Writing For Profit - Squidoo, Blogger and More

Writing can be good fun but unless you can manage to get a book published or a good job with a paper or magazine then what is the point. "For fun" you say. Well yes but wouldn’t it be great to make some money at the same time?

Of course it would but how can you do this? Well you can use sites such as Squidoo and Wizzley to write great information and sales pages, or you can write factual or fictional pieces on yahoo contributor network. Ezine Articles is also another great site where you can write some great articles that you think need to be heard, but Ezine articles work best when you have another page to link to.

So let’s talk about Squidoo and Wizzley.

First my favourite....

Squidoo.

Squidoo is a very easy and user friendly platform for writing articles as well as being a great community full of lots of friendly people. When first starting with writing your articles, it is a great idea to search Squidoo pages on how to write Squidoo pages. I have written a previous blog post on Squidoo being my favourite. Here are a couple of examples of great Squidoo lenses to help get you started.

http://www.squidoo.com/fisher-price-walker

http://www.squidoo.com/squidtips

http://www.squidoo.com/experiments-magnets

http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-be-an-archer

http://www.squidoo.com/outstanding-photographers-from-around-the-world

http://www.squidoo.com/the-solar-system-planets

There are two ways to make money on Squidoo:

1. Is to create great lenses that get lots of visits and have a good lensrank. Having a good lensrank will determine what tier you end up in. What tier your lens is in, is important because it will determine what sort of payout you get from the Adsense pool. On each lens Squidoo apply Adsense ads and all the proceeds from the click-throughs go into a pool. Squidoo takes half of this pool and the other half gets split up between the lenses, but not equally. The lenses that are performing well will be in tier 1 and then mid performers in tier 2 and low performing lenses in tier 3. A good lens in tier one could sometimes get up around $50 on a good month, tier 2 possibly 50 cents or so and tier 3 possibly a couple of cents.

2. The other way to make money on Squidoo is by using sales modules such as Amazon and Ebay. You can add related products from these sites into these modules and earn commission when someone purchases something. Squidoo also take 50% of the commission on these sales as well, but since Squidoo traffic so many sales to amazon these modules attract about an 8% commission. This means you end up with about 4% of the sale, which as a new amazon associate with no sales history is the maximum you will get anyway.

Wizzley.

Wizzley is very similar to Squidoo, you create articles with all sorts of different modules that you need to add content to. If using sales modules the situation is pretty much the same as Squidoo. Whereas Squidoo has an Adsense pool on Wizzley you use your own Adsense ID number and anything clicked through on your pages goes towards your Adsense income. This could be a good thing if you have high traffic to your Wizzley page but if you don't then you get nothing.

Yahoo Contributor Network.

Another way to write online is by joining the Yahoo Contributor Network. This Network gives you a platform on which you can write about anything you want and get paid for it. People who live in the United States are able to submit articles in a couple of ways.

1. You can earn money for completing writing assignments usually between $5 and $25 sometimes for some yahoo partners up to $100.

2. You can also submit articles for upfront payment and if they are accepted the payment is typically between $2 and $15.

3. Articles submitted are also eligible for unlimited and ongoing performance payments. These payments increase as your popularity and traffic increases. The performance payments are relatively small and are around $1 per 1000 visits and can get slightly higher. Some people make hundreds and thousands of dollars from performance payments with the right type of content.

On the Yahoo Contributor Network you can write all sorts of content including fiction, reviews, politics, opinions and pretty much anything you can think of. If you have a look here you can see my first 2 articles on Yahoo Contributor Network.

Ezine Articles.

Another great site for writing articles is Ezine Articles and it is a very professional site. Each article goes through numerous reviews and quality control to keep the whole site and its content high quality and professional. You don't get paid directly by Ezine Articles or by the performance of your articles, but Ezine Articles is very good for sending targeted traffic to your other paid sites such as Squidoo. So although on its own there is no income from writing on Ezine Articles there is the benefit of possibly increasing your income on other sites.

Here are the links to 2 of my Ezine Articles:

Help Your Baby Learn To Walk

The Toughest Iphone Case

Blogger.

Then of course there is this amazing site, Blogger. This Blogging platform is very easy to use and as it is connected to Google it is very easy to monetize your blog posts by using your Google Adsense ID.

You can also use the other method of posting affiliate links in your blog to make commissions as well. Using a Google blog like this works well considering you can use your one log in for Gmail, Google+, Youtube, Adsense, Adwords and Blogger.

So many options to choose from!

I don't by any means think of myself as a good writer, in fact I am very bad with grammar, but I do enjoy writing. So if you enjoy writing as well and want to get it to work for you a bit, then in my opinion these are some of your best options.

Remember whatever you decide to use, Have Fun with it.

One of my Favourite Methods - Squidoo

Squidoo is an awesome way of making some cash online. You can write about anything you want basically, except for a few small things that have been flagged as spam. You can write sales lenses which are primarily for making sales in a review style lens such as Fisher Price Walker. Pages on squidoo are called lenses by the way, so when I refer to a lens I am talking about a web page. You can also just write about topics that you love and create a great information lens that will attract traffic because of the expert knowledge you are sharing. One of my favourite informational lenses is my lens on the The Solar System Planets.

So far I am up to 23 lenses and I am currently just concentrating on making more and more links to my lenses. In a follow up post I will go through some of the best places to post your links to.
I am relatively new to squidoo and I have already made my first sale. Squidoo takes a fair amount of work and the cash doesn't start rolling in over night. It will take a a few months at least before you even see one sale. I have been sticking with it and asking question after question on the squidoo forums. Asking questions of the veteran lensmasters has really helped me a lot. There are a lot of great lensmasters willing to share their knowledge and help you to be successful with squidoo as well.

Here are a few basic tips that I have picked up so far about creating great lenses.

- Always write great content, don't ever just copy and paste information from web pages as this is a big no no with squidoo.

- Take the time and do some keyword research, it will help you out with getting traffic from google. Try and stick to what they call long tail keywords like "fisher price toys for baby boys" instead of "fisher price toys". Long tail keywords won't have as much competition. A good free place to check keyword popularity is Google keywords Tool

- Use lots of photos, I love to use my own photos whenever I can, I even go out of my way to try and get the perfect photo. If you can't take your own photos then Allposters is a great place you can get images and also earn 20% commission each time someone buys a poster. You can post a link from Allposters straight into a text module to show a great photo, plus if any one likes it they can click on it and buy it as a poster on the allposter website.

- One last major point to get you started and it is always remember to review your lenses before you publish them. Spelling and grammar mistakes look extremely unprofessional and it is something that I still have to remember to do.

I am really enjoying writing on squidoo and although my sales are yet to build up significant momentum I can definitely see the potential to create some serious income. Quite a few of the long term  lensmasters that you can chat to in the squidoo forums make a pretty tidy sum each month. You can too if you want to put in some effort. Remember if you want to give making money online a go then keep in mind it never happens over night regardless of what all the get rich programs tell you. Give Squidoo a go, I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I do.

If you would like to join Squidoo, you can sign up here
If you want to sign up for some good pictures with Allposters, Sign up here

Starting My "Making Money Online" Journey

My Journey started a few years ago when I heard about this wonderful program called the easiest home business ever. Well little old naive me decided to sign up, and $500 later I had 12 lessons that pretty much told me everything that I am going to share with you for free on this blog.

The problem with the Easiest Home Business Ever was that it isn't all that easy. What the creators of that program told you and showed you sounded really really easy. Putting the strategies that were shown into place was very easy as well. What they didn't tell you was that it took time and a lot of work to build up your online presence enough to start getting meaningful traffic to your pages, videos etc. They also didn't tell you how to go about really getting yourself and your online content out there. 

I have to admit that I did get a lot of useful information off of this program so in a way it wasn't a total waste of money because it saved me going out and researching all the different methods of making money online myself. What I have had to do since was a lot of research on how to get real traffic to my pages and what not.

One of the first real strategies that I was taught was the social media strategy. This isn't a hugely successful strategy for me as I don't have a huge following on twitter or facebook and all the rest such sites. It certainly does work though especially if you have a lot of like minded friends on these sites. 

The whole strategy basically consists of posting paid links onto these sites having people click through them and subsequently buy something and bam you get a commission. 

First you need to sign up to join an affiliate program such as Clickbank, commission junction, clixgalore etc.

My favourite is clixgalore I find it very easy to use. Give it a go sign up, pick product or link that you think people on your twitter or facebook would like, then get the link copy and paste it into a post, put a short description something like "I just Found great priced DVD's at (insert link)". It is that simple.

How simple does that sound? 

I know it sounds to good to be true, but it is true. You won't get rich off of this one simple method, but with other great strategies that I will mention in more posts this one certainly helps to start the ball rolling.