If you have a blog of website then you’ve probably heard of Squidoo. Squidoo lets you create lenses filled with content and various cool modules. You pick your subject, write about it, put it into a lens with images, videos and other stuff, and then you have a content-filled page ready to publish to the Squidoo network.

These lenses usually hold some authority in search engines because Squidoo is a trusted website. What’s more, you’re not creating a junk page. If you put a bit of time and effort into your lens, it has value and will be treated as such.

A Squidoo lens can be beneficial to your blog or website in several ways. Firstly, you can link out as you please. If you have a blog about cars then you can write a lens about cars, link out to pages on your blog and reap the benefits. This is a good way of building links, if nothing else, because the links are all dofollow.

Furthermore, if a lens you make becomes popular, you can drive traffic to your sites. Lenses become popular in the same was as any page of content on the Internet. You build links, use social bookmarking sites and promote your lens to get it noticed.

Lenses are categorized and ranked by Squidoo, so if you have the top travel lens, you can expect to gain a lot of traffic from it.

I’ve created a few lenses. You can see them here:

• Phuket hotels
• Phuket nightlife
• Patong Beach
• Phuket beaches
• Phuket girls
• Phuket restaurants
• Patong girls
• Acai “free trial offer” scams

I say all of this theoretically because my lenses have yet to become popular and really benefit me in any way. However, I’m still new to the whole Squidoo thing so I will keep experimenting and see just what these lenses are capable of.

If you’ve had any positive results from Squidoos, please share you experiences here.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
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So you’ve got $100 to spend and you want to use it wisely. What do you do? Well, first thing to do is to read part one of this article about how to use money to promote your blog. Next, let’s get back down to business.

Buy a page on a paid wiki

For $100, you could buy a page on the Million Dollar Wiki or the Million Euro Wiki. The current buzz is surrounding the Million Euro Wiki, which launched just recently. There are less pages on the MEW and therefore there is less competition for page views. If you are going to get in with either of the paid wikis, the time to do it is right now. You need to ask yourself if you can make that $100 work for you. Not everyone will be able to.

Start a new blog

Although not directly beneficial to your existing blog network initially, there is always the option of spending some of your $100 on a new domain and starting a brand new blog. Having a network of blogs makes it easier for you to make money blogging. Pick your topic and get writing – it’s that simple.

Invest in a killer logo

There are heaps of freelance designers out there who could add a touch of pizzazz to your blog. If you need something done, just make a post on Digital Point and within minutes you’ll have five people all wanting to help you out. Beware! Some of them suck. This guy, however, is brilliant. He made my logo for $10 and I love it. He’s actually made three logos for me so far. If you want to brand your blog, you need a logo.

Outsource writing work

In the past, I’ve outsourced article writing for just $4 an article. It sounds silly because my full-time job is writing, but I don’t always have time for completing laborious tasks. At $4 an article, you can’t complain, and you can get some decent content up on your blogs while your time can be spent on other things. If you want the contact for a guy I use, email me and I’ll send you his address.

Start an ad campaign

Yahoo Search Marketing, Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter – whoever you chose for your ad campaign, you will be able to target readers to come to your blog for a small fee (from $0.01 per click, depending on whether you Yahoo, Google or Microsoft your ads). Learning about ad campaigns is a useful skill and something I trying my hand at recently through Yahoo Search Marketing. You will get traffic to your blog, but you have to look at what sort of traffic you are getting and whether your blog can benefit from it.

Obviously you can’t do all of these things with $100, but you’ve got options. What would you do? What have I missed? Maybe you missed part one of this article. Go and check it out and share your thoughts here.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
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Let’s say you just won $100, like Becky did in my last blog contest. What are you going to do with that money? You have a number of options, but what you really need to decide is if you are going to keep that money or invest it back into your blog. There are a lot of people after that $100 and what you do with it could drastically improve your blog and your chances of making money online.

What are your options?

Buy blog reviews

You don’t have to spend $400 for a review on John Chow’s blog. There are plenty of blogs where you can get your site reviewed for $100 or less. Cash Quests is the obvious example, where you can get reviewed for $80. At the moment, you can get reviewed by Michael Kwan, who writes John Chow’s Review Me reviews, for just $40. Another to consider is Ben Cook, who has built up a solid readership in less than three months. He currently charges $100 a review.

The benefits of buying a review are traffic, links and advice. If you pick the write review, you can make the most out of all three of these.

Invest in domains

Remember when I wrote about how to buy dropped domains? If you have $100, you have the opportunity to buy dropped domains with Page Rank and links, and extend your existing network. Better yet, you could buy domains that have no been dropped, and create your network that way. You can use these acquired domains to generate additional sources of income and to link to your own blogs, thus boosting Page Rank and SERPs.

Buy text links

With $100, you can buy a whole bunch of text links. What you want to look for are two things: blogs with Page Rank/linkbacks and blogs with traffic. If you purchase a text link that has prime placement on a blog and the creative you use is catchy enough, you will get traffic. If you purchase on a blog with Page Rank/links and your creative is based around the keywords you target (”make money”, for example) you can receive a boost in SERPs for that keyword, and if your link is up when Google takes its snapshot of Page Rank, you might see some changes in that respect too. Text Link Ads is the obvious place to look like links, but don’t rule out Linkworth as well. At other times, you can approach bloggers directly to inquire about buying links.

Buy advertising space

Those 125×125 ad blocks are all the rage. Carl Ocab is selling ad blocks for just $40 at the moment while Courtney Tuttle‘s blogs are going for just $50! Ad spots like these can generate traffic if you can catch a reader’s eye. It’s not rocket science, so pick a high-traffic blog and get your ad up.

Buy other blogs

It seems ridiculous, but for $100 you can buy other people’s blogs. Sometimes bloggers give up on their quests, while sometimes they just don’t have time to maintain everything. You can buy blogs for content, the domain, Page Rank, linkbacks, and a number of other aspects. You could buy a blog with a posting history and start writing paid reviews on it straight away, or you could use the foundations of a blog to build it into something new. As you trundle around the blogosphere, make a note of blogs that have apparently died. If one catches your interest, make an offer. Blogs for sale crop up on webmaster forums a lot too.

Would any of these options meet your needs? What would you say is a wise investment?

Part two of what to do with your $100 is here.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
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