In the Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint I talk about setting up a blog to support your lenses. This can be a blogger blog, it can be a sel hosted wordpress blog, it can be a tumblr blog ~ it can really be pretty much anywhere. The one place it can NOT be is at wordpress.com. The terms of service at wordpress.com expressly prohibit sites that are for monetary gain or linking to other sites to support search engine ranking. (I’d personally read the TOS of any site you are planning to build a blog on to make sure what you’re doing is within the rules).
With that said, I think blogger is a great place to do this because it is an authority site so you will be able to quickly get this site up and running as well as ranking if you choose good keywords. (I do recommend that you start your OWN sites as quickly as you can so you own your own content and can’t have your site taken down at the whims of others ~ so YES, if you have an understanding of how to start a wordpress (self hosted) blog I recommend you do BOTH. 
How to start your support blog:
Since you are targeting Christmas with your lenses I suggest you create a Christmas blog. This starts by going to the keyword tool and doing a little research on Christmas keywords. You will be astonished at what is available and not very competitive. (just use the same process you use for finding lens keywords).
Set up your blog wherever you’ve decided to do it at.
What Kind of Content Do I Put In My Blog?
Once you have your blog set up you want to start filling it with content.
You can create a post for each of the lenses you create. Write a short blurb about the product, talk about a specific feature, talk about a specific use, tell a story how it came in handy in your life ~ any of these will be fine blog posts.
Once you’ve written your post make sure you link back to your lens (using your keywords as the link text) Go ahead and add an image to the post. If you have your visual call to action that’s a great image to add. Make sure you make it a clickable image.
You can link to different products you are promoting by creating a new blog post for each lens. You want this to probably be more than just things you are promoting, depending on the focus of your blog. If you have a “great Christmas gifts” blog you can just do tons and tons of products. Even if you haven’t done a lens on the product no reason you can’t write a blog post about the item and then link it directly to the product at Amazon.
These posts don’t need to be incredibly long (150-300 words is good) ~ what’s more important is to regularly update your blog so that you will be indexed and spidered by the search engines. You will find if you do some kw research the way it is taught in the Blueprint, even if you don’t do a lens, but just link to the product you will end up getting some long tail traffic related to the product.
If your blog is more generally related to Christmas or holidays you might want to add articles on anything else related to Christmas ~ tips for finding good deals, managing holiday stress, whatever seems appropriate, just make sure you use it as a place to link back to your lenses as well.
Other Ways to Link to Your Lenses
You can also link to your lenses from the sidebar of your blog. This is a great way to create links to your lenses. Here’s a quick video showing how to create a link list in the sidebar of a blogger blog.
For those of you who hate video:
1. Login to blogger
2. go to your blog
3. Click customize in right hand top
4. click add a gadget
5. choose link list gadget
6. Fill in box that appears
7. Save
You can add as many links to the link list as you want.
Other cool stuff to add to your blog
You might also want to grab a widget from Amazon to put in the sidebar (or even at the bottom of posts) ~ they have some really cool auto updating ones now, like deal of the day. You could create a carousel widget with products you recommend. You could add an amazon banner about getting free shipping ~ Amazon has a lot of great stuff to help you get people to their website. You have to have an amazon associates account to do this. If you don’t have an account yet go ahead and get one. If you’re waiting because you don’t have a website to fill in, put some content on this blog you are creating and then use it as your website when you apply to Amazon ~ blogger blogs count as a website. 
Don’t forget to use your RSS feed!
Once you have put some content on your blog don’t forget to add the rss feed to your Christmas Cash lenses. Add it at the bottom of your lens. That way if they haven’t clicked on any of the links in the content they might at least click on something else interesting in your RSS feed and click out to something else you own. (where of course there is always another opportunity to buy)
I think that about covers what to write on your blog and how to link to your lenses and products from your new blogs. If you have any creating a blog related questions feel free to ask them in the comments section below.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=262d76d8-1f8b-4010-964c-7895bba02caa)
Other Posts That Might Help:
[...] will have to apply to both of these programs. You’ll need a website ~ so if you don’t have a blogger blog yet, now’s a good time to get [...]
[...] Creating a blogger blog for linking [...]
[...] hearing the most is you don’t have a website. That’s easily taken care of. You can start a blog on blogger, add some content to the blog and then [...]
[...] RSS feed will be on your blog (remember I talked about starting a Christmas Blog?) When you go to your blog. You will need to look for a little orange square. This is your RSS feed [...]