This post is about the benefits of using Squidoo as a great tool to make money, drive traffic and to show other people that you’re an expert in a certain niche. Because I’ve already written some of those so called lenses by myself, I want to share my thoughts about it.

Squidoo is a web project launched and founded by Seth Godin in October 2005. Basically it offers you to write and publish single webpages, so called lenses, that may deal about different things you like and/or want to promote. You can think about Squidoo like a bloghost, with the exception that your blog will be more like a static webpage that you only update from time to time.

Creating a Squidoo lens is relatively easy. After choosing the right name for your lens (it will be part of your URL, e.g. Squidoo.com/YourLensName) you can immediately start filling it with content. A lens consists of different modules like a text module or a questbook for example. You can add as many different modules as you want, there’s no limit in possibilities. Each module should be filled with content, e.g. in a text module you should write down the text that belongs to your lens’ theme. After adding all necessary modules, text, images and other stuff you like, you have to publish your lens and it will immediately go live and starts receiving traffic.

The best thing about a Squidoo lens is the fact that you’re allowed to place links (including affiliate links) right within your lens’ content. You can add as many as you want and use them to either drive traffic to your websites/blogs or to directly generate affiliate sales for example. Because Squidoo is very popular, frequently visited from many people around the world and new lenses are indexed extremely fast, it’s a perfect marketing tool! When choosing the right keywords to target and with good content, it’s quite possible to make some nice affiliate sales and money.

Squidoo also features a revenue sharing model, meaning that each lens you’ve published may bring you also a share of all the advertising revenues it has generated. Those revenue comes from ads shown next to your lens and also from Amazon widgets if you want to use them in your lens. If you have a popular lens with lots of traffic, then you may see some bucks from that revenue sharing alone. You can also donate your earnings to different charities if you will.

So far I’ve only written and published 4 lenses, but I’m amazed about how well they perform and help me in making some extra money. Especially my lens about NeoBux brings several new referrals each day and it is listed in the top 10 for the same keyword. Squidoo lenses are definitely worth your time if you want to get some extra traffic or money. You can use them to create a small piece of online real estate that you can use to establish your online business, be it lenses about products you promote or useful articles that will show others that you’re an expert in your field. Squidoo is a nice and free way to increase your online exposure to potential buyers, readers, whatever you like. Simply give it a try and start creating your first lens right now, it’s easy!

Bye bye,
Querblogger

Today I will write about Kontera’s ContenLink ad publishing network and how it may help you in monetizing your blog. I thought it was time to continue my “series” about blog monetization methods that I began in December 2007. Back then it presented three different money makers called WidgetBucks, Bidvertiser and Fair Ads Network.

Kontera provides a full-featured advertising network that offers in-text advertising, another attractive method for making money from your blog (and also your regular website’s) content. It’s really simple, you place a short code snippet in your blog’s template (they even offer an automatic tool for Blogger.com blogs) where you want those ads to appear. Whenever a page of your blog gets loaded, the code parses your content for particular keywords that different advertisers bid on and it highlights them just like a regular hyperlink. When your site visitors click on one of those links, you’ll make money. You may see such links while looking at my posts here on this blog, they are double underlined.

I’ve implemented Kontera’s ContentLink technology some days ago after I got accepted in their publisher network. I use their very own Wordpress plugin to make my life a little easier with integrating Kontera on my blog. So far I made $1.77 in four days with an average CTR (Click-Through Rate) of around 2.50%. The average click price is at $0.30, but I must admit that I only have stats for those four days!

It seems that this ad publishing solution does work real good for content sites, so far that’s the highest CTR I’ve ever seen from all those advertising networks that I tested here on my blog. To give you an example, my CTR on Speedyads is at 0.20%!

Kontera pays at a Net 30 basis, meaning they pay you 30 days after a month’s end. In order to get paid you have to reach $100 as the minimum payout limit. Payments are made via Paypal, Check and even international bank transfer.

Kontera’s ContentLink looks very promising and I’ll leave it on my blog for some more weeks to get some better and more realistic statistics. Right now I’m very happy with their network, earnings are quite good so far and I’m really surprised to see such a high click-through rate, which is a good sign for making good money. As always, revenues also highly depend on your blog’s or website’s traffic, the more the better.

Bye,
Querblogger

Today I came across a site called My Homepages Friends (formerly known as My Search Funds), a site where you get paid to search the internet. Let me give you a short review on this service, at least all the details that I actually know about this promising making money opportunity.

Paid to search services are nothing new on the net, I could name a handful of them. But most of those programs already died or scammed their users, mainly because of getting banned from major search engines after violating their terms of usage. Basically, Get Paid to Search programs rely on those big search engines, because they generate ad revenue from them. Google for example offers an API for integrating search functionality within a website or blog. When users use the provided search function and also click on sponsored listings within the search results, they get paid a percentage of that revenue.

So, you may ask why My Homepages Friends is that different? Well, I don’t know exactly, but I think they are kind of special:

1. They have paid many people within the last weeks and months. I’ve done some good research on several forums and blogs to find out if the service is a scam or not. Besides some people calling it a scam (as usual), most of them agreed with My Homepages Friends being a legit business.
2. It seems they have real deals with major search engines to avoid getting banned. So far they had or actually have deals with Ask.com and Google for example.

So, what does My Homepages Friends really offer all those people trying to get paid to search the internet? Well, high ad revenue and a real nice referral system with 3 levels. Here are the features:

• An easy to install search bar for IE and Firefox that makes you money from each search you do
• Get paid to Search the Internet with up to 0.03 pound for each search, which is around $0.06 (they are based in the UK, but open to international members and they also pay international)
• Payments to Paypal or direct deposits in a UK bank account 45 days after the end of a month
• A 20 pound minimum payout level
• A 3-tier referral system, you get paid 10% from level 1, 5% from level 2 and 2.5% from level 3 referral revenues
• A sophisticated click-fraud protection system to stop scammers from using that service and destryoing it in the long run

I will test My Homepages Friends for the next days and try my best to get some referrals to get the ball rolling. I think this program is really worth to be promoted on differentl places around the net (I will soon write a tutorial about some techniques I use). Feel free to sign-up under me, if you hate me just google for “My Homepages Friends” and sign-up without my referral ID…

See also my latest updates on My HomePages Friends!:

06/06/2008 – Update One: First impressions, waiting for the Earnings Update
06/08/2008 – Update Two: Earnings Update, New Company Name, Different Search Engine
06/10/2008 – Update Three: Official Yahoo! Partnership, Some minor statistics problems
06/17/2008 – Update Four: Growing Earnings!

Happy searching!
Querblogger

PS: I know the post title sounds like I have forgotten the “the”, but it’s for some SEO tactics. “Get Paid to Search Internet” should get more searches than the version including the word “the”…

My friend Tiberius Burciu, owner of My PPC Advertising, has just recently started a new project. He created a new website that deals about everything you want to know about domain names. It provides some good info and today I will give a short review on his new site and also talk about some money making techniques he is using.

The site I will review here is named Domain Names 101 and, as already stated in the post title, it deals about domain names. Well, you may have guessed it already?

Ok, today I had a deeper look at Tiberius’ site and I was really impressed with all the good content you can find on it. I don’t say this because we are friends and I’m only here for promoting his site, but because he has really invested a lot of time and hard work in it, and that should be worth a review on my blog anyway.

Design

Let’s go on. His domain name site has a quite clean and clear design. No fancy graphics and annoying popups, the whole page looks very “friendly” in my opinion.

The navigation is well done and easy to handle. I like the uncluttered navigation style, nothing is more annoying than those hyper-cool, javascript driven flyout menus and that kind. A navigation should be easy both for your site visitors and also for search engines, which can better navigate through your site.

Content

A website’s design doesn’t matter too much when it comes to creating a information-based site. What really matters is content, and Domain Names 101 has a lot of content!

Content is really important, both for visitors who are looking for it in order to get answers, and search engines who are permanently searching for new sites they can index. Domain Names 101 features a lot of quality content and provides usefull information if it comes to domain names.

The site contains nearly everything you want to know about domain names, from choosing domain names to selling them, from mobile domain names to free ones. I was amazed about all the info Tiberius has researched for his niche site! But he goes even more into the details, e.g. do you know what a homograph attack is? I doubt many people will know that.

It’s a great plus for his site to offer such specialized information, it will drive targeted traffic from search engines and therefore visitors who are looking for the right answers. Besides only providing the info to those people, it’s also useful for monetizing a site as I will explain in the next paragraph.

Monetization

Ok, let’s come to some monetization strategies Tiberius uses on his domain names site. I think it’s nothing wrong about monetizing such a content-rich site, on the contrary, it would be a bad idea not to do so.

In general, to make money from websites, you need traffic and the best traffic you can get is from search engines like Google or Yahoo for example. In order to get search engine traffic, you must provide unique and useful content. In other words, you must provide the answers to the user’s questions. If you do your job right, you’ll reap big fruits.

So, traffic shouldn’t be a problem with Tiberius’ site, although it will take a while before search engines index all the pages on Domain Names 101. But now it comes to monetizing that traffic.

One strategy he uses is contextual advertising. It’s a well known technique to monetize a site and it’s really simple to work with. All you have to do is to integrate a small piece of code in your underlying website template. That code snippet will “scan” your pages for keywords and show advertisements tailormade to those keywords and phrases. If somebody clicks on those ads, you’ll make money ranging from only some cents to several dollars. The amount depends on the keywords and how much advertisers are willing to bid on it.

Tiberius is using SpeedyAds as the advertising network of choice. It’s like Google Adsense and can bring you a nice amount of money if you have some good traffic. I’m personally using SpeedyAds too and so far I have had several clicks, including clicks on high-priced keywords.

Another money making strategy he uses are affiliate banners. Those banners are another nice way to make some real good money from your sites. Most times they are sale’s based, meaning that someone has to click on that banner and buy a product or service on the merchants page that the banner links to. You can make anything from some dollars to several hundred bucks (yes, really) from a single sale. But, as any other money maker, it higly depends on targeted traffic. People must be looking for a particular product/service you advertise via affiliate banners in order to make sales.

Conclusion

That should be all for my short review here. I think all I can say is that Tiberius’ site has a good potential to make him at least some bucks a month at the beginning. If search engines start to pick up his useful content, traffic will definitely grow and he should be able to make even more money.

Tiberius has done a good job on creating Domain Names 101, he has gathered some good information about domain names and created a great site. I wish you all the best Tiberius!

Check out his site and learn everything about domain names!

Cheers,
Querblogger

Today I want to start some kind of long-term series about all my favorite blogs that I´ve came across on my way on making money online. I visit them regulary and they provide many useful information on different aspects that interest me, but they are not limited to money making only.

My first review will deal about My PPC Advertising, a blog from my very good friend Tiberius Burciu.

I came across Tiberius´ blog while searching for new ways to drive traffic to my own blog. It was nearly at the beginning of my money making journey as I used a service called Linkreferral (I´ve written some posts about them) to drive more visitors to my posts. I don´t know for sure, but I think it was Tiberius who first reviewed my blog on LR and we came into contact. Things went fast, we exchanged links for both of our blogs and since then are regulary commenting on each others (sometimes weird, but mostly highly valuable posts.

It was August 5th 2007 when Tiberius (who is better known under the name Midwest) wrote his first post on his newly created blog. Better and longer post should follow soon…

My PPC Advertising deals about a wide variety of themes like (obviously) money making opportunities, free and paid advertising, blogging and SEO tips and many many more. Tiberius has written some good articles about Google Adsense, although he got banned for no reasons. I especially like his posts about (free) advertising methods to promote your blog. So I came across Entrecard for example. But there´s way more to find on his blog, take the posts about Commission Juntion or Adsense Alternatives for example, you see the variety?

If you´re looking for in-detail infos about making money online or advertising your blog or website, then My PPC Advertising is what you´re looking for, really

The blog design is uncluttered, simple and easy to follow, you´ll find everything you need. The posts are structured in categories, so you´ll definitely find the right post. In my opionen there isn´t too much advertising on Tiberius´blog, which is good and won´t put visitors away from coming back. Nothing is more annoying than having too many ad banners and links on a page (maybe I have to work on it for myself

My PPC Advertising is hosted on Blogger.com, in case you didn´t recognize it. Tiberius recently bought his own domain name (a dot info) and it´s worth to mention that this may have affected his blog´s popularity in a positive way. It didn´t take too long and he gained back his Google PageRank of 3 and an Alexa rating of 320,000(!), which clearly shows his influence and reach in the money making blogosphere. Good job Mr. Midwest!

Besides being one of my favorite bloggers, Tiberius is also a top-commentor on my blog. We exchanged some weird thoughts about most different topics within the last month (and actually he thinks I´m evil…an on-going joke, but maybe true hehe

I could tell you way more about My PPC Advertising and his owner Midwest, but I think it would be better if you find out by yourself. Simply drop by and have a look at his blog, I promise you won´t do anything wrong. You actually get some great info and good insight in the money making branch with all its facets. Actually he releases a new and fresh post nearly every day, so there´s much content you can read. Feel free to say hello to Tiberius on one of his posts!

To came to an end, I want to thank Tiberius very much for his good findings, infos and ideas he triggered (in my sometimes lazy) brain I´m looking forward to work together with him on some nice projects (sorry, I can´t go into the details yet) and I wish him good luck with his blog!

The very best regards,
Querblogger