Are You Spending Your Time on Crabbysbeach?

I wanted to invite all of you Squidooites who are not already spending some of your time dipping your toes into the water on Crabbysbeach to come and check it out. Crabbysbeach is run by none other than Alex Crabtree, who you might know as Drifter.


What I like about Crabbysbeach is the constant level of creativity and innovation going on. Alex is sharing his knowledge with all of us and we are soaking it up.


There is always a party going on at Crabbysbeach, so come and join the fun.

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Experimenting in Creating a Link Wheel or a More Organized Lens Cluster

I wanted to bring everyone's attention to the experiment that AJ is conducting with coaching from Alex. AJ is chronicling this experiment starting with her blog post, Blogging for Profit. AJ does a beautiful job describing what she is doing step by step and the results so far, but to help explain this process, you need to read the blog post by Alex, called Publishing Sites Content Indirectly Pay Off.


The chart pictured above is what Alex describes in his blog post. His frustration with making pennies by writing online is evident, as is his determination to make real money or "a living" as many of us call it. I have to say that I believe that it is only by experiencing and understanding how writing online works, that this experiment can work, but I agree with Alex, that many publishing sites are looking for "junkies" when it comes to participants, and we can take ahold of our income more directly.


The link wheel concept is really just a better organized version of the link cluster idea that has been mentioned by several successful lensmasters including Captain Squid. However, it is interesting in that it takes your articles that assuming you already have a niche, point in a one way direction and to your money making venue for that niche, again assuming that you have a central money making center.


This concept organizes an idea that I have been finding intuitively, and fine tunes it. I am going to examine how my articles in various niches are organized and most likely change some of the link structure.


AJ, I will be following your experiment avidly, while reading your excellent posts. You are so good at taking the concepts apart and describing them to us all, so you are a great person to be blogging about this.


Hopefully, this project will help us all make more money in our online effort.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Content Anchored Backlinks

We talk a lot about backlinks on Squidoo, and on the internet in general. And many times, in the interest of getting more traffic to our lenses, we go on a backlink rampage from social networking site to social bookmarking site to forums, without ever really considering the value of that particular backlink.

Well, I am here to tell you that most of those will not help raise your article's value, and at the same time, may anger forum, or network memberships. Many of them consider that kind of linking spamming and could get you knocked of the network or Squidoo or other sites banned altogether for that behavior.

What is a better use of your time is to create content anchored backlinks. Content anchored backlinks are content with a link to your lens included. However, the link is anchored by the blurb, article or few sentences that you write about it.

Some sites will not only allow you to write about your lens, but also will generate additional revenue for you. However, each site has rules, and most of them will not allow more than two links to one particular site in their article or signature.

Here are some sites that I recommend joining or at least looking into:

Hubpages
Xomba
Squidlog
InfoBarrel


You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Strategizing for the Year to Come

New Year's Party Invitation by gravityx9
Create notecards at zazzle.com

Happy holidays and a happy healthy New Year to everyone!

This week between Christmas and New Year is often one that people waste when it comes to business, but I recommend that you use this "down time" to assess the last year, and strategize for the year to come--2010.

This is the time to take a summary of your activities, figure out which ones have brought in the most money, and which ones were a waste of time. There will always be some business experiments that do not go as planned.

Look at the year coming up and plan your marketing plan at least two to three months in advance of any major event or holiday because it takes time for your articles to ripen and mature. People also shop ahead of time, especially online.

Decide what your strategy for the year is and what your goals are. Then work towards them.

This is what I will be doing this week, so you can think of me when you are doing your planning. :)

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Maximizing Your Adsense Earnings Through Backlinks

I am a strong believer in maximizing and compounding your online earnings as much as possible and getting as much earnings from the same articles as you can. It seems that lately several websites have popped up that will share Adsense earnings with you for bookmarking your pages with them, so I thought I would compile a list here to make sure that everyone knows of the websites, and is taking advantage of the income and backlinks available. Some of the listed websites give credit for referrals, some do not, but all of them give you income either through Adsense directly or through some alternate form of payment.

If you would like to join or check out any one of these websites, just follow the link I have provided below:

• Xomba
• Tagfoot
• Yousaytoo
• Shetoldme
• Addblogurl
• Hubpages
• Redgage

A note about Hubpages: Hubpages is not a social bookmarking site, but it is an excellent site to earn Adsense income from and write articles containing backlinks. They do have a two link limit per article, but since you only need one link for a backlink that is not a problem.

Do you use any other Adsense revenue sharing sites regularly that you can recommend? If so, add them to the comments here so that everyone can learn about them.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

New Amazon Associates Direct Links in Blogger

Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut


If you haven't already become an Amazon associate, now is a good time to do so, because Amazon has just added convenient usage for associates to Blogger. I do a lot of blogging to promote my articles and websites, and I thought I would try it out with this article so here it goes. If you see a link in this article, it was put in with the new Amazon tool.

As the year winds down, I am reviewing what I have learned from my online ventures, about making money online, and affiliate marketing, and I can say that I have learned a lot this year, and had some successes that I can definitely build on next year. I have set up a network of blogs, and articles that are already generating income, and that will increase in the year to come, and my main website is beginning to really show some results.

I have to say that I am thrilled with my growth online this year, and am excited to see how much my business will grow next year. So here is to finding more ways to grow our income online and offline and to a very successful 2010 for all of us.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Using Offline Marketing to Send Traffic to Your Zazzle Gallery (and Your Squidoo Lenses)

Too Cold for the Beach by lakeerieartists
Browse more Cleveland Mugs

Since many of Squidoo's lensmasters also have Zazzle galleries, I thought that I would talk a bit about marketing your Zazzle gallery offline.

Those of us who work online forget that there are excellent ways to market our online businesses offline. We spend so much time in front of the computer, we forget that we also meet lots of people off of the computer when we are not working.

I am here to remind you that every person you see face to face in your life is a potential customer for you. Almost everyone does some searching and shopping online these days, which is evidenced by how every commercial on TV or the radio gives a company's website.

Well, your Zazzle gallery (and your Squidoo lenses) are your business, and you can also market them offline by using standard marketing methods.

These methods can be:

• Getting business cards with your Zazzle gallery website on it and handing them to people you meet.
• Going to any social or business networking event and letting people know about your Zazzle gallery.
• Telling relatives and friends about your Zazzle gallery.
• Making flyers about your Zazzle gallery and posting them on bulletin boards where you go at libraries, grocery stores, or anywhere else they let you.

Handing out business cards is so easy to do when you meet people, and it costs so little. You can buy 100 cards for a few dollars, and you can make that back with one purchase. Just like being online, marketing offline is a numbers game and you have to talk to a lot of people before you get a sale but because you see them face to face you will have a bit more influence on the people you talk to.

Most of us get invited to parties and other social gatherings during the last few weeks of the year, and if you are already there and someone says, "What are you doing these days?" it is the perfect opportunity for you to say, "Thanks for asking, here is a link to my Zazzle store."


You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.