One week later...

I've spent most of the last week making backlinks for my Squidoo lenses. I now know what my least favorite part of Internet Marketing is - making backlinks. Basically, I've been writing articles of about 300 words in which I can put a link back to my Squidoo lens - (get it? link back = backlink!) and posting them on free article sites. I've put some on Ezine.com, some on 3stepads.com and even more on various other similar article directories. But that's what you've got to do, soI'm doing it! My lenses still aren't where I want them to be in Google - I've got about a third of them on the front page, some at the #3 and #4 spots. I originally had a lot more - but I can see that the Christmas competition is really heating up, and other pages are passing me by. So, I'll just keep on chugging along, and make as many back links as I can, and hopefully get the rest of these things at least up to the first page of Google.

I HAVE had some good news though - two more sales this week, for which I earned about $10. So it is possible to make money with Squidoo lenses and as an Amazon Associate. $10 in a week doesn't sound like a lot - but you figure, I wrote an article also for $25, and made about $4 on page views. so that's nearly $40 this week. Ok.. still not a lot -- but I'm new! I'm just starting, and still learning. And if I can make $40/week with what I've got, I can double it and make $80. Then triple it, and make $120. Remember, with affiliate marketing, it's that set it and forget it thing - once you've got the work done, it keeps making money for you even if you don't do anything else.

Also, my money came in this Monday, so I've done a transfer over to PayPal. As soon as that's through, I'll be purchasing One Week Marketing from PotPieGirl. I'm REALLY eager to get started!! I already have a couple niche ideas, so I just need to get the blue print on how to get started. If you think One Week Marketing might be something you'd like to try, or if you're just interested in seeing what it's all about, PotPieGirl let's you download the first 18 pages for free. Check it out if you're at all interested in making money online.

If you've checked out Squidoo and would like to know how to get started making lenses the easiest way, PotPieGirl also makes a great Squidoo tutorial available for free download. I had already started making Squidoo lenses and thought I knew what I was doing - her tutorial made me better and faster. I recommend it if you want to make money - or just make lenses. It's free, so you can't go wrong.

Oh - and my lens traffic? Remember last week when I said it had moved up to 215 views per week? Up through today I was at 320/week. w00t!

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to Get Backlinks to Your Blog (ronmedlin.com)
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Some of my money making ideas...

I've been trying (albeit not very hard) for a few years now to think of ways to make money. I have to admit that I've been looking for a way to make a decent amount of money (say, $1500/month) with something that I could do from home, would give me lots of time with my family, and wouldn't cost me anything to start. And if I didn't have to work very hard, that would be even better!

As I mentioned, my first money making idea was article writing. And right now I've got a small income stream, about $140, from it that includes about 4 hours of work a month. That could easily grow if I wrote more articles - I get paid per click, so the more articles I have out there, obviously the more clicks I'll get. It takes a lot of knowledge about SEO (search engine optimization), which means you've got to know about keywords, finding KWs that people are looking for, and getting them to your article. If you're article doesn't rank high on Google, you probably won't get a lot of page hits.

So, to get my articles higher on Google, I started making backlinks - and that brought me to Squidoo. This is the most recent of my money making ideas, and I'm following a plan that I learned from Jackie Lee's Christmas Cash Blueprint. It has everything I was looking for - it was simple to follow, I could start it right now with no material, and it was FREE. I've been building CCB lenses on Squidoo since the 1st of October - I have nearly 30 of them. So far, I've seen $35 in sales. It's not much, I realize - but we'll see how things go as we pass the middle of November here.

And where do I go from here? Well, hopefully, the lenses from the CCB will continue pulling some sales for me even after the holidays are over. I can refresh those lenses, take out the Christmas references and link them to some other blogs. But apart from that, I'm going to move on to PotPieGirl's One Week Marketing plan. Basically, it's doing niche sites - picking a product (either physical or digital) and making pages based on SEO and keywords to get people to come and buy the product. I'm sure it's not as easy as I just made it sound :) But that's what I'm going to be doing for the next 6 months. I'll post here about what I learn, and how I do. If I'm doing other things, like the article writing, I'll also post about that. And I'll keep a tally of how much I'm actually making here - so if you're following along, you can see if the work I have to put into it is worth the trouble.

If the PotPieGirl or Squidoo sound interesting to you, she's got a FREE Squidoo guide - click on over and check it out.