If you have suggestions, please leave a comment below and I will add them.

Already to be considered:

• Zazzle
• Cafe Press
• Brighthub
• Squidoo (via affiliate modules/links)
• Hubpages

So, if you are looking for more potential followers, sign up for Twiends!

TrafficG

The first one is TrafficG.  It is not the largest or most popular, but  the layout is immediately easy to understand.   Unlike so many sites out there this one does not try to confuse you into clicking on something else.

The main page shows you your current credits (how many you have earned), the sites in which the credits can be distributed, and the Start Surfing button.

The Start Surfing is also available on the left side of the screen, along the menu.  Each page you visit uses a Captcha in the upper left corner, in order to deter automation.  You simply click on one of the three Captcha choices that you see.  Currently it is set to 20 seconds minimum between sites.

Features include:

1. Very simple site navigation and layout
2. One “splash page”
3. An excellent referral program, including contests
4. Many banners to use for referrals
5. A simple to use toolbar
6. 20 second timer

EasyHits4U

EasyHits4U is the most popular traffic exchange around.  It has existed since 2003.  The layout is pretty easy to follow, with a menu bar at the top of the site.

Features include:

1. Earn real money or credits toward more traffic
2. Includes a directory to add your site
3. Includes many prebuilt splash pages
4. Option to create your own splash pages
5. A site rotator to help you to manage, host, and track your sites
6. 20 second timer

StartXchange

StartXchange looks like it will catch up to others because of the founder very aggressively comping up with creative ways of gaining visitors and members.  He also hosts a very popular traffic exchange directory, which certainly helps.  It is the oldest, having been created in 2001.   Many of the traffic exchange sites out there are using a script written by the founder, Tim Linden.  He created the first version of StartXchange when he was 15 years old.  If you’re looking for an innovative traffic exchange then this is it.  They set the standard.

Features include:

1. Chat option
2. Contests and prizes
3. Ability to join various teams of people competing for prizes
4. An active forum
5. A very good referral program
6. Easy to understand layout and navigation
7. 10 second timer

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.

An offer to you:

If you have not yet signed up for Squidoo, I will even make an offer to mentor you, by giving tips and explaining things about Squidoo. All I ask is that you do your best, be fairly patient, and sign up via my referral link (click HERE).

My Experience:

Currently, I have 2 lenses within the top 100, out of a total of over 700,000 lenses in existance.  I’d say I’ve learned a thing or two by now.

In just the past few months of being an active member I consistantly make over $100 per month in Squidoo payments, not including affiliate royalties from Amazon, AllPosters, and others. It will only grow from there!

The Benefits:

There are so many ways to make money within Squidoo, it’s amazing.  The nice thing is that you don’t have to sign up for any other affiliates, if you don’t want to.  You can simply sign up for Squidoo and you will get a portion of the revenue.

If you don’t care to make money for yourself, you can also have your earnings automatically submitted to various charities too.

One of the benefits is the ability to focus on SEO down to the page level, unlike being concerned with entire sites. This really helps in understanding (better) the effects on on-page SEO and the value of backlinks and the internal linking structure.

The other is more from an affiliate point of view. you get to experiment with a multitude of different affiliate programs, most of them without signing up for anything. Just use Squidoo’s own affiliate modules and reap the rewards.

And last, but not least, you get to make lenses about whatever you feel like making.  I look at many of the topics of my lenses as doing a “research paper”, in that I may not be an expert on the subject, but have a curiousity about it.  I then research it and make an informative lens on the subject.  By the time I’m done, I am quite familiar.  All in all, it’s really fun!

I should also point out that the Squidoo community is very supportive and fun.  It’s one of the best experiences you could have online.

TagFoot is similar to Del.icio.us, Digg, and  Squidoo, but has it’s own unique features. It is designed in the smooth and easy to use Web 2.0 format.  Currently, visiting the main page will only bring you to the video, but you can still sign up and take part.  Once the site is fully operational (out of beta mode), then the search engines will crawl and rank the pages.

The supports staff are super friendly and very rapid to work on issues or ideas that the users think up.

Another nifty fact is that they have a 50% Adsense Revenue sharing program. The links are also dofollow, so you not only get traffic from your friends, but get a good backlink.

• Import your existing IE and/or Firefox bookmarks (you can import all as private and change later)
• easily manage and access all of your bookmarks from any computer
• quickly share anything you find on the web with your friends
• share what you want, when you want, with whom you want
• tag all of your imported bookmarks so they are more easily found
• If you’re using Firefox, you can drag and drop links onto your sidefoot – onto a specific tag or section.
• tag your friends and you can send a message and/or share with that tag – everyone you tagged will get your message as opposed to you having to remember everyone’s member name. I use this when I post the Adsense articles – I share with “super users.”
• go to Amazon, find something you like and add it to your tagfoot wishlist. Watch as tagfoot scrapes the page and grabs all of the possible prices for you.
• Play with privacy settings. Add something to your wishlist that you want to buy for a friend, tag it with your friends name, and set it to private. You just created a private shopping list for that friend!
• It’s 100% free!

TagFoot Signup

This is the time to sign up so you can give them your feedback on what you would like to see!

Update: Tagfoot is now adding, not only Adsense revenue sharing, but also has plans for adding other ways of making money (along with being a part of a fun and growing community).  They are asking the members for input right now on other ways, such as Ebay, Amazon, Cafe Press and many more.

Read this:

Additional revenue sharing
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
So, we’ve got our Google Adsense sharing program setup and we’re thrilled so many have jumped on board. We’re now looking forward to getting tagfoot out into the wild so we can start making you guys (and us too) some real money. Until then, it’s going to continue to be pennies no doubt.

First, we need to quiet down the “messages overload” noise we spoke about last week – and we’re on that hard core right now. While we’re banging away on that, there are a couple of other things we can get into regarding moving to a public beta.

One of the most important, is making money.

Revenue sharing
We’ve got a ton of options beyond Adsense and we’re hoping some of you pros will help us whittle it down a bit. Here are a couple of ideas we’re tossing around that we think have the most potential – both keeping in mind the same type of impression based sharing we’re currently doing with Adsense.

1. Amazon
2. iTunes

Amazon
Your personal tagfoot wishlist can end up being a virtual treasure trove in more ways than you think. Not just a place for your friends to find stuff for you on your birthday, your wishlist can make you money all year round by driving traffic from your blogs, MySpace, Facebook etc.

It’s an easy setup. Simply pop in your Amazon affiliate ID, just as you did with your Adsense ID, and we’ll attach it to everything in your wishlist. Next, plug your tagfoot wishlist RSS feed into your personal blog, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and you’re done.

iTunes
The tubefoot is being used to play free music all day long right now by quite a few. We’re guessing it’s going to get hit pretty hard once word gets out. We can set up the tubefoot with a “purchase” link for each track – linking directly to iTunes.

Same drill – plug in your iTunes affiliate ID, we attach it to the tracks, members copy your tracks and potentially buy’em.

Let’s do this
We’ve got a couple of other ideas we’re throwing around but, we thought it best to hand it off to you guys at this point. We’d like to get most of this stuff solidified over the next couple of weeks so we have a chance at generating some holiday revenue for every one – let’s act quick.

1. What are your thoughts regarding the methods above?
2. What other options would you like to see us consider?

No holds barred.

So, if you want to be in on the discussion, NOW is the time to do it!  Sign up and make your ideas heard.

It’s a fantastic information sharing community that provides a way for members to post articles within their expertise.  It allows you to maintain your own blog, which you can then talk about your other sites or interests via your signature link.  It is dofollow, so your link will be followed by the search engines.  Unlike most other social article and networking sites, you can be part of a growing and fun community.

Right now there are 19 different ‘Channels’ in which you can post your articles or information.

Google Knol

The great feature is that Knol is 100% Adsense revenue sharing!  Now is the time to join, while it is young!

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• The potential that you could rank higher is the way in which your lens is constructed and the fact that you could have more related content, thereby probably ranking higher in the SERPs than a competing page.
• You can add easily add the song’s Youtube videos and other content that is not included on other lyrics sites.
• Another benefit includes your including Amazon links to the album or MP3 single.

First, take a look at How To Make A Lyrics Lens.  He did a GREAT job describing how you can make one and the benefits of it.

My modifications include:

• Using the Amazon Spotlight module for the album
• Using the Amazon module for the singles (mp3 singles of just the one song)
• Adding a Blackbox module at the bottom, pointing to other related lenses
• Lensroll your related lenses together
• Adding a Flickr module and set it to a slide show (for the artist or band)

I just started and am already seeing good traffic.

After you’ve got your lenses out of WiP status (work in progress) add them to the following groups.

Lyrics Headquarters – add your lyrics lenses to groups, including this one

Here’s some of my current lyrics lenses:

Beck – Replica

Beck – Modern Guilt

Beck – Volcano

Beck – Orphan

Portishead – Hunter

Portishead – Silence

Constantines – Our Age

Constantines – Hard Feelings

Constantines – Trans Canada

Usher – Moving Mountains

Fleet Foxes – Your Protector