The Nicher

For a while, Squidoo was touted as the best promotional tool in the world.  I think we all know that there is no such thing, but just because something doesn’t live up to the hype doesn’t make it worthless.  In fact, there are a lot of great reasons to build a lens at Squidoo. (Why, yes, that is a referral link.  I do appreciate any join ups.)

1. You actually can make money with Squidoo.

Believe it or not, I didn’t know that when I joined up with Squidoo.  The first lens I built had me so befuddled, I gave up half way through and let it go.  A few months later I decided to give it another shot and, lo and behold, my unfinished lens had earned me money!  I believe it was something like $0.37, but it wasn’t nothing, and it encouraged me to push through and finish not only that lens, but a dozen more.

You can earn money through direct sales (your own product), affiliate sales (someone else’s product- in fact, Squidoo offers sales modules for many different companies that you can use), and clicks on ads.  Squidoo sets up AdSense and other affiliate links on all lenses, and they share 50% of the profits on these with all lens masters.  So even if your lens isn’t successful on its own, you’ll still get a cut.

2. Low payout threshold.

This is related to #1 (above), but you can set your own pay out threshold as low as $1.  I have mine set to $10, but you can set it as high or low as you want to.  You can even have the income donated for you.  Just select one or more of the dozens of charities and causes Squidoo provides and put in the percentage you want donated.  You can mix and match across the board, or on individual lenses.  For example, on lenses that are automatically compiled by Squidoo (rather than hand built by me), I have 50% donated to the Grameen Foundation, and the other 50% sent to my account.

3. Draw traffic to your other sites.

For some reason, Squidoo lenses tend to rank high in search engines.  If you build your lens well enough, a visitor may be interested enough in what you have to say to follow a link to whichever site you wish to promote.  If you have a blog, even better as you can insert a RSS feed directly into your lens.

 4. Raise your Page Rank with links.

As I said, lenses tend to rank well in search engines which gives them a good bit of authority.  Insert one or two well chosen links into a popular lens, and you’ve instantly given yourself more authority on whichever site you chose to promote.

5.  It’s completely free.

While you can pay someone to build a lens for you, or buy one pre-built, building a lens is easy and the options are continually growing.  The only thing that you risk is your time.

6. There’s a referral program.

While Squidoo is totally free, they do offer a referral program.  For every person you refer, you earn $5 after they earn their first $15.  For some lens masters, this will never happen.  For others, it could be in their first week.

Once you’ve finished your first lens, take a look at my post on ranking high on Squidoo.

I’d love to say that I decided to follow in the footsteps of John Chow and Darren Rowse, but while I’d love to make that kind of money from this blog, that’s not really why I’m starting it.

For years my main career focus was to become a professional novelist.  Since I don’t seem to need as much money as many others seem to need, I wasn’t too concerned about becoming a best seller, just enough to cover the basics would be enough.

 I spent a lot of time online learning about the writing craft.  One day I stumbled upon a community blog that was comprised mostly of writers.  About half of these writers were freelancers, not novelists, and I inadvertantly began to learn about the freelance writing world.  Eventually I decided that being a freelance writer by day and a novelist by night would be even better than just a novelist since the income would be more predictable.

A few months later that community site folded, and many of us started up our on blogs on Blogger and WordPress.  Many of the same freelancers and novelists that I’d been in touch with at the community site continued to stay in touch through our personal blogs, and I began to learn even more.  Eventually I put a few things together.

Freelance web content writers write web content for internet marketers.  While many of these marketers have physical or informational products to sell, many of them were affiliate marketers.  And more, many of these affiliate sites were built with little more than a site template and some Adsense!  Granted, I don’t know much about marketing or HTML, but I do know how to use WordPress, and if I was going to be writing content…. maybe it should be for more than a one time $5-15 payment. 

 And so I began subscribing to professional bloggers and marketers RSS feeds and started learning more about affiliate marketing, programs, etc.  However, since all of my focus was on the affiliate sites I was building, I noticed that my writing blog had become more of a “look what I did today!” kind of blog.  Readership started to dwindle as most of my readers were there to hear about my writing or personal life.  I started feeling guilty when I blogged because I knew it wasn’t what my friends were interested in hearing.  And yet I wanted to talk about this.  Plus, I totally went on a domain registering binge.  I can’t seem to help myself.

So this is the beginner’s blog.  Hopefully to become a professional one day, but for now, it’s my platform to shout about what worked, what didn’t, what I’m trying, and what’s new.  Maybe some day I’ll be the new Darren or John (I don’t think my husband would like me getting a sex change, but I’m sure he’d enjoy the pay checks), but for now- I’ll just be The Nicher.

P.S. I haven’t begun optimizing this blog.  Partly because I tend to get involved in more projects than I can handle, but also because I don’t want to begin truly promoting this site until I have something useful to say.