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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