Nada Collar

Ok, it has taken me a long time, but I finally got around to looking at Squidoo.

It looks to me like the first “Revenue Sharing Inside”(tm)  site that I think will be (is it too early to say “is”?)  a huge success. Apart from forums, most revenue sharing sites I’ve come across just seem to lack that little something. These sites are usually made by someone who:

• has the vision to see that user generated content could be huge
• The willingness to part with some revenue to help generate users
• But not the realization that those that really love a subject will create the best content and make them the most money.

These enthusiasts, are people are more interested in their subject than the money. And they don’t want to just quickly list a few things and hope that someone clicks on it so they make a buck. They want a site that they can use to express their love.

It seems Squidoo offers that.

Referrals

However what really intrigues me is the Squidoo referral system. As a lensmaster, you can refer new users, and when they make $15, both you and them get $5.

Getting Traffic from Squidoo

What prompted me to start looking at Squidoo (even though its been on my list of things to do forever) was this blog post: Using Squidoo for Free Traffic and Money.Dave Rigotti claims that you can setup a Lens with a RSS feed of your blog to get traffic and PageRank for your blog.  Seems like a great idea to me. The only downside I can see is that Google might flag the duplicate content.  I suspect that problem would go away if your RSS feed only included an excerpt.

Obsession?

This could lead to an obsession.  I’m starting to get ideas about Squidoo, topics etc. I really don’t have the time, so I think I might start listing them here as I think about them.

I’ve just checked out the new Google Analytics and while I haven’t really spent much time with it, I have to say that I like it. I was an easy convert, I really hated the Google Analytics GUI before.  But now it seems to be more contextual, from most reports you can click on almost everything and drill further down into the data.  I hated that about the old GUI, sometimes what you wanted was there, but other times it just really didn’t make any sense (to me).

I suspect the original interface was designed for a certain user (the marketer), but then when Google took over it suddenly became for everyone, and as a result the interface wasn’t quite what most people wanted. It seemed bizarre to me that it took me a ton of time and finally a help search to find who my referring sites where.  But on the new interface it took me all of 10 seconds to find.

Maybe marketer’s will be writing about how they hate the new system, but I’m hoping they got that right too as I am slowly (very) but surely creeping towards being able to call myself that.

I’ve just added a new blog to my Google Reader. Zac Johnson is a “Super affiliate” who has just started a blog about affiliate marketing. I enjoy Zac’s writing style as he often seems to slant towards a high level “running a business” article, as well as the usual affiliate news and ways to make money. I am a partner in a reasonably successful business in a completely unrelated field (but in technology) and I find that most high level business concepts carry over well, so its a nice mix for me.

My blog originally started as pure Revenue Sharing, but the more I look around and see concepts such as Zac’s Review Me and Make Money (taken from John Chow’s similar Link Love campaign), and his Top Commenters Competition, the more I realize that there are many, many types of revenue sharing. As I’ve mentioned before, even just removing rel=nofollow from your links is a form of revenue sharing.

Anyway, back to Zac’s blog. I am trying to learn as much as I can about the affiliate industry and so Zac’s site will stay on my RSS feed. Its well written and I am sure he will continue to write some great articles. Its good to get some fresh ideas if you have been reading from the same people over and over.

There has been a reasonable amount of noise lately about lead generation affiliates and their shady practises. Shoemoney published an article from an anonymous guest some time ago about how ValueClick seemed to be in some shady practises. They (Shoemoney wrote that he had done some due diligence and seemed to agree with the guest) seemed to be directly involved in the “Win a free iPod” deals.

I did some digging and discovered that the websites in question were run by the old 180Solutions team. Now it seems that analysts are questioning the state of the industry and what effect these kinds of deals are going to have on these companies.

We have already seen the Florida Attorney General take action against ringtone scammers. But I predict class action suites. There must be a lot of people who have been scammed by free ringtones, free iPods and other shady deals. And there must be a lot of Lawyers itching to make a fortune off them.

Start developing your sites explaining these shady deals and class action lawsuits. I suspect they will make create adsense or affiliate pages to get leads for the lawyers Ironic isn’t it.