort of lost interest as they weren’t returning enough on the time invested, and are now just a bit of a playground and showcase for the day-to-day business. The blogs weren’t getting a lot of traffic and I lost interest in them, only occassionaly going and making a post these days.

Meanwhile the Squidoo stuff I’d created was getting traffic, and there was a really helpful community and forum. I didn’t really do much with squidoo in the first couple of months, apart from created the longest lens I’ll ever create - Perry Mason. Then in September I was quite shocked to receive my first Paypal payment from squidoo! A little over $10 may not be much, but I was quite pleased with it as I was mainly interested in earning some money from my own amazon affiliate links in the lens and the bulk of the money was royalties from cafepress and ebay.

This inspired me to spend a lot more time on Squidoo! The last few months I have seen a steady increase in earnings from affiliate marketing, primarily through squidoo. I may still be some way from making a ‘full-time’ living from this, but I’m earning a nice regular, and steadily increasing, amount from squidoo, and I’m only doing it when time allows. If I could devote 40 hours a week to squidoo and other affiliate publishing projects I’m sure I would be earning a full-time or better income, at the moment though I can’t afford to give up ‘the day job’ until I’m earning enough to replace the income I’d lose by doing so. Affiliate income is usually 30-60days behind it being recorded so there would be too long a lag between earning the money and being paid it.

Wasn’t this post supposed to be about a squidoo lens earning £10 a week?

Or even $20 if you need the US conversion! Well, yes it was I just didn’t want you to think that it’s easy to create a lens that will bring you an instant return! In most cases you’ll only see a few cents from a lens, though if you do write a really good one with links to relevant items you can make a better return, the trick is to write about either something unique or/and something you’re interested in. There are probably hundreds of lenses about ‘how to earn money from affiliate marketing’ but very few good ones, and hundreds of other sites and blogs covering this outside of squidoo, so you wouldn’t get a great deal of traffic even if you did write an excellent article. Go for niches, go for something that interests you, go make it yours and write it well, don;t just copy stuff.

Anyway, I should explain a bit more about why I’m doing a Gratitude Dance. £10 isn’t a lot to earn from a lens, but it’s a great milestone for me to be able to say that 1 of my lenses has earned me at least this in affiliate commission every week for the last month! Now some lenses and links have earned more commission in one or 2 purchases, but these are often occasional rather than regular. This lens is earning on the basis of an average of 70p per action/purchase, not a lot, but the fact I’m getting 15 or more successful transactions a week from this does add up, it’s also interesting that it is getting more traffic and more commission as the weeks pass too! Originally this lens peaked at about 4,000 lensrank and then dropped quickly. Then as search engines started picking up on the keywords it started getting more and more visitors, currently pulling over 100 a week, mainly from search engines, and more often than not the search term was not any of the keywords, though usually close. Now, most of my lenses don’t earn a heck of a lot of money, some tick over quite nicely, the odd one or 2 get good sales, but if I could create a couple of dozen lenses that perform as well as this one each week, I could go be going full-time online much sooner!

If you were here to look for tips and advice on earning money from squidoo, I hope I have provided some and I offer you my encouragement in earning money from squidoo. If you thought that this was going to give you the ’secret to easy riches’ well ….. Stop Being A Sucker! You get out of this what you put into it, there is no ‘get rich quick’ and those offering to sell you a ‘get rich’ program are the only people who are likely to get rich from it!

Squidoo Payday! May 2008

The great squid has been handing out the cash again!

This month is the payout for revenue earned during March 08, squidoo are predicting due to new ad types released recently that revenue should jump quite a bit in the very near future!

The payout tiers for this month appear to be -

bottom tier 7cents (quite a lot of these!)

mid-tier $1.42 (a pleasing number of these!)

Top tier $8.32 (didn’t have any of these, but am hoping the next couple of months I’ll have one or 2!)

Add up the affiliate income I made for this month and the income from squidoo was about a 5th of this, which seeing as most (90% at least) of my affiliate marketing is via squidoo ain’t too shoddy!

I’ll try keep peoples posted on squidoo earnings here in future, but as I’m kinda private I won’t actually be stating exactly what I earned!

It’s Star Wars Day!

May The Fourth Be With You!

Kinda corny I know, but just couldn’t resist! Also I wanted to showcase a lensmaster on squidoo who seems obsessed with Star Wars - Meet Rebel Pilot - dozens of lenses all about Star Wars, BSG and other similair genre Sci-Fi space stuff!

I dedicate this youtube video to him And I’m also building a lens on it - Store Wars though it’s pretty bare at the moment!

Single Malt Highland Whisky

Single Malt Whisky was introduced to me many years ago and quite surprised me. Previously I’d only expereinced ‘cheap & generic’ Whisky’s and hadn’t enjoyed the harshness that was a cheap scotch or the sweet sicklieness of an american bourbon.

I learned a lot about Single Malt Whisky since and have shared this on squidoo - Singles Malt Whisky Buyers Guide.

It’s The Environment Stupid!

I’m quite passionate and committed to environmental causes and living a greener lifestyle. Eco subjects, green topics and the environment are a common theme for me when writing on Squidoo. As this is only my second post here I’ll cover breifly the Eco lenses that I have already Published on Squidoo.

My earliest ‘Green‘ lens was about Hemp Clothing, which to me is one of the most eco-friendly materials in existance as it costs little to produce, requires no nasty chemicals such as pesticides and fertilisers and it is a very durable material.

I followed that lens with one about Wind-Up Gadgets, such as Clockwork Torches, Bike Lights and Radios. Until writing this piece I had not realised there were so many people out there making all sorts of energy saving clockwork devices. It makes so much sense to use a wind-up device for portable equipment, meanijng that you never have to worry about the batteries running out or not being able to recharge it. I was so taken by this subject and one item in particular that I dedicated a whole lens to just one item - The Wind-Up Media Player.

Green Laundry also caught my attention as a result of being recommended Eco-Laundry-Balls, a chemical free way of washing clothes that is remarkably good for the environment. Not only are they chemical and detergent free, the fact that one small packet can last several hundred washes can save an enormous amount of packaging, transportation costs and pollution. And that’s without even taking into account the cost saving!

I recently discovered Green Computing and as I could probably save a fortune by cutting my PC’s energy usage and thereby reducing the carbon footprint of my PC. The other beauty of this is that as energy prices increase, green computing will make more sense and save more money!

Following straight on from that article, I was inspired to look into ‘greener office chairs‘. My current one is very much on it’s last legs, and due to me spending over 40 hours a week sitting in it I kinda grew used to the idea that they’d only last a year unless I bought a Very Good one. Well, I went looking to see what was out there and discovered a bunch of ‘Eco-Friendly Office Chairs‘ from a small number of makers. It was quite fun to research this and decide which chair I’d prefer!

I’m sure I will return again and again to this subject!

Now I’m a Giant Squid!

I’ve just been made a Giant Squid on Squidoo!

Since July 2007 I’ve created over 100 lenses (squid talk for webpages) on a huge variety of subjects, some good, some still work in progress and possibly a few abandoned ones that I’m unlikely to go back to having lost interest in the subject!

I hadn’t quite expected to be made a Giant Squid yet as this moniker is reserved for people who have created at least 50 high quality lenses and I wasn’t sure I was upto that level yet. So I was quite surprised to find I had an email notifying me that I had been made a Giant Squid. The thing I’m going to enjoy most about this is the ability to set up a lens template so that I can quickly create lenses from scratch without the constant adding of modules! I don’t know why they don;t make this facility available to all, but I’m glad I’ve got it now!

The first thing I need to do though is create a Lensography so that all my lenses are collated in one place. As I’ve left this for so long now it’s going to be one helluva a job! Also, I’m going to start blogging about my lenses as advised by MrLewisSmile on his Squidcool Blog.

If you want to check out my Lensmaster Page, feel free to do so, and I’ll update here when the lensography is complete, probably with a link in the side panel.