Squidoo Awards

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Michey

purple star1 Squidoo AwardsBeing a Squidoo lens master who perform well and work hard it is a joy as Squidoo awards our best lenses with a Purple Star.

It is an awesome thrill, we have no idea when is happening, it is always a surprise, and always for good quality lenses, and when we get it the Purple Star will stay forever. Sure you can argue that it is a subjective matter, I say, it is not, as the award follow Seth Godin principle under which the Squidoo was created.

A lens has value if follows the 3U:
Unique - Useful – Up To Date.

What this award really represent is:

  • the recogntion of its value, uniqueness, usefulness
  • a well done lenses, good layout, pictures
  • a way to teach novice squids how a lens must be created

This is my list of Purple Star lenses (you will notice the little purple star near the title):

http://www.squidoo.com/Vatican-beauty
http://www.squidoo.com/Paris-Gothic-2
http://www.squidoo.com/MichaelaCernescu
http://www.squidoo.com/TeaParty2009

The second award is Lens Of The Day (LOTD).

LOTD1 Squidoo AwardsEvery day Squidoo staff pick one lens, just one, and spotlight it as it  is topnotch, the lens really stand out, for innovating, experimenting, storytelling, and sharing. Usually the LOTD nomination produce a lot of traffic for the lens master.

This is an example of LOTD from my lenses:

http://www.squidoo.com/modern-architecture-calatrava

So squidoo is a platform which is interesting, kind, open source, with the less constrain possible (the common sense ones) where your imagination can get wild.

As a lens master we gain money from affiliation, direct sales, Google adsense. The earnings are divided between the charities of our choice and us. Both awards will increase traffic and to some extend our earnings.

Posted in Squidoo Events, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Squid Angel Work Part II

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Michey

angel3 Squid Angel Work Part IISo the Squid Angel sojourn I told you about in previous post …  it is working well.

I am only 1/2 through, I find so far a lot of great lenses, and  I sprinkling Stardust Blessing them.

I have to organize my work so I come out with a classification on my own ( I don’t call them categories to avoid the confusion with categories we already have in Squidoo).

You can find my choices for:

  • Holiday Lenses
  • Architecture and Travel
  • Art Lenses
  • International Cuisine
  • Exceptional Value Lenses
  • Patriotic Lenses
  • Lenses For Our Soul
  • Experiments
  • Lensography – People
  • Technical Lenses and Learn To Squidoo
  • What Is So Special About Angeling
  • What Makes A Good Lens!

To avoid duplication of content I give you the link:

http://www.squidoo.com/how-i-am-doing-as-an-angel

I have had a couple of great surprises as the quantity of very young people who started to do Squidoo and how quickly they master the system.
Squidoo is a easy platform to use, but still it is a learning curve to do it right, and to do it at the level of producing a comfortable amount of money.
There are lensmasters  who make $20.00 per month and some who make thousands. So the skills of the last category take some time to master, and a lot of knowledge and dedication.

The good part is that Squidoo is a free platform to use and there are numerous lenses from which newbies can learn for free.

In summary my Angel lens is doing well and I invite you to visit.

Posted in Squidoo Events | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Squid Angel Work

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Michey

Angel01 300x160 Squid Angel WorkSome Squidoo lensmasters who are Squids with great working standards, have the privilege of joining “Squid Angels” squad for 30 days.
Squid Angels are people who will make a difference, they will find lenses with great value on  Squidoo community, and they will Bless them.
Doing so, we will encourage good work, and give a bust in Squidoo ranking.
RingoSquid Squid Angel WorkIt is a system you will not find in other communities, it is about empowering the Squid Angels as individuals expressing freely their opinions, and  we will create an array of valuable opinions, and ideas.

The system is implemented because Squidoo is an Open Source Platform where Squid Angels  can:

  • contribute, expressing their own opinions
  • they are helping with generosity, and great professionalism
  • they are allowed to appreciate stories, problems, accomplishments, ideas
  • their own talents and skills are recognized
  • they are part of a community of choice and they are totally free to express themselves

For the month of December I am a Squid Angel and I create a lens exposing my chooses. You can look it over:
http://www.squidoo.com/how-i-am-doing-as-an-angel

So I am really busy in December, I create my own classification, I create the structure, I add my work daily, until the end of my Angeling duty. You will see my choices, how the work is progressing,  and the value and diversification of out work on Squidoo.

Squidoo Angel is a volunteer position. As an angel, I have the responsibility to help make Squidoo a better place for all lensmasters. So I am humble and glad that is my time to serve.

Posted in Squidoo Events | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Profits Vs Traffic

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Michey

FileNan chmod3 Profits Vs TrafficThe first temptation is to do both but is it possible? I am asking because the methods are so different. What makes sense? To concentrate first on monetizing (making profits) of just produce ton of traffic?

This is a very interesting debate, the conclusion may surprise you . I just read an Daniel Scocco’s article and I am 100% agree with him.  As I have the reputation of being opinionated, this rarely happen, so I decide to give you his URL:

http://www.onlineprofits.com/

and also explain my point of view.

Did you hear about companies which build a website, work to produce a huge amount of traffic, then figure out how to monetize the website and finally nothing positively come along and the company gets bankrupt, and the entire story is not successful, it is actually a disaster.  How this happen and why?

Daniel’s point of view is that you must  concentrate first on producing profits, and second on traffic.  This is a very interesting debate. The vice versa process can work as well, but statistically he is right!

Those are a couple of reasons why:

  • The traffic is vital on Internet marketing, but the “good” traffic is expensive, so without having resources you can get bankrupt easily
  • The traffic shouldn’t be the destination of your activity, it is not the end, it is just one more tool in your hands
  • Second “content is the king”, concentrating on traffic you will end up breaking the fluidity, neglect quality, and consistency of your dialog with your readers
  • So you need to find and follow a business model in which your first goal is to monetize your website
  • After having enough money, and prove to  the world that you business is prosperous, then you can spend a part of your wealth to produce more traffic, which will increase your wealth
  • If your business is not branded  well enough, you don’t create the necessary trust, the conversion of visitors to become buyers is not going to happen

As controversial as may sound, you first goal must be to monetize your website and distance yourself to the crowd with serious branding using all the tools:

  • Create quality content
  • Build the trust on you
  • Brand yourself and your business
  • Maintain a good dialog with your list through quality content

I’ll give you the classical example which happens to me on Affiliate marketing.

Prior starting to write my own products I have done affiliate marketing choosing products from Clickbank.  I had here and there sales, but not frequently enough to be a substantial earning solution.  As soon as:

  • I bought a domain for each affiliate product I promote and I redirect the visitor first to my squeeze page and then to the author sale page
  • I created a specific blog for my affiliate marketing adventure
  • I was able to write a description as a user of the product, not as a beginner copying and pasting from sale page. With other words I bought the product first and then my product description contained convincing info as a user of the product
  • Then I started to make sales which were  significant

In a nut shell, only after I brand myself as a serious affiliate marketer, the success surface.

So I recommend to read Daniel’s post because I think he is right. He also has a FREE report.

report 468 Profits Vs Traffic

Success is not an accident

Posted in Web 2.0 General | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Squidoo Traffic and Mobile Marketing

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Michey

Selflopod 241x300 Squidoo Traffic and Mobile MarketingWhen we talk about traffic the majority are thinking about Social Media.
My favorite is Squidoo, it is a open source platform with a lot of freedom in design, and topics.
The best part is Google likes Squidoo lenses, so we get a great deal of traffic.

Mobile Marketing is such a new topic that I decide to try my skills creating some lenses. The main reason was to explain some details, show my favorite package I am using it, and shear some personal finding in the process of experimenting with Mobile Monopoly.

So I created 3 lenses so far:

Mobile Marketing with Mobile Monopoly System, it is a lens which explain in general why Mobile Marketing is such a hot topic, and why I like Mobile Monopoly System.

The Strategy Of Mobile Monopoly, it is a lens showing the  strategy:

  • how is working
  • the prerequisites,  and
  • what you need to know from classic Affiliate Marketing and Mobile specifics. To create great campaigns you need to combine the knowledge of those worlds

Beastmobi Software package it is a lens which explains the software package which help us to create squeeze pages optimized for the little screen of  mobile devices. We need this as nobody will pay attention to a bed looking screen.

I hope at this point you know why Mobile Marketing is working, but I enumerate just a couple of benefits of this new niche:

  • Mobile marketing generates a 15% – 20% response vs. a ridiculous 1%, response with conventional media. This is an incredible higher response rate…  you know what I am talking about…
  • Marketing costs are very low vs. any other marketing costs even though you still use PPC
  • Three billion mobile users represent a great marketplace, you can reach more customers then you dream of
  • You have many different ways to market on mobile devices and many different paths to make serious money
  • And the most important you don’t have a lot of competition at this point

The most important argument is that mobile commerce is going to be huge on mobile devices in the future:

  • There are already payment processors set up that will allow you to sell items directly via your mobile web site and have it charged to the user’s cell phone
  • Google and other big corporations are investing millions on mobile industry, mobile advertising, mobile new platforms, mobile applications

Mobile applications are very special for the future, I’ll give you just one example. When Joel Comm released his “iFart” mobile application, he had 10,000  downloads in just one day at a cost of $1.00 per user, so Joel back $10,000 in one day.
The application is about to hear farting noises on their mobile device. This is it!

So success is not a coincidence, you must sweat and making happen!

Posted in Squidoo Traffic | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Change Life Events

Posted on September 19, 2010 by Michey

August and September have changed my life.

group31 300x224 Change Life EventsDid happen to you to have the feeling that something is not quite right, but it was hard  pointing out exactly what was it?  If yes, continue reading.

The talking points of newsletter:

  • My challenge
  • New project – Mobile Marketing – The tedious process to get the proper routine
  • Connecting the dots between the old Affiliate Marketing and the new Mobile Marketing

My challenge:

If you happen to read this blog you know that I have initiated a challenge about creating a system for beginners to monetize a Blog. The root of this idea is coming out from the frustration I have with Gurus who still tell beginners that Pay Per Click is the best way to generate traffic and succeed.

This was true 5 years ago when PPC rate was $0.02 – $0.05. They happen to be the right person at the right moment in history, they get rich, and now the good key works have an PPC in the range of $5.00 – $15.00, some are as high as $30.00.
They spent $20,000 per month to generate $40,000. It is perfect; it is doubling the investing, but…

How a beginner can afford to spend $20,000 per month advertising and learning the advertising business with Google Adwords, which involve some learning curve in which, in general, people lose a lot of money?

So, my idea was to get rid of Adwords, and relied heavily on free Social Media and the power of Blogging. Maybe some system with decent PPC prices surfaces again, maybe not!  I was determined to stay just with Social Media and prove that this is possible. The process is longer, but is free and is suitable for beginners.

So, the challenge was in schedule, I made small consistent progress, when a stone hit my head. In August, just 2 week apart two systems about Mobile Marketing were launched:

I read all I could and I realize that it is the right time to try such a system, because:

  • It has a PPC in the range $0.01 – $0.05 and
  • The pool of cell phone users is 4 times larger then the active Internet users

I put the challenge in hold until I learn, mastermind the Mobile Marketing, and proof that it is a really good one.  To postpone the dead line of the challenge wasn’t a moral problem because I told from the start that I stay with the system until I succeed. And I had a light bulb from the beginning that I can connect those 2 concepts.

You have more details about Mobile Monopoly in the next section.

New project – Mobile Marketing – The tedious process to get the proper routine:

I start with Adam’s Mobile Monopoly system because it has a decent price, just one flat fee, and is very detailed explained in over 50 Videos.

I create a new blog for Mobile Marketing:
http://mobile-profit.com

This Blog will collect in time all the info you really need to mastermind the process, and it is a new testing site I add to the challenge.

In the new blog I define the Mobile Marketing, and I create a post about the Strategy showing the role of each component:

  • aWeber autoresponder
  • Clickbank marketplace
  • CPAs Networks
  • Mobil Advertiser platforms
  • Adam’s software to create opt-in pages suitable for Mobile devices.

A tedious process to get the proper routine follows and I proudly tell you that I am happy about the process.
In the first week I started to create Mobile campaigns, first campaign was part of the learning curve, no gain and no lost, the second campaign was profitable, I actually tripled the investment.

This System literally knocks my SOCKS OFF! So now I have a long term goal, a couple of short time goals and I am in the process to mastermind the process. If you will follow the Mobile Profit blog you will be up-to-date with:

  • The entire Mobile Marketing process
  • My personal progress, and
  • The challenge evolution

Connecting the dots between the old Affiliate Marketing and the new Mobile Marketing:

One of my short term goals is to find a natural way to connect my Challenge with Mobile Marketing, this will involve:

  • Mobile Monetizing in all my test sites
  • Driving traffic with Mobile Monopoly System as well, and
  • Other little steps which will trigger a viral traffic using the mobile devices.

In summary:
I am not going to tell you that making money with Mobile Marketing is  easy as 1-2-3, because I would be doing you a great disservice.
It is a learning curve, lot of steps to cover, but each step is easy to follow and Adam’s 50 videos are enough to conquer the learning curve.
If you already have a little experience with classical Affiliate Marketing (work with aweber, clickbank), and with a little bit of dedication and hard work, it is easy to learn and adopt.
There are various avenues of making money with mobile devices such as

  • SMS (texting)
  • Monetizing mobile content on sites and blogs
  • Local business marketing
  • Mobile CPA offers and many more.

You really can cut out your share of the Mobile Marketing money pie, and the right time is now when the market is new, not saturated, PPC fees are still just cents, and overall is a great new medium to explorer.
If you wait until this field will be as saturated as the classical Affiliate Marketing is now, it is still possible to make it, but the beginners will be left out as usual.

This is a short newsletter but is definitely about the most important event of August and September launches. I’ll e-mail it to my entire list now, but if you are interested to follow, you have to subscribe to one of the opt-in forms on the challenge test sites:
http://michaelacernescu.com
http://squidooeventlog.com  this site, or
http://mobile-profit.com

Until next time stay informed!
Regards

Posted in Newsletter | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Effective Newsletters.

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Michey

0com1 Effective Newsletters.We already know the importance of having a list, and a couple of ways to accomplish this mission.
We know the power of creating sizzling Squeeze pages, having an opt-in form on our blogs, creating a double opt-in email system for a targeted list. Now I narrow down the best practice of creating a useful newsletter which will:

  • increase your list
  • make your members engaged and happy and
  • they will stay with you, even though in each e-mail, they have a mechanism to unsubscribe if from some reason they are disappointed with what they get in return

Let’s start with the design of your “Thank You Page”.

Aweber has a default “thank you page” but I advise you to create one on your own which:

  • Politely you remind the prospect customers that they must confirm their subscription with a very simple statement like “Congratulations! You’re almost finished…  In just a minute, you’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your email address…You MUST CONFIRM your email to receive your FREE…”
  • Remind to whitelist your email address
  • Give prospects step by step instructions how to confirm their email addresses
  • Optional, you remind people the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter, good practice to reaffirming your promise

It looks professional and entices more actions… isn’t this what we want?

Note: I like to tell you upfront that the method I propose is going to work for beginners and medium marketers as their main purpose is to increase the list. The method for the top marketers is different simple because they already have a big, sometime very big, list and their first purpose is not the list, even though they will welcome some increase of the list.

So what a beginner or medium marketer must do:

  • Give value content and don’t imitate the hype of other established marketers
  • The content must be free and over deliver the upfront promises, this will build trust
  • If in some newsletters you want to sell a DP, don’t abuse the “call for action”, one in the body of e-mail and maybe one in the PS of email, and don’t include more then one product to sell per newsletter issue
  • To correctly build the relationship with your list, be objective, tell your success stories and your failings as well
  • Make a distinct difference between the desire of branding yourself, and the necessity of a strong relationship, because people read you to learn, find ideas which worked, not to count your Ferraris or your Mansions
  • When you tell about your earnings, tell about your expenses as well, subtract them and tell the real profit
  • Make a distinction between the need of short term sales against building long term income
  • Firesales are very good and profitable but don’t even try them when you are a beginner, wait until you are an establish marketer
  • In the newsletter don’t talk at your subscribers, and instead try talking to them, engage in conversation, entice readership. This looks hard at the beginning, but with a little experience you will develop your own style of direct speaking with your readers. This is the single way you will develop a community feeling and camaraderie spirit

In a nut shell, don’t emulate your newsletter after other newsletters, try to be yourself, have your own style, avoid ghost writer for newsletters (can use them for products), it is great to be a little different, the readers will notice immediately.

From all the techniques, “secrets”, advices…  which flood the Internet, I have chosen 3 brilliant  ideas from Lee McIntyre’s techniques, and I have applied then with great success.

Note: Working exclusively with WordPress, I adapted those techniques to a Blog logic and requirements to make it as simple and friendly  possible, and they gave me a lot of satisfaction.

Each Newsletter must be published in 2 formats: an HTML and PDF version.

You will use autoresponder to announce each issue of your newsletter, and the email will contain the URL for the HTML format.
Having PDF format it is for your long range success. You will attract and keep people with you because many like to have the PDF format to download and read later.  Do you agree that rarely you come back and read old e-mails?  If you have all Newsletters stored in PDF format it will be easy to come back and read them when you need them, when you forget something, or when you have time.
PDF will help the future subscribers. If somebody join after you already start your newsletter for one full year, that person want to read previous posts as well. You accomplish this with the next bullet.

Your first issue of your New Newsletter is different then the other monthly newsletters.

It is not publish as a first issue, it is more an archive of all posts already created.  In the first e-mail send to a new subscriber you will remind that there are other issues which nay be of his interest and you put a URL to the first issue.  It is a little extra work for you as all the time when you add a new newsletter you must go and add the URL’s of the previous letter to the first one.

End each email to my subscribers with a couple of lines generated by aweber, which will remind them that they are part of my list for a reason…

Msg24 Effective Newsletters.So what is left for you is to show you those techniques in action. Watch for the next post which will be the newsletter of the challenge, and you will be able to identify all those elements.

In summary: there are many other elements you can consider to add to your newsletter but this is what I already verify that have the potential of giving you long range success, professionalism, and satisfaction.

Until next time be informed.

Posted in blogging | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments