Squidoo - Web 2.0...and all that

While we sit here blogging, people around us are doing something that will make them rich. Everyone who is at least 1/50th nerd knows that Web 2.0 (social networks, online video etc) is where it's at. Why aren’t I doing it?

1. Because I'm lazy
2. Because I will...in a bit.

In the meantime, while I gather my thoughts and ideas for the future what else is there to do but take a look at these sites and blog about them?

This morning I took a look at Squidoo. I first heard about it on Mylot and I though it could be a good place to promote my referral programs and get a little more traffic for this blog. You also earn on Squidoo from the AdSense ads that are displayed on your 'lenses' (pages) that you create. Sqidoo keeps a portion and you can chose whether to keep your portion or donate it to charity.

"with no other deductions, we pay 5% of our post-expense revenue directly to the charity pool, 50% directly to our lensmasters and retain the rest to pay off investors and employees"

I decided to make my first lens on an affiliate program and see if I could get some referrals (I know I'm so sleazy!). I typed in the search bar, 'AGLOCO', but there were already a zillion lenses on that, so I tried a couple of others and eventually I found one that there was only 1 other lens on; and that was Cashcrate.

Actually making a lens is pretty easy and there’s not really any point in me going through the process, you just follow the steps. The only hiccup was the first two times I clicked 'publish' it said there was an error on in my lens, so I just re-saved everything and it worked after that.

Here is the final product: My CashCrate lens.

The FAQ is pretty good and should answer any questions you have. Personally I think Squidoo is going to be huge, (it already has over 40,000 members). I’m going to do a lot more 'Squidooing' and see if I can make a reasonable amount of money from it. I will let you know the results!

Spicypage is 1 Month Old!

CLICK TO ENLARGE
Spicy page sent this to me, "We are proud to announce that we are officially one month and one day old". I am a huge fan of spicy page. Don't ask me why that screen shot is a bit odd (the pie chart has gonw a funny colour), but you can still see that I get 2.1% of my traffic from Spicypage. The graph on the right is the Spicypage traffic plotted on it's own. You can see it started of high, because after I joined I voted on a whole load of sites and added their Webmasters to my 'Friends' list. Many reciprocated with a vote which got me on the front page for a few days. Its pretty easy to get on the front page, you just need about 10 votes in a day but you wont get massive amounts of traffic like Digg because Spicypage is still growing.

They also made this handy addition:

"Just a reminder that our policy allows for a site to receive votes from the same people every 30 days. So, for those of you who voted for sites 30 days ago, you can vote again for the same sites.

you can send messages to multiple recipients. So, if you need others to vote for your site/blog, let them know and keep on letting them know every 30 days. Your site/blog might be inside the Most Popular section all the time!"

Unfortunately for me I joined on January 25th which isn't 30 days ago. I think Spicypage has some great potential for growth so join now and get voting!

Technorati WTF?

Before you exclaim aloud 'how rude!' you should know that WTF stands for 'Where's the Fire?'. Technorati have began a service much like Digg. They have described it as a "a big social experiment to see if people will work together to help create something great and useful, and will use the voting system to push up the best explanations to the top. " If it works this will be great for bloggers with good content (as they will receive some targeted traffic especially if they get on the front page) and for people browsing the archives for information. Providing people vote honestly the articles will be ordered fairly, rewarding the hard working bloggers and punishing the spammers.

I for one believe it will be a success. I have already posted a few of articles from this blog on it. I do have one nagging issue with it and that is that It was surprisingly easy to submit articles. You are given a lot of freedom (perhaps too much) even to the extent of choosing to start your own category just for your post. On other similar sites this has been frustratingly difficult because you need to 'apply' for a new category. On WTF however you can just type one in and BAM its a new category. Whether this is a good or a bad thing remains to be seen. I am not especially worried about spammers but about honest mistakes being make. For example, if you submit your article and label its category 'football' it will end up in a different category to an article categorised as 'soccer'. There are lots of other circumstances where a category could be slightly different and end up dividing content. I am unaware of how Technorati are going to prevent this. Perhaps they are only allowing new categories to be created like this because it is still in very early stages and will remove this ability once the 'directory' is more developed.

Check out WTF

Spicypage Update

SpicyPage has made an interesting update, I received this message earlier today:

"Dear matt608,

once again it is time to let you know about some cool new things that have been done on Spicypage.

- "Blog this" feature has been released. The feature allows you to publish sites/blogs or articles to your own blog directly from Spicypage.

- "Just Launched" section has been completed and opened to public. As the name implies, this section talks about new start-ups that have been recently launched. It provides detailed information about the products and services of that start-up.

Hope you are having a great time!
;-)
Spicypage Team"


This features looks like it has some potential. It shows how Spicypage is developing and slowly but surly becoming one of the big boys of in the social networking game. If you are a blogger and not a member of Spicypage yet, you can sign up here. I highly recommend it, its a great way to bring traffic to your site whether or not your site gets enough votes to be on the front page. As with any other social networking site it's a great way to make contacts online who you can have a 'symbiotic relationship' with, like with mediclorients ;)

Social Networking

We all know by know (well you will if you have been reading this blog) that social networking is a useful tool for network marketers, whether you are looking to get referrals for an affiliate program or get some extra traffic and/or feedback about your website. SpicyPage is an up-and-coming social network. It is essentially the same as Digg only different...Instead of voting on an individual story or post entire blogs are voted on.

'Voting' on a blog doesn’t mean you have to think its the best blog in the world. It just means you like it and think it deserves a little extra traffic. Voting is a reader’s way of saying thank you to the blogger with the click of a button. Not only is this psychologically rewarding for the blogger, but enough votes will result in the blog/website appearing on the SpigyPage Homepage in the very prominent 'Most popular' section; this obviously brings that blogger more traffic.

SpicyPage is also a great place to make 'friends' - not real friends, but the kind of friend you might ask for a link exchange or something of that sort. Much like Mylot you can invite members to join your 'friends' group and you can send messages to each other. The idea is that eventually it will end up that everyone is interconnected with other people who are in the same niche enabling them to be able to communicate with each other easily.

So go check Spicypage out!

Networking - Generate Traffic and Links

A useful and rewarding way of generating traffic and links to your site is by networking. In this case this means contacting webmasters who have a similar topic of yours and 'requesting a partnership' with them.

I have done this by using Technorati. I searched for blogs, which have similar content and had MORE authority. There is no point putting effort to get links from sties that have less authority than yours. It is important to aim high, but ACHIEVEABLY high. e.g. if your site has 20 inbound links, it would be best to contact webmasters with around 40 - 100 inbound links. A Webmaster with over a 1000 links probably wouldn’t pay any attention to you. (Note - it is also the authority of their links which is important, so be sure to check their Technorati ranking as well).

When you contact other webmasters, be friendly, but do not offer things you will not do. For example you could offer to write a short review of their site which a couple of links to their site on it, and then suggest that they could link to it once you have written it.

The general rule is: Be good to them and they will be good to you.

You have to genuinely care about their success, you may find they put multiple links to your site and even recommend it if it is of good quality content.

Writing a review might sound like a lot more work than just putting a link to them in a list on your sites menu; but the review will end up in your archive, so it will not take the most prominent position on your page for long (not to mean it wont ever be read again).

Networking partners also may be interested in your affiliate programmes. They may sign up without you even asking if your posts about the programmes are good enough. If you are very good to them they may sign up, or they may offer to join yours if you join theirs.

Networking is therefore a very useful tool, in getting traffic, links (resulting is traffic due to the search engines smiling on them) and in possible affiliates.