Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Creating Squidoo Lenses : Too Much Fun! (Part 1)

Are you familiar with Squidoo.com? Well I wasn’t until a little over two weeks ago! To me, this site is like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Wikipedia, or almost any other social media sight you can think of pretty much rolled into one. It might just be my new facination with the site but I am totally addicted. Pretty much like I was addicted to Twitter when I joined but even this site has torn me away from Twitter for the time being. Although, when you update your lens (page) on Squidoo you can automatically have it tweeted to Twitter. How cool is that?

So far I’ve created five lenses (which is what they call pages) that are kind of like a Wikipedia page that you can create content on any subject you can imagine and one group lens. If you have something you believe you are good at and want to share your knowledge, then Squidoo is a great place to do just that!

One of my lenses is linked with my blog here to help promote it. It's called Come Check Out Nochipra's Blog Spot . I’ve placed content on there referring back here listing my latest blog posts, encouraging people to stop by to participate in my surveys to the left of this post. Given updates about what I’m doing on the web during the day, etc.

But, the best part is that you can actually make income from Squidoo without actually having to do anything other than market the lenses to generate traffic! You decide on the affiliate ads that you want to place from Amazon, Ebay, or Cafepress. I believe that at this time they are the only three I‘m sure will give an affiliate profit? There are also google ads and other ad profits that get put into a pool and depending on how your lens does, then you can get a portion of that too. It’s a totally cool system in my opinion but you do need to promote your lenses and get them seen.

Another lens I created was just for fun called Dinner Recipes Tonight . The concept behind this lens is to have people come together online at dinner time and share their experience with everyone from the actual recipes they made, to whether their family enjoyed the meal, how the night went if it was a date, etc. To expand on the discussion on how the night went I also created a Dinner Recipes Tonight Group . This is where they can go into more details if they wish, about their frustrations of cooking dinner in a hurry, how the kids interrupted their cooking, expand on how their dates went, etc. With more of a discussion group type setting.

The next lens I made was The Debate Club. This lens has debate questions where you can choose a side and express your opinions on different subjects that I post. At the moment I have 20 questions listed but more will be added later. This lens along with the Dinner Recipes Tonight lens seem to be my most popular.

The last two lenses I created were What’s Your Blood Pressure Now? And What’s Your Blood Sugar Level Today? I just created these two lenses in the last few days. My purpose in creating these was to have lenses where you could come and keep a record of your blood pressure and of your blood sugar if you’re a diabetic. My inspiration came from Chip who had a really rough experience recently with a 10 day hospital stay of which I’ve blogged about in a previous post or should I say ranted about? Anyway, it was definitely not a bed of roses! Since he got out of the hospital we have done some pretty significant changes in our lives including checking his blood pressure and blood sugar every morning and night. These two lenses are designed for me as well as anyone else who needs to keep a record for any future doctor’s visits. I believe it is important for anyone with medical problems similar to Chip’s to keep a close eye on these numbers.

I’ve tried to keep my lenses interactive which my visitors seem to enjoy. The majority of the lenses on Squidoo are very informative text lenses with a wealth of information on just about any subject you could imagine.

The potential to be able to make money on the site is very exciting as well. You can choose to either have the profits from your lens sent to your own paypal accout, have it donated to charity, or split it both ways. There are several different ways that you can make money on Squidoo.com. This video is one of the better ones I’ve found that gives good information on the different ways.



I’ve become so excited about creating and potentially making some much needed extra money on Squidoo that I couldn’t possibly put all the information I’ve learned into one post. So I’ve decided to break it up into parts where I will share with you my experiences on things like; what I’ve learned about how to make a Squidoo lens, how to promote the lenses, and of course how to make the money from the lenses.

I hope you will find these posts informative and I have not forgotten about my previous series of posts too. I will be doing posts on Informative Youtube Videos on blogging and social media.

Please consider following my blog to help me achieve my daily goal of gaining at least 3 new followers a day. There is also a fun poll that you can vote on to the left of this post. Let your vote be heard!

If your interested in signing up and getting an account with Squidoo please consider using my referral link to do so. It will be greatly appreciated and when you make your lenses, let me know that they are ready and I will come visit them. http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/Nochipra Thank you.

Happy Blogging!

Nora

Sunday, March 29, 2009

My First 3 Survey Results

I just wanted to give a summary of the results from the first 3 surveys that I placed on this blog. I decided a few weeks ago to start putting about one or two surveys on my blog per week to help learn what you want to see in a good blog. My followers are few but I have received some good feedback from them.

The first survey I placed asked:

What Kind Of Blogs Do You Like?

Blogs about anything and everything
History/Genealogy
Entertainment
Traveling
Teaching Blogs (like on marketing/social media)
Home Improvement
Games/Gaming
Other types of specific subject blogs not listed

I received a total of 10 voters and 17 actual votes. I opened this particular blog so that more than one answer could be chosen. There were 5 votes for blogs about anything and everything, 0 for history/genealogy, 2 votes for entertainment, 4 votes for traveling, 2 for the teaching blogs, 1 for home improvement, 1 for games/gaming, and 1 for other types of specific blogs. Based on this information the blogs about anything and everything and on traveling are the clear winners. I did find this very reassuring since I have made this particular blog about anything and everything. I also have a blog I started about my genealogy research but I have not really updated it in a while since I am trying to focus my attention on this blog first and get it read by more people. If I happen to take a trip somewhere then I plan to add any articles about that in this blog as well which will cover the traveling part too.

My second survey asked:

When Do You Tweet On Twitter?

Not every day, when I have free time
About every day, only when I have free time
Only when I’m out, I do mobile tweeting
Only when I feel I have something interesting to say
Every day, all the time, I’m a twitterholic! HELP!

Well, this particular survey did not fare as well as the first. I think it is because I put it on at the same time as I did my third survey which pushed it below that one. I think people did not realize this one was open too? There were only 3 votes. 2 were for only when I feel I have something interesting to say and 1 for everyday, all the time, I’m a twitterholic! HELP! I’m sure though that there are probably more tweeters that fit in the latter category than they are willing to admit, me included!

My third survey post asked:

How often does a blogger need to post to their blog for you to follow it?

At least once every day
Several times a day
At least once a week
At least once a month
Whenever they feel like posting

I received a total of 6 voters with 6 votes. I didn’t open this one to have more than one choice. The results were 1 vote for at least once every day, 1 vote for several times a day, 3 votes for at least once a week, 0 votes for at least once a month, and 1 vote for whenever they feel like posting. Due to the fact that 50% of the votes went to at least once a week, I think it is safe to assume that most people like to see a new post done once a week if not more often.

I want to thank everyone who did participate in my little surveys. You provide me with great feedback and information when you do them. Based on the information I receive from them and other valuable sources that I am learning from every day, I will try to implement them into my blog. Please do not forget to participate in my latest survey, What Is It That Makes You Stay And Read Someone’s Blog Once You Arrive At The Site? These blogs are only up for one week at a time, so please don’t hesitate to put in your votes.

Note: Once the survey is completed, the survey with the results are posted on the lower left side of the blog. If you didn’t get a chance to particpate in the older surveys please feel free to discuss your votes in the comments section. Also, please make suggestions of surveys you think would be informative. Thank you.

Happy Blogging!

Nora

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Affiliate Marketing: You Learn Something New Every Day!

Affiliate Marketing? Do you know what it is? Well I didn’t until recently. In doing my research on social media and marketing in general, I kept coming across the term and it got my curiosity going. So, as I usually do I turned to you tube for the answer (you can learn almost anything on you tube) and this was a good answer to my question.



In addition to the Adsense ads that you can place on your blogs, participating in an affiliate marketing program seems to be a pretty good way if not more profitable way of earning extra cash from your writings. The main thing that has to be considered before participating in these types of programs though is building the traffic to your blog or website and that is where the social media comes in; where you promote your web site to generate the traffic by using twitter, face book, myspace, etc. It really makes you wonder how the world functioned before this new age technology showed up? You really can learn something new every day.

Please feel free to leave comments, especially on the post "What's So Special About Twitter" below and fill in the surveys to the left. Thanks. Nora