Best Reviewer: Easy Backlinks & Plenty of Potential

A lot of Squidoo lensmasters are using a new site, Best Reviewer, for quick backlinks to their lenses. Right now, Poddys is the top referrer, and Jimmie the homeschool mom is the top publisher. I'm the top commenter.

The user interface is simple so you can write quickly and easily... not a whole lot of complex thought is needed to create a page there. All the pages are "Top Ten" type lists though you can range from "Top Three" up to "Top Twenty".

To write the article, you compose the title, a short intro, and then your listed items. Each listed item has room for a link. Like I said, a lot of Squidoo lensmasters are linking back to their lenses. I made three pages with affiliate links to Amazon. Use your imagination and business sense here! An example: "Top Three Best-in-Niche Lenses".

Squidoo lensmastering is more than just making lenses. We also must let people know about them.

Eating vegetables and fruit to fortify your bones!

I heard a great show about stronger bones through nutrition on the People's Pharmacy; the guests were saying calcium supplements and our mothers' insistence on drinking milk don't really supply what we need to keep our bone density up as we get older. Fruits and vegetables are better for you than milk and cheese! You can read about it in my bone vitality through diet lens...

Triond 4 - Infobarrel 0

I posted sometime ago that I was experimenting with some alternatives to Squidoo. Not because I want to replace Squidoo. Squidoo is, for me, my best money earner. But I would like to supplement my Squidoo activities with some other sites.

Two sites I have experimented with are Triond and Infobarrel. Which do I think is better? No competition, Triond is much better than Infobarrel.

I have an equal number of five articles posted on both Triond and Infobarrel. Although I have had my account at Infobarrel much longer, to this day I have yet to earn anything! That is a big ZERO. Not a penny. Nada. On the otherhand, I have had my account much shorter with Triond, just about a month and so far I have earned $4.

Ok, $4 is not much to write home about, but for 5 articles in under a month that is about $1/article per month. Actually not too bad.

The amazing thing is that Infobarrel advertises that you earn 100% of the income from your article. Problem is that 100% of zero, is zero.

So, which site will I be submitting more articles to? Certainly not Infobarrel.

HOT TIP: Blog Network Offers Multiple Backlinks FREE

As online publishers we are always on the lookout for free links to our websites and Squidoo lenses. As we all know, search engines love links. The more the better. I have found a way to get several quality links for free. It is called PubRocket.

PubRocket is a network of blogs. There are over 200 blogs in the network divided amongst various topics including Beauty, Business, Dating, Domestic, Fashion, Financial, Fitness, Health, Home Improvement, News, Pets, Pregnancy, Shopping, Technology.

You only have to write a 200 word article and you can get it published FREE on any three of those blogs. In each article you may include 3 backlinks for free.

It is simple to use, you just add your article to your dashboard, select the 3 blogs from a list of 200 and click on publish. You are then asked to submit different titles for each of the 3 articles. Although I am not sure if changing only the title is enough for the search engines to not consider them duplicate content, it seems like a good idea.

The 200 blogs have google PR which range between PR0 to PR3. So you will quickly have backlinks from 3 different quality blogs. Sound great? It is great, with one little catch. I published my first article yesterday and today had the thought to check the IP address of the 3 blogs I selected. Unfortunately, all three of the blogs I selected had the same IP address.

Some believe that links from the same IP address may be seen by search engines as coming from the same website. That is, that the search engines understand that there is a relationship between websites hosted at the same IP address and may treat all three blogs as though they are the same blog. So, it is possible that you are not actually getting links from 3 different blogs, but as though all three links come from the same blog. Who knows for sure? Only Google.

I love the idea of PubRocket and will be testing it in the future. If anyone has suggestions for other blog networks like PubRocket, please let me know.

Happy Birthday Michael Jackson

52 years ago today Michael Jackson was born. No matter what you thought of Michael Jackson as a person, as an entertainer Michael Jackson was one of the best.

I can almost mark my childhood with Michael Jackson's songs. From Ben to ABC to I'll Be There, Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5 made hit after hit that listened to, sang along with and even danced to.

But of the many, many singers from my childhood, which ones were there from my childhood all the way to adulthood? Very few. Monkees? No. Diana Ross? No. Carpenters. No.

Michael Jackson was one of the few who kept innovating, kept changing, kept refreshing his music. Michael Jackson's music played a role in just about every stage of my life.

I miss Michael Jackson. I wish he were still making music today. Happy Birthday Michael Jackson.

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?

The Case Of The Vanishing Lens

A couple of weeks ago, I was checking out some of my lenses and discovered to my horror that one of them was GONE!! Actually, it was not 100% gone. But rather than the 20+ modules that it was supposed to have, only the introductory module remained.

Now, this was not just any Squidoo lens. It was one of my first lenses, a lens about sexy lingerie that I wrote just after joining Squidoo. I had put quite a bit of time in creating the content for that lens and it was rather difficult to create it. I had to write it very carefully so as to keep it interesting, but not anything that would go against Squidoo policies.

So, imagine my surprise when this 3 year old, PR4 Squidoo lens was simply MIA. Just a stub of its once healthy self.

What did I do? I wrote a letter to the "Giant Squid Concierge". The privilage to be able to Giant Squid Concierge email address is one of the best reasons to be a Squid Giant! Why? I use it very rarely, but when I have I have gotten an IMMEDIATE response. Always with the same day, usually within a few hours.

I sent a polite letter explaining the situation and asked if they could help. My response was:

Wow, I'm not sure. I see that the lens still exists, but confirm that the rest of the modules are not showing at the moment either on the live published version of the lens or in the Workshop of the lens.

I'm passing this along to get checked out for you right away.

Hang in there -- we'll get it figured out!

.

About a week later, my Squidoo lens was still just a stub. So, I sent a polite reminder. I got this response:

I am looking into your case now. Thanks so much for your patience.

Regards,
Gil

Receiving that letter from Gil made my day. I felt pretty confident that "stubby" would be saved. and then

I've just restored your lens and corrected the bug that caused this. Thanks again for your patience. You're the best!

Gil

So, I asked if I had done something to cause it and if I he minded if I blog about the event. Gil responded:

It was a very rare code problem...nothing you did wrong. I corrected the problem so it will not happen again.

As a customer service representative in the age of the internet, I always start with the assumption that everything I say will be blogged. Thanks for being polite enough to ask :)

Gil

Whew! It was a nice feeling to have my old lens back. But it left me wondering if I am cursed. Why? Back in April, the same thing happened to me at World Village, my Village Vanished.

Not one but TWO of my masterpieces have vanished, only to be returned with the help of technical experts. Has anyone eles lost any of their work this way?