Good Evening!

I was just doing some things over at Squidoo, and I found out that there have been some very inprotant changes that I tought that you might be interested in knowing about.  Some of the changes are going to make your lenses look a lot better, while some of the changes have to do with what they are now allowing ( some would say that they are getting a little stricter).

First off, you can now make your lenses more appealing by applying different themes.  Here are three lenses of mine where I have implemented the new themes (backgrounds/colors):

Discount Coach Purses – Purple People Eater Theme

The Office on NBC – Paintball Theme

How to Make the Perfect Mojito – Gone Camping Theme

As you can see, these themes are nice, and they really help ut with making your lens look more appealing to your visitors.  Now, every single lens will not look exactly the same, and you can make each lens sort of stick out among your competition.  In addition to the ones shown above, they have also put out five other themes in addition to the original default theme.

Squidoo has also done away with the discovery tool.  I am not sure if this will help or hurt your lens.  I know that I have used it about 50% of the time, so I guess that it all depends on your personal preferences.

In addition to these great options, here are some things that have made Squidoo a little more “stricter.”  First of all, they are no longer allowing porn.  This does not affect me, but there are a lot of marketers that have made a lot of money in this niche that are going to be upset to see this go.  Squidoo has also done away with a lot of their topics to submit lenses to.  For a full list of topics that are no longer available, check out www.squidoo.com/squiddont.  Last but not least, Squidoo has put new linits on overly promotional lenses.  They have decided to put limit to the number of outbound links to the same domain that you can have on a lens.  Fortunately, you can still have nine outbound links to the same domian.  This is a lot better than a lot of other sites out there, so I am okay with it!

In my personal opinion, the changes that Squidoo has made are going to be very beneficial.  I am really not a fan of overly promotional lenses, so this does not affect me, and as you can see, I am already incorporating the new colorful themes!

If you have any questions about internet marketing using Squidoo, please let me know!  I will be more than happy to help!

Go Hard or Go Home!
Chris Jensen

I really appreciate that you keep coming back to my site, it's loyal people like you that make what I do worth it. If you have any questions feel free to email me. Oh and since you obviously like our site it'd be great if you could share it with a friend... They'll love you for it!

So you are interested in making money online working as an affiliate marketer, but you do not have a big bankroll.  If you are willing to put in the time and effort you can actually do very well without ever spending a dime of your own money.  When I first started out in Internet Marketing, all of my focuses were spent doing Bum Marketing.  All of my efforts were split between two different sites.  I was either making blogs on Blogger or I was making lenses with Squidoo.  Depending on what you are looking for in your efforts, both places have their ups and downs.  If you are looking to do a blog, definitely go with Blogger.  If you are looking for a more static website that you can go in and change periodically, I would suggest Squidoo.  But as far as ease of use, page rank, and functionality, here is what you will find.

Blogger.com is where I first started out with Internet Marketing.  Just starting out, Blogger is great because it is virtually foolproof.  It is really easy to use.  Point, click, drag-and-drop, and you are done.  Blogger is owned by Google, so it has a lot of built in features that you use that are incorporated into it.  In terms of pagerank, Blogger boasts a seven (on a scale of zero to ten, a seven is pretty strong).  So, if you build a nicely optimized blog with nicely researched keywords, chances are that you will be able to get your blog ranked fairly easily.  If you would like, you can set up Google Adsense on your blog, and you will be able to make the full amount from using it.  You are allowed to have affiliate links which is also a plus!

When it comes to Squidoo.com, you are looking at a totally different picture.  Like I already said, Squido lenses are more like static websites (alot of people wil even call it an article submission site on steroids).  Here, ou have a sense of community.  People vote on the popularity of your site, so it has a rank in the community.  You can mak a little money here and there witout ever setting up any affiliate links.  This is possible because every site already has ads, adsense, and other things like this built in.  THe only thing different here is that Squidoo keeps a portion of money made from these ads, and the rest is split up amongst all members (the more high ranked lenses you have, the more you make).  Just like Blogger, you can still have affiliate links. There are also hundreds of things that you can incorporate into your site to make it look more professional.

When it comes to the free sites, there are benefits and shortfalls with all of them.  These two were personal favorite of mine, and  have personally done pretty good with both.  If you are looking for more information on using these sites and monetizing them nicely, I have a couple of resources for you.  For more about Bum Marketing, I would suggest you check out the free resources that Travis Sago has put together at The Bum Marketing Method.  If you are looking for a great resource to start making money within a few weeks and you have a few dollars available to purchase a book, I would definitely check out PotPieGirl’s One Week Marketing.  Both of these resources have made me a lot of money, and they continue to do so each and every day!

I hope that this has been helpful for you!  I look forward to your questions and comments below!

Go Hard or Go Home!

Chris Jensen