Monday 15 October 2007

Squidoo payout! #2

Well, this is my second month of receiving a squidoo payout and I thought it would be good to do a little update. The earnings were not as strong as in my first month when I had a lens in the top pay out tier for the adsense share-out. Also, as I hadn't fully realised what a goldmine squidoo has the potential of being I didn't really do much work on it in August which is what this weeks payout was for. I did get quite a few click-thru's to my amazon account and a few purchases there though. All in all the payout's I did receive were mainly for mid-ranking lenses (pages) , and a very small amount of commission from ebay/amazon/cafepress modules on those lenses.

I have put a lot more work into squidoo lately, creating at least 2-3 lenses a week since the payout at the start of September. Also, I have utilised more of my own affiliate links within lenses rather than use the ones they provide, except where it is easier to do so. If these lenses start to see good traffic, I will then often include my own affiliate links, this has been quite a winner in a big jump in my affiliate earnings through affiliate sales. My strategy is now to create a lens on a subject I am interested in,or think others will be, filling out a few basic modules, including some unique content then see how it is doing a week or 2 later. If it seems to be popular I will develop it further and include relevant affiliate links, if it's being a bit of a lame duck I will pop back and try make it more likely to succeed by doing some editing, though this does not always seem to work.

I'll list here a small selection of my successful and not so successful lenses to give some examples of what works -

Perry Mason - A very extensive list of the Perry Mason novels, this gets a good amount of regular traffic and click-thru's to amazon. Though the majority of visitors are looking for free downloads or ebooks.

Discworld Store - a moderately successful page with a large variety of unofficial discworld merchandise and links to official merchandise on ebay.

Shimshi - A lens reviewing this magicians tutorial DVD. Mainly to promote the surplus of these I have for sale. Get's lots of visits and click-thru's to youtube magic tutorials, as well as sales of magic tutorial dvd's on amazon.

UK Cash Back Sites - A lens highlighting the sites in the UK that you can join to receive cashback from purchasing online. Provides a voting system and invites visitors to review and share their experience. All links on this page are affiliate links and all though traffic could be better, I'm pleased with the click-thru rate and the percentage that convert to commission earned.

Jon Richardson - A fan page created using squidwho, which autofilled a lot of the lens for me, and I just added some bits and pieces. Jon is comedian who co-hosts a show on 6music. Quite popular with people to find his youtube videos, also as he does not have his own website it gets a reasonable amount of traffic for a relatively unknown celeb.

The Spacemen 3 - A lens about 80's Drone Rock band, supposedly with quite a cult following but traffic has been quite scarce despite having a lot of info on the band and it's spin-offs.

Psychometric Testing - A lens explaining what psychometric testing is and detailing books on how to prepare and to improve your score. Did well in it's first month or so, but now barely getting any traffic - possibly in need of a revamp!

So, hopefully having checked some of these out you'll be inspired to start writing articles about stuff on squidoo to earn some money! If so you may wish to use my referral link here as you will get a $5 bonus when you have earned your first $15, and I'll also get $5 then for introducing you. You will have to create a lens when you sign up for your registration to be successful, so pick a topic, or save the first one you create in draft. Also, fill out your profile and provide either a link to your blog or webpage, and consider making yourself available to be contacted through squidoo, as I may offer you assistance and advice if you sign up via my link!

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