Today we are going to look at building a squidoo lens around your long tail keyword. First of all you want to make sure you have an open account at squidoo. Once you have your account opened you want to put the url you would like to use in the search bar. So continuing with yesterday's example I would want the url www.squidoo.com/how-to-clean-cloth-diapers. When you put that in the search bar it will either bring up a lens someone else has already done on this topic, a note that someone has this url and are still building it or you will see a nice little hello sticker. This little sticker says this lens can be your if you just claim it now.
Just click on the place it says click and it will take you to the set up process to get started on your lens. Mary K has walked you all through this part already, but I want to add a couple points.
Make sure you use your long tail keyword as the title of your lens, also once you get inside the editing area make sure you use it as the title for your intro module.
If you are using this lens to refer someone to an affiliate product make sure you jump right to the chase in your intro module. Leave out the hi I'm Jackie Lee stuff ~ make sure to put it in your bio though. I say this because google will pick up the first paragraph of your intro module to put as a description. You want people seeing it in google search results to know this is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. So start off your intro module with the problem you are solving, and try to get your long tail keyword in the first two sentences exactly as you are trying to optimize for. This will show up in bold in your search engine listing, giving you bold keywords twice in your listing.
The next step is to give the meat of your lens. You will need at least 2 more modules, and then of course a guest book. It's always great for fresh content to have a guest book. I'd try to start with a couple of write/text modules. Start giving the reader information about the problem you are trying to solve in the first. Then in the second text module go ahead and show them how you are going to solve the problem.
There's some conflicting opinions on just how to do this. Some say to leave all the outgoing links out of your module until google has got them, but I don't know how true this is. I would probably stick to only one or two outgoing links in the beginning.
Remember, you need to update your lens every day or every other day for the first few weeks so you want to leave yourself room to grow.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk about how to find products for your niche. If you don't have any products, but know the solution to the problem go ahead and get started, don't worry about links you can put them in as you go. You can also rearrange, change text and whatnot ~ which will be counted as fresh content.
When you have at least 4 modules in your lens go ahead and hit the "publish" button. Once it has published go ahead and "view lens" to take a look at what everyone else is going to see.
As you can see the logistics of actually building a lens is not really my strong suit in explaining. So maybe I will have to start making videos again since the research part is really over. ;)
No matter how much information you have it never matters until you use it. Now Go Build Your Lens!!!! Talk to you tomorrow.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Choosing long tail keywords. This is the point where some people get nervous or feel like they don't know what they're doing. That's understandable ~ I mean come on . . . long tail keyword?!
Yesterday the task was to come up with a list of questions, concerns, and problems that your niche experiences. Did you get to 100? If not, don't worry, as time goes on you will see more things you can write down on your list, just remember to do it so you won't forget them later.
I bring up this list because if you look at it closely it could look very much like a list of . . . (drum roll please) Long tail keywords!!!! Did you guess that? It can also look like a list of TITLES for articles and Squidoo lenses!
So really there was a method to my madness you see.
Look at your list, what is the one issue you found came up most for your niche. What is their biggest problem, question or concern they are looking for an answer to?
Let's say you are working in the Cloth diapering niche (a niche close to my heart :) ). What's the one question people might really want to have answered. It could be one of many but let's say "How to clean cloth diapers" when I googled it with quotes it came up with only 5 other competing websites and there were google ads on the page!! That's a really good long tail keyword. (in fact I think I will stick with this example for the rest of the experiment) :) Here's what I mean by that:
As you can see the results this long tail keyword only brought back 5 other websites optimized for that keyword. That rocks the house!
You see the questions people want answered are going to be YOUR long tail keywords. Now you see that list is an invaluable resource huh?
When you're done choosing your long tail keywords you want to take it to google, and put it in quotes and see how many other competing sites come up, just like in the example above. If it's less than 10,000 you are good to go. Squidoo can easily outrank other sites with less than 10,000 competing. If you see there are google ads on your keyword search results this is an excellent thing. It means people are paying money for your keyword, so there is money to be made there.
Ok ~ check it out today, throw a couple of your long tail keywords through google and see what comes up. Find one that has less than 10,000 competing websites.
Tomorrow we're going to start building a lens around our chosen long tail keyword!
Okay...that may be a stretch but it sure is FUN when you let it be! ;-)
The trick about attracting people... is paying attention to what attracts YOU! ;-)
As I've been contemplating my next Squidoo lens one of the first things I had to decide was what I wanted to focus on. There is quite a bit of advice online about finding something that people are hot for right now... listen for what they want and then provide it for them.
Certainly I see the sense in that and I have to admit I had some concern about whether there would be anything in high demand that I would personally feel passionate enough about that I could market it effectively. I know myself well enough that if something doesn't hold my interest over a sustained period of time I'm likely to resist working on it.
I let myself get momentarily distracted by some well-meaning advice to find a product sharing a good price point with a high demand so it would sell well and focus on that... and it took me a few days to admit that the whole idea, while having good business sense... simply didn't FEEL GOOD! This brought up a few issues for me that had to be resolved before I felt the energy to move forward.
The reason I share this is because some of you may be feeling the same way. And to those of you who might have similar struggles I'll save you a bit of time and let you know that if you take the time to explore your interests, then put your 'ear to the ground' to find others who share those interests you will find a product and market that fits the bill.
One of the fun things that has resulted from my search is that I discovered, through my listening and searching, that I already have a long list of keywords and I know many of the places where I will find the people likely to be interested in my product!
Now it makes sense for me to use the tools available to hone and refine my approach. I had it all backwards before. I thought I was getting confused by the detail... but instead, I hadn't really locked onto the bigger picture with enough clarity.
So today I simply want to remind you that it's important to balance the 'inner' game with the 'outer' game! Out of the clarity of who you ARE comes the inspiration to DO what will serve best!
You hopefully ran your 3 or 4 choices through google analytics yesterday and now you have a good idea of which one is your "best" choice.
You know they are starving (traffic trends at google), now you just need to know what they are starving for. Knowing this information will be key to building a lens at Squidoo, as well as setting up any other pieces of a marketing campaign you may want to add, like PPC or a website, articles etc.
How do you find out what your niche is starving for? Eavesdrop!! Yes, eavesdrop. You wrote down the url to the busiest forum on your niche in step 2 right? Great, if you didn't just go through step two and find it again. Go over to the forum, sign up for an account, and listen.
What is your niche talking about? What are the questions they are asking? what kind of problems are they dealing with? What kinds of threads have the most replies? Read between the lines a little to really get at the meat of what they need.
Now this next step is going to seem revolutionary, but it is a vital step.
Get a piece of paper
Crazy huh? It's important to get a piece of paper because while you are in the forums discovering all the things your niche needs you are going to write them down on this piece of paper.
I want you to keep writing, and writing until you have a fabulous list of 100 things. Yes, I said 100. You also want to note any niche related lingo you may see, as you will want to use their language in some of your writings later. Believe me building your lenses and creating an entire campaign around this niche is going to be easy cheesey if you just do this one step!!! I promise.
That's your task for today. Get in there, get to know your niche and make a list. You can also start making some posts in the forum. You will know if you are getting to know your niche if your posts get some replies. If your posts are NOT getting replies, you need to take a look at yourself and see if you are wearing your Magical Marketer Hat. IF you are ~ take it off right now!!!! Your job is to blend in, belong, become! You want to become so familiar with your niche that you feel like you are part of it.
WOW! I hope you took the time to check out the videos Jackie posted today... they are really helpful and eye-opening!
Today I'm going to familiarize you with some of the many 'modules' that are available over at Squidoo so you understand just what an easy 'plug and play' approach to website building is provided over there.
When you go to the 'module picker' from your lens by clicking on 'Add Module' when you're in editing mode, the first thing you will see is what is called the Starter Package:
The trusty Amazon module you know and love. Feature your favorite stuff (books, CDs, DVDs, geekware...) and comment on it. (Beware, you could earn money!) If you want people to vote on your list, or submit their own items, or share your list... try the new Amazon Plexo module instead.
Ready, set, BATTLE! Stage a debate on your lens. This is no piddly little Guestbook... this is a place to sound off, to put people who disagree right next to each other and see what kind of sparks fly. Have fun.
Flickr is a popular and powerful photo site. Add pics to your lens! (No, you don't need a Flickr account. Tip: If you DO have a Flickr account, create a photoset tagged to your topic for quick adding to your lens.) Want to start a PhotoPhight? Try the Flickr "Plexo voting" module. Or stop by www.squidoo.com/photophights/hq.
Find out what your visitors think of your lens and your topic! Add a Guestbook module and let them shower their praise upon you. (It's okay, if they get ornery you can always delete blurbs. The ethics of it is up to you).
Feature the best links on your topic, and help searchers get where they need to go, fast. If you want people to vote on your list, or submit their own items, try the new Links Plexo instead!
Squidooers love Yelp! Yelp.com is a site where you can find reviews of great stuff in your neighborhood, from pizza to pinstripes. Add a Yelp module to your local lenses and give your readers a head start.
Next to each of these module titles is the word ADD. When you hover over this word you will see a popup with a brief description of the module. Sometimes these descriptions are helpful in that they give you an idea of what you can do with the module... like the following info for Amazon:
Amazon
The trusty Amazon module you know and love. Feature your favorite stuff (books, CDs, DVDs, geekware...) and comment on it. (Beware, you could earn money!) If you want people to vote on your list, or submit their own items, or share your list... try the new Amazon Plexo module instead.
And sometimes they are simply tantalizing and don't really give you any more clarity about what it does so you find yourself clicking on it simply to explore. The great news is that you can easily delete any module if you decide it's not a particularly helpful tool for the kind of lens you're building.
Don't feel like you have to use every module offered in the Starter Package. Just follow your wisdom and inspiration!
In addition to finding modules sorted under various tabs you can also search for modules alphabetically. For instance... when you click the Search (A-Z) tab and then select the letter 'W' you will see the following list:
USA Today's feed of the 2006 Olympics in Torino. *For a limited time only. If you add this module to your lens it will remain there, but after the Olympics are over you won't be able to add this module to new lenses.
As you can see, it's not always easy to tell what function is served simply by reading their names. I mean, would you guess that the 'Wonkette' module description says, "Politics for people with dirty minds"... whatever that means! LOL
As our blog is about marketing online, I presume you are interested in monetizing your lens. Some modules lend themselves more easily toward that than others and it's valuable to be creative and think outside the box. I have received the most comments about various lenses about fun widgets that were found on my lens that didn't directly earn me any money but gave my lens some word-of-mouth that increased the likelihood that someone interested in purchasing would land on my lens!
And since we're talking about money here I'll share with you how Squidoo divvy's up the dough.
Ah, money.
One of the great features of Squidoo is the ability to make money for yourself or charity by selling items through one of our monetized modules. How does this work?
You add a money making module to your lens. Some examples include Amazon, eBay, and CafePress.
Someone buys an item
When the transaction clears though the website where the purchase was made, you get a commission
You decide if you want cash (which is paid out monthly through PayPal) or for the commission to go to charity. You also decide your minimum payout in your Dashboard preferences.
Commissions for month one are paid in month three. So anything you make in January will be paid in March.
The total commission made from each sale is split up. Five percent off the top goes to our charity. Yay! The remainder is split 50-50. Squidoo gets 50% to run the site, and you get 50% to play with.
Several advanced users also become affiliates for websites and products not yet offered through one of our money making modules. This allows them to offer additional products that match their niche topics.
Hope you're inspired to go explore and take advantage of this brilliant no-cost playground for attracting people to you!
I was going to talk about this yesterday but then I got all sidetracked with using the TV. :)
The next step in your research ~ you should have your 10 niche ideas narrowed down to 3 or 4 ~ is to run them through google trends to take a look at the possible search volume for your niche idea.
I could try to explain exactly how and why you shoul use google trends, but I decided to let you hear it from a master. Travis Sago (THE Bum Marketer) has done two videos on using Google Trends to analyze your niche.
Here they are!
I hope that clears things up. I know when I put my 3 niche ideas through google trends I was seriously surprised by the results. The niche I thought was going to come out on top was not the best niche. It gave me some clear ideas of the direction I needed to go.
It also showed me why many of my previous campaigns had not done as well as I thought they would. Just because a niche seems good, does not necessarily mean it is. Why not just take a couple minutes and run some research?
Comparing Products at Squidoo is a great idea for building a lens. Mary K mentioned last week to look to TV for niche ideas. The more I thought about it the more I realized this is REALLY a great idea, and I would add you have to do a little reading between the lines.
Here's what I mean. Super Nanny, Nanny 911 ~ and who knows what other shows are on cable, which I don't have. If you read between the lines you might start to see people want to know more about "how to handle your kids" or "how to discipline your kids" people might want to know more about "difficulties parenting" you know, that might be a really good niche ~ and it might be worth running some research on. If you found it could be profitable niche you could build a lens comparing different parenting books, or the different parenting shows (I'm sure they're out on dvd).
Think about comparing products at Squidoo that you see on TV. You see a million different weight loss drugs, exercise videos, workout equipment on the TV. What about the million different types of cell phones? My guess is that all of them have an affiliate program or there's a store that stocks them that does. Why not do some research on each of them and then write reviews of each. (of course providing your affiliate link in each section) So no matter which one the reader feels is right for them ~ YOU WIN. Another benefit of the comparison lens is people don't feel like they are being sold. You are simply providing quality information and therefore the lenses tend to have a much higher conversion rate.
You can easily put together a lens comparing products at Squidoo. Simply put each product in a separate "text" module. You can add banner ads at the top or bottom and post a text link within the review or at the bottom that takes them to the merchant page where you have an affiliate relationship.
You can also add one review a day to make the process a little more "natural" for google's sake and it will be a great update, which you know you need to do every day or every other day for the first week or so.
When thinking of keywords for this type of lens make sure you are going for the long tailed keywords, and make sure to include compare or review (or something similar that fits) as part of your keyword.
When doing these comparison or review type lenses go to google and check your long tailed keyword (keyword made up of more than a couple words) with quotes around it to see how many other websites are fighting for position. You also want to look for google ads on the side. If you see google ads it means there is money to be made. Those people are paying for clicks on that keyword.
If you can find a keyword with less than 10,000 listings and some google ads you are in business.
Here's another google tip: Try using allintitle when you search your keywords. You are going to use your keyword as your url and title over at squidoo, so see how many sites come up when using allintitle. This will show you ONLY the listings that have your exact keyword in the title. It would look like this in the search box at Google ~ allintitle:"your long tailed keyword here" You may find you have even less competition than you thought!!!
Did you find an active niche? I'm assuming you played along and came up with 10 possible hot niche ideas right? ;)
How do you know if you found an active niche? Easy enough, you look for forums.
Hop on over to google and enter "your niche" + forum and see what comes up.
Go into the forums and take a look around. When was the last post made? Was it today, months or even years ago? How many replies are people getting to their messages? How many views?
Yesterday I went into a forum on one of the hot niche ideas I was looking at. There were 20,000 replies to ONE topic. It have even more views than that. Now that's an active forum! That is a great indicator of an active niche.
You know your niche is active if there are lots of forums with lots of people talking. An active niche is made up of passionate people who think about your niche idea a lot.
You can also take a look at yahoo and google groups. See how many groups there are on your topic. Groups gives you a little bit of upfront and easy data. You can see how many people belong to the group. Yahoo groups tells you on the front page how many posts have been made each month since the group began. You can see if this niche is on an upward trend or starting to lag.
Now you have some ways to find out if you have an active niche, go out there and DO IT. :)
Take your 10 Hot Niche Ideas and run them through google and/or Yahoo groups and see what you come up with. You might want to classify the forums and groups for each niche idea on a scale from not at all active to super duper active. It will make it really easy to see which niche ideas are active and which aren't.
Once you figure this out you want to cross the "non or minimally active" niches off your list. Your goal in this part of the process is to narrow your 10 niches down to 3 or 4 for further analysis.
See ya tomorrow, (with 3 or 4 niches to proceed with)
I'm not really writing about 'finding hot niches' today but since Jackie brought it up I want to add one place not included on her list. There is a good possibility many will disagree with me but I want to suggest you look for 'hot niche' ideas by paying attention to television ads.
Yes! You heard me correctly. ;-) And no... I'm not suggesting you should compete with the 'big guys' who can afford TV advertising rates. But think about it...
They've spent tons of money doing the research to find out what people are looking for (or, at the very least they've spent tons of money deciding to convince us we're looking for certain solutions. Heck...until pharmaceutical companies decided to advertise directly to the consumer I just never knew there were quite so many things that could go haywire!)
So, pay attention to what are presumably people's concerns and then zero in on a little subset of that group of people with a product or service that might serve them around the issue.
Okay... got that out of my system. ;-)
I was reading an ebook about building Squidoo lenses and it was talking about getting your lens indexed in search engines. According to this 'expert' it is better to leave links off of your squidoo lens for the first 3 or so days and simply focus on content that uses your keywords. That way, you'll get the best indexing.
Now...I have no idea if this is true or not but I decided that I'd give it a day or two before I included any direct links. Today I did add more content AND one link to my Cards Build Business lens. I will confess to have some doubts about the veracity of this information because I believe it was the same source that suggested simply writing your intro and adding a couple of 'Text modules' to start your lens out.
The thing is... it may simply be outdated information because Squidoo now requires a minimum of 4 modules before even they will add your lens to their files. That was set up in order to discourage those people who were simply using up space over at Squidoo by slapping up a quick, minimal lens simply to ride on the coattails of the highly ranking squidoo pages. That kind of stuff just hurts everybody so I'm very pleased Squidoo responded by setting up some parameter that might help lenses be a synonym for 'quality content'!
What I ended up doing when I started the lens on January 1 was writing the Intro, the two text modules AND I simply added a Guestbook. If you drop by a lens that offers a guest book please take a moment to leave a message... giving feedback is always a valuable exchange and if you happen to be logged in to Squidoo at the time it provides you with a link back to your name and your lenses so it's really a win-win to sign guestbooks!
Yesterday I went in to edit the lens by adding a fun little widget called "Did you Know?" It allows you to rotate through a series of random facts and I really like things that are interactive plus it was a nice fit for my subject matter.
I also added a poll and a couple of new tags. I have learned that the search engines, Google and Yahoo for instance, seem to like a site that is frequently updated. To add something new a few times a week is actually frequent enough... and this can be as small and simple as adding a new tag or two. But when I'm still in the active building phase of a lens I'll usually add at least one section daily.
Today I added another text module which resulted in me having some new tags to add to the lens also. Feel free to hop over there and check out my progress... and hey, while you're there you could leave a note in my guestbook and/or give me a star rating... I haven't yet promoted this lense but I intend to do some of that... tomorrow!
Finding hot niche ideas is one of the ways Mary K mentioned to go about deciding on what to build your lens on. In the past I have made lenses on things I was interested in and have not had all that much monetary success. I've decided to be a little more deliberate and methodical in my choosing of a niche for this experiment, just so I can see how that goes!
This is going to be a process. If you want to follow along, feel free. Understand that you have to do each step and then move on to the next without jumping ahead for the process to unfold into an amazing campaign. Don't stress if you don't know what to do next, just do what you need to do for the day. :) I learned this process from Travis Sago(THE Bum Marketer). I learned all of this over at Wealthy Affiliate (in the first few days), if you'd like to learn from the masters, you can too.
The basic premise of marketing involves three steps:
Find a "starving" market (with disposable income)
Find out what they need
Give it to them
So how do you go about finding your starving market. It really is easier than you might think. Ideas are everywhere. In fact I just posted 15 places to look for Hot Niche Ideas on my other blog today.
I am going to suggest you go out and find 10 hot niche ideas. Don't judge them at this point, just get 10 ideas from the suggested places (you can use one or all of them), or your own ideas. You can certainly bring your own ideas to the table and run them through this process to see if they are likely to be a profitable niche for you.
Remember, at this point we are NOT thinking about products to sell to this market, keywords, adsense none of that we are just coming up with some hot niche ideas.
I am going to come up with 10 hot niche ideas today too. Then tomorrow we can work on them from there.
Jackie Lee is so right!!! I LOVE the lens creation process. The only *wish* I have when it comes to Squidoo.com is that we could choose different templates so we could rid ourselves of that 'squid-orange' if we wanted to. (can you tell I want too?!? :-)) I have to admit it was brilliant branding... I rarely see orange anymore without thinking of squidoo! ;-) Now don't get me wrong... I certainly appreciate that it was brilliantly set up to shake-hands well with the search engines and I'm keenly aware of the value of placing good 'keywords' in your title and URL. But for me that's just the icing on the cake compared to the satisfaction of building an attractive lens that's interesting, interactive and filled with valuable content in such a way that others can easily digest it!
When it comes to monetizing with Squidoo... there are a few schools of thought and, like humans who are thinking these thoughts, they vary greatly! Seth Godin, the creator of Squidoo and a Marketing genius himself, urges people to explore their passions with a lens... to dive in and dig deep sharing everything you know about a subject that captivates you. Sounds a bit like, "If you build it they will come." For me... THAT'S attractive!
Others will suggest you find something people are clamoring about and provide information and resources (for free and for sale). There's certainly nothing wrong with that... it makes sense.
I say the best thing would be elements of BOTH! Keep your ear to the ground about things people are clamoring for and select those things where YOU are one of the clamoring people! ;-)
So let's do a brief walk-through of the basics of starting a lens...
When you first click 'start a lens' from virtually any page over at Squidoo you will be shown the following:
Step 1: So, what's your lens about?
People are making lenses on everything from "How to Roast Your Own Coffee Beans" to "Why You Should Hire Me" to "Top 10 Books That Changed My Life." And LOTS more. What's your topic?
Here there will be a little box for you to fill in your topic. Thing of a word or a brief sentence that someone may use over at Google if they were looking for information about your topic...
After you finish you go to:
Step 2: What do you want to do with your lens?
A few real examples: There's Damon, a teacher who makes learning lenses with his students. And Jane Goodall, supporting her nonprofit organization. And Kimberly, an author promoting her books. And Raj, who wants traffic back to his blog. These are just 4 ways people use Squidoo. How will you?
(easiest option)
(money maker!)
(most popular)
I ALWAYS select "I just want to do my own thing" though any of these choices are fine. Some will simply come preloaded with specific modules that you may find yourself deleting. By selecting the fourth option you have to go in and select your own module but that gives you an opportunity to only work with the modules that serve your purpose.
Tip #1: Clever lens titles can make great first impressions. Have fun! Tip #2: When picking your Squidoo URL, just fill in the blank where it says www.squidoo.com/_______. (So, if your lens is about daschunds, try adding the word dashchund to the box. If your lens is about making paper airplanes, add paperairplanes to the box. Sorry, no spaces or weird characters).
(This can't be changed, so choose wisely). www.squidoo.com/
Here you want to give some thought to both your TITLE and your choice for the URL. They do not have to be identical and it would be very wise to use your main keyword in both. In other words, use words people are likely to search on when they want more information about your subject!
Today, for instance, I started a new lens that will be focusing on effective ways to use greeting cards in building your business. I don't really know if or how many people might be actually searching for ways to build their business specifically with greeting cards but I DO know that people ARE searching for ways to BUILD THEIR BUSINESS and because I happen to have a greeting card business I also know that people search on the words 'greeting cards' so...
I wanted to be sure to incorporate the long-tail keywords (they are 'long-tail' because they are more than a single word...and/or they refine a single word... for instance, 'cards' could be business cards or baseball cards or any kind of card but I'm looking to attract people searching for Greeting Cards) 'business building' and 'greeting cards' in both my title and my URL. I prefer a URL that's short and memorable but I'm willing to take liberties with my title so I used
as my TITLE. The URL that is embedded above reads, www.squidoo.com/cards-build-business
So before you find yourself on Step 3 give some thought to your title and URL and remember, it may already be chosen so you may want to have a slightly different alternate handy.
Another choice you'll notice required with this step is selecting the 'Category' where you'd like your lens to appear. Many subjects can make sense in more than one category. Just go with the one that makes most sense to you. Follow your intuition and select the category you would be most likely to go to if searching on your topic.
This leads you to the fourth and final step:
Step 4: Help people find your lens
Keywords (or "tags") are really important in helping people find your lens. Think about the search words someone might put into Google when he's looking for info on your topic. Those would be your lens tags.
(Optional)
You're going to be choosing keywords. Don't sweat over this as you will be able to add more keywords later. You'll notice that the system has already assumed you selected the best keyword for your title (and of course you did already know that because Jackie and I have both told you so! LOL) so it preloaded that one for you. Just select three more that make sense, type in that goofy word you see in the box which proves you are, indeed, a real live, if goofy, person, and then click DONE! You'll be ready to start building your lens!!!
Whew! And we'll save more on that for another day! Happy squidoooooing!!!! ;-)
I must say I have found some resources in the last week that have completely captivated me and shaken up my thinking leaving me fumbling around trying to figure out exactly what I want to do and say!
Me, who is usually not at a loss for words, I guess it's a good thing to get flamboozled once in a while. Keeps life interesting.
OK, now on to the experiment.
I just have to tell you I LOVE squidoo. It is simple, effective and fun. You can get 8 out of 10 of your lenses on the front page of google driving you fabulously targeted traffic which you can convert to sales and all for free.
I think this is going to be an interesting month because the things Mary K and I love about Squidoo are completely different. I'm a little concerned that our different interests may make for a less cohesive blog this month, but I think you all will be able to figure it out.
Where Mary K, likes actually DOING the lens, building, using the modules and explaining as she goes ~ I LOVE to do the market research. Figuring out which niche to choose, who are the people in my niche, what they want, are they willing to spend money, what are the best keywords, how to get my page to page 1 of google ~ THOSE are my loves.
I am continually learning more and more about how to do all of those things and I am excited to show you as I learn.
My intentions for this month:
Each week do the research necessary to build a profitable lens
Build the lens
Update regularly for the love of google
Teach you everything I know and learn along the way
Please ~ I am going to be very up front with all of you. Showing you exactly what I'm doing all the way, so please please please, follow along, come up with your own ideas, but don't steal my stuff. :) thanks.
YES! We touched on squidoo.com when first starting the 30 Day Marketing Experiment as it is a part of the Bum Marketing Method. And because SQUIDOO.com is such a valuable resource it's well worth taking a deeper look at all that is offered here at NO COST to you!
Squidoo is a fabulous place for you to define a niche that YOU feel passionate about while providing a platform that helps drive traffic your way.
My intentions this month are:
To share tips and tricks that make setting up a squidoo lens easy and effective for you
To create at least two new lenses of my own and to expand on current lenses
To demonstrate how squidoo can help brand your business on the 'net
To give you step-by-step instructions on how to set up Search Engine Optimized pages within Squidoo at absolutely no cost to you
And to continue to sharing what I learn as I learn it!
2008 Promises to be a very HAPPY and VERY PROFITABLE NEW YEAR!!! Give us some feedback and let us know what YOU would like to know and what you would like us to try. The whole point of experimenting is to try something different... so don't hold back!!!
WOW! Wrapping up another 30 Day Marketing Experiment segment at the same time we're wrapping up a whole year feels GREAT!!!
I was reading Jackie's reference to word that MySpace marketing was 'dead' and it made me chuckle. It simply could never happen! When you have a place where millions are gathered... you have 'marketing' going on in one form or another.
Human beings are a creative bunch and even when it seems that the 'tools' for interaction at a given community are finite in number... people by their very nature will come up with an infinite number of ways to creatively use those tools.
So keep exploring and take the time to nurture the relationships you begin online... your time and effort will be rewarded in ways you haven't yet imagined!
The one thing that stands out the most clearly as we wrap up another 30 Days... when you take consistent action toward your intention you see results in that direction...when your actions are not in alignment with those intentions you see few results in that direction.
Well here we are at the end of the month, and the end of this year.
I have had a lot of fun with myspace marketing this month. I have learned quite a bit and enjoyed sharing it with you all.
There are many who say myspace marketing is dead. I beg to differ. If done correctly ~ read creating relationships and offering quality content ~ it works wonders.
I set the intention to connect with one new business partner each week during this experiment. The first three weeks this intention was met. The last week of the month, I received some fun and interesting business inquiries but did not get a new business partner. This is NOT because myspace marketing doesn't work ~ it's because I didn't work. lol
The last week of the month I fell off the horse, and did not complete my specific daily actions. Although this did not allow me to manifest my intention, it did push home the learning that if you do nothing you get nothing.
I set up this experiment, for myself, so I could continue to work on other projects and spend time with my daughter. If a person wanted to they could spend a lot more time on their marketing efforts you could increase the number of business partners exponentially. In fact you could outsource the building of pages and acquiring of friends and leave yourself the main focus of relationshipping.
It comes down to what you put in is what you get out. If you spend 30 minutes a day, inviting friends and interacting with them, and you followed the steps we've laid out for you you can easily create new business partners regularly.
You can further increase your profits by providing your friends with quality content in your blog, help them solve problems, and then lead them to more information ~ (affiliate products).
In my opinion Myspace Marketing is far from dead. Most people are just going about it in the completely wrong way. If you follow the steps we've provided this month you will find Myspace marketing is alive and well and working for you. :)
Stay tuned for next month's experiment! It's gonna be fun. See ya then.
I know Mary K has already talked with you about bulletins, and I just wanted to add a couple things.
Today I was over at Myspace, and I had some time so I decided to look at bulletins. I must admit, I'm not much of a bulletin reader, however, I think that will be changing. I read quite a few bulletins, and the ones I found interesting, or inspiring in some way I just hit "reply to poster" and sent the person a note.
This makes it really easy to connect with new people in my friends group.
If you have started from the beginning with a concrete idea of who your market is ~ you will probably find a couple things in the bulletins they are sending out.
1. Questions your market has ~ an opportunity to answer that question in your blog and post your own bulletin.
2. Another opportunity to engage your market ~ Many times people will write a bulletin when they need help or support. What better way to engage your friends in a positive way.
3. Interesting Info you can pass on ~ Most people welcome their bulletins being passed on. Just make sure you hit reply to poster and then copy and paste the whole thing so you give credit to the person who originally posted (and keep their links in tact)
If you have forwarded someone's bulletin they are more likely to take a look and maybe even forward one of yours. When they do this, you have reached a whole new network of people. I must admit I have seriously not been using the bulletin feature to its fullest potential. Don't make the same mistake. Myspace makes it easy to connect with others ~ that's their main goal~ so read your bulletins, and then send a quick note to say hi, thanks, show appreciation or whatever is appropriate.
Since we are winding up our 30 Day Marketing Experiment with Myspace I thought I would find some interesting resources to share with you so you can continue your learning.
It was more difficult than I anticipated finding resources solely related to Myspace, so I found some interesting marketing, social networking, and internet marketing blogs and podcasts to share with you.
Here are 5 blogs that I suggest you subscribe to their RSS feed.
We have a few days left in our 30 Day Marketing Experiment around MySpace and so I thought I drop by (weaving in and out of the holiday festivities is a bit of a challenge these days! ;-)) share with you some of the things I've discovered about the MySpace Instant Messenger tool.
In all fairness I have to share that I only downloaded this tool a couple of weeks ago and I've been away from my computer for more days than usual so I don't have a lot of experience sending messages with this tool. I have yet to find any close friends who are using it and that's okay... it will give me a great excuse to connect with one of my friends I'd like to know better by searching for someone who has already downloaded this tool!
Even without experiencing many conversations using this IM tool, I have discovered there are a couple of features that I wasn't expecting and I'm finding them very useful.
Certainly it provides the basic instant messaging to other MySpace users and has customizable emoticons and Zaps (a combination of a sound bite, picture, and words.) that are found in many instant messengers but what I'm appreciating is that it also provides shortcuts to MySpace.com features and profiles AND sends instant alerts for all requests, messages and comments. (Even blog post comments!) As you can see on the left, it shows up on my desktop just like any other IM tool. I'm sure I'll discover many more bells and whistles as I play around with it and as we roll into a new year I intend to fill up my contact list with friends. If you're inspired to download it yourself please add me and give me a holler sometime! ;-)
Until then... I'm off to message somebody. Thanks! I appreciate you,
We haven't quite reached the end of our 30 Days around MySpace and yet with Christmas right around the corner it's time to lay low for a few days so today I wanted to wish you a very Happy Holiday and recap what we've covered in this particular 30 Day Marketing Experiment.
We've covered:
What MySpace.com is all about and how you benefit from getting and using an account there.
Showed you exactly how to go in and set up an account.
What you need to know to create and attractive MySpace Profile.
Defined and described placing 'My Story' on your profile page.
The value of adding Friends to your list at MySpace.
Who to look for and how to add them quickly using FriendBlasterPro.
Described through word and video how, when and why to use the tools available at MySpace.
With the last few days of the year 2007 I intend to give thanks and express appreciation for ALL of my wonderful friends both on the 'net and off!!!
I appreciate YOU -- Regardless of how or if you celebrate the holidays and holy days... may yours be wonder-filled and merry indeed!
This is not myspace advice, but wonderful business advice to end the new year.
I received this email from Travis ~ of November's Bum Marketing Experiment. I really appreciated what he had to say and thought I would share it with all of you.
I will be going out of town, so I won't be back until after Christmas.
Ever been stuck in a traffic jam on a broiling Summer day?
Have you seen that dude dressed up in a suit and tie pounding the steering wheel like a gorilla...screaming obscenities like a sailor and practically sitting on the horn?
(Hope it wasn't ME you saw!)
Ya' know I am all sure we have done that or something close at some point.
But ya know what we DID NOT do?
We didn't get out of the car and say SCREW IT!
No!
We stayed in the car because we knew EVENTUALLY traffic would clear up and we would get where we are a goin'.
Same thing with red lights...right?
We don't plan a trip to the mall and say...
"Hey, if I hit a red light I am going back home!"
Now, that all seems like some common sense...
BUT...BUT...
This is what an overwhelming majority of folks do when it comes to starting a business.
And rings true for new Bum Marketers as well.
"Ah...CRAP...my article got declined...I quit!"
"The last two articles I wrote didn't get on Google...forget it!"
"I wrote 10 articles and no sales...Google can SUCK MY BUTT forever!"
"What? Ezinearticles won't allow links to UsFreeAds anymore? I give up!"
..NOW LET ME SAY...folks, these are just red lights! YEAH...IT BLOWS!
NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!
But what you don't do is get out of the car...right? You go somewhere (in private is best)...you blow off any steam...cuss...rant...rave...
But stay in the car dude!
Let's take an example:
Ezinearticles stopped letting you link to UsFreeAds...OK!
Whatever!!!!
So you figure out another route...which there are many:
You can do a ton...you can add video, audio, opt-in forms...the fella I put up on that blog that gets his rear smeared on the bike was free...I just linked to youtube...
And that page converts so well...I am using it for my landing page for Adwords.
There are a few limitations...like you can't change the font size after you start the blog (on wordpress.com hosted on their site)...
But hey...it's free...and it works...
My point is that there are always work arounds...you just GOTTA THINK LIKE A BUM...and STAY IN THE CAR...
You know, maybe you are making some profit now...this may be the catalyst that spurs you to invest in YOUR OWN WEBSITE...
Which is a HUGE positive step in your business.
Now...I don't want to come off as a smarty pants or know it all...
I do NOT know it all...
But in my 39 years on this Earth (it's my Bday on the day I wrote this), and over 20 years of business experience...
Here is something very important that I have learned:
YOU DO NOT NEED MONEY TO START A BUSINESS AND BE SUCCESSFUL!
What do you need?
1. BIG BRASS CAJONES or if you are a lady GUTS!
2. DETERMINATION and PERSISTENCE OF A BULL DOG!
3. and what will multiply your success rate?...INGENUITY! If you can't go over...you go under!...or to the side! or through any obstacle that dares stand in your way.
So...for you math freaks...
take...
BIG BRASS CAJONES + DETERMINATION X INGENUITY = How much you get of ANYTHING you want!
I live and breathe this everyday...
Who the hell am I to submit an article to Entrepreneur Magazine?
Who do I think I am to submit an article to Entrepreneur Magazine not once...but SIX TIMES!
Hell...I don't even know if they are getting it...so next time, I am going to FED EX it...in the strangest darn container I can find!
Maybe a 4 foot long cylindrical tube.
If that doesn't get me a response...I might just have it delivered in the G-Strings of a couple hot strippers.
Yeah...I am just a redneck from Arkansas...I don't give a damn! One day I am going to get my article in Entrepreneur Magazine, even if it means I have to buy the darn publication to do it!
******************************************************* THE MINDSET!
Ever see a Mother lose track of her youngster? Maybe it has happened to you?
I don't care how meek that Mom is...when she can't find her youngin' she will ask the biggest burliest man...she will have it announced over the PA at Walmart...she will ask anyone and everyone she sees to help!
Will she stop at the 5th stranger she asks...hell no she is not going to stop until she finds her baby!
THAT IS THE MINDSET you need to have to break free an UNLEASH HELL ON ANY OBSTACLE OR PERSON THAT DARE TO STAND IN YOUR WAY! ********************************************************
So my message to you is THIS:
Stay in the car...the light will change green...or you can find a different route...or get out of the car, climb up the pole and MAKE the light change green.
opened you want to put the url you would like to use in the search bar. So continuing with yesterday's example I would want the url www.squidoo.com/how-to-clean-cloth-diapers. When you put that in the search bar it will either bring up a lens someone else has already done on this topic, a note that someone has this url and are still building it or you will see a nice little hello sticker. This little sticker says this lens can be your if you just claim it now.
