Keith Goodrum

Lately I’ve been getting more into affiliate marketing outside of the make money online arena. It’s fun, and I’m finding it much easier to rank for keywords in Google. There seems to be much less competition… at least is feels that way. Plus if you do find any competition, they are usually not as savvy as the selling internet marketing to internet marketers.

I’m doing the usual things… setting up blogs, forum marketing, article marketing, social bookmarking. Things like that. I’m also writing under a pen name to make it harder to find out what niches I’m playing in. It’s kinda cool to use a pen name because you can take on a different persona. A little bit of Kabuki theater never hurts!

Anyhow, today I started… or should I say I attempted to set up a Squidoo page. The plan was to set up several Squidoo pages, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. First mistake was to jump in without reviewing, or studying any how to information. After all how hard could this be… right? I mean you slap up a couple modules, a picture, YouTube video, toss in an affiliate link & away you go!

Well, Hang On There Sparky… Not So Fast!

Seems like when I open my dashboard my new lens still “Needs Some Love”. Which is Squidoo’s way of telling me my lens SUCKS! Yeah, sure the guys at Squidoo are too nice to use those exact words… but they won’t let my lens out of the “works in progress” column. In other words – I’m not allow to go out and play until I clean up, comb my hair & put on some nicer clothes.

I suppose I could rail against Squidoo, and say there’s nothing wrong with my lens. They are a bunch of nit-picky morons, and are in a conspiracy against left handed, middle-aged male, east coast, quilt knitters! (one of my ultra-mirco niches)

But seriously… I’m the one to blame here.

After all, I did jump into this thing without reading the rules. I had a little too much swagger in my step, and figured – Hey, Piece of CAKE! And guess what?

It didn’t take too long for me to get slapped down… Lesson learned. Time to eat a little humble pie, and head back to the drawing board. Going to have to learn the rules, and then set up a lens the right way.

Hey, I have and idea!

Wonder if there are any Squidoo lenses teaching you the right way to set up a Squdioo lens?

Hmmm…

http://www.squidoo.com/links_to_learn

http://www.squidoo.com/squid_etiquette

http://www.squidoo.com/first_lens

Here’s an interesting thread I found on the Warrior Forum yesterday. Some of you might know Tiffany Dow as one of the Squidoo Experts from http://www.buildmylens.com/. She is also a very active member of the Warrior Forum.

Anyhow, she posted a thread starting a 30 day article writing challenge a few days ago. I stumbled on it last night, and thought it was a great idea.

Here are the rules of Tiffany Dow’s 30-Day Warrior Article Marketing Challenge…

Alright Warriors, listen up – there’s prizes involved here!

I know we all have it in us – that “Steve Wagenheim” article marketer quality. So starting tomorrow, and for the next 30 days, I want to know who is going to submit 1 article a day to EzineArticles.com?

After reading the thread, I figured this is another great way to get in the habit of writing articles. So, I joined this challenge. This is one area I’ve really slacked off on as part of my traffic generation procedures. This challenge will get me in the habit of writing article on a regular basis. One article a day is a very doable task, and the benefits are great.

Article marketing is a great way to drive free traffic to a blog, squeeze page or any website. Now, it doesn’t always drive a lot of traffic rapidly, but it delivers some pretty powerful long term results.

I’ve already issued a 21 day blog post challenge for myself the other day on my post Let’s Break Some Rules. I felt the article writing challenge would fit in nicely with my blog post challenge.

So, what do you say… want to head over to the Warrior Forum and join in on the challenge? It will take some work, but in the end will be worth it.