These are my favorites:

Squidoo – Squidoo has a fantastic platform and is very easy to use.  It does pay 2 months behind, but once you get going it is steady income, even if you take a break for a while.  Join SquidU and ask questions, share your latest pages (lenses) and ask for critiques and suggestions.  If you are a WAHM (Work At Home Mom) then you are especially well off.  Join Rocket Moms for an already built exclusive community of  friends.

HubPages – HubPages is easy to use and has a different payment scheme than Squidoo, but according to several people I know, you can earn much more than on Squidoo.  Many of us are active on both.

Associated Content - It’s pretty simple, you create the content, which are typically short articles, and Associated Content automatically distributes it to their huge list of topic-related Publishers.  Write about your favorite sponge for cleaning and it will be published on someone’s kitchen website.  Nifty! You earn money based upon how many visitors (hits) it received.  You could also link back to other related pages (such as your Squidoo or HubPages).  It’s win win!

Blogger – Sign up for Amazon Affiliates and you can easily display Amazon product links via their built-in tools.  You can also link to your other sites.

You will find that the months leading up to and including December are the most lucrative, being that it is Christmas shopping  season.   All of the above sites pay into your PayPal.com account.  Then you can set PayPal up to transfer to your real bank account down the road.  It took a few months of part time work and I was earning a few hundred dollars per month.  My results are probably typical for an active member of these sites.  Some people earn much, much more than me.

The key is to become part of the affiliate community by taking part in forums, social networking sites, and within the above sites, so that your friends will visit and hopefully bump up your pages or whatever.  For example, if you like to be on Facebook, look for and add Squidoo friends.  If you are a person that likes forums, then join SquidU (Squidoo), HubPages Forum, and others.  You will find very active members and probably become good internet friends with a few dozen people.  A lot of these folks are even meeting via Meetup.com and becoming “real life friends”, after all it’s always nice to make a new friend or a dozen.

1. Sony PlayStation Move | Games and Accessories – All about the upcoming Move motion detecting game system.  I’m very happy with this lens, as I’ve worked very hard on it.
2. The Best Wii Fit Games
3. Silly Bandz
4. A Review of the Top Gaming Mice
5. Neighborhood Watch – This is raising money for the Inner City Scholarship Fund
6. Winter Emergency Car Kits

Notice the variety of topics?  Yes, I’m trying to spread my wings and see how the visitor rate and click-throughs differ.  Also, I used different inline CSS to enhance them with borders, different colors, and other webpage spice.

CommentLuv, which is a WordPress and Drupal plugin that allows you to comment and then have your most recent blog post or RSS feed post to be included at the bottom of your comment.  To have this work, just type in your URL into the appropriate URL or URI field.  Once the comment is accepted then you would see a link.

This works very well for any web page, blog, and other sites, such as Squidoo.

The other is a Widget for WordPress blogs that is called Top Commenter.  It allows the blogger to display the most prolific commenters on the blog, over a period of time, often a month.  In the case of my blog, Top Commenter is only on the front page, so the link value is not diluted throughout the site.

Both can be set by the blogger to be dofollow (meaning your link will include the linkjuice from the search engines), which includes this blog as well.

How to Find Commentluv and Top Commenter Blogs

There are various linkbuilding programs out there, free and otherwise:

• Fast Blog Finder *Recommended
  
• Real Link Finder
• Comment Kahuna
• Traffic Kahuna (same author as above)

In addition there are great online search tools and listings:

• Do Follow Diver – Allows you search through a listing of more than 700 dofollow blogs, including many with Top Commenter and CommentLuv.
• A list of over 100 blogs using CommentLuv.
• The official CommentLuv active sites list.

Don’t Spam!

The important thing here is to not abuse these sites.  Spamming hurts everyone and if a blogger finds too many spammers coming from a certain region of the world easily can block an entire IP range.  Also, both of these widgets/plugins allow the blogger to block certain people automatically.

In addition, the spam-blocking plugging known as Akismet and the process of manually authorizing each blog post will eliminate any post deemed as spam.  The important part when posting on blogs using either or both is realizing that its simply not worth taking the time to spam, as your comments will assuredly not be allowed.

If you don’t already know, Squidoo is a free social networking site in which you build pages (known on Squidoo as ‘lenses’).  Also, Squidoo is a revenue sharing community (shares the money with the members).  There is no cost to you whatsoever.

First off, I’d like to mention a few of the benefits of making lenses  on Squidoo, as they will help you understand the value of ranking, in general.

The benefits of Squidoo:

Free – Yes, Squidoo is completely free.

Ease of Use – Building lenses is actually very easy. Squidoo provides a growing selection of modules which are available to every lensmaster.

Social – The Squidoo community is one of the friendliest and most helpful that I have found on the internet.  By taking part in Squidoo’s forum, called SquidU, commenting and receiving comments from other members, and being a part of the external Squidoo-related sites, you can meet many other friendly Squids from around the world.

Express Yourself - There are few places on the internet that provide you with so many easy to use tools, a platform to earn money, and a free way to share your passions, skills, and general interests.  Squidoo is a great place!

Money – You can earn a steady income via the monthly payments from Squidoo (not to forget any of the affiliate income you can earn in addition).  The monthly payments are based upon the “Payout Tiers” that are further based upon the average ranking on Squidoo, for a given month.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization is an important part of ranking on Squidoo, in the sense that it plays a huge role in search engine traffic to your lens.  The benefit of Squidoo is that you can, and often will, learn a ton about on-page SEO.  You will be able to have much more clarity about on-page SEO than you would if you have an entire website in mind, such as this blog.

Sign up for Squidoo

A few terms to know:

Squid – A member of Squidoo

Lensmaster – Same as above.  Everybody who creates lenses (pages) on Squidoo is a lensmaster.

Lens – a page created by a Lensmaster

Module – Free components that you can add to your lenses to give them unique features and content.

WiP – Work in Progress, means that the lens is still being worked on and has not been published or indexed by Squidoo.

Publish – Once you are satisfied with your lens, for now, you can publish it so Squidoo will then index it and make it available to the other lensmasters and general public to see.

Dashboard – This is the main screen where you can adjust your settings, check your stats, and access important links within Squidoo.

Lensrank – It is the numerical position in which your lens exists when compared to all other published lenses.  Lensrank changes (normally) on a daily basis, based upon a variety of factors.

Squidoo HQ – The paid staff of programmers and others that work at Squidoo.

Squidcast – A message about a lens that can be sent out to fans that you have on Squidoo.

URL – Uniform Resource Locator, in other words, a web address; ie http://www.example.com

Nofollow – This is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.*Also, you can read through this post on Nofollow.  The opposite term is ‘dofollow’, which is not an official term of any kind.  It is more of a way of thinking in which the webmaster purposely allows the “link juice” to be passed to the other site, as a way of possibly rewarding the other site (or, just to be nice).

How the payments work:

Squidoo sends payments to Squidoo members (or charities) on a monthly basis, usually a the beginning of the second week of each month.  Payments are always 2 months behind, so you will not see any money for at least the first 2 months from building your first lens(es).

Once you have created a good lens, you then decide to publish it, so that others can see it.  The lens then will become part of the overall ranking of all published lenses on Squidoo.  The payment amounts are broken down into “Tiers”.  Based upon the average position throughout the month each lens would approximately*  the amount listed below, as part of Squidoo’s revenue sharing.

For each lens, the following payment tiers apply:

Tier1: $10.00+ range – Below a lensrank of approximately 2,000
Tier2: $1-2 range – LR Between 2,000 and 10,000 (Approx.)
Tier3: $.08 – LR Between 10,000 and 60,000 (Approx.)
There may not be any fixed upper end to Tier3. It may be determined each pay period, so may fluctuate around 60,000.

*The Tier level and payment amount changes slightly every month.

The following is a breakdown of the top few lenses that are mine.  The first column is from 2 months ago, the second column is from last month, and the third column is the total earned since I created the lens.  My top lens was created about 4 or 5 months ago.  Some of the lenses on the list were created within the past month and have no earnings yet.

As you can see, it would only take 10 lenses in the first Tier (top 2000 or so) to earn over $100.00 per month.  There are many people that earn a few hundred dollars each month and then use the money toward apartment rent, a vacation, or just extra cash.

Tips for Improving Your Lens Rank

So, without further ado, I will explain how you can improve your overall rank.

The factors themselves are somewhat of a secret for Squidoo HQ.  Some things are well known, some lesser known, and some are closely guarded secrets, theories, or ideas, as to what affects the lens rank.  The algorithm that Squidoo HQ uses is tweaked fairly frequently to be fair and just to the lensmasters.  The algorithm also tries to catch and punish those that are trying to abuse the system.  It is very effective.

Factors affecting lens rank:

Ratings – From your fellow Squidoo lensmasters.  It is a five star rating system.

Favorites – In addition to rating lenses, lensmasters can Favorite your lens, which allows them to receive Squidcasts from you for the specific lens.

Traffic – External and internal visitors to your lens.

Clickouts – Visitors continuing on past your lens to visit the links that you are suggesting.

Sales – Squidoo provided affiliate modules that you are using on your lens.

Updating - How often and how much your lens is updated throughout the month.

Other lenses – The other lenses factor into the ranking of one another.  If one has moved up slightly and your has moved down a little, your lens may end up in another position until the next daily update occurs.

Unknown – There are some unknown factors that Squidoo HQ keeps as a closely guarded secret.

The most important thing to do is to create a well-designed, interesting, original lens.  Emphasis on original.  You will find that visitors won’t stick around long or rate your lens well if they find it lacking on any of those counts.  So, put in the time, energy, and imagination that it takes to create a good lens.  Otherwise, you are pretty much wasting your time.

Once your lens is published and then indexed by Squidoo, the lensrank will become a factor.

Ratings – The best thing to do to increase the likelihood of your lens getting ratings (aside from building a good lens) is to get the word out to the Squidoo community.  There are a variety of good ways to do this.

Join Tagfoot, as there is a large amount of Squidoo folks there.  Just don’t spam. Currently Tagfoot is in private beta.

Another dofollow social bookmarking site is Folkd.  It has a limited following and is in a gamma state (similar to beta, but not).

Send Squidcasts from your Squidoo Dashboard or lens out to all your Squidoo fans.

Join and use Twitter and send out Tweets every so often to your friends about your lenses.  Many lensmasters are signed up on Twitter.

Join MyBlogLog, as it also has a large Squidoo community, among others.  It is owned by Yahoo!

Submit your lens for a critique in the Critique Me section of the SquidU forum.

In addition to normal star ratings the most important thing is to focus on “quality, not quantity”.  Don’t bother submitting lenses that are of poor quality.  Try to add as much interesting and original content as you can, while still keeping a nicely designed lens.  Include photos and visually interesting html throughout the lens.

Favorites – You can not control who Favorites your lens, however you can make such an interesting and fun or informative lens that they will want to return.

Traffic – Traffic coming to your lens, both internally (from within Squidoo) and externally, are a large factor in determining rank.  Weekly traffic above 50 visitors seems to begin to help, along with ratings.  Once you get above a few hundred per week, you will likely be able to keep that lens in the top 2000 without much of a problem.  A big part of getting traffic to your lens is tied to keyword analysis and on-page SEO, both of which I will cover in more detail in a future post.

You should also ping your Squidoo lenses whenever you update the lens with more content or make a change to it.  Squidoo Tools and Resources is loaded with helpful tools, including an excellent list of ping tools.  This will notify the various ping services of your lens URL, which will then be made available to websites all over the world.

Submit your RSS feed to the RSS feed services and include your RSS feeds on blog or websites that you maintain.  Squidoo Tools and Resources has a listing of good RSS feed submission services, along with related links.

Build backlinks to your lenses in the various Squidoo-friendly directories, websites, blogs, and any other relevant and quality sites that will allow a link. Contact related sites to the content on your lenses and see if they would like to link to your lens.

Post interesting, thoughtful comments not only on other lenses, but also on external blogs.  With respect to blogs, try to comment on blogs that are related to your lens content or that may have an interest in the content.  Don’t leave short, thoughtless comments.  In other words, don’t spam.

Clickouts – The amount of your visitors that like your lens enough to read through it and then follow a link or links does appear to factor into lens rank.  Provide good, valuable links to sites of interest for your visitors.  Make your lens a helpful and interesting place to visit.  Include videos, links to related content, widgets, and anything else that engages the reader.

Also, possibly how much your visitors clicking on Adsense and other ads appearing on the page.

Sales – There are a large number of modules, such as the Amazon and Ebay modules, that give the lens visitor the opportunity to buy something.  In addition to the normal Squidoo payouts, you would earn a percentage of commission from these types of modules.

The best way to increase sales is to blend the product (for example, a book on Amazon) into the lens.  If you have a lens about Fancy Toothbrushes, you could talk about “what makes a good toothbrush” and then show your favorite one, which links to it on Amazon.  Don’t pepper your lens with links to products, as this does not tend to end up as a sale.  The most successful lenses have only a few product or service affiliate links.

Try to practice a 95/5 “rule” of 95% good, interesting content and only 5% are affiliate links.  You may find  less than 5% is even better.

Updating – It is important to show Squidoo that your lens is still fresh.  Every few days or couple weeks, you should go through each lens and update them or tweak them a bit.  Then re-publish the lens (and ping, etc).

Other lenses – You have no effect on what others produce or how they rank.  However, you can always try to make a better, higher quality lens than the other lensmasters.

Unknown – There are many unknown variables about how the Squidoo ranking system works.  Also, Squidoo HQ is constantly tweaking it.  Factors that could come into play could be which category your lens falls under, how many other lenses are in that category (for example, the Local category is fairly easy to rank), how much search engine traffic you get versus referral traffic, and how long of a period visitors spend on your lens.

Lenses and sites that are very helpful

Squidoo Tools and Resources - My lens which is made up of helpful tools, addons, guides, etc, that you can use as you build and promote your lenses.

SquidUtils – An extremely helpful set of free tools specifically designed for Squidoo.

Captain Squid – A very informative blog with all sorts of tips and information about Squidoo.  It is maintained by one of the most profitable lensmasters around.

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