Make money online for free is actually possible with Squidoo.

This is old news but my Squidoo lenses really suffered after The Big G gave Squidoo a big slap. When I saw what little income I was making from this source all but stop I just dropped Squidoo and moved on to something else. All I could think about was all the hard work I had put into it, well I just got a bit ticked and quit Squidoo-ing.

Not that I lost a lot of income as I was only getting started with Squidoo but it still knocked the wind out of my sails.

What I didn’t pay attention to though and this is important was the traffic I was getting to my other blogs and websites. Instead I just stopped using Squidoo and only went back periodically to see if there was an increase in the income.

Well I am started my Squidoo campaign again and this time I will concentrate on the traffic Squidoo can generate for my other sites instead of seeing how much I can make on Squidoo.

My latest project is to get my butt back over to Squidoo and start talking about my BANS sites. Let’s see what kind of traffic I can generate to each Build A Niche Store site.

I will use this particular Squidoo lens to share what I learn about BANS and how to make it better. I am already learning how to modify the BANS templates to make them more unique but I will leave the rest of what I am learning for my BANS Squidoo lens.

The process is pretty simple and only requires a few new paragraphs on my BANS Squidoo lens every few days to keep it fresh and growing. Plus search engines like fresh content so why put all that I have for this lens up in one sitting. Instead I will feed the Googlebot a little at a time.

I will also go through my previous post about Squidoo and link to my new BANS Squidoo lens to get a little more linking going on.

For those just starting with Squidoo remember to use this method to make money online for free. It doesn’t have to be used for BANS, I also use it to promote products and services I don’t even have websites for, instead it’s affiliate marketing for free.

I love living in Canada, although I wish this winter would end. It would be nice to spend the money I make online on my hobbies like buying a new bass boat but we have to pay a fortune for furnace oil and electricity.

I guess I could have started a blog complaining about the high prices of fuel for both heating and driving. Maybe that would take care of those expenses while I earn money online from my hobby blogs. Nothing like making money online with my fly fishing blog and BANS site and then spending it on my new fishing supplies.

Well we won’t have to put up with the cold and high oil prices. I am already retired and ready to start traveling but my beautiful wife doesn’t want to give up the job she has had for the past thrity years, although she was almost convinced this year with all the ice and snow. More than we usually get, but not a record, just a pain in the back, shoulders, legs…

We are already planning to purchase laptops so that we can both keep up with our websites while on the road to who knows where.

Well we are down to just over a foot of snow and ice in my backyard. It’s pretty to look at from my office window but I don’t like to play in it any more. I can see some of our shrubs poking their noses out of the snow and they don’t look happy at all.

I think a place in Florida will work for us. We have friends there and buying a property may be the only way I can get my wife to leave here, at least for a few months in the middle of our winter.

I definitely won’t be leaving New Brunswick in the spring through fall, the fly fishing for Atlantic salmon is just too much fun. Come on April 15, 2008. I can get two days of salmon fishing in before our 25th wedding anniversary.

Love you dear, please QUIT YOUR DAY JOB !!

Knowledge is power and ClickTale.com will track your visitors giving you the knowledge you need to make your sites powerful. The more you learn about the traffic you receive the better chance you have to make money online faster.

What are your visitors doing when they arrive at your site? Are they just leaving? Do they go through other pages on your site?

The answers to these questions can give you the power to make their visit better which will keep them on your site longer and even have them return over and over.

A few question from their ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section should give you all the anwers you need to make the choice to start using ClickTale.com.

1. How is ClickTale different from traditional web analytics?

While traditional web analytics provide aggregated visitor data across web pages, ClickTale provides information about individual visitor behavior inside the web page. They show website owners movies of browsing sessions, as well as meaningful reports of behavior inside their webpage by aggregating thousands of visitor sessions. Now, website owners can gain a deeper understanding of visitor behavior, which leads to improved website usability, enhanced navigation, and increased overall website effectiveness.

Seeing is believing.

2. How is ClickTale different from other website recording services?

ClickTale is a mature and reliable site-analysis service that has been running for over a year on thousands of production websites. ClickTale-enabled pages have been visited over 100 million times and over one million pages have been recorded. We offer Heatmaps for an aggregate view of your data, advanced search capabilities, automatic tagging, and recording of https pages such as checkout and login pages.

3. How does ClickTale work?

ClickTale is a hosted service, so no software installation on the server or client side is needed and visitors can browse your website as they always have. Account setup takes only a few minutes.

As with other web analytics packages, website owners add a small piece of JavaScript code to their web pages. The JavaScript collects browsing data and transmits it to the ClickTale servers for processing. ClickTale creates movies of browsing sessions in minutes, and website owners can log-in securely at any time to view these movies.

4. Will you record all my website visitors?

Not usually. ClickTale typically records a random subset of your daily visitors. The number of daily recordings is limited by the level of your subscription plan and the criteria you choose.

Well there you have it. Take a closer look at ClickTale.com and see what it can do for you.

Image by baxiabhishek via Flickr“How would I earn money online?” is on the lips of pretty everyone that asks me how I make a living on the internet. Then I make them take me for a coffee or I won’t tell them. Ok, not really, I tell them anyways.

Pretty much the first thing I tell them is to NOT quit their day job, like I did. It does take time to match your income to your salary and all the benefits you get so stay employed.

Next I make sure I don’t tell them it’s simple. So many people start with ‘It’s simple, all you do is…’ That just sets them up for disappointment when it doesn’t happen quite the way they expect it to, like over night.

Most of the people I talk to soon find out how much I love my hobbies because I love to talk about them. Before you know it in a conversation like that you pick up on the hobbies they have as well and that’s my starting place.

I earn money online talking about my hobbies and if you spend money on your hobbies you most likely can make money online for free talking about them like I do.

I really like blogs over static websites, especially when I am talking about the things I talk about every day. The blog just updates the search engines faster and people tend to find blogs easier to read.

Blogs are like a journal where you can write what’s on your mind every day or so. Sometimes I write once every two or three days, other times every day and sometimes multiple times a day.

Now I said you could make money online for free and it’s true.

Step One – Get a free blogging account.

I have used Blogger.com and Wordpress.org for a few of my blogs but later made the choice to purchase my own domains which I feel gives me more control over what I can write without the fear of losing my account.

Step Two – Don’t try to monitize your blog too soon.

And when you do don’t go wild and scare your visitors with ads every where. If you are tempted to put ads up you may find your readers don’t like it. Let them get to know you first and they will learn to trust you because you feed them great content.

Step Three – Stay for the long haul.

That is why I told you not to quit your day job.

I have a few hobby blogs that took me about 3 months to start producing the results I wanted and that’s when I started to earn money online from them. Unfortunately most people or new marketers can’t seem to keep focused over the long haul and never earn enough to keep them going.

Step Four – Take the time to create great content.

It’s a fact that poor quality content doesn’t get read much and if it does it doesn’t get read completely. Sure how you made it this far.

When I first started blogging I felt pressured to come up with content at the snap of a finger but that’s not really the case. I now take a bit of time and put my articles and posts together over a period of days.

Creating content over time allows you to think about it and gather better info in you need to.

I will also create content for multiple posts will my mind is rolling in that direction. I don’t have to publish these posts at the same time. I will time stamp them with the date I want them to appear for my readers.

This post on ‘How To Earn Money Online’ was created three days before I actually posted it but I set the date at the same time I created the post.

This allows me to give content to my readers when I am off fly fishing with friends or out jammin’ on my guitar or what ever I want to be doing that isn’t in my office.

NOTE: I didn’t add any advertising sites for you because I don’t want you to put advertising on your blog until you have been blogging for a month or more.

How cool is that? Selling products on eBay, the worlds largest online auction, without even owning the products. Well that’s what I do for a living and it’s easy.

I am sure that you already knew eBay was big but did you know eBay is selling about 60 MILLION products at any given time and you can earn from these products as an eBay affiliate just like me.

There is a TURN-KEY, super simple, mind-blowingly EASY way to tap into that affiliate program and earn hundreds or thousands per month, every month?

I had all but given up selling on eBay and frankly, I didn’t have a CLUE about how easy it could really be until I ran across this…

With Build a Niche Stores, you can build UNLIMITED stores that can earn you UNLIMITED income on both new sign-ups to Ebay, and on ALL purchases made within 7 days of a person visiting any one of your stores.

For example, if you live in the United States, there are over 28,000 Ebay categories, and thus over 28,000 stores you can build.

Building a store is super simple with Build a Niche Store (BANS) but we’ll get into that in a moment.

With BANS, you choose your category, or target niche, and then BANS will instantly create for you a professional, fully functional, search engine friendly website. This site will contain all of the products listed for sale on eBay relevant to your chosen market.

I started with my hobbies. Those things I love to do and then from that I moved on to things I don’t even care about that make me money from eBay. There are great tutorial videos that made anything I wasn’t clear on very clear.

Because I started with my hobbies it was easy to start building the traffic my site gets. As your targeted traffic increases, your site will generate more and more money for you in THREE different ways…

1. Affiliate Commissions For Ebay Purchases

If your customers buy ANYTHING (even items NOT in your store) from eBay within 7 days of visiting your store, you earn between 20% and 75% of the revenue that eBay makes from the sale.

2. Affiliate Commissions For New Active eBay Members

If a new referral of yours registers as an eBay member and either makes a bid or purchases an item within 30 days, you earn a new member bonus of between $25 and $35.

3. Supplementary Advertisements

Not everyone who visits your site will purchase Ebay items, but you can still make money from them with Supplementary Advertisements such as Google AdSense, Commission Junction, LinkShare and ClickBank.

And building the BANS sites couldn’t be easier.

Simply…

• Choose your country…
• Choose your niche…
• Customize your site…
• Market your site…
• And then repeat the process by building new stores to target additional niches.

Simple!

When I first looked at BANS I immediately figured it was going to cost more than my budget would allow but I was way off. It should cost a fortune but it doesn’t.

The price for UNLIMITED stores of your choosing is less than what it would cost to hire a rookie website builder to build a one page website for you! I know because I am a website designer and even for my friends sites I charged them more than the cost of Build a Niche Store.

You may not know me but I have to say “This is truly amazing“.

Be sure and check out the many examples of stores that ordinary people have created using BANS… they’re some of the most professional looking sites I’ve seen in some time.

What if you only built a dozen stores, and each one only made a hundred or so dollars a week.

What would you do with an additional $60K+ per year???

I personally have been building one BANS site a week and the process takes me about 5 minutes and I have a site that sells products I would never have bothered trying to get and sell. I then spend time each month adding a little content to the sites and making a few product pages for products that are best sellers.

Example: On my fly fishing New Brunswick BANS page I added product categories for the the best selling fly rods, reels and even fish finders making for a very unique store that was being indexed for long tail keywords in just days.

Qassia is a great place to practice article marketing and increase the number of backlinks to your websites and all it will cost you is the time you are willing to put into promoting your sites.

Not convinced yet?

Ok, let me tell you abit about how Qassia works.

To start with you can not join Qassia without an invitation by another member, at this time. This is because Qassia is still in BETA. Alex Goodall invited me. Thanks Alexa.

Look just under Webmann’s Profile and you will see the signup link in the first paragraph.

The more quality content you add the more noticed and higher in the ranks you will go. Remember content is king/queen and the better you get the better your rankings.

So take a few minutes, get signed up with Qassia, then start adding intel(content).

Caroline Middlebrook had a little contest on her blog a couple of days ago. A little Easter egg hunt and I love Easter eggs so I went hunting.

When I am on an Easter egg hunt lookout and you little kids out there watch out for my big feet cause I don’t watch were I am going and who is under them.

Well I found all the Easter eggs on Caroline’s blog and there aren’t any left for those late comers.

Proof, you want proof. Oh man I ate them all, can we just count the wrappers.

You still have time to get over there. I didn’t really eat them all. So click this link to Caroline Middlebrook’s Blog and start hunting.

These were the competition rules:

Competition Rules

All 30 eggs will be cunningly hidden by midnight Thursday 20th March UK time but you can get a head start and begin looking for them now as 10 have already been hidden. The competition will run until Tuesday 25th March 9am UK time – that gives you the whole of the Easter holiday period to find all of the eggs.

Each person can only enter once but the more eggs you find, the more chances you have to win. The maximum number of entries you could gain would be 180 – for starting a new blog (30 entries) plus finding all 30 eggs and blogging about them (150 entries). Only one copy of the StumbleUpon course can be won by each person.

It will also take me a couple of days to gather all of the entries together so the winners will be announced a few days after the closing date.

I trust Alex Goodall for one main reason. He has not steered me wrong and I think he even saved my sanity with his IM Mind Map

Alex mainly grabbed my attention with the word ‘backlinks’. I am always looking for backlinks to my various blogs and websites. So I joined up and now I would like you to read what Alex has to say about Qassia and decide if it’s worth a go.

Here is what Alex wrote to me:

Qassia is still in “Private Beta”, as they call it, but has already hit 10,000 members.

The site defies direct categorization, but combines elements of an article directory and blogging environment.

There are many imaginative and creative features that are worth looking at, including:

• Its viral-incentivised approach to getting new members
• Its member-based quality assurance
• The simple rules that help minimise abuse of the rating system
• Strong competitive element for getting more exposure

The purpose of anyone being active there is pretty blantantly to get backlinks. Provided Google doesn’t impose a penalty on the site, this has very good potential.

I think (but am not sure), that there is an advantage to getting in early and clocking up your Q$ account before too many people get too wealthy.

The $100 – $500 per referall? That’s what you get for referring others to sign up. It’s not real $s. It’s Q$s. And the only reason to get Q$ is to get better ranking.

Overall, I like the site and the ideas behind it.

Alex Goodall

Here is my profile link to Qassia so you can connect and get connected.

I have been using Build A Niche Store (BANS) for a couple of months now and have been focusing on my hobbies, selling things on eBay that I don’t even own.

I think that is so cool because I used to spend so much time looking for thing I wanted to sell on eBay but never really finding anything that I wanted to sell, so I moved on and left eBay for a while.

Version 2 of BANS was great and did the job so I have no complaints. I did get a bit nervous when I had to make a few changes to code here and there but then BANS Version 3.

I didn’t install the update to version 3 because I understood I would have to go back in and add the changes I had made all over again.

I had three BANS sites at that time. I had everything setup the way I wanted and I was slowly making changes to the templates so they were unique.

Instead of updating I just left them the way they were and continued creating new BANS sites for a few interests and it was so easy that I was sure I was doing something wrong. But I wasn’t wrong and Build A Niche Store Version 3 is just that easy.

I woke up the other morning to find that my version 2 sites had an account suspended message in the middle of the control panel. I immediately thought that it was because I didn’t update and decided I better do the updates.

The update was just a matter of copying the new files over the old files and running an update file.

Now all my BANS sites are version 3 and I have so much more control over the auction items I show. Just too cool.

The funny part about the update and the suspended message was that the suspened message was an RSS feed error message and had nothing to do with the update.

Goto love those mixed messages that turn out to be a positive thing.

Man it’s some easy to get swamped with emails and other business related tasks. Not to mention all the things that need to be done around the house and property. Spring has almost sprung and the things that need to be done are starting to come to the fore ground of my mind and my wife’s mind.

Of course it might just be my fault for asking Jenny to make a list of things that need doing.

This year is a new ball game for us because the past four years have been a struggle just surviving a major heart attack that was in-operable. But in the past few months I have been feeling a lot more like the guy I was before that dreadful Friday February 13th, 2004.

I have been blogging about my hobbies but I haven’t been able to enjoy them so much. The love is still there so I have no problem writing about them.

But with everything happening all at once it’s a bit overwhelming so I had to get better organized. That’s when I found a little article on Priority setting and I read it instead of setting it aside for later.

It’s brief but it made a huge difference in my building stress levels.

The Alphabetical Priority List

There are actually a number of ways you can prioritize business tasks. Among the more popular and more effective methods is the alphabetical priority list whereby your tasks are given a value between ‘A’ and ‘F’. ‘A’ being most important, paying your taxes for example and ‘F’ being something unimportant like cleaning your phone receiver.

Here’s how to prioritize effectively.

Step 1

Create your task list. It is important to break larger tasks into smaller steps if possible. For example paying your taxes might first involve calling your accountant or making a deposit into your Swiss bank account first. (Just kidding about the Swiss bank account.)

Step 2

Give all immediate tasks the value of A – F. Again A is the most important task or tasks and F is the least.

Step 3.

Evaluate the tasks based on two criteria: how important are they and how urgent are they. For example if your taxes are due tomorrow then you need to get busy or you’re going to face financial penalties so the task is very urgent. However, calling a client and finalizing a large sale is very important to your business.

Step 4.

For all tasks with the same value, prioritize them numerically. For example, maybe calling your accountant and making a large deposit in your Swiss bank account both have a value of B. Which is more important? The deposit quite likely because you don’t want your accountant to be complicit, so making the deposit would have a value of B1 and calling your accountant would have a value of B2.

Step 5.

Your final step in creating your task list, particularly if your high priority list is extensive, is to run through your list again and see how you can re-arrange it so that some of the less important tasks get moved down the list to make room to spread out your high priority tasks. For example if you have three A level tasks and only one F level task, perhaps you can move down a D or E level task and make room to spread out your high priority tasks. When in doubt, delegate to get all of those high priority tasks completed quickly.