Make Cash Online From Your Articles With Squidoo

Squidoo, you have probably heard of it, but have you used it? Up until recently all I really knew about Squidoo is that it drives major traffic and that people love it. I saw it as yet another place where you can submit your articles and maybe get some exposure, but I didn't realise the full potential of this site until I signed up and dived in.

In this post I will be talking about Squidoo.com and how you can use it to make money online.

What is Squidoo?

Development on Squidoo started in 2005, launching a beta testing period in October of that year. The launch team consisted of Seth Godin, his book editor Megan Casey, former Fast Company employee Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr.

Squidoo is a user-generated website which uses the concept of a lens as its primary feature. In his ebook "Everyone's an Expert," Godin describes a lens as "focusing light and showing us what we need to see."

The site came out of beta testing two months later and reached 100,000 lenses within the first six months.

What is a Lens?

Lenses are much like blog posts, except they're on a single subject.
The users who create lenses are called "lensmasters" (like Webmaster). A lensmaster can be anyone with an interest in a specific subject; they do not necessarily have to be experts.

Squidoo also offers many ways to enhance a publishers lenses through things called modules. Modules work much in the same way as widgets. They basically add extra functionality to your Squidoo pages e.g. Guest comments, Link List, RSS Feed and video modules plus many more.

You can also earn points and trophies related to your activity on the site, these can be used to unlock more tools and other content you can use to add more functionality to a lens.

Before you start creating your lens check out the Originality Pact.

 

How can I make money online with Squidoo?

The site also allows content creators to make money online from referral links to sites using modules like Amazon.com and Ebay. Lensmasters also get a share in the advertising revenue generated from Google ads and in-text ads on their lens.

Lensmasters can track their earnings through the easy to use dashboard and also see other statistical data about the activity on their lens.

Sqidooo also gives users the option to give a share of their profits to charity. This is a great way for top money makers to give a little help to those who need it.

Check out this page for more info on building a lens: http://www.squidoo.com/whybuildalens

Royalties and Payments

As I'm fairly new to Squidoo I have decided to link this section to a brilliant lens I found that explains in much greater detail than I can, how Squidoo's earnings, Payouts & Royalties work.

Here is the link: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-payouts

Tips:

Lenses are moderated before they are made 100% live to make sure there is no duplicate content being submitted, so make sure your lens is unique before submitting.

Use all the tools available to make your lens as interesting as possible, also interlink your lenses if you can. As well as interlinking, getting some backlinks to your lenses will help them do better in search engines.

Like all ways to make money online, you need to stick at it. The more articles you have, the more money you make.

Read more >>

HubPages, Good Or Bad? Why Join?

If you want to share ideas, advice, or opinions about, pretty much, any topic, HubPages is a very good place to start.

What is good about HubPages?

1. HubPages allows you to earn money from your ideas through Google Adsense, Amazon, eBay, and others.
2. HubPages hosts your articles for free. With HubPages, you don't have to pay or worry about web hosting and web design. There is no approval process, so once you publish your article, it is available to the public.
3. HubPages is frequently crawled by Google. Articles created on HubPages get quickly indexed, and start appearing on Google, often within the day. The most that an article of mine has taken to appear on Google is 2-3 days.
4. HubPages has a simple, user-friendly interface for writing up your ideas. You don't need to have any html, or web design expertise.
5. HubPages is run by an efficient team who is very responsive to user questions and suggestions.
6. HubPages has a wonderful community. There are many active members on HubPages who know a lot about website promotion, and design. Many of them are even willing to share this expertise for free. There are also many good writers, who know a lot about a large range of topics, so it is not too difficult to find a group of people to help critique, and improve your article. There is even a message board for posting your articles to get input from other writers. I learnt a lot about site promotion, and writing, from the HubPages community.
7. HubPages has many interesting community activities. There is HubNuggets where a set of high quality articles are chosen every week, and members get to vote on which ones they like best. The top five are featured in the weekly HubPages newsletter, that is sent to all members. There is also HubMob where a new topic is put forth every week, and many members participate by writing articles on the shared topic. These activities help new members hook up with the existing community.
8. HubPages is an interesting place to be. There is always something happening in the Forums, or some interesting discussion going on around an article. There are so many colorful and engaging personalities on HubPages, you will have a hard time tearing yourself away from the Forums to go work on your article. 

What is bad about HubPages?

1. HubPages articles do not start off with a Google ranking. This is in contrast to other article sites, for example, eZine, which gives articles a good Google ranking from the outset.
2. HubPages authors only own 60% of the total advertisements on their articles. A click on an author owned advertisement will generate revenue for the author, while a click on the other 40% of advertisements will generate revenue for HubPages.
3. HubPages does little to help authors promote their content. It is mostly up to the individual authors to drive traffic to their own articles.
4. HubPages only allows an article to have a maximum of two links from the same domain.
5. HubPages controls how advertisements appear and where they appear in your article. You also do not have the ability to enter html code.

Why Join HubPages?

1. HubPages has very low startup costs. No web expertise is needed, and the service is free.
2. HubPages is a good place to start learning about how to make money online.
3. HubPages can provide you with backlinks to help drive traffic to your other sites.

HubPages is a good starting point. Once you begin to learn more about online marketing and site promotion, you can start to venture forth into other writing platforms, that perhaps give you greater flexibility in the design, and layout of content and advertising. But even then, the HubPages community is always a valuable source of expertise, and HubPages is always useful as a source of traffic.Join HubPages.

This post is by Sephy Shake

Sephy has a PhD in Computer Science and She used to work at Accenture Technology Labs where her work was featured in many technology publications. She is now happily retired with her two dogs.

Read more >>

16 Great Places to Submit Your Articles

Today's post is 16 Great Article directories to submit your articles to. Submitting articles is very popular for all kinds of reasons, one being that some of these article directories attract vast numbers of readers every day. As well as lots of eyes on your work, the chance of getting a nice juicy high PR backlink is irresistible.

Why Use Article Directories?

Submitting articles to article directories can benefit you whether you are a writer, an SEO or even a company. Well written articles submitted to the right directories can drive a flood of traffic back to a publishers site with little or no cost.

• For writers, article submission is key to getting more eyes on their work. You can spend more time writing and less time trying to drive traffic to your blog.
• For seo, its a great way of obtaining high pr, anchored backlinks making link building easier.
• For affiliate marketers, reach thousands of potential customers and send them back to your sales pages using your high pr anchored links.

There are various reasons why you should submit your articles to Article submission sites, but there are hundreds out there.

What ones should I go with?

Here is a list of 16 brilliant places to submit your articles to. They all have differences, so please check'em out to see which ones suit your needs best...

Ezinearticles

Technorati

HubPages

Squidoo

Zimbio

Examiner

ArticlesBase

Ontoplist

GoArticles

Gather

Triond

Snipsly

iSnare

Helium

ArticleAlley

ArticleCity

Tips:

• Make sure the articles you submit are UNIQUE. Search engines DO NOT like duplicate content, although sometimes you can get away with it.
• If you are going to submit articles from your your site, make sure your sites article page is indexed BEFORE you submit it. This way your site will be marked as the ORIGINAL source.
• Instead of submitting whole articles submit a detailed introduction and give reasons why you should read the whole article at your site, and leave a link..

Read more >>