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Tiffany Dow, one of the most famous users of Squidoo, is about to begin a new Squidoo Contest. In this Squidoo contest, participants will be creating pages using Squidoo’s Hey Mondkeybrain modules. Tiffany Dow has held several of these contests in the past, and they are great for learning how to use Squidoo.

This should be a really great contest. I followed one of Tiffany’s prior contests and learned a lot about how to get traffic to my Squidoo lenses. I am loving Squidoo. As most of you know, I do not hold myself out as a make money online guru. However, I will admit to you that I have started to make some decent money using Squidoo. So far this month I have make $120. I know that this is not a lot, but it is a great way to diversify and create multiple online income streams.

If you are interested in reading some of Tiffany Dow’s guide on how to make money using Squidoo, you should really check them out. Tiffany is a great writer and is a true Squidoo expert. Tiffany has two really excellent Squidoo ebooks.

The first one is Social Networking on Squidoo. This is a great beginner to intermediate guide on how to make money with Squidoo.

The second Tiffany Dow Squidoo guide is Flip That Lens.  In this guide, Tiffany describes how you can make a lot of money quickly building Squidoo lenses and then selling them to other marketers.  Flipping Squidoo lenses is a great way to make money fast on the Internet.

For me the best part about Squidoo is that I can create Squidoo lenses very quickly.  This allows me to target a bunch of affiliate products hoping that one becomes successful.  I have had great luck so far with Squidoo.  My lenses rank very well with Google and Yahoo and they bring me very targeted visitors.  I highly encourage you to buy one of Tiffany’s Squidoo guides listed above.  I would definitely start with the  Social Networking on Squidoo ebook.

Hey Fred, did you just say that I should pick a niche that I hate?  Absolutely!

Too often  I hear bloggers talk about the need to like what you are blogging about. Over the last year, I have learned that this is complete hogwash.  Well, at least partially.  Let’s explore this a little further.

For me, I break down blogging into two high level categories: flagship blogs and niche blogs.  My flagship blog is Newest on the Net.  However, I don’t make much money with Newest on the Net.  On the other hand, my money blogs are my niche blogs.  And, let me tell you a secret for these niche blogs.  DON’T BLOG ABOUT WHAT YOU LIKE.  BLOG ABOUT WHAT CAN MAKE YOU MONEY.

That was a very important lesson for me to learn.  Every thing that I read said that I needed to blog about something that I am passionate in.  But, you know what?  For my niche blogs, I am passionate about making money.  I am not doing these niche blogs to gather a huge following of RSS subscribers.  I am creating these niche blogs to made money.

I have learned that I really don’t need to like what I am writing about.  I just need to research the niche very thoroughly, and write articles from this research.  And, despite not always loving the topics that I am writing about, I am motivated by learning more about Internet marketing, blogging for money, etc.

This is an important thing for us bloggers to learn.  Sometimes you need to go against the grain.  Don’t always listen to the professional bloggers.

Adding photos to you WordPress blog has just been revolutionized.  It has been a long time since I has discovered a plugin that truly changes the way I blog.  But, the Photo Dropper Flickr WordPress Plugin has just done that.

After installing this plugin, you can easily add Flickr photos to you blog posts.  This plugin allows you to search for Flickr photos right from you WordPress Post Writing dashboard.  It is so simple.  Watch this, I am going to search for photos of American Idol contestants

Photo of American Idol Season 7 Contestants

photo credit: Project M·A·R·C

Or, photos of Kellie Pickler

photo credit: minds-eye

photo credit: caswell_tom

This plugin really makes it easy to put photos into your WordPress articles.  I only wish that you could crop them and target your specific Flickr albums.

Ok, this is not a post to become rich by learning how to make money with Squidoo. No, I don’t think that Squidoo is going to make anybody rich. But, I am finding it to be a great way to start making some money online. If you are just starting out with Internet marketing, Squidoo is great because you can start making some money which helps you to build you confidence and to keep you motivate.

I think that the number one reason most people fail at Internet marketing is that they give up on something too quickly. They set up a blog, put some affiliate ads on it, and then become discourage when no one buys their affiliate products. I know that I have had this problem. However, Squidoo has helped me build up my confidence.

How did Squidoo help me to build confidence?

Well, it is simple really. I made my first affiliate sales with it. That’s right, I finally made money online. However, it was kind of by accident. One day in December, I decided to log in to clickbank and check out my account. To my surprise, I had sold 4 affiliate programs with a Squidoo lens that I had forgot about. I created this lens in August when I was participating in the Thirty Day Challenge. I created a Squidoo lens for an affiliate product, but then quickly forgot about my lens.

I sure was surprised when I learned that I made $85 from this site that took me 15 minutes to build. So far this month I have made over $100 this month so far on three lenses.

Why is Squidoo such a good way to start making money online?

1. Squidoo is easy. You can create a lens in about 15 minutes once you get familiar with the interface and Squidoo modules.

2. Squidoo lenses rank high in Google’s search engine results pages. If I carefully select my keywords, I can quickly rank in the top 10 pages on Google which allows me to get some traffic. Remember, focus on long tail, focused keywords.

3. You can promote affiliate products on Squidoo. Unlike many free website platforms, Squidoo allows you to insert affiliate links into your lenses. This allows you to start making money with Squidoo very easily.

4. You can experiment. Because Squidoo lenses are quick to create and you can quickly get some traffic, they are great for experimenting with different website styles, affiliate promotions, sales copy, etc.

5. Squidoo is great for diversifying. Many of us bloggers tend to focus on our flagship blog, and fail to diversify. But every personal finance advisor will tell you that you must diversify your investments. This is also true for Internet marketing. Don’t just focus on your flagship blog. Build Squidoo lenses, create build a niche stores to sell ebay products, create Hubpages, create niche Blogger blogs, etc. Don’t put all of your eggs in the same basket.

So go sign up for Squidoo. And, go sign up for Clickbank and sell clickbank products on you lenses.

I am sure that a lot of you have been wondering where I have been. Well, I have been recharging my batteries. I have been very busy at work and have also been focusing on some Internet marketing.

While I know that taking a few weeks of holiday is not good for a blog, it was necessary in this case. I needed to determine where I wanted to take Newest on the Net. Sometimes every blogger needs to ask themselves, what is this blog’s purpose?

Don’t get me wrong, this blogs focus is not changing dramatically. No, I think that these areas have always been the focus here.

• Blogging
• Internet Marketing
• Social Media
• Internet and Web Application News

Ok, so what has changed? Well, with respect to blogging, I am going to try to maintain my focus on helping beginner bloggers. Now for us intermediate bloggers, don’t panic, I will still talk about more advanced topics, but I really feel that my bread and butter is with new bloggers.

For those of you who like to hear about how the Internet is changing, Newest on the Net is not really changing very much. I will continue to provide news and commentary about cool new Internet sites and web applications.  I really like this part of Newest on the Net.  Do you?

Hey Fred, what about social media?  I will still provide lots of information about social media.  The focus here will be how can bloggers use social media to promote their blogs.

This leads me to Internet marketing.  I do not want to fool you into thinking that I am a make money online guru.  So let’s just state this right up front.  I AM NOT VERY GOOD AT MAKING MONEY ONLINE.  However, I have been focusing a lot of my free time on it.  I have been focusing on niche blogging, squidoo, BANS and affiliate marketing.  I am definitely going to be sharing more of my journeys in these areas.  I hope that you will like my tales.  I am also getting quite good at creating squidoo lenses that make money too.

S, I am sorry about long holiday that I took here.  But, as I said, it was very much needed and now I am back in the saddle.