Travel To Europe CHEAP

If you are considering traveling to Europe and are looking for advice about how to travel to Europe as cheap as possible, you can read this new Zujava article about How To Travel Europe Cheap. You do not have to put off your European travel until you are have inherited a fortune, won a lottery or retired. There are excellent travel bargains to be found in Europe right now. Included in the article is advice on where to travel in Europe cheap and when to travel to Europe cheap.

Experimenting With Zujava

In case you have experience with Squidoo and have not yet heard of Zujava you may be interested in learn that Zujava is alot like Squidoo. You can write articles and give your websites dofollow links. You can earn money from Amazon and Google Adsense. And unlike many other Squidoo "Me Toos", Zujava does not require you to have adsense and Amazon accounts. You simply write an article and you get paid monthly by Paypal. Personally, I like that better.

I had read about Zujava on Squidoo and SquidU and thought I would give it a try. It was easy to set up and very easy to write a "Leaf" (the Zujava equivalent of a Lens). While my heart will always belong to Squidoo, I appreciate having a new alternative. Frankly, I do not like Hub Pages, so I am hoping that Zujava will be better. Have a look at my first effort on Zujava, an article about adult footed pajamas or simply click here to Create a free account on Zujava. It is free and easy so why not give it a try?

The Best Article Directory?

You have built a website and are looking for places to give it links. You search the internet for suggestions and what do you see? Virtually every list of article directories place Ezines at the top of the list. Common logic is to write an article and place it in Ezines. Why? Ezines gets alot of traffic and has high Google rankings (PR 6) Sounds like a good idea? I am not so sure.

I have placed several articles in Ezines and this is what I do not like about it:

* The Ezine rules and regulations are amazingly strict. 400 word minimum, under 2% of your words can be keywords, 1 week approval time, links to your website ONLY in the resource box at the end of your article. Break any of their rules and your article is rejected. WOW! You are sending Ezines free content and have to jump through very high hurdles just to get them to publish it. But rules are good right? It means that if your article is "selected" for publication that it will be some value to you, right? Not necessarily.

* I have placed some articles into Ezines that were not indexed by google. If they are not indexed by Google, that means that Google does not even know about it. The articles that are not indexded, and their links, are of no value to me.

* The ezine URL of the articles is not a standard URL ending in a suffix like .html, rather it is long and messy. I am not certain if this plays a role in the indexing process, but it is hard to link to. I have had some sites, for example SheToldMe.com where I often link to help articles get indexed, refuse to accept it. At shetoldme, I get the error message "Story's URL: The URL is not functioning!". No wonder, the URL is a mess.


* Almost every article that I have placed has been reproduced on other website. The copied articles almost NEVER include my links to my website. In fact many of the "stolen" copies of my articles include links to other websites. Why do I say stolen? If they have not included the link to my website, this is against the terms of use of Ezines. Problem is that Ezines does nothing to inforce the terms of use. They leave this battle to you the author to fight.

* The copied articles often rank higher in the search engines than my original article in Ezines. How do I know that? Just do a search on the tile of the article. See how many copies come up and see where the Ezines copy ranks.

* So, if google is seeing, for example, 5 versions of your article and the only version of your article with your links in it are at the bottom. How valuable is that article for your website? It will probably not send you any traffic. If Google is ranking other articles, it is possible that the links of those articles have higher value.

* Yes, I see the arguement, "Ezines has Google PR 6, so if I get an article published there, I am passing lots of value to my website. I am not convinced that Google PR is the be all and end all of value of a link. If the link is not indexed, I believe it has no value. If other copies of the article are published which do not have your links in it, I believe that it decreases the value of your article. You will probably get no traffic and since it will be seen as duplicate content, you may get little value from the links.

What do I prefer instead of Ezines? An article published on Squidoo has MUCH higher value in my opinion than an article on Ezines. Why is Squidoo a better place to publish than Ezines?

* Squidoo has little or no review process.
* Squidoo publishes immediately
* YOU have control about where to place your links as well as the number of links
* Your article will give you traffic, links AND money.
* Squidoo articles have short, clean URLs
* My Squidoo articles generally achieve PR 2-4

So, if you are only going to place one article, I think it is clear that you should place it in Squidoo rather than in Ezines. But what if you are going to place many articles? I still think that Ezines is not best place for a unique article. The time you spend meeting all of their requirements has little value when your article is going to end up all over the internet with links to websites other than your own. I would rather suggest to place your article in other article directories where you can place your links in the body of the article rather than in the resource box at the bottom which the copyright right thief will simply leave out. A recent article I submitted to Amazines Why Do So Many People Wear Adult Footie Pajamas? was approved in 1 day. I was able to include as many links as I like and in this article, I have four links. There is no requirement for the links to be placed at the bottom in the resource box, I am able to place my links in the body of the article. This seems better to me.

The Bad Reputation Of Online Marketing

Has anyone else had this experience? You have a friend out of work, or looking to make some extra money. So, you tell them about Squidoo, Google Adsense, Affilate marketing, etc. Your friend asks alot of questions, seems very interested, wants to know how much money you make, how it all works, etc. You answer their questions, show them what you are doing. Then about 3 months later you ask how it is going and they have done nothing about it. They are still out of work, still looking to make some extra money, still have yet to sign up for Squidoo or even read about it.

What is it with online marketing? I have told probably about 10 friends /aquaintences about what I am doing. Yet as far as I know, no one I have tried to help out has actually taken the plunge. When I ask why, they answer "I have been too busy", "I am not really sure". I dont hear a concrete answer.

Is it me or is it the bad reputation of online marketing?

7 Things I Ask Myself Before Creating A Lens

Below are the 7 questions I asked myself before/while creating my lens, BEARS: The 8 Wonders of the World.

1. What am I hoping to accomplish?
Raise awareness of the world's 8 bear species and raise money for Wildlife SOS.

2. Am I focusing on a singular sub-topic or giving an overview?
A brief overview / introduction of the 8 species.

3. How can I organize it to make it easy to navigate?
With only 8 bear species, it seemed logical to put the bears in alphabetical order.

4. How can I make it interesting?
Most people don't know the 8 species so I included their aliases (Brown Bear / Grizzly), photos and conservation status. I also added a Flickr slideshow and videos.

5. What do I want to link to?
I had already created more in-depth lenses on each of the 8 bear species so I linked to each of them. I also linked to organizations saving bears.

6. What can I sell?
I added bear Wildlife SOS's CafePress and Amazon books and bear gifts.

7. How much royalty do I want to give to what charity?
100% of the royalties goes to Wildlife SOS so I make sure I added a Donation Module.

Adding a guest book, some featured lenses, and a link to the Save Our Bears (SOB) Group made this a 5 star lens (in my opinion) right from the get-go. I have, of course, continued to update and add new items often.

Giant Thoughts

At some point between trying to keep my Giant status, content writing, trying to launch a new business and raising my Grand kids, it hit me; Don't try to do something you can't. It is much like don't try to be someone you're not but I think a lot of us take on things without really having thought them through.

How many lenses have you in WIP? I have about 5, which isn't bad but if I had my way about it there would be about 15 there. Every week I go through and delete WIPs. Why? Because I know that I will never find the time to do them or I get a much "better" idea for a lens.

I was thinking back to when I was trying to become a Giant Squid. That was pretty much priority with me. I worked very hard on the lenses and I put a lot of thought into them. That is probably why I made Giant Squid. Because of my work on Squidoo, I got a job as a content writer. I write between 5,000 and 10,000 words a day/ 5 days a week. (That is a LOT of writing, folks) and it is for the most part about things I don't give a hoot about. But, it's my job and I am glad to have it. It definitely cut into my Squidoo time, however. Then, I got caught up in all of this internet marketing jazz and quite frankly wasted a lot of time and money at it. I then started a couple of websites. To make a short story long--I am lucky if I spend 30 minutes a week working on Squidoo and that is what I loved the most.

So, after a lot of soul searching and retrospect, I have decided I am going to make every effort to go back to what I love; Squidoo. If I make a little extra money at it, fantastic! If I don't, thank God I have a job! What was the final revelation that caused me to decide this? Yesterday I was talking with (read: Bitc*** at) my teenager about something and I said "If you aren't going to do it right, dammit, don't do it at all". Boing!! I should listen to myself on occasion, I make a lot of sense!

So, my fellow Squid Giants, there are no links to follow here, no fantastic products or brilliant lenses that I am going to link to. There is just some advice; Do what you love and don't try to take on more than you can chew. Some people can do more than others and I, for one have a full plate-How about you?