The Value of Monetizing Your Blog Through Nonadvertising Opportunities:

Displaying ads on your blog is certainly a simple way to try to generate an income from it. However, ads are not a guaranteed money-maker. For one reason, they are often dependent on the actions of your blog's readers. For another reason, generating a significant amount of money through advertising on your blog is unlikely (possible but unlikely) unless your blog receives a very large amount of traffic each day.

By diversifying your income-generating opportunities, you'll have a greater chance of successfully monetizing your blog. Following are a variety of nonadvertising methods to earn money from your blog.


Sell Merchandise:
Many bloggers have success selling branded and non-branded merchandise on their blogs through CafePress.


Ask for Donations:
It can't hurt to ask your readers to donate to your blog. Some of them just might do it. You can add a donation button to your blog through PayPal.


Sell Your Guest Posting Services:
Most bloggers write guest posts for other blogs for free as a way to promote their own blogs. However, you can also offer your guest posting services for a fee.


Write and Sell an Ebook:
If your blog has loyal readers then they must like what you have to say. Similarly, if you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic, then there is a good chance people will want to read more from you outside of your blog. Leverage that position by writing an ebook and offering it for sale on your blog.


Write a Book:
If you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic and developed a strong following, you could write a book and either try to have it published or self-publish.


Become a Professional Blogger:
Many blogs and blog networks look for talented and knowledgeable writers to author blogs, and many of those blogging jobs are paying. Apply to blogging jobs to boost your blogging income.


Apply for Other Writing Jobs:
Blogging can help you polish your writing skills, which can help you land other freelance writing jobs online and offline. Transitioning into freelance writing from blogging is not unusual and can be very lucrative.


Become a Public Speaker:
If you've successfully established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic and generated a decent amount of traffic to your blog, you could offer your services as a public speaker at events related to your area of expertise.


Become a Consultant:
If you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic, you can offer consulting services to other people or business' who could use the help of your expertise. Alternatively, you could offer consulting services related to developing and writing a successful blog.

I made two new lenses on Squidoo today. Guess I had a sudden rush of inspiration come over me =) Ok - truth is that I came across some good keywords and decided to test them out. I like to test niche markets on Squidoo. The stats Squidoo offers on our dashboards are pretty good these days and that makes Squidoo a wonderful testing ground for potential niche markets I’m thinking of expanding on. And hey, Squidoo pays, too…. not a bad deal, is it?

Anyway, as I started making my first lens today, I wrote down what I was doing as I went through the lens creation process the way I do it. As I was looking over my notes I thought, “Hey, this would make a good blog post for my readers!” So - here we go:

How to Make a Lens on Squidoo

Step 1:
Before I ever step “foot” into Squidoo, I do some brainstorming first. Sometimes my brainstorming comes from a product idea, sometimes it comes from a keyword idea - hence, the “chicken/egg” nickname. Regardless of what came first, the keyword or the product, both product research and keyword research are required

If I found a product that looks promising, I do heavy keyword research to find those little golden nugget keywords that have decent search volume but little competition. I use Wordtracker. Wordtracker is flat out the best keyword research tool around - hands down. (Note: Wordtracker is not free, but you can get a free trial run with it by clicking here

On the other hand, sometimes I am playing around in Wordtracker and I find some sweet keywords, so then I do product research to see if there is a way to monetize my idea. Either way it happens, I always have at least one product in mind and a list of keywords to focus on.

2. Write content:To me, having my main content written before I get to Squidoo to create a lens is very important. I can focus completely on my content and make sure it is keyword optimized properly before I get to messing with any of the modules, etc. I want to be sure that my content is high-quality and could stand on it’s own without all the other whistles and bells. In essence, the above steps are just like article marketing.

Sometimes, I use PLR (Private Label Rights) articles for the content on my lenses. PLR means I didn’t actually write the content, but I have rights to it that I can change it up, edit the article, and add my name to it as if it was my own work. Problem with PLR content is that most likely, it has already been indexed on the internet - meaning I am not using unique content on my lens. That’s why I re-write the PLR articles to make them unique. I use a free web-based program called DupeCop to make sure my re-write is at least 30% unique from the original article. Therefor, my Squidoo content will be seen as unique content by the search engines and I won’t suffer any duplicate content penalties.

3. Create a lens: Yup, time to go to Squidoo. I have my keywords, I have my content, and I have my products. I go to Squidoo, click “create a lens” and go through the steps.

– First, I give my new lens a title. I don’t stress over this too much because this can be changed at any time. I also always tend to choose “do my own thing” when asked what I want to do with my lens. Why? I guess just because I like working with a “blank piece of paper”. I guess that is really just personal preference.

– Second, I give my lens 3 main keyword tags. Again, not a big stress thing either - these tags can be changed and added at any time. Key thing to remember is that if your title is a strong keyword, make sure to add it to your tags.

– Third, its choosing a url time. I believe the words you choose for your url are very important. I like to get my best keywords in here if at all possible. There are over a quarter of a million lenses in Squidoo now - odds are, your first choice might already be taken. Don’t be afraid to use hyphens if needed - I use them all the time. I think that when someone sees your url on Google as a search return, that it is easier for them to read puppy-training-tips than it is to read puppytrainingtips. Google doesn’t “read” hyphens, so it’s all good to do it that way.

Thats all for the actual set-up part. Enter your capcha code and get into edit mode for your new lens

4. Putting the lens together:Since I chose “do my own thing” in the original set-up for my new Squidoo lens, I get into edit mode and only have an intro module - and nothing else.

Content comes first. I choose “add more modules” and get 4 or 5 new text modules, click save and get to copy/pasting my pre-written content in.

Some things to remember -

– Your intro module is VERY important. Make sure your keywords are in there and you follow good SEO rules here. (Hint: I offer some great SEO tactics for Squidoo lenses as part of my nine-ebook Squidoo Profit System).

– My pre-written content is never intended to fill only one module. I will use all 4 or 5 modules and fill it with the content I have already written. When I wrote the content, I broke it into sections. Each section/module will have its own well keyworded title. Module titles are also VERY important.

5. Linking/monetization:Now, I take the steps for my lens to do what it is intended to do. For some, it is to drive traffic to a site, for others it is for affiliate products… whatever the purpose is, I go back in my lens and link as needed.

6. Beautification: Time to “dress up” my lens. I add images, Rss feeds, guestbook, etc, etc to make the lens flow, look better, and suit my needs.

7. Tags: Remember that keyword list I already had prepared? This is where it comes into play. I used that keyword list at first to write my content, now I use it to add relevant tags to my lens.

8. Pre-Publish: Now, I usually hit publish to take a look at my almost finished product. I read through it, check for typos and bad grammar and look for opportunities to bold this, space here, italics there - all to make the readers experience more enjoyable.

9. Clean ‘er Up! Last shot in “edit mode” as I make any edits I feel I need. Then I hit “publish” and git’r done!

10. “View This Page” and admire my work! Thats all folks!

Squidoo has become yet a famous phenomenon that enriches the arsenal of Internet Marketing tools. With the availability of Squidoo it is even easier to start an internet home business within an hour with a website (=lens) to promote your products.

Seth Godin founded Squidoo and launched the website in October 2005. It is a platform designed to make it easy for anyone, for free, to set up a single page on a topic he or she knows or cares a lot about. It's a social network of user-generated lenses -single pages that highlights one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise.

Users of Squidoo, or lensmasters can use a lens template to create links, feeds, abstracts, and lists for other users. There are different modules that allow you to create Flickr photos, maps, blogs, eBay auctions, YouTube videos, iTunes music, Amazon products, and other links. You can get all these functions on your lens for free within an hour. You can even earn money with Squidoo since there are standard incorporated Adsense ads on the lenses, and you can sell for example (e-)books or other products for Amazon or other shopping chains. Squidoo splits its revenue with its "co-op" of lensmasters. 5% goes straight to charity, first. Then 50% goes to the lensmasters. 45% goes to Squidoo.

Because Squidoo is quite popular with, and if you have an internet home business, with or without a website, then it is advisable to employ Squidoo as one of the Internet Marketing tools to promote your products. No matter what of internet home business you are involved in, everyone's dream ticket is a first page ranking in Google's search results.

I you have an existing website with a page rank (PR), link your lens to the website pages to improve the ranking of your lens first. Over time your lens will be indexed by and will give a PR link (and traffic) to your website in return. You could promote the same or different products on your website and lens.

If you don't have a website, you can create a lens and promote your products immediately. Over the past months, Squidoo lenses have been showing up on the first page of Google for very competitive search terms.

In fact my first lens was about a very competitive Internet Marketing keyword phrase (135,000,000 results). In a couple of days my lens showed up as No. 19 in Google.....and it didn't cost me a penny to get there. For comparison, it took me four months hard working on to get to the same position in for the same search term, while I had to pay web fee monthly and other costs to do the SEO. Although my lens in this case was 'pulled up' by my website with higher Google position, it is easier to get it ranked by Google.

In conclusion, Squidoo is an easy, excellent, and above all free internet marketing tool. It should be employed to promote products and increase sales in every internet home business.