Using Squidoo To Make Money
Some dude named Rob posted this on my blog...
Hay guys,I have been a memeber of the rich jerk for 6 months now and you are very right that most programs you buy on the net are a hole lot of information and they do not tell us how to put it in to motion! I have made close to $1000.00 in the last 6 months using bum marketing methods "means I try not to spend money on advertising"! Here are some examples of lens that I would love some help with!
The pre-school lens has had 500 hits since 02/28/08 but has not been converting very well at all, whats wrong?
http://www.squidoo.com/top-used-car-auctions
I have no idea what is wrong with this lens, I did the reseach and seems to struggle, Any ideas on this one!http://www.squidoo.com/loweryourgolfscores This is my favorite but I get no traffic at all, maybe 5 hits a day and I have tried social booking it to death and I even tried the lastest tool Comment Kahuna and still NOTHING!
It would be awesome to have some people help me out with these DUDS!
Thanks evereyone
Rob
Well, take out your happy-pipe, Rob, 'cause RJ is gonna lay some knowledge on your sorry ass.
But first, let me just say you are the type of guy I like to see posting on my site. Your ass may be sorry, but you ain't no loser. You've made your first $1,000, you haven't been spending jack on traffic, and you're motivated to improve. Gold star to you, junior.
All-righty, on with it...
I took a look at your Squidoo Lens at http://www.squidoo.com/top-used-car-auctions. And I can tell you the number one problem right away is this:
YA GOT TOO MUCH STUFF ON THERE.
There is just too much for visitors to click on, follow, and do. Making money is about a FOCUS OF ATTENTION. If you have three affiliate programs you want to promote for car auctions, make three damn lenses - one for each program.
Sell one thing and one thing only. Make your entire page centered around selling that one thing. You'll see your conversions go up instantly.
Get rid of sending people to places that don't make you money. Yeah, the Youtube and Ebay and RSS shit is fun and easy to put on a Lens, but it don't make you no MFM. (That's mother-f*ckin' money for you who aren't hip to my jive)
Only put stuff on your Squidoo Lens that's going to make you dough. Period.
Second of all, you make NO attempt at all to try and connect to the people who visit your lens. It's just a bunch of faceless, formal info on car auctions. Ain't no one gonna buy that.
People want to buy from "Bubba, a broke-ass plumber from West Virginia, who's crappy 1978 camaro broke down and he needed a cheap car which he found through this great and dependable auction site. Here's a picture of my lame-ass camero, which nearly killed me when the transmission fell out the bottom of it. Oh, and here's a picture of my new car, a shiny dodge pick-up truck, which I got for a steal because I was smart enough to use this special website I found. You should check it out by clicking this snazzy banner they gave me when I made my purchase."
People like pages built by real people, offering real experiences and real advice. The more "home made" something is, the more people believe it's real and of value. The more faceless and corporate, the less likely they are to trust what you're selling.
Selling is about storytelling. Ya gotta tell people a story when you're selling them something. They have to be able to identify with the character who basically is a physical manifestation of what they want to be.
Is your average customer some moron who knows nothing about cars, but needs a new car and doesn't have a lot of money? Guess what - I'm a moron who knows nothing about cars and doesn't have a lot of money, but I used this website to get a great deal on my new car, and if it helped me, it'll help you too, because I'm just some out of work plumber from West Virginia.
Catch my drift?
Okay, now onto your traffic quandary.
Trying to get free traffic is like trying to get free sex. Sure, you can get it for free, but you either have to work really hard for it or settle for something you aren't really happy with.
If you're going the free traffic route because your broke-ass can't afford adwords or whatever, here's what you do.
First off, bookmark your lens. I know you said you already do this, but you're probably doing it wrong. Go to www.onlywire.com. Create accounts for everything on that bitch and then use those accounts to bookmark your lens.
Now, the big mistake here is that people try and get people from the social bookmarking sites to visit their lenses. Uh-uh. Wrong. What you do after you bookmark that bad boy is take the RSS feeds from all the accounts you created, and then you go to Ping-o-matic.com and ping them bitches. You ping the RSS feed for every dang bookmarking account you made.
What does this do? Well, when you ping your RSS feeds, you're basically going out to all the search engines and saying:
"Yo! Search Engines! Get off your lazy asses and come check out my website!"
The Search Engine spiders will then visit the bookmarking accounts you created, see they're linking to your lens, and visit your lens. And then the spiders will say:
"Well shit, look at all these bookmarking sites linking to this Squidoo page. We better index this MF."
So then your lens gets in the search engines. Then what you do is you start creating a "link network" linking back to your lens for the keyword you want to rank for (in this case, golf scores). You do this by creating hubpage accounts, wetpaint acocunts, wordpress.com accounts, blogger accounts, and other squidoo lenses. All of which link back to your page with your keyword term in the link. And you create brand new bookmarking accounts too.
Then, you PING all those suckers too!
And you do this EVERY FREAKIN' DAY until your lens starts appearing on the first page of the search engines. (Usually Yahoo and MSN are the first to notice and rank you. Google can be a bitch.)
You can use these tools to keep track of your progress. They're free.
Keep using your Traffic Kahuna software to get backlinks from blogs. Then ping the comment feed for those blogs.
Remember: building up free traffic is a PROCESS. Process is shit that needs to get done every single day. If you're not spending 4 hours a day on building your traffic, you're wasting your time.
And if you can afford to outsource the traffic building, that's even better, because to be honest with you, doing that stuff yourself sucks ass. The sad reality is that unless you're willing to spend some money, getting traffic to your site is a SLOW endeavor.
Unless you have an email list you can blast to whenever you want. Then it's fast. But that's another matter all together.
Repost a comment when you start making the changes and let me know how it goes.
Later Losers,
-RJ
Comments
RJ thanks for sharing that site, iwebtools. I've used similar stuff from other sites but that one there has everything packed into one.
Posted by: evpstud | April 28, 2008 06:25 PM
Liking the shit RJ.
Classic RJ style, but some good stuff. Your definitely bullshitting on the once a day, but we'll see.
And the guy could get the real heads up and get his ass over to Hubpages.
Posted by: Sweeney | April 28, 2008 07:34 PM
Hey Rich Jerk ... If you haven't got sexy abs then you need to review my site and quit spending so much time on the computer. You too can become a winner like me!!
Posted by: Halhighlander | April 28, 2008 07:51 PM
If you look up "sexy abs" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of moi.
-RJ
Posted by: The Rich Jerk | April 28, 2008 08:18 PM
RJ,
Killer Post.
Hey, I am like you - I hate doing my own work. Do you have any capable outsourcing companies/people/sites you recommend for doing all the squidoo/pinging stuff?
Thanks,
Mark
Posted by: Mark Daniels | April 28, 2008 08:48 PM
I've been bookmarking everything I post in hub sites, blogs, etc. But I've been using the same onlywire.com login info as when I started about a month ago. Is it really imperative that I change those logins on a daily basis? If so, why? I'm guessing the answer is because after a while they penalize you, correct?
Posted by: Chad | April 28, 2008 09:46 PM
Hi RJ,
Who do you recommend when outsourcing list building?
Thanks for your advise.
Posted by: Elizabeth | April 28, 2008 10:43 PM
Mark - find some indians to do it. They're cheap and they sprekenzie english. Traffic Assistants come to mind. If not, elance that bi-ai-otch.
Chad - more bookmarking accounts = more individual links. If all the bookmarks are coming from one account, they aren't given as much weight as they are from 1,000 accounts and so on. Get my drift? It's a pain, but such is life.
Elizabeth - would you outsource your BREATHING? If not, then why would you outsource something as important as list building? Do that crap your damn self. Your list is too important to outsource.
-RJ
Posted by: The Rich Jerk | April 28, 2008 11:26 PM
Yo RJ,
I've been working online for a while and too have made about $1000+ but I'm struggling to convert one of my sites.
I get about 50-60 unique google visitors a day, and it's growing, to my antispyware site (http://www.spywareremoversolution.com) but I only get one sale per 200-220 google searches.
I have targeted desperate keywords - ie those who want to remove spyware or find the best spyware removal, which don't include the word 'free' in order to avoid freebie hunting losers.
I've also done product reviews and I receive lots of traffic for adware alert but no sales there.
As i say, I get one xoftspyse sale per 5-6 days, but I should be converting loads more!
I would just love to hear your thoughts on increasing my conversions.
Thanks RJ,
Alex
Posted by: Alex Miller | April 29, 2008 01:39 AM
nice stuff RJ,
but tell me if you have your own website would'nt you use Squidoo to link to it and build that up instead of the lens page?
Posted by: Jay | April 29, 2008 01:47 AM
I got another way to get traffic for you for free or, if you're lazy, darn close to it.
The lazy way: Go over to http://www.articlepostrobot.com
Buy the mentioned software, I own it and use it daily, it's a one time charge. No, unfortunately, I don't have an affiliate link.
Learn to use it. It is NOT difficult, and it comes with help manuals galore.
Create an account at all of the article directories it gives you. Put login info and password into each field, you only have to do it once. All of this takes about a good, solid day, but, as stated, it's a one time deal.
Write a 500 word article, preferably better than my four-year-old, with the link to your site anchored to your keyword at least four paragraphs down.
Link to another of your sites with keyword attached AGAIN in the author bio box. DO NOT MAKE THESE THE SAME SITE OR KEYWORD.
Make sure any html code is right, double check spelling and grammar, hit the button and your article gets distributed to about 100 article sites without further interference from you. You can even set it up to pause between submissions so your Internet provider doesn't think you're spamming. I only submit to article directories with a PageRank over 5.
The really free way: Submit that article by hand a hundred times. If you are so insanely cheap or anal-retentive to go this way, for the love of sanity put it in a text file and do cut and paste.
RJ, I bought your book on Saturday, stayed up all night to read it and take notes, and WHEN I am worthy to be seen in the same circles with you I shall bow down and call you Messiah of Marketing. Or something like that.
Ever other e-book I tried (and demanded, and GOT, my money back for) sold so much fragging fluff. I don't need to be told how to sell to people, I'm a copywriter for crying out loud, I needed the process for doing it on the Internet, and boy did you deliver.
Warning: Do Not Feed the Rabid Copywriter
Later,
Loni
Posted by: Loni | April 29, 2008 02:14 AM
Well I listened to this program called Science of Inlfuence by Kevin Hogan and he basically studies a lot about salesmanship and the human mind.
He said that they did a test and found that when you give your customers too many things to buy, they become indecisive and don't buy anything.
In fact they did a test. One table had all kinds of flavors of jellies for sale and the other table had only a few flavors of jellies (like 3). The table with the most samples had the fewest sales and the table with the least samples had the most sales.
I think RJ knows Kevin Hogan, not sure about it. google him in.
Posted by: Ansub Chaudry | April 29, 2008 06:31 AM
Alex,
Your site sucks. That's why you ain't gettin' no conversions.
I'll be posting some stuff soon to teach you morons what you gotta do to sell people crap. I suggest you pay attention.
Later Losers,
-RJ
Posted by: The Rich Jerk | April 29, 2008 09:07 AM
This is really good information... despite the tone.
Thanks man, keep it coming, while we're here implementing what you teach each day.
Posted by: A Fan | April 29, 2008 09:50 AM
your information about free traffic. I would love a bueprint. Could you create this for us?
Posted by: mohamed | April 29, 2008 09:54 AM
HEY RJ
HIRE ME FOR YOUR SPECIAL PARTIES AND EVENTS. YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED!
PETER JOSEPH PAUL / HI-TECH
ONE MAN BAND WITH 1200 SONG
REPERTOIRE
Posted by: PETER JOSEPH PAUL | April 29, 2008 06:41 PM
Hi RJ,
I figured you thought it would suck. Have you got any tips you can give me now to help improve conversions?
Have you heard of Chris Rempel? He's at thelazymarketer.com
It's a site based on that.
Can't wait for your expert tips RJ.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Miller | April 30, 2008 01:09 AM
No, I haven't heard of Chris Lame-Ass-pel. Wanna know why? Because he's a NOBODY.
He's got a nice gimmick with the "lazy marketer" thing, but any real IMer will tell you lazy people make no money.
Why are you copying a marketing site for your spyware site? Last I checked, it was two different niches. You wanna rip someone off, rip off the leader in your niche, dummy!
I've got a billion things I could tell you you're doing wrong with the site. If you want to pay me my $5,000 per 30 minute consult fee, I'll be happy to share them with you. Or you can just wait and read the brilliance I'll be sharing about conversions for free on this blog-diggity-blog.
I ain't running no charity here, fella.
-RJ
Posted by: The Rich Jerk | April 30, 2008 01:20 AM
I would like you to give a comment on this len : http://www.squidoo.com/what_is_a_hyip
It's my first one.
:)
Posted by: Smartpost | April 30, 2008 02:28 AM
Well RJ, that's fair enough but I guess i'm kinda envious that you gave 'Rob' some help on his squidoo and not me...
Also, you asked me why i'm copying a marketing website...well i'm not. He created a registry site which he earns a nice sum off every month and so I based my website design and content on his one. I didn't get the niches mixed up RJ...
Anyways, it's a shame u cant give me one bit of advice out of the billion things wrong with my shit, pathetic website!
Posted by: Alex Miller | April 30, 2008 11:35 AM
Hey Alex,
My cold, black heart bleeds for you. It really does. But I can't give out help to anyone who asks, that sets a dangerous precedent. Soon, all losers would want me to critique their lame ass websites. And I don't want to do that. At least not for free.
I chose Rob's sites because it struck a spark in my head about common mistakes people make with conversions - especially on squidoo.
But, since you've been persistent, I'll take pity on you, just this once. Here's your problem:
1. Your background color is hideous. Did you test that out? You might get a better response with a different color.
2. Too many graphics. People's eyes go right to graphics, and this distracts from the action you want them to take.
3. Your sales copy sucks. Your headline in particular. Read my book about what you need to do to get people's attention.
4. Your check box quiz is lame. It doesn't offer any value to the user.
Understand - if someone's looking for spyware removal, chances are they have spyware and it's ruining their experience. It's kind of like in the health market - people don't go looking for cures until they get sick.
Don't say "Free spyware scan." Say "Get rid of spyware RIGHT NOW, instantly, with no hassle, and never worry about getting infected ever again!!!"
See the difference? People want a quick, easy fix. Offer it to them. Focus on the action you want people to take. Focus on the pain they're feeling. Make them feel like complete CRAP. Make them feel SCARED. Then, offer them a solution - your product or service. Get them to imagine how much better they'll feel when they use your product.
Test, test, and test some more. Keep testing until you find something that works.
But remember - sales is about the psychology of people's needs. Put yourself in the mind of your customer, and say "If I had a spyware problem, would I use my website?"
Look at your top competitor and see what he's doing. Emulate that, and then branch off and do your own thing.
That is all.
--RJ
Posted by: The Rich Jerk | April 30, 2008 12:25 PM
Thanks very much RJ for your advice, I will do nothing but listen and act on it.
You are genuinely too generous...
Can I post back any results that I get as a result of your wisdom or would you rather I just took a long hike?
Alex
Posted by: Alex Miller | April 30, 2008 12:44 PM
Hi RJ,
I know you need a lot of energy to keep making money, so why not check out my site, this could help you with more stamina and increased energy levels with all you shenanigans.
Keep helping the newbie.
p.s. Do you have any recommendations on how to build a big list ASAP, with minimal expense?
Posted by: Elizabeth | May 6, 2008 08:37 PM