This is my absolute favorite way to make money online. I have owned my own company in the past…three companies actually. One sold physical products (my own and wholesale) and the other two were service businesses. ALL were successful but I wasn’t happy long term. I found something I truly love in affiliate marketing. I don’t have to serve customers, send orders, keep inventory, etc. I just write…which I love to do…and promote other people’s products for a commission.

The Secret Affiliate Code shows you how one successful Internet Marketer uses a special system to drive traffic to his affiliate sites, ranking number one in Google and raking in a ton of money….as in thousands in one day. Overall I liked the book. I think it would be an awesome read for someone who is just getting into affiliate marketing. But it also had some tricks for veterans to. It gives links to all the major affiliate companies, it explains how you can find high conversion products, and most importantly how to drive lots of traffic your way.

What I appreciate most is that this is not a book that touts some fast, easy way to make money. This system does require time and work…it is not plug and play. Some of it seems kind of tedious even but it is not black hat and it is valuable for those that want traffic and high rankings right away and can’t wait entirely on their awesome content. The book has quite a bit of info about setting up Adwords campaigns with pictures and clear instructions and tips to make sure you aren’t going to go broke paying for traffic. But for the most part this book is all about FREE traffic and links using web 2.0 savvy. It was also full of cool links I had never seen that will be useful in the future.

The price is right to…only $67.00…but special hint…go to the page and then click away to leave the page and a box will pop up telling you can get it for $20 off…so only $47. Enjoy!

Day 6. Start making friends on a social media service like Digg or StumbleUpon. These services are a great place to network, because you’ll be establishing relationships with people who have the potential to send hundreds of visitors to your articles. If you vote up their content, you may be able to call in a favor later on by asking them to vote up posts you’ve written.

This one I do need to work on. I regularly submit my own posts to Stumbleupon and a few other social network sites but I haven’t really worked to gain “friends” there. I have been fortunate that some random people have started following me as friends though. I noticed recently that within a few days of posting about recycling household stuff for the garden that it was Stumbled and reviewed about 8 times. You really can’t underestimate the power of Stumbleupon. Last year one of web pages about using no shampoo on your hair got Stumbled by one gal who had lots of friends (who then reviewed and Stumbled) and my traffic skyrocketed up to an extra 4 to 5 hundred people a day. It stayed that way for a month and then petered out within 2 months. It was an awesome ride.

Mom Masterminds….one of the most awesome mentoring and networking groups ever…has a Blog Boost program where you can ask the other members to visit one of your blog posts and submit it to social networking sites for you. That is a big perk.

So my mission for this week is to start making “friends” on social networking sites…let’s call this mission a mission in progress.

But know what? Do you just sit back and hope that the keyword research you did and the market interest in the topic will help skyrocket your post to the top of search results bringing you lots of traffic and affiliate sales? Well hopefully all of that will happen but why wait? Start using the web 2.0 phenomanon to bring in immediate traffic and sales: Digg it, Hugg it, Reddit, Stumble It, ect. Submit it to the social bookmarking sites that are relevent to your site and this is easy to do if you have added a social bookmarking plugin to your blog like Sociable or Share This.

Also, find several blog carnivals that are appropriate for the post and submit it to them. This is a great way to get incoming links and new blog readers.

Happy Blogging!

Blogging Starter Pack – EVERYTHING you need to know about blogging. This great guide has step by step tutorials for all important aspects of getting a blog off the ground running from installation to marketing.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, social bookmarking, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon

Other users can also lensroll your lens to appear on the right sidebar of their lens page if they are so inclined.

You can do your best to make sure your lenses rank well via Squidoo searches by making sure they are properly tagged.

Lens have guestbook capabilities and it is helpful to find other lenses that you like and leave comments, giving you permanent links to your own lenses. This also helps to build community. Many times if you leave comments then those lens owners will return the favor and give your lens a favorable lens rank…adding to the cycle of traffic.

Squidoo also has a community form called SquidU. This forumm is a great place to network, meet other lensmasters, and even request that your lens be blessed by a SquidAngel. You will know if you have been blessed because a little angel will appear on your lense and your rank and thus traffic are greatly increased when you receive this honor. So it is great goal to build a truly excellent lense worthy of blessing.

You can also drive traffic to your lenses by linking to one or more of them OR your profile page which lists the lenses you have….on your other sites, blogs, and newsletters if you have them. You can also place a link in your signature line for community forums, discussion groups, and emails.

Your lenses can be added to various social book marking sites like Digg, HUGG, reddit, and stumbleupon. There is even a new one specifically for Squidoo lenses called lenseroll.

Do article marketing whereby you write and distribute article on various subjects to the free reprint article directories and put the link to your Squidoo page or pages in the by line. Whenever someone publishes your articles they will also be publishing those links.

So you can pretty much market a Squidoo page the same ways would promote a regular web site or blog.

So are you ready to Squidoo? Use this link to get started and after you make $15.00 Squidoo will give us both and extra $5.00!

Want to know more about Squidoo? Get the best Squidoo resource out there…Social Networking On Squidoo. I’ve read it…its awesome…if you want to Squidoo then you need it!

Technorati Tags: squidoo, social networking, web 2.0, lens, blog, article marketing

Aside from the shared lens commissions, Squidoo lenses are also very easy to monetize yourself. Squidoo is very lenient about allowing you to use third party advertising on your lens. You can promote your own websites, your own products, or promote your favorite affiliate products. You just work those links into the content and you get paid when visitors buy. You can also use your lens to prompt visitors to sign up for your mailing lists so that you can pitch your products or services to them at a later time.

I made my first two large affiliate sales through a Squidoo lense within 3 weeks of creating it. And I also get Squidoo commissions every month. I make a relatively modest amount….I think I have 6 very targeted niche lenses. But there are some Internet Marketers who have 100 lenses or more. One man that comes to mind is Lewis Smile. He has quite a few lenses and I was just reading one of those about why he loves Squidoo so much and he mentions that Squidoo just paid for his new laptop at 2500.00 so the potential to make a lot of money is definately there.

Want to know more about Squidoo? Get the best Squidoo resource out there…Social Networking On Squidoo. I’ve read it…its awesome…if you want to Squidoo then you need it!

Technorati Tags: squidoo, social networking, money, lens, affiliates

There are more an more web sites cropping up to imitate this system..hubpages comes to mind. But I have seen nothing that has the sophistication of Squidoo and Squidoo pages can rank very well with search engines and draw good traffic. For someone just getting started this is a painless way to get started.

Also when you have just published a new web site or blog It is helpful to get incoming links and Squidoo pages are a great way to accomplish this. You can link tot your other web sites as much as you like.

Want to know more about Squidoo? Get the best Squidoo resource out there…Social Networking On Squidoo. I’ve read it…its awesome…if you want to Squidoo then you need it!

Technorati Tags: squidoo, making money, web 2.0, blog, business, money, lens

For instance, you may have some information to share about red shoes but you don’t want to set up an entire web site about them. Squidoo gives you the option of building a lens about red shoes fairly quickly and then with different lens modules you make it interesting and attractive AND since Squidoo offers many ways to monetize your lens you can make some extra cash too. There are MANY benefits to using Squidoo but he best one has to be its ease of use in getting what is really a mini web site up and published quickly and with quality.

Another bonus, Squidoo shares profit with you. You can pocket the money you make or you can donate it to charity.

How do You Create a Lens?

Squidoo lenses are very easy to make. Even if you are a newbie to creating web pages and you have never blogged before…you can have a lens up and running in as little as 15 minutes.

Squidoo lenses are made up of “modules”. And there dozens of modules to choose from. There are modules for making lists, text modules – where you write about the subject of your lens, a module of links to related web pages or products, a poll module, a YouTube videos module…. There are modules for Amazon and Ebay auctions. With a little knowledge of the module system, you can have your lens built in no time at all.

Want to know more about Squidoo? Get the best Squidoo resource out there…Social Networking On Squidoo. I’ve read it…its awesome…if you want to Squidoo then you need it!

Technorati Tags: squidoo, social networking, web 2.0, blog, business, money, lens