The Nicher

I’m a tea drinker who has recently discovered the joys of gourmet loose leaf tea.

My most recent order was a selection of oolong teas- one of which is Wu-Yi. Now, I’ve discovered that out of the three oolong teas that I’ve selected, I only considere the Wu-Yi to be so-so.  However, I did remember all those advertisements blasted across the web for Wu-Yi being some sort of weight loss wonder drink, so I thought I’d look up a little information on it before giving it the heave-ho.

I saw an ad promising diet reviews of the Wu-Yi tea. I followed the link to see what they had to say.

This is where I discovered the first problem. All this site had to offer was a short blurb about 5 different sources of Wu-Yi tea. They were reviewing the sites, not the tea or the diets. At first I thought this was a rather clever way to funnel traffic through their affiliate accounts, but when I went to choose one, there was no link! Not only that, but the linked website was the first listed.

Remember the article I mentioned a few posts ago? The one about how to get people to buy what you’re selling? The key to promotion is in mentioning what a product can do and then give the consumer the solution (usually being “click here, buy this”). By placing the linked website at the top/front of the list, I was convinced that it was the least worthy! I was already frustrated when I clicked through, and that’s not what you want your potential customer to be feeling. (By the way, it turned out to be a mini site/satellite site, which is a great idea, just poorly executed.)

At first, I was rather impressed with the website’s over all design. It was, after all, rather attractive and a good use of WordPress. The location of the articles was relatively good- requiring a bit of scrolling past sales pitches, but clear enough to not be obnoxious. To my freelance writer eye, the articles were also obviously rewritten PLR or possibly spinned articles (or budget original). They also lacked the most important thing- information.

If a consumer is taking the time to read your articles, they’re not going to be swayed by a sales pitch.  A little weak content is fine for SEO purposes, but if you’re going to build an all-out website? Make sure you have something good for the more discerning patron.

That, however, was not my biggest concern. What annoyed me the most, and what spurred on this post, were the pictures used.

Now, let me explain something. Weight Loss is not a niche, it’s a category. Men’s weight loss is a niche. Pet weight loss is a niche (and yes, pet weight can be a problem). Teen weight loss is a niche, and so on. But weight loss itself is too broad. If you’re focusing on something as broad as weight loss in general, you need to think about who your audience is or you’ll lose them to someone else who actually has focus.

And the biggest market for weight loss products? Women. The biggest market for natural/organic products? Women. (That was one of their selling points.) So tell me, why on God’s green earth, would you put a picture like this in front of an overweight woman who believes in natural products?

Yes, she’s slim and toned. Yes, most of us overweight women would like to look like her. But that look screams “I’m going to rip your shirt off and then dance naked until you jump me”, not “Look! I’m slim and toned, and I did it naturally!”. Remember: Fake tits and organic anything don’t mix.

Sex sells. But male oriented sex? Does not sell to women.

There were many more pictures like this, and some taut and toned men, which would be fine if the market and target audience been other than what it is. There were also more appropriate photos that actually indicated weight loss (thin women with measuring tapes, or holding their oversized pants away from the waist, and so on). There were also books by Oprah, Rachel Ray, and Kevin Trudeau, which tend to be very appealing to the target market.

We all say that content is king, and in many cases it’s true. But design can tell your customers more about who you are than your words can.  Makes sure that you’re appealing to the right audience, because otherwise? You’re just flushing sales down the proverbial toilet.

Ya Digg?

We all know that once you have a certain number of slaves… Um, I mean, loyal readers, that a contest can shoot your visibility through the roof by dint of all those followers talking about your contest on their own blogs and Twitter accounts. But can a little guy, say, someone with 10-100 page views a day do it? Would it be worth the cash spent?

We’re about to find out.

No- I’m not hosting a contest here on TheNicher.Com, but I AM hosting a contest in order to boost visibility.

I recently found out that the FDA is trying to shut down micro businesses in the skin care field by requiring insane registration fees (to the tune of up to $12,000 a year) and loads of paperwork. I’ve recently discovered a wonderful little shop on Etsy that sells the best dang lip balm and soap (the CranGrape lip balm totally smells and tastes just like CranGrape juice- just ask the husband). Do I want to see them shut down? Heck no! I’m afraid of them running out of my favorite flavors and scents!

So, in order to spread the word about both, I built a basic Squidoo lens with info on the products, and info on the FDA Globalization Act of 2008- and announced a contest. The rules are simply to post a link from virtually anywhere (no spamming allowed) to either the lens, her shop, or the petition against the Act, and then tell me that they’ve linked it.

The contest is barely over a week, which doesn’t give it much time to go viral, but it does keep the contest relevant (who knows how long the FDA thing will be alive?).

I’ll be posting messages similar to this on all of my blog accounts, and have already tweeted about it. I’ve notified the shop owner, the woman running the petition, and the Tweeter who I originally heard about this from.

At the time of announcing the contest there were zero visits/page views. When the contest is over, I’ll announce my stats, and we’ll see how the contest did! And just so that everyone knows that I really am being selfless here: I’m paying for the prize out of pocket AND all proceeds from that particular lens are being donated to the Grameen Foundation which offers micro loans to people in third world countries. Helping to stamp out poverty by teaching them how to fish so to speak (Remember the saying? Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for the rest of his life.).

Now, if the contest were to run longer, I’d be buying up advertising on several affordable blogs. But, alas, a week and a half is not long enough to go about making banners and finding people to host them.

Update: Would you look at that? I forgot to link to my vegan skin care contest!

I’m addressing this post to the thousands (millions?) of personal bloggers who insist that blogging doesn’t work for making money, this is not addressed to those of you who know that blogging for money is hard work but are just starting out. For clarification purposes, I just want to add that all of my current blogs are personal to a certain extent- including this one. Now, the post:

Personal blogs do not provide value. I’m not saying that they’re never entertaining or interesting, but in order to have a large number of unique and returning visitors (both of which are important) you have to provide value to the visitor.

By value, I don’t mean simply information. Information can be had anywhere. Providing only facts may garner you good ranking in search engines, and a steady flow of information seekers. That alone may be enough for a commerce site, or a MFA (made for AdSense) site, but you’ll want reader retention if you’re making money from your blog.

Look at the top blogs when it comes to making money. John Chow, Shoemoney, and Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) create value on their blogs, not by rehashing what the latest e-books say, but by actually creating the methods, companies, and information that they post about.  The majority of their money is made not on their how-to-make-money-online blogs, but on their other blogs, websites, and products. They try new methods, see what works, and then talk about that. They create their own value and provide a service that can’t be had elsewhere.

TechCrunch, BoingBoing, and many others provide value by being the first with news, new products, new programs, and so on. Again, they don’t simply rehash what others say. They don’t even just put their own spin on things. They are the source. What do advertisements and print magazines say when trying to lend credence to their own statements? “As seen on TechCrunch”.

Not that there isn’t a place for blogs that aren’t industry leaders. Bloggers like Tyler Cruz and John Cow, while not at the very top of the game, provide much of the same news that the big boys do, but with a bit of entertainment mixed in. Often, you’ll find that these smaller-but-still-leader blogs have a more approachable feel, and less hero worship to slog through. Along with being more approachable, these smaller bloggers can break down the information into easier to understand chunks and terminology.

What all these bloggers have in common is that they work at blogging. They work hard. They work at finding or developing information, they work at writing it, and they work at promoting it. The most successful ones often work harder and longer than their corporate counterparts.

And that’s why most personal blogs do not make money. They say talk is cheap, and it’s true. It’s the experts who make the dough while the rest of us just talk about it.

So what are you doing? Rehashing old info? Providing a diversion? Or becoming the expert?

Nope, not advice from me. I’d kind of have to have a bit more success at it for me to be giving advice away. But CopyBlogger- yeah, he’s got a lot of experience.

Now, I realize that most of aren’t copywriters in the traditional sense of the word, but I do know that most of you still write your own content and sales pitches. So, I thought a link to CopyBlogger’s post on using perceptual contrast to sell a product would be very useful.

The concept is rather simple, but important. And I’d tell you what it is, but it’s late and I’m lazy, so just go read it. It’s totally worth your time.

There will be more Squidtorials coming, and probably a bit more info as well eventually. However, thanks to one inquiry into my Squidoo lenses for sale, and one recommendation (Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you Elijah-Blue!), I’m hard at work building a freelance website.

I’ve been meaning to do it for over a year, but have been too afraid of HTML. Luckily for me, HostGator has a WYSIWYG HTML editor built right in. So I stole a bit of source code from a friend (that’s what friends are for, right?), hacked it up, and threw it back together.  I’m practicing on my rates page right now (not the official freelance site- it really is just a test page).

Speaking of which- any suggestions? I plan to tweak the content a bit, and change the color of the text on the logo, but otherwise? Different background color? Different layout? Different font or text color? The original background color was the exact shade of the clouds, which was a little creepy.

Anyway- I’ve got a website to build and a few lenses to put together as a hedge against lens purchases before the Giant Squid application cut-off (October 1st). I’ll be back with more info, but I thought I should drop a note in case anyone missed me.

In lesson 1 we covered the basics of building a lens- mainly the text and basic selling modules such as Amazon. In this lesson we’re going to take a look at some of the more advanced modules available on Squidoo.

There are many, many more modules available to use that I’m not covering here, but once you learn how to use these you should be able to handle any of the others with ease.

To Start:

Log into your Squidoo account and find your lens’ name in the list of lenses you’ve made (this will be shown on your dashboard- if you don’t know what that is, see lesson 1). As you hover over the lens name, a mini-menu will drop down with options such as “view”, “delete”, “stats” and “edit”. Click “edit”. This will take you back to your lens’ workshop.  From here, you’ll click “add modules”. You’ll see a screen like this:

If you don’t know how to add modules, you’ll want to see the first Squidtorial before proceeding. Choose the modules you want to use. In this case, I added a Twitter follow, link list, poll, duel, Talk Bubble, and others.

You can search through the categories, or if you know what module you want, just go to the Search (A-Z).

One of my all time favorite modules is the Featured Lens module. This module automatically brings up the introduction photo and text from whatever lens or lenses you choose to feature. It’s great for promoting your own lenses, or the lenses of others.

Once you’ve picked all the modules that you want and saved them, go ahead and re-order them now. Otherwise, they’ll all be together at the bottom of your lens workshop. It may be easier to fill them out and then re-order them.

The Modules:

The Talk Bubble:

This module is used to showcase a small amount of text (100 character limit).

Click “edit” at the Talk Bubble module, type in your message or quote (keep an eye on the character counter), and then click save. It should look something like this:

Blog Search:

Blog feeds from Google (under G for Google in the alphabet search) are a great way to keep your lenses fresh since that part of your content updates every day.  As with all modules, click “edit” to work on it.

A title and description can be filled in as you would with the text module, but below that you’ll see this:

Enter your search term, how often you want it to update, whether you want it to search the news or blogs, and so on.  When you click save, you should see something like this:

The Duel:

Duels are a little confusing. They’re an interactive module that you can put on your lens. You can ask any question and provide two answers for debate (the simpler the better). Visitors to your lens can vote for the answer they agree with, and then tell you why.

When you click “edit”, you’ll see this:

You have the opportunity to fill in a title and description as you would in a text module. Then you’ll ask your question and fill in two answers.  Hit save, and you should see something like this:

Featured Lens:

You could simply add other lenses to a link list, but the featured lens module is much more attractive and more likely to get clicks.

When you click to edit this module, you should see this:

You’ll have the opportunity to fill in a title and description as you would for a text module, and then simply choose the number of lenses you wish to show (if you have a smaller number than the actual lenses you load into the module, Squidoo will randomly choose the lenses to display), and enter the URL of each lens.

After you hit save, you should see something like this:

The Link List:

Including relevant links on your lens makes you seem more relevant to the search engines. I know it will feel as though you’re sending potential customers to your competitors, but trust me- you need this.

After you click “edit”, you should see this:

This is very simple. You can enter a title and description just as you would for the text module. Then, just enter the URL of the website or lens you want people to see into the left box. Name the link in the right box (you’ll want to name it something that relates to the link itself as well as the subject of your lens), and a brief description in the box below those two boxes.

After you click “save”, you should see something like this:

I just want to note here that this is a great opportunity for affiliate marketers. That second link shown is an affiliate link to a great company that I really do use. The third link goes to one of my own affiliate based shops.

The Poll Module:

Another interactive module, the poll is a simple title, description, question, and a list of answers that you choose. Unlike the Duel module, visitors can’t leave comments on the poll (though they can on the Guestbook if you have one).

Editing a poll looks like this:

After you’ve filled in all the answers you want included, and click save, the poll will look like this:

The Twitter Follow:

Twitter is a great place to get up to date information in small chunks. You can either have a small Twitterfeed of your own Twitter account featured on your lens, or you can have someone else’s account feed into your lens.

The editing screen looks like this:

After you click save, you should see something like this:

Wikipedia:

Including a Wikipedia article feed is a great way to provide your visitors with more information instantly. It’s also a great way to flesh out lenses that don’t have much content.

The editing screen looks like this:

You’ll have to get the URL exact or it won’t work. After you save it, it should look like this:

YouTube:

Whether you want videos for entertainment or education, YouTube probably has it. And you can showcase YouTube videos right on your lens!

The editing field looks like this:

Of course, it gives you the option to let YouTube find videos for you (I don’t recommend it, since I recommend actually watching a video before putting it on your lens), but you can also choose to show a single video of your own choice, or thumbnails of up to nine videos of your choice.

Once you’ve finished and clicked save, you should see something like this:

And that’s it for the advanced modules. As I said, there are a many, many more than this, but these will be the most common modules that you’re likely to use. There are modules that are referred to as “plexo”- they’re basically the same as other modules, but allow visitor to vote items up and down, and I think to actually add to them!

And remember, sometimes less is more. If your lens begins to look cluttered and shifting modules around won’t fix it? Then it’s time to start deleting anything that isn’t necessary.

You can see the lens I’ve been building for the tutorial by clicking on The Health Benefits of Black Tea. Some of these modules will be gone by the time you get there.

Squidoo is one of the best tools available to anyone who wants to get their feet wet in internet marketing, or who simply wants to make a little cash on the side.  You’ve probably heard that building a lens is “so easy” but found that it’s actually quite confusing.

Well, building a lens is very easy, and it is also confusing when you first start out. My very first lens sat fallow for several months before I decided to just charge in and figure this thing out. But once I did, I saw how simple it really is- once you know what you’re doing.

So here is a step-by-step instruction manual for building your first, simple Squidoo lens.  Not a Squidoo member yet? You can sign up for Squidoo here.

Before you start building, you’ll need to log in to your dashboard. That just means going to Squidoo.Com and logging in. Squidoo will take you straight to your dashboard, which should look something like this.

Of course, at this point you won’t have so many lenses listed, and you won’t have a picture in the corner (that’s for another lesson).

To start building, you can either click the “Make a lens now!” link on the upper left of the screen, or scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the “Create a lens now!” button, which looks like this:

Clicking the link or button will take you to this screen:

Step 1: For the sample lens I decided to build a lens about tea, but you can make your lens about anything- purple elephants, internet marketing, pudding snorkling, whatever.  What you’ll want to remember is that this part is actually your main keyword- so think about what someone searching for your lens would type in.  When you’re done, click the “Go to Step 2″ button.  That will take you to this screen:

Step 2: You really don’t need to worry about what your lens is for (marketing, making money, etc) because all those choices mean is that Squidoo will set up specific modules for you to fill in. While it’s a good idea, most lenses won’t use all the modules included, or will need others. Leftover modules make your lens look messy, and for new ones you’ll need to learn how to do this anway. I recommend checking “I just want to do my own thing.”. Then, click “Go to Step 3″, which will bring you to this screen:

Step 3: On this page you will choose the lens title (I chose Health Benefits of Black Tea), the URL that you want your page to have (You may have to try several times to get one that isn’t taken. Remember -’s are good for attracting search engine traffic, while havingwordsruntogether is easier for people to remember).

The section that says to pick your category is a drop down menu. It has choices like TV & Movies as well as Travel, Music, and many others. I could have chosen Food and Cooking, but instead chose Health & Medicine since my lens focuses on the health benefits of tea rather than what it tastes like. Categories are for people searching within Squidoo and (I believe) doesn’t affect search engine traffic.

You also have to rate your lens. G is for everyone, R is for anything that children shouldn’t see including swear words, tobacco, and alcohol. X is pretty much self-explanatory.

When you’re finished, click “Go to Step 4″, which will look like this:

Step 4: When you get to Step Four, the section that says “The Best Keyword Phrase” will be filled in with the description you used in Step One. You can change it here.

Then, you’ll fill out three more keyword/keyphrases below. I chose “health benefits of tea”, “tea for cancer” and “tea for weightloss” as they’re sections in my lens that I think people will be searching for when looking for information that I have on my lens.

Next, you’ll enter the Captcha phrase (Squidoo has some doozies- you’ll get a good laugh at what they come up with such as “pigslap” and “squidsnog”), and click “Done!”. That will take you to:

Step 5: Just as an empty Word document is the most terrifying sight to a writer, and empty lens workshop is terrifying to a lensmaster. To solve that problem, you’ll want to click the button that says “Add modules” at the top of the screen. That will take you to this:

Step 6: For this basic lens, we’re staying in this first section marked “Starter Package”. I recommend choosing Guestbook, and one or two Amazon modules. You do this by clicking “Add”.  If you hover your mouse over the Add, Squidoo will pop up a little window explaining the module that you’re looking at. Link List is very useful as are several others, but for this basic lens we’ll stick to the…er, basics. Click on “next” in blue near the bottom. That will take you to:

Step 7: I recommend choosing several Text/Write modules (when you click “Add” it will change to “Add Another”, which you can keep clicking to get the number you want). I counted up the sections I wanted in my lens, and used that many. You can add other modules, but they’re not covered in this tutorial. Don’t worry, if you don’t have enough modules to finish your lens, you can always come back and add more.

When you’re done adding, look down at the bottom of the screen. It will tell you what modules you’ve added.  Then, click “Save”. That will take you to back to the main workshop page where you’ll see all your empty modules. Click “Reorder Modules” near the top of your screen.  That will take you to:

Step 8: This is the easiest way to reorder your modules. Most people build their lenses with the Guestbook at the bottom, and I prefer scattering small Amazon modules (one or two items) among the text both to provide color when I have no pictures, and because it’s more attractive and more likely to attract interest than having one large list of Amazon products somewhere on the screen.

To change the order, click on the arrow buttons on the left of each module, and drag it to the location you want it. Squidoo can be a little glitchy here, so you may need to drag the module several times to get it to “stick”.

When you have the modules in the correct order, click “All Done!”, which will take you back to the workshop screen.

Step 9: On your workshop screen, the very first module is called the “Introduction”. Click “edit” You will see the screen above. This is really as easy as filling in the blanks. Just name your introduction, and then fill in how you want your lens to start and then hit save.  If you want to include a picture, click “edit” again, then “browse” and choose the picture from your computer. Then click “upload photo” and “save” again.

As you can see, I filled in the introduction and used a picture of a cup of tea to complement the lens.

Step 10: For your text modules, click “edit”. The process is the same as with the introduction module. The “Title” section will be a header for this section of your lens, and you search for a photo the same way (though they’re not required), but there’s no need to “upload”, simply “save”.

Step 11: When you click the “edit” button for the Amazon module, you’ll have the option of titling the module and giving it a description, which is just like the title and text of the text/write module. Then, below, you’re given the option of letting Amazon choose products for you based on your search terms, or choosing the items yourself. As Amazon has a very strange idea of what products match, I prefer to pick my own.

You can do this either by pasting in the URL of the product you want to sell, or by clicking “help me find products”, in which case a box will pop up allowing you to search Amazon’s inventory. Adding items is as easy as clicking “add product”, though you’ll be limited to 5.  Don’t forget to save your module!

Step 12: When you’ve filled in all your modules (or deleted the ones you didn’t use), go to the bottom of the workshop page and click “Publish!”. If you don’t want to finish your lens just now, you can choose “Keep this craft” instead, and access the workshop again through your dashboard. Of course, you can edit a published lens as well through the dashboard.

Done: After you hit “Publish”, Squidoo will send you to a congratulations page (but only the first time you publish, after that, you stay on the workshop page), where you have several options available, mostly in relation to promoting your new lens.  To see the lens, just click “View lens”.

Want to see the lens being built for the Squidtorials? Click here to see more on the health benefits of tea.

Unless something particularly interesting or exciting happens first, the next post you should see is a step by step tutorial on building your first basic Squidoo lens.

I realize that most of you either already know how to build a lens, or don’t want to- but lately I’ve had several friends ask me how to do things, from building a lens, to putting ads in their blogger sidebar.

Rather than simply write an email to each one and leave everyone else in the dark, I thought I’d post them up here.

So if you’re brand new to marketing, and want detailed information on how to get started without any of that techie-speak, this is the place to be. This is rather labor intensive, so please be patient.

There have been numerous discussions on how Twitter can make money; There have been just as many concerning the wisdom of paid tweets.  But now there’s another way to monetize your Twitter account- with much less controversy.

TwittAds is an advertising liason between twits and advertisers. I found out about them through one of ProBlogger’s tweets. What they do is sell advertising for your Twitter profile background.

As someone who has only just figured out how to set up my background, I think it’s a smashing idea. After all, my background isn’t doing anything for me, and it’s completely non-obtrusive.

What you’re allowing the advertiser to do is rent out your Twitter background for a specified period of time- either a day, week, 15 days, 1 month, or 3 months at a time. You can start out at a day just to see what you think of the program, or jump right in at a month, as I did.

You also set your own price. There are no guidelines for this, and I saw prices ranging all over the place, none of which seemed to be based on any specific numbers.

You set the price, the length you’re willing to advertise, and advertisers pick the twits they want to advertise with. I seem to have set my price a little low ($25 for the month), but it’s a number that I’m happy with as payout is at $20. And if I change my mind before someone purchases the advertising (which you can turn down if you choose), it’s changed with just a few clicks of the mouse.

TwittAd home page

I think it’s an interesting idea, potentially a good money maker, and shouldn’t upset too many potential followers.  Use your own judgement of course, but for now, I’m game!

So far I haven’t found an affiliate program for TwittAds, though, so I’m sorry about that. Perhaps if the service proves lucrative for them one will be offered.