Horoscope and Zodiac Jewelry - a lens turning into a blog

One of the advantages of having a hostgator webhosting account is that you can set up as many blogs as you want without having to switch to a more expensive plan. That is: you do of course have to buy the domain name, but the various sites (blogs in my case) are all hosted under one account.

One of the least intuitive things you can do with that system is set up a blog ONLY to promote a lens. I know, weird isn't it? But that's what I just did. I spent two days setting up a blog, creating content, building links on something that I expect will only make me money through the promotion of a squidoo lens or two.
Here's the lens: Astrology Horoscope Jewelry 

It does OK selling zodiac jewelry and it gets decent traffic, but I want it to move up a notch in both search engine traffic and sales. And since I'd already bought the domain, I've set up a blog. It's called, not unsurprisingly:  Horoscope Astrology Jewelry. 

Normally I'd have turned the lens around at this point: linking it to the blog wherever reasonably and perhaps toning down on the content on there. Instead I've done the opposite: linked to the lens and used this as part of my link wheel around that lens.

Why? It has to do with being an international publisher. Amazon makes it real hard to get to their money, because they only pay out by check internationally. And guess what: it's expensive as hell the change them into actual money. So one of the reasons I'm active on squidoo is that for me it pays to have a middle man that pays out through paypal.

Of course, if ever Amazon starts paying out directly to my Dutch bank account, or in some other way where I can get to the money without having to jump through hoops, I can always turn the blog around too: link to the blog from the lens and turn the blog into an online 'hub' or the center of my 'link wheel'.

In the mean time though, that blog is going to get older - and therefore more trusted by Google as well. So it makes sense to host and own it myself, not put it on some free account. All thanks to hostgator.

More SEO and Marketing advice

I have been outgrowing my blog at squidtop for a while, but it took someone asking me to create an e-book to go and create my own blog about SEO and online marketing. The result is my Marketing Spiritual a blog about Online marketing with spiritual integrity.

The most popular posts there so far are:

• What I just did to get 5% more traffic to my squidoo lenses... 
• Search Engine Marketing Basics - 5 SEO Techniques 
• and the controversial: Tweaking the title tag for SEO 

The free online marketing e-book itself has also been downloaded a whole lot already. 

The e-book is basically the information from my SEO and Keyword research lenses, plus the most important content of my blogposts about SEO and online marketing, plus the basics about online publishing in general.

There Aren't Enough Hours in the Day

I don't know about anyone else but I sometimes get overwhelmed. I absolutely love Squidoo and anyone who knows me is aware that my topics are wide ranged. I also belong to just about every social network known to man. I am a content writer who typically writes about 10,000 words a day (for another Marketing company). I'd like to make the most out of affiliate marketing and use Squidoo as a part of it as much as I can, but the things I love most just don't have many products. I even thought of starting my own products but then I'd have to think about the sales page and working on the website (such as for a clickbank product.)

Does anyone else feel like they are running a race against themselves? I work and get nowhere it seems! I get all of these brilliant ideas that I end up going nowhere with because I don't follow through or I get another brilliant idea. Things were so much simpler when I just wrote Squidoo lenses and that was it! Good times...good times.

Information overload is a problem we all face at one time or another. We almost have to spend so much time promoting ourselves that we lose sight of who we are and what we care about. We stop writing about what we love and start looking for things that will make us money. There has to be a happy medium. Instead of trying to work on 15 different projects I need to complete one to the end and then begin another. Does anyone else find themselves running ragged like this?

I miss Squidoo. I miss the community, the committment I used to have to writing and the creativity that was available. There just aren't enough hours in the day