The first time I heard of Squidoo,
I only looked at it as a source of fascinating information. I didn’t
realise that there are different ways to make money from it. How? Well,
here are the few ways —

  

1.Be a content provider. Or rather, a ‘lensmaster’ as
they are referred to in the world of Squidoo, as each page made by
an individual is called a ‘lens’. This is the primary function of
Squidoo: allowing everyone to be experts in their specialty areas. And,
the fantastic thing about it is that there’s no one way to make a page or
lens. As a lensmaster, you are entitled to earn royalties from your
lenses. Basically, when you make a page and Squidoo runs ads on them,
you get a cut of the revenues whenever a reader/visitor clicks on an ad
on your lens. 

 

2.Sell and promote your own products. If you have an
eBay store or Cafepress shop, then making a Squidoo lens is one way
for you to get new buyers. You just make a lens that is related to the
theme of your online store, use the built-in functions of adding eBay
and/or CafePress items, choose items that you wish to promote – then
publish and share your lens. 

 

 

3.Sell affiliate products. There are two ways you can
make use of affiliate selling on Squidoo. One is with the use of their
built-in affiliate tools (just choose the products to add to your lens
and you get a cut off the commission that Squidoo will receive). The
other is by linking to your own affiliate products on your lenses. In
the built-in affiliate tools, you can choose from various well-known
brands like Amazon, eBay, Netflix, CafePress, and iTunes. 

 

4.Drive traffic to your blog or website. When you
make a lens about your blog or website, or a topic that can be used as
a spin-off from your blog or site, then you just might find yourself
with a flurry of new visitors, that may just turn in to readers,
subscribers, and/or buyers of whatever it is you’re selling. Although I
haven’t seen this myself just yet, apparently, search engine giant
Google likes Squidoo. So, it might just help with your PR rankings too!

 

5.Promote Squidoo through their affiliate programme.  All
you need to do is make your own account and get your referral link.
If someone signs up through your affiliate link and then his or her lens
earns its first $15, both you and your friend will each get $5 in to
your account. This is fantastic because it really encourages promotion and
community. 

6.Email Marketing

Email Marketing is useful, but not used by many. You can just place a
signature link with all your outgoing emails about your “Squidoo Lens”.
You may be sending emails very often and all your recipients have a
chance to click and check your latest Squidoo Lens.

7.Forum Signature

Taking part in forums helps you lot with learning different things.
You must be a registered member with many forums so make use of the
signature link that is offered. Just add your Squidoo lens link at the
signature space, through this you are revealing your lens page among
many forum users. Also make sure you check their terms and services
before you drop your signature.

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In order to succeed in blogging the quality of content is very
vital. But, only content cannot help in making a blog well loved.
You need to know about various successful tools for blog promotion.
Internet is full of a large number of blog promotion tools and websites.
Here are a few ways which you can use for promoting your blog.

 1.DIGG:
 Digg is a
social news site that can help users find blog posts and web pages of
interest as well as promote pages and blog posts they like.Digg
users can add "friends" to their networks. This is where Digg gets
social. Users can comment on submissions and share submissions with
each other.You can add your blog at Digg. You can add your posts and if
people like it, they will digg it. More diggs indicate increased
popularity of your blog. It is very simple to use Digg. Numerous people
use Digg for promoting their blog. Google picks up blog posts from
Digg in a quick manner.

2.FACEBOOK:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.Facebook
is the most well loved social networking site with over 350 million
members. Not only is it a fantastic tool to connect with friends, family,
colleagues and more across the world, but it's also a fantastic tool to
increase traffic to your blog.Adding your blog to your Facebook profile
is a fantastic way to promote your blog and drive traffic to it. When you
add your blog to your Facebook profile, each time you publish a new
post, a snippet of that post appears on your profile's home page as a
status update. Every friend that you're connected with on Facebook
will automatically see that snippet on their Facebook status updates
page where they can click on it and visit your blog to read the rest of
the post (and if your Facebook profile is public, everyone with
Internet access can see it).

3.TECHNORATI:  
Technorati Media is an integrated online media company with an ad network, three owned web properties, and an ad technology platform. Technorati.com, the flagship site, is the world’s first and largest blog search engine and a robust community blogging platform.Numerous
bloggers have already added their blogs at this website. If you add
your blog at Technorati then it will help a lot in its promotion. You
can meet likeminded people here. Do not doubt the reliability of this
website by focusing on its name. It is a wonderful tool for blog
promotion.

 4.MYBLOGLOG:
MyBlogLog
is a blogging directory and community that also provides statistics
tracking to registered users of the site. Registration is free. The
statistics provided by MyBlogLog are not as robust as those provided by
most of the other stat trackers available.This service is offered by
Yahoo for blog promotion. Here, you would be able to meet a large
number of bloggers and you can question them to visit and join your blog.
You may leave your comments on other people blogs and they will return
the favour. It is a trusted method for blog promotion.

5.Del.icio.us:

 Del.icio.us
is a social bookmarking website owned by Yahoo! that can help users
save, share and find online content such as blog posts.Del.icio.us is
also a fantastic way to find content of interest, because you can easily
search using relevant tags. Having the ability to subscribe to feeds
for your favorite tags makes it even simpler to find content of
interest.Del.icio.us should certainly be a part of your social
bookmarking plot to promote your blog, but don't rely on it to bring in
torrents of traffic.

 6.REDDIT:
 Launched
in 2005, Reddit is a social news website that displays news based on
your personal preferences and what the community likes. Your preferences
are determined based on your history of voting tales up or down.So
reddit evenly counts for your blog traffic.

7.  Getting blog traffic by link building:

1. Exchange links with other bloggers
2. Use BlogRush
3. Submit to RSS directories
4. Submit to blog directories
5. Submit to general directories
6. Start a 2nd blog and link to yourself
7. Make and give away blog themes (with a link to your blog in the footer)
8. Make free plugins
9. Make link bait
10. Participate in blog carnivals
11. Comment on DoFollow blogs 

8.Joining communities:

1. Join communities at MyBlogLog
2. Join communities at Bumpzee
3. Join communities at Blog Catalog
4. Start a community at any of these sites
5. Comment on other blogs in your niche
6. Email your friends and contacts about a new blog post that may interest them
7. Email your readers to say “thank you”
8. Email other bloggers to introduce yourself
9. Link out to other blogs

9.Internal Links:

A fantastic deal of blog promotion tips focus upon how to promote your blog
on other people’s blogs and sites – but a fantastic way to promote your
blog post is to do it on your own blog.
One thing that I try to do with my best posts after I publish them is to reckon about where I could promote it on my own blog.
While it is at the top of my blog’s front page (the primary place to
promote it) if you reckon hard you’re bound to find a few other posts in
your archives that you could link to this new post. Find places where
you’ve covered similar topics before and add your link as a ‘related
reading’ link or even add a link to your new post within the content of
an ancient post.
You might also want to add your new post to previously written ‘sneeze
pages‘ or your sidebar if it’s a key post. Every link you add on your
own blog to your new post potentially sends your current readers to
your new post but also helps your blog with Search Engine Optimization
(internal links count too).

10.Other social networking sites:

1. Netscape
2. Magnolia
3. MySpace
4. YouTube FORUMS:
5. AuthorityBlogger
6. Stumbleupon 

The above discussed ways to drive traffic to your blog covers the
entire basic scenario to drive a quality traffic to your blog and hence
enhance your blog rankings.A deep research on how to drive traffic to a
blog mainly  ponits out to the above ways. Though, suggestions to the
improvement of the post will be greatly acknowledged. Leave comments if
any……………
————————————————————————————————————

One of the fantastic things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running within minutes of deciding to start a blog.

Free tools range from hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger through to a myriad of plugins and themes around the web that can make blogging a breeze.

Of course while there are many many free options out there, sometimes to take your blog to the next level there can come a time when you need to spend a few dollars. I bit the bullet early in my blogging and did this first by paying for my own hosting and moving from Blogger to Movable Type (and later to WordPress.org). I also paid honestly early on for a custom design.

These days I continue to have a variety of expenses including hosting, design, paying a small team of writers (on dPS), paying for some admin support and some development costs.

There are also a number of paid tools that have become indispensable for me which I’d like to feature today. While there are free alternatives to some of them, I’ve found them to be of a standard that I’m more than pleased to pay for.

1. Aweber

Perhaps the single most vital choice that I’ve made in the last few years of blogging was to add newsletters to my blogs (particularly my photography blog).

I’ve outlined how I use newsletters to drive significant traffic and make money and have written previously Why I use Aweber so won’t rehash it all again – but this is a tool I’m more than pleased to have invested in as it easily pays for itself and has been a key part of growing my blogs over the last 4 years many times over.

2. Ustream Producer Pro

This is the latest tool that I’ve invested in. It wasn’t particularly cheap at $199 but enables me to take my video streaming sessions up a notch and do things like have more than one camera angle, do live screen capturing, add a logo to my ustream sessions, import movies and audio into them, have extra transitions, do picture in picture etc.

Some of this is in the free version and you might find you don’t need to upgrade unless you want a few more bells and whistles.

3. MindNode Pro

I’m a huge fan of mind mapping. I used to do it without having a name for it on whiteboards and note pads but when I saw online tools that could help me with it I was in heaven. I’ve tried a lot of the Mac based tools (both free and paid) and the one that suits my workflow best is MindNode.

Their free version is brilliant and you might not even need to upgrade but I’m willing to pay for the Pro version simply because it adds the ability to fold down sections of your mind map and do things like add images to it.

4. Market Samurai

I’ve not ever really paid money for SEO before until I came across the Market Samurai tool but it’s brilliant. I may not use it quite to its fullest potential (yet) but have touched on how I find it useful for choosing a niche to blog about as well as optimizing a single post on your blog for search engines.

The cool thing is that they have a free trial of the tool which will give you access to its fantastic features to try before you buy – you might find that that’s all you need to do some research and get your blog optimised pretty well.

5. Screenflow

This is a mac only tool which allows users to do fantastic screencasting. I’ve used it more for private resources that I’ve developed for a couple of companies in consulting but it is a very cool way to show what’s on your screen in video as well as insert a view from a camera. A few videos I’ve made with it include -  

• How Leaving Comments on Blogs Can Drive Traffic to Yours
• How I Use Social Media to Promote my blogs
• How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to find topics to Write about

Note: I am an affiliate for Market Samurai and Aweber but am both a user and a fan of both.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

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With the continued growth of Facebook, businesses have started to sit
up and take notice. Some marketers are reported to be making up to
$1000 a day on the dominant social

network. They are testament to the realistic potential Facebook has
to make money online for businesses. As the Facebook hype continues we
can only expect more and more companies to look for new ways to drive
traffic back to their websites through this viral medium. Getting more
traffic means getting more money, which everyone is after. So how can
we, as online business owners, successfully drive traffic back to our
business pages?

There is an effective strategy that was named the “SEO Feeder
Strategy” a couple of years ago. This strategy involved the creation of
multiple websites to drive traffic and Page Rank back to the website
that the marketer wanted to boost. This strategy is still successful
today, and it was what encouraged me to reckon about utilizing Facebook
in a similar way.

Facebook is viral in nature and nothing online that I know has the
power to get a business exposure in a small period of time. According to
my research of Facebook, a fan page really starts to gathering momentum
after it exceeds 20,000 fans. Beyond this point, the rate of growth is
unstoppable. By drawing on Facebook fan pages, we can tap into the viral
traffic available to it. All it takes is a few compelling thoughts. The
key is to make relevant fan pages that fit the same demographic as
your online business. You can find demographic information by searching
for Facebook in Quantcast.com

The real key to acheiving success using the Facebook feeder strategy
is first of all being able to make a viral system where you can take a
facebook fan page viral again and again. First of all though you need
to learn how to take your first fan page viral. Once one fan page gets
over the 20,000 mark it can be used on other fan pages of the same owner
to aid that page in reaching the 20,000 person target.

When you have three – five viral fan pages with increasing numbers of
fans and gathering momentum, it is time to “Feed” them into the main
Facebook business page you have setup. This business page needs to fit
the demographic, justify the benefits of joining and engage with fans so
they feel like they can join in discussions, add comments etc.

This method works with all businesses but, it lends itself best
to the female demographic. In my experience, women tend to like sharing
and talking about viral topics more than men.

Once you business page starts flourishing, you are in a fantastic
position to start calling your fans to act, thus converting their
presence into sales.

Remember that like SEO Feeder sites, Facebook feeders rely on
relevancy to be effective. Talk to your audience in their own language
and terms they know and your online business will be rewarded
greatly as a result.

—————————————————————————–

FANTASTIC 2 SITES 2 JOIN-

1.

2.

Yesterday I shared 5 ways that I’m using Facebook to drive traffic, Build Brand an increase Reader Engagement on my blogs.

After publishing the post I was questioned a few questions about things that I brushed over that I thought might be worth following up upon. Here were the three main questions:

• How did you make the landing page graphic?
• How do you use the FBML application to serve up the landing page?
• How do you make your landing page show up to new visitors?

Lets tackle them each in turn.

Making the Landing Page Graphic

Let me start by saying that I’m very surprised anyone wants to emulate this because I did it myself and I’m certainly no designer.

Also worth noting is that the graphics on the current landing pages are temporary. I’m hoping to go them to a live html landing page in the coming weeks. The FBML facebook application lets you place any kind of html on the landing page which means that nearly everything that you see in the graphic that I’ve made can become a live page. I could for instance make the blue mentions of my blogs in the graphic below live links (as would be the link to problogger and my twitter account at the bottom).

In the mean time though – I wanted to test the thought of a landing page and get some reader feedback on it before hiring a designer to make the html version.

As a result I went for making it myself using Keynote. Keynote is a mac application similar (but better than) Powerpoint but you could probably use Powerpoint or pretty much any other kind of graphic program to make such a graphic.

In terms of what to place on the landing pages – I went for two different approaches with my two different facebook pages. On the ProBlogger one I went for a much more personal feel – my face, an invitation to connect with ‘Darren’, a personal introduction etc.

I chose to take this more personal approach because ProBlogger is a brand that I tie myself to quite a bit and my hunch is that a topic like making money from blogging is going to be viewed with suspicion and that a personal approach might help to break that down.

With my dPS landing page I obviously went with some similar layouts but kept it much more branded along the lines of the dPS site – and not very personal. I do try to get across some element of social proof though with the ‘3 million’ highlighted.

I’m thinking in the next version I’ll incorporate a couple of other factors – firstly something more ‘visual’ (it’s a site about photography after all) and a mention of it all being ‘free’.

How do you use the FBML application to serve up the landing page?

OK – so once you’ve got your graphic or html for the landing page – how do you get it up onto Facebook?

The tool I used was a small application called Static FBML.

The application allows you to add a ‘box’ to your page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language). You can also show it as a ‘tab’ (as I’ve done on mine).

Here’s how to make your Static FBML landing page:

1. go to the Static FBML application page on Facebook (make sure you’re logged in)

2. look for the ‘Add to my Page’ link under their logo (top right hand corner of the page) – click it!

3. A popup window will open up – it will contain any ‘pages’ that you are admin for that you can use it on. Hit the ‘add to page’ button on the page you’re wanting to use Static FBML to.

4. Go to the facebook page that you selected. Look for the ‘Edit page’ link under your page logo and click it.

5. On your ‘edit’ page scroll down to the Applications section until you see the FBML page. Click the ‘edit’ link.

6. Change the Box Title. I use the title of ‘Welcome’ but have other FBML pages for my newsletter, for my eBooks etc. Under the title box you need to enter your html. Don’t make your title too long as Facebook will cut it off.

In this case my html is pretty simple – I uploaded my image file (made above in Keynote) to my blog and so I simply embed the image code into the FBML application.

I also include two links for people to be able to click on to visit my site and my Twitter account. Once you’re done click ’save changes’.

7. Return to your page’s ‘edit’ page and look down to find your newly named page in the applications section. This time click ‘Application settings’.

8. A popup box will appear that lets you choose where to show your new application. By default it’ll be showing as a ‘box’ but not as a ‘tab’. I hit ‘remove’ for the box and hit ‘add’ for the tab. Then hit ‘okay’.

Selecting to show it as a ‘tab’ means that your landing page will now appear at the top of your page

Click the tab to check that it all looks ok. You might need to go back into edit the page to tweak it and get it looking right.

How do make your landing page show to new visitors?

The last thing that you might like to do is set up your landing page so that everyone who arrives at your facebook page is automatically taken to it. If you don’t do this it’ll just be a tab in the navigation area of your page and everyone will only see it if they click it.

By default everyone will be taken to your ‘Wall’ tab. This might be ok but if your have a landing page then it makes sense to have people land on it.

1. To change this visit your page and again click the ‘Edit Page’ link under your logo.

2. On your editing page look for ‘Wall Settings’ and click ‘edit’.

3. You’ll then be presented with an array of settings that you can choose to determine how your ‘Wall’ operates. The one we’re interested in is ‘Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else:’. By default it’ll show ‘Wall’ but you can choose any of your tabs here. Select your landing page and it’ll automatically change your settings.

Doing this will mean that anyone landing on your Facebook page for the first time will be taken to your landing page and not your Wall. From my understanding of Facebook’s FAQ they’ll then be taken to your Wall the next time they come to your site (it’d be fantastic if Facebook allowed more control on this at some point to set different rules for what tabs are shown).

Some Final Tips for Facebook Landing Pages

Ultimately what you include on your landing page will depend upon the goals for your facebook page.

1. Don’t Try to do too Much – As with all excellent landing pages you don’t want to try to achieve too much on a single page. If you try to get people to like your page, sign up for an email, watch a welcome video, follow you on Twitter, visit your forum, buy your eBook and share your page with a friend you might end up not getting any action. You can do more than one thing on a page but reckon about your priorities and make your primary one clear.
2. Consider Secondary pages for other Actions – you can set up as many Static FBML tabs as you like. There’s only so much room in your navigation area to show tabs but you might want to set up other tabs for other purposes.
3. Call people to Action – make it as clear as possible what action/s you’re wanting people to take. Remember not everyone will be as savvy as you on how to take that action so be as clear as possible.
4. Test it – you might not get your landing page right the first time – try a variety of approaches to see how people respond.

Show us Your Facebook Landing Page

I know many ProBlogger readers already have facebook landing pages – and those of you who don’t now have the ability to do it – so I’d like to see examples of yours. To get the link simply go to your page’s edit page and scroll down to the application of your tab and click the ‘link to this tab’ link and you’ll have it.

Share a link in comments below with a link to your landing page.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Make a FaceBook Landing Page for Your Blog

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