Well the tier earnings are pretty much the same as the previous month for the April Squidoo payments, with about $40 less, and I know exactly why this happened. Basically I’ve started converting some of my existing lenses to my own affiliate id from the Squidoo one. And the results show it quite clearly. While the Squidoo earnings went slightly down, I got in fact almost to the cents $100 more for Amazon. The reason I want to do this is because through Squidoo I only earn 4.25%, whereas from my own Amazon affiliate id the more I sell, the more I can earn.

I will keep converting more links to my own aff. ids over time, and leaving the Squidoo ids only on some low price products like books. Eventually I want to get to 8% Amazon commissions (right now I’m at 7.5% and so far I never managed to break the barrier to 8%). But the more sales I do, the higher the number, and eventually it will happen. This is my immediate goal anyway.

So here is my latest Squidoo payment screenshot and below I’ve written down my Amazon earnings from Squidoo (I have a separate tracking ID for Squidoo so I don’t mix it with the ones from my own websites).

Compared to the previous period I have for March 128 lenses that are in tiers 1 t o 3. In February I had 117.

And here is what I’ve earned this year starting from January from the Squidoo lenses through my own affiliate id (sales from my own websites not included):

Jan $236 from 166 sales
Feb $368 from 221 sales
Mar $468 from 292 sales

I think it looks good and I will continue converting Squidoo links to my own Amazon links. I prefer higher Amazon affiliate sales than tier payments from Squidoo, since they are more stable and I have an actual goal ahead of me: to get to 8% Amazon commissions any time this year. Hopefully.

So how much did I actually earn in February? A bit short of $500, and this from Squidoo only, not including the Amazon sales made through my own affiliate links. To be exact $472.83 cents, minus $1 for Paypal fees that Squidoo takes from every payout.

Here is the latest graphics, as usual.

I might stop at this point the experiment as  I proved that over time one can earn with Squidoo just as with any other online platform, including your own websites. Sure, a personal website might earn faster than this, however the experiment was really for those folks starting out just now, without a domain, hosting or any knowledge of what to do.

Squidoo is easy to start on, as there are already so many great lenses to get ideas from. And within just 6-7 months, I got to close to $500 per month, a nice list side-income, or a starter income that in many countries is really not bad.

And really, all it takes you is just to make one single lens a day…but not those WSO type of lenses that so many internet marketers are trying to sell (successfully I might add) to beginner IMers. Most of those just get your account banned (I’m not talking about every single WSO, as for example sojurn has one that is much better than everything else I’ve seen). I got an email from a guy who bought one of these recent WSOs that promised millions over a few months (or something like that) and after making 12 of those lenses, his whole account got banned.

So indeed, it’s not these types of lenses I’m talking about. You really don’t need to buy WSO after WSO to learn to make a great lens. Go to Squidoo homepage and see what is highlighted there. And click through a few lensmaster’s bio pages and follow some of their other lenses.

One note: I’d follow the lensmasters that have more than 100-150 lenses, for the simple reason that they actually stuck with it and worked through it, while many others gave up and went to seemingly greener pastures.

Next to Squidoo you can also join Wizzley, another great place to start writing for profit (as well as for backlinking to our websites if you have any). Personally I stay away from Hubpages. I have a few hubs there but it’s just not a platform that I personally like, so I don’t use it.

Now imagine you’re new to the online world and you’ve basically did no other work than a lens a day (I don’t work weekends on my lenses). Within 6 months (while maybe still having a day job), you’ve got to around $500 (+ a few hundred more from your own Amazon affiliate account, so say a total of $800-$1,000) only from your lenses. Now you’ve learned and earned enough to take the next step: starting a website of your own, or maybe working as a freelancer at Elance or other places, or simply pushing Squidoo to the limits.

Now the choice is yours, but now you REALLY have some options - and money in front of you that you can use further - and please NOT by buying even more WSOs!

So just how low were the payouts for January? Not that low, actually, only by about $100 or so. Compared to the month before, the payout for November, it is definitely up. We all know that usually December is the month where everyone is shopping, so the higher spike is expected. So if we take that month out of the equation, the growth compared to November is still apparent.

March payout for the month of January $287.64

January payout for the month of November: $138.32

There is a clear upwards trend, and let’s not forget that November is actually a month where people are starting to shop for Christmas. Whereas January is the recuperating time for most folks who have spent all their extra earnings or their 13th salary on Christmas gifts.

I want to also touch upon something that I was asked about in an email. If you notice in the  screenshots above, it says ‘total featured lenses on date’. This doesn’t mean that I have this number of lenses up to day (I have over 160 lenses by now, btw). This means that these are the lenses that actually made money.

Squidoo payment (except for the actual Amazon or Ebay sales) is made through tiers. Currently there are 3 earning tiers and nothing below these numbers earns anything.

Tier 1 are lenses with a lensrank between 1-2000

Tier 2 - 2001 - 10,000

Tier 3 - 10,001 - 85, 000

I still have plenty of lenses with lensrank way below that which can increase by making more actual sales, or by more traffic, popularity, etc.

And this is where many internet marketeers are complaining that they don’t make money from Squidoo - because most of the lenses are created to backlink to their websites. These types of lenses don’t follow the style and layout of lenses that have a possibility of getting higher lensrank. For example I have a lens that has never made me a sale ever since I made it, back in Novenber, and it is in tier 1. I have tons of links to other sites, the lens is actually a resource about a specific topic that people can go to.

Now when you make a lens to link back to your site, you won’t do such a type of lens, afterall you want people to click through to your site, and not to random sites on the internet. And this is one main reason why internet marketing type lenses never make to any tier that actually earns anything.

Where can you see the lensrank of the actual lens? Some screenshots below.

Here is an example of a lens in Tier 1 that makes the maximum earning per month (usually $65 to $45, depending on the month - the actual amount is always depending on Squidoo). Not my lens, took a random lens from the homepage display. Lensrank 924

And here is a lens that will not earn through Squidoo tiers anything as its lensrank is extremely low, way below the actual threshold. Lensrank 394,068

So if you really want to make money from Squidoo (especially now that Clickbank is really getting on Squidoo’s blacklist as many lenses selling Clickbank products are getting deleted the last few months), then you need to start making a particular type of lenses that not only earn you from Amazon (or Ebay, or Allposters, or Zazzle) commissions, but also through high tier payments.

Close to $400, it starts to look better and better. In the January payment 49 lenses were features. I have more than that, however these were the lenses that actually made me money at all. This month I have 69 lenses that made me money.

I know that for 90% of the affiliates the month after December the earnings drop, so I am prepared for that. But as the months go on and I add more lenses, the money will go up. Since this is the first winter that I’m experimenting with Squidoo in this fashion (as opposed to simply using it for backlinks only), I’ll be really curious of my progression next December compared to this one.

Also while I know that the Google PR has a much diminished value these days, it was fun to see the latest PR update bringing pretty much all my lenses to a higher PR (up to 4), while my bio page is PR 5. Many websites are struggling for years to get to this PR, so I know that Squidoo still gives a nice juicy backlinks to your site - even if just for this, it’s worth working with it.

Looking for the previous months Squidoo results?  Check them out here:

Payouts till August 2011

October to December 2011

January 2012

Keep in mind that these payments reflect the earnings from 2 months before. So the January 2012 payments are for what I earned back in November, etc. The current February payout is for my lenses that earned in December 2011.

Of course these are just the earnings directly coming from Squidoo from simply having the lenses created. It does not include my own affiliate sales like Amazon, Clickbank, etc. Those are extra and usually much higher. It does include Amazon affiliates that were made through the Squidoo modules, simply because I haven’t bothered to change those links to my own affiliates, so for those I only get around 4.25% commission.

All you need is some good keywords to start the lenses with and then a bit of backlinks, and you’re in business. And why not, a bit of extra money never hurt anyone before…

While this money is still peanuts compared to other earnings, it pays for my batch of domains that I need to renew now at the beginning of the year.

Remember these are the payouts from Squidoo directly, not the affiliate sales I was making during this time.

So let’s recap.

April earnings: $7.75 (paid in June)

May earnings: $15.55 (paid in July)

June earnings: $28.43 (paid in August)

July earnings: $29.21 (forgot to upload screenshot of this) (paid in September)

August earnings: $23.99 (paid in October)

September earnings: $43.47 (paid in November)

October earnings: $68.54 (paid in December)

Before September I haven’t practically added new pages (maybe 1-2 per month). In September I started to add Squidoo lenses more often, and from October onwards I’ve added on average one lens per day. This is reflected in the September earnings which almost doubled the August ones, and the Octobers earnings being the highest ever so far.

Of course, if you’re making good money online, this is petty cash and definitely not worth looking into. But as a starter, who doesn’t have a website, doesn’t know how to work with a website (we’ve all been there, done that before), Squidoo is a great way to see the first money coming in.

Now of course I also have Clickbank earnings from some of my lenses, and Amazon earnings from my own affiliate links (you can add your own Amazon affiliate links at Squidoo, or you can use Squidoo’s own affiliate id, especially if you’re in a state that is right now not in Amazon’s good graces, so you can still earn some money).

I already know that November earnings, to be paid next month will be highest, and from what I see that I’ve earned so far in December (especially for the Christmas sales), I’m really a happy camper - sales are great.

So whichever way you want to take it - be it by reviewing Clickbank products, Amazon products, Shareasale or even just for making some high PR backlinks to your own sites, Squidoo is definitely worth pursuing for making your first money online. Money that you can then reinvest in your own domain and hosting. And as long as Squidoo is alive and well, and your lenses are up there, they keep earning you every month, like clockwork.

Beats making no money at all every time.

So why would Wizzley be important anyway? Well, for several reasons, especially if you’re looking to earn your first money and want to get your feet wet before jumping in with websites of your own.

With Wizzley you can earn money from Adsense and Amazon (you need to have your own accounts with them) and with several other ones as well. But for us these two are the most important ones anyway.

If you’ve used Squidoo or Hubpages, Wizzley is pretty similar (personally I find it much more user friendly to create the articles there).

You add modules (it’s like parts of an article with a subhead), you can add videos, images, the whole media shebang. And of course, you can also add your own links back to your site. It’s allowed. The only caveat is that your external links are initially nofollow - but only until you have 5 articles under your belt. And that’s nothing really, you can do those 5 within a day flat.

Just yesterday I created two articles, one going back to my website and to a Squidoo lens that also has links back to my site, and a second Wizzley article simply for the enjoyment of writing and of course I have on it plenty of ads (3 Adsense and a few Amazon modules too).

Another thing with Wizzley that should put spammers off is that they are quite strict with quality, so you can’t just spin your article and post it there. No matter how well it’s done, I’ve never seen a spun article written better than what a crappy article directory would accept.

But it would have to be REALLY crappy to be rejected here, and if you can’t write better than a machine, then you shouldn’t be in this business anyway.

Here the articles are rejected if there is any duplicate content or if the gods to be read your article and is crappy (like the old Xfactor types of sites if you happen to remember those).

But don’t let this deter you from joining because you can earn your first money there if you’re just starting out. It’s a great free platform which to build upon. One thing I’ve noticed is that from an article posted at Wizzley and one posted at Squidoo at about the same time - well the Wizzley article got indexed one day faster. That was weird! It means Google really likes this little new site.

And just look at the articles below (just click through and read any of them - they’re not mine, they’re just a random listing on what’s on the site rigt now).

They are nothing major, anyone can do them, just make sure you don’t have any dupe content, write a bit more engaging than a Wikipedia article (that’s as dry as sawdust) and knock yourself out with your links and sales modules.

Who said that backinking to your main site AND making money in the process can’t be done?

]]> http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/blog-tips/wizzley-new-kid-on-the-web2-block.html/feed http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/making-money/earning-money-with-squidoo-when-starting-out.html http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/making-money/earning-money-with-squidoo-when-starting-out.html#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:51:12 +0000 Marika http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/?p=853 I’ve recently come across some threads at the WF about using free platforms such as Squidoo and Hubpages to start your journey online. Many people are of the opinion that you should not use Squidoo for making extra cash because they’re not your sites and you can’t really make money there, so I’ve decided to start a small experiment.

I have an old Squidoo account that I almost forgot about. It was making me the occasional $5 a month on the few lenses I had there setup from 2008 and I got the occasional Clickbank affiliate commission from people who happened to click through. During Panda, Hubpages took a hit, however Squidoo is just as strong as ever.

In all honesty I never really liked Hubpages, so I decided to stick with Squidoo and see if I could increase my earnings simply by writing a few more lenses.

And no, I’m not talking about getting rich from Squidoo, I’m talking about starting out with making your first coins when you’re new to internet marketing. This can help you pay for your first domain or hosting or whatever else online fees you’re paying.

I’ve started adding more Squidoo lenses to my account - about 5-6 per month (quite easy to do), all good quality articles, well researched with a lot of interesting modules (of course also included Amazon affiliate links and modules where appropriate).

After 2 months, here are my earning stats - note - I’m not talking here about direct commissions (Clickbank or Amazon, or Zazzle, etc) that you get from click-throughs, I’m talking about actual Squidoo payouts to my Paypal account, money that comes through every month simply by having a few lenses up.

When it comes to earnings and payouts, they are usually 2 months behind. So my May payouts came through in July, and my June payouts were in August.

Now in September I’m waiting for my July payout.

While it looks a very small amount, nothing to brag about really, imagine having lots of lenses and how the income will increase. And again, I stress out, this is only the Squidoo royalties, it is not my total income from Squidoo.

That makes me a nice few hundred dollars every month with a few well chosen Clickbank products and some Amazon affiliate products. Not bad considering that I haven’t really done much with Squidoo since I’ve started it back in 2008.

Of course, to really make money on Squidoo  you will promote affiliate products. This is where the real money comes in. But just to start out, to get your feet wet in the possiblities of earning online, this is a great motivator, don’t t you think?

Btw, some of these Squidoo lenses have a nice PR 4 and have gained authority over time, so now they’re perfect for some juicy, quality backlinks to some of my own sites.

All you need is make sure that you don’t write on topics that Squidoo doesn’t like and that you do write quality stuff, something that you wouldn’t want to click away from ashamed of the bad content you’re reading.

Also when it comes to Clickbank, Squidoo can be quite squirmish, so choose the products you promote well, nothing spammy.

Earning with Squidoo is quite possible when you’re starting out and you want an easy way to get some money that will be invested in your more permanent business.

And think about it, as your lenses age, you can use them for backlinking to your new sites.

A high PR Squidoo lens as backlink to your own site is nothing to cry about - and if you happen to earn in the process some passive income, hey, who’s to complain?

First the background. This is the first site that I’ve started as an ‘authority’. Everything else I’ve done so far was in microniches, or blogs that were created for flipping at Flippa.

It is in a niche that is dear to me (related to spirituality), however the CPC payout is measly at best. It really doesn’t pay. But for once, I went against everything I did before and create a site based on a hobby of mine instead of high payout keywords.

Right now the site has about 80 pages, and it just came back from a 2 months sandbox. Ouch.

Let me explain.

Basically I’ve started heavily backlinking from a social article site (not exactly a directory), and I guess due to a glitch or whatever they had on the site, soon, within 2 months actually I got over 4000 backlinks from that site (the same happened to a friend of mine, we both started an authority each at about the same time, I think the difference was only 2 weeks or so). Both saw a crazy growth in backlinks coming from that site.

Both got sandboxed about 3 months from starting the site, and I mean all keywords went completely dead, gone.

I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

In June, however, I’ve started noticing a bit of Adsense movement on that site. Not much, definitely nothing to brag about, but it was there. By the end of June, I got a total of 18 Euros (around $25) in Adsense from that site. Hm…interesting.

In the meantime, I haven’t touched that site at all, I was waiting to see which way it will move.

Now it’s end of July, and just checking my Adsense for the month for this site, I have around 52 Euros (that’s about $74), and I still have a few days to go. So the upwards trend is definitely there.

And let me reiterate, this site is one with an extremely low CPC for Adsense, I mean some clicks are like 5 cents or even less.

I’ve ran a stats checker from within SBI (similar to Market Samurai, but internal to SBI) and I’m on first page for many long tail keywords and a few mid-range ones as well. It’s definitely looking better and better.

So now that I’m actually out of the dreaded sandbox, I’ll continue with the site adding new pages to it and backlinking to it - not too heavily, just enough to get the new pages noticed. I will mostly use these: BMR, article marketing, especially using AMR, Magic Submitter for web 2, social bookmarking and blog commenting - along with the eventual exchange of links with a niche relevant SBI site.

Oh and I forgot to mention, for the last PR update, I went from 0 to 3 (and on many internal pages from PR NA to PR 2). Yeah I know, this is not the most important aspect to look at, but it’s certainly not one to ignore.

I haven’t talked about it here, and I guess I’ve neglected my blog recently, but I have a good reason: I’m learning copywriting. This is something entirely new to me and I really need to focus. It is new but also exciting. I didn’t think I would, but I love it! (and I’m also scared of it, especially since my native language is NOT English).

But I digress. I started following a particular copywriter’s blog who is an advocate of ‘working for yourself instead of wasting your life at the corporate HQs’ that simply IS hilarious (and also educational), and at some point I came across this post (one of Ash’s older posts).

As I was reading it, I got flashbacks of very uncomfortable images that are part of my past. With every line I was reading, I was nodding heavier and heavier ‘yes’ on the universal truths that she was pointing out about the corporate ‘drone’ world, so that at the end I could do nothing else but ‘take action’ (this is the ultimate goal of copywriters, to make the ‘prospect’ take action). I had to share her post with you, especially if you’re still slugging away at a 9-5 (poor you).

Beware, she IS rather liberal in her choice of words and profanities - but that makes her so much more adorable.