I still have to wait for the December payday, but I can tell you one thing ... I didn't reach the challenge target of $500 / month.
I've been hovering between $100 and $150 for some time now, and it seems I didn't put enough energy in creating lenses to get past this point.
I might pick up the challenge, or a different one, in the future.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Woohoo for payday bonus
The title says a lot about this post.
Yesterday, Squidoo had a payday and one of the best if I may say so.
Because of some calculation errors in the past and a fix in the eBay commissions, this months payday was going to have a bonus to make up for the mistakes (Read all about it here). I was anticipating a 10-20% bonus and was extremely suprised to see that I received about $110 extra! That's more than 100% bonus!
So back to the real payout.
I was payed $102.08 in total. At last I'm back above the $100 line.
About $66 was made by 3 lenses in the top tier (paying $10.97 per lens). I was a bit disappointed that the Bartender Tools lens no longer lists as Tier 1.
About 15 other lenses are Tier 2, paying $1.85 per lens (=$28). The remaining $10 are Tier 3 lenses and Amazon or eBay sales.
The lens I recently bought for $39.00 was (and is) ranked Tier 1, so it made me $10.97 already. The Squidoo Dashboard Extension lens apparently didn't make it to Tier 1, it will next payday.
Yesterday, Squidoo had a payday and one of the best if I may say so.
Because of some calculation errors in the past and a fix in the eBay commissions, this months payday was going to have a bonus to make up for the mistakes (Read all about it here). I was anticipating a 10-20% bonus and was extremely suprised to see that I received about $110 extra! That's more than 100% bonus!
So back to the real payout.
I was payed $102.08 in total. At last I'm back above the $100 line.
About $66 was made by 3 lenses in the top tier (paying $10.97 per lens). I was a bit disappointed that the Bartender Tools lens no longer lists as Tier 1.
About 15 other lenses are Tier 2, paying $1.85 per lens (=$28). The remaining $10 are Tier 3 lenses and Amazon or eBay sales.
The lens I recently bought for $39.00 was (and is) ranked Tier 1, so it made me $10.97 already. The Squidoo Dashboard Extension lens apparently didn't make it to Tier 1, it will next payday.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bought a cycling lens
I mentioned earlier that I'm always looking to buy nice lenses with great potential, and I already bought a Guitar lens in the past ...
This week, i bought my second lens.
The Cycling lens goes about how good cycling is to burn calories and for your health.
The person selling it used it to promote his blog (and store) but wanted to sell it for $39.00.
My Guitar lens turned out to be a profitable investment (bought for $5.00, made at least $20.00 in Squidoo pay). This time however, the stakes are higher.
The lens was ranked 1600 when I bought it. That's a tier 1 ranking. If I can keep it in that tier for 4 months, I have my investment back. Any extras like Amazon sales will boost the profitability.
When I bought the lens, I completely revised it. I removed all links that are of no importance to me and replaced them by Amazon modules or interesting content. Refreshing the lens immediately boosted the lensrank to less than 1000.
I also revised all Amazon modules and added a few products I like or tat I think will sell, and yesterday, the first sale was made. For 45 cent commission, someone bought a book through the lens. Yay!
I'll keep you posted on the progress.
This week, i bought my second lens.
The Cycling lens goes about how good cycling is to burn calories and for your health.
The person selling it used it to promote his blog (and store) but wanted to sell it for $39.00.
My Guitar lens turned out to be a profitable investment (bought for $5.00, made at least $20.00 in Squidoo pay). This time however, the stakes are higher.
The lens was ranked 1600 when I bought it. That's a tier 1 ranking. If I can keep it in that tier for 4 months, I have my investment back. Any extras like Amazon sales will boost the profitability.
When I bought the lens, I completely revised it. I removed all links that are of no importance to me and replaced them by Amazon modules or interesting content. Refreshing the lens immediately boosted the lensrank to less than 1000.
I also revised all Amazon modules and added a few products I like or tat I think will sell, and yesterday, the first sale was made. For 45 cent commission, someone bought a book through the lens. Yay!
I'll keep you posted on the progress.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
September payday
Time flies I guess.
I vaguely recall reporting on my August payday, and here's the next.
The grand total for this month is $96.42. It seems the tier 1 payout was huge: $11.27, just unfortunate I only had 5 tier 1 lenses it seems.
This payout is for the month of July, so it figures it's a bit on the low side, I was out of the country that month.
This just shows you have to keep your lenses updated and fresh.
Something else that's happening now is a drop in Google traffic to my fashion lenses. There is an easy explanation.
Take this one as an example: Rachel Pally. It used to get an average of 100 weekly visitors, it has 5 now.
The fashion lenses used to rank Top 3 for their keywords, just because of the quality links received from the Squidoo Tag pages. However, those pages have been altered to no follow links, no idea why. The result is they don't give PR anymore. Since I never promoted these lenses outside Squidoo, they dropped significantly.
The fix isn't easy, I'd need a lot of incoming links to them. That's 20 lenses I need to find links for ...
I vaguely recall reporting on my August payday, and here's the next.
The grand total for this month is $96.42. It seems the tier 1 payout was huge: $11.27, just unfortunate I only had 5 tier 1 lenses it seems.
This payout is for the month of July, so it figures it's a bit on the low side, I was out of the country that month.
This just shows you have to keep your lenses updated and fresh.
Something else that's happening now is a drop in Google traffic to my fashion lenses. There is an easy explanation.
Take this one as an example: Rachel Pally. It used to get an average of 100 weekly visitors, it has 5 now.
The fashion lenses used to rank Top 3 for their keywords, just because of the quality links received from the Squidoo Tag pages. However, those pages have been altered to no follow links, no idea why. The result is they don't give PR anymore. Since I never promoted these lenses outside Squidoo, they dropped significantly.
The fix isn't easy, I'd need a lot of incoming links to them. That's 20 lenses I need to find links for ...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Advertising on your own lenses
The August payday has passed. Again, my grand total is $94.24 to be exact. I wasn't home to make more lenses, so that explains why things just stay around $100.
But this post isn't going to be about the Squidoo payday.
I've been testing a new method of raising some money. At a forum I frequently visit (Digitalpoint forum) there are people looking to buy text links on sites related to a certain topic.
I figured I would contact one of them with a proposal to link from some of my lenses.
To my amazement, the response was huge!
I sold 43 links (on 16 lenses) for a total of $312. That's for keeping them on for an entire year.
So how did I do this ?
I checked the forum (there is a link sales forum) for any post that wanted to buy links in a category I have lenses for. Then I mailed the owner with the list of lenses and this offer: $1 / month / link and that I would make them a deal if they buy more than 1 month and/or link.
Most bought several links for 12 months!
I integrate the links into the content of my lenses, joined with a few links of my own (to other lenses or to one of my sites). I'm going to keep on visiting the forum for future opportunities. It's a great source of income!
But this post isn't going to be about the Squidoo payday.
I've been testing a new method of raising some money. At a forum I frequently visit (Digitalpoint forum) there are people looking to buy text links on sites related to a certain topic.
I figured I would contact one of them with a proposal to link from some of my lenses.
To my amazement, the response was huge!
I sold 43 links (on 16 lenses) for a total of $312. That's for keeping them on for an entire year.
So how did I do this ?
I checked the forum (there is a link sales forum) for any post that wanted to buy links in a category I have lenses for. Then I mailed the owner with the list of lenses and this offer: $1 / month / link and that I would make them a deal if they buy more than 1 month and/or link.
Most bought several links for 12 months!
I integrate the links into the content of my lenses, joined with a few links of my own (to other lenses or to one of my sites). I'm going to keep on visiting the forum for future opportunities. It's a great source of income!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Back from vacation
I'm back from a 3 weeks vacation, and to my delight, a nice Squidoo payday has passed since I left.
For the month of July, the grand total was $109.01, which means I'm back to my average pay.
Tier 1 payout went up to $8.09 this month, with 9 lenses falling into this tier. This accounts for 66% of my earnings! Tier 2 went up too to $1.38, with a count of 21 lenses this accounts for another 27% of my earnings. The remainder comes from Amazon sales and Tier 3 (and lower) lenses.
Lenses to note are the Dream Kitchen lens, dropped to Tier 2 last month, it's back into Tier 1 and currently ranked 3rd best lens for me.
Since I've been gone for 3 weeks, the lenses haven't been updated, and you can notice this from their lens ranks. The average rank across all my lenses almost doubled since I've left. If current ranks would be an indication, I'd have only 3 in Tier 1 and 13 in Tier 2. I have some work to do before the end of the month ...
For the month of July, the grand total was $109.01, which means I'm back to my average pay.
Tier 1 payout went up to $8.09 this month, with 9 lenses falling into this tier. This accounts for 66% of my earnings! Tier 2 went up too to $1.38, with a count of 21 lenses this accounts for another 27% of my earnings. The remainder comes from Amazon sales and Tier 3 (and lower) lenses.
Lenses to note are the Dream Kitchen lens, dropped to Tier 2 last month, it's back into Tier 1 and currently ranked 3rd best lens for me.
Since I've been gone for 3 weeks, the lenses haven't been updated, and you can notice this from their lens ranks. The average rank across all my lenses almost doubled since I've left. If current ranks would be an indication, I'd have only 3 in Tier 1 and 13 in Tier 2. I have some work to do before the end of the month ...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Small difference, big impact
Small differences can have a big impact on the web.
I noticed an increase in traffic to the archlord lens, so I went out to investigate where it came from. Turns out, the lens is ranked second on Google if you search for "the archlord" (without the quotes).
Obviously, I went to check it's rank for just archlord, and it's not even on the 5 first pages. So the word "the" actually makes a difference, and even better, people actually search with the "the" keyword.
I noticed an increase in traffic to the archlord lens, so I went out to investigate where it came from. Turns out, the lens is ranked second on Google if you search for "the archlord" (without the quotes).
Obviously, I went to check it's rank for just archlord, and it's not even on the 5 first pages. So the word "the" actually makes a difference, and even better, people actually search with the "the" keyword.
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