Do You Know the Purpose of What You’re Doing?
Oct 08
Why can’t I just link straight to Amazon from here?
It’s a question I’ve heard over and over and over when it comes to building a blog to support your Christmas cash lenses. The answer is because that’s not the purpose.
Each time you open an edit page or a text editor there is a purpose behind the words and links you put down on the page. You need to determine that purpose before you start. This way you can create content and links that serve that purpose.
What makes it so complicated is that each piece of virual real estate you own can be used for multiple things depending on your purpose, so knowing your purpose before you start will help you get where you want to be.
Let’s look at some real estate and possible purposes:
Squidoo Lens.
Possible purposes:
1.Make money from an affiliate product
2. driving traffic to a blog
3. building links to help drive another page up in the search engines
4. make money for charity
5. Provide information
Now let’s look at how our lens might look different depending on our purpose.
1. affiliate sales: our content will probably be talking about a product/service. We’ll probably talk about benefits of this product/service. Our links will probably lead directly to a sales page or a place they can buy the product/service.
2. Driving traffic to a blog: The content on this lens will be different ~ I may provide quality actionable content in this type of lens, something relevant to what I talk about on the blog. The links on this lens will probably point to my blog.
3. Supporting another site: This content can be just about anything related to the other site, and it similar to driving traffic to a blog. Say you have an ebay auction store and you want your store to come up higher in the search engine ranking for a specific keyword. You could talk about something related to your ebay store, and then link to your ebay store using the specific keyword. In this case your links would lead to the store and you would use keyword anchor text.
4. Make money for charity: The content on this lens may be about the charity, what they do, why they are awesome, and how people can donate to the cause. The links on this page may point to places someone can donate ~ there may be NO links on this page if you are giving your squidoo earnings to charity you want people to click the google ads and other ads on the page to make more money through squidoo.
5. Providing information: not all people use squidoo to make money or help other websites. Some people use it to simply provide information. On this type of lens you would provide information. Your links might lead to other awesome resources that provide more information on this topic.
Depending on the purpose of your lens your content will be different, you will probably use different modules. You will probably link to different places and in different ways, and it’s all because of what you want this page to accomplish.
Blogs
What can blogs do?
When it comes to blogs it gets even a little more confusing, because not only can an entire blog have a specific purpose but each post you put on your blog can have a specific purpose. You need to know BOTH each and every time you hit the “add a new post” button.
1.Niche blog
2. Authority blog
3. linking blog
These are 3 of the main things you will use a blog for. (of course there are plenty more, but for the sake of not writing a novel here lol)
1. a niche blog will probably be a small site ~ maybe only 5 or 10 posts. This is a blog that once you finish it, it’s done. You don’t usually continue to add content over a long period of time ~ in that respect it’s much like a static website. On these blogs there may be links directly to a product/service ~ or there may be very few links and adsense or some other monetization.
2. Authority blog: this type of blog is a “long term” blog. This is a blog, much like this one, where people come to expect a certain type of content on a regular basis. You will need to continue to post on a regular basis to keep your readership interested and coming back. This type of blog may be linking to any number of places and may provide some free and paid content.
3. Linking blog ~ this is a blog you create simply to help other sites build backlinks. This blog may or may not get traffic, which is perfectly OK because traffic is not its primary purpose. It’s primary purpose is to give links back to another site.
Blog posts:
Every time you write a blog post you need to think about WHY you are writing it, what’s the purpose?
1. Sell an affiliate product?
2. Provide great information
3. Build links to another page/site/lens
1. Sell affiliate products. If the primary purpose of a blog post is to sell an affiliate product you are probably going to talk about how you use the product and how it helps you in whatever you are trying to do. The links in a post with this purpose will most likely lead directly to a sales page or a page where people can buy the product.
2. Provide great information ~ this type of post will mostly be informative ~ you may link to another resource that can help the person reading further understand the topic you are discussing. These blog posts are great for building a relationship with your readers ~ people like great content.
3. Building links to another page ~ this type of post is probably going to talk about the product or topic of the page you are linking to. For example, if this is a post on a Christmas blog you’ll want to talk about what a great gift idea a specific product is. Now the purpose is to build links to a page so you are going to link back to that page you’re building links for (your squidoo lens). Linking to amazon or a sales page in a post with this purpose does NOT fulfill the purpose of the post.
What is really great about blogs is they are super flexible. You can incorporate any of the three types of blog posts listed above into your blog ~ you just need to make sure you know the purpose of the post before you start so you can make sure you are doing everything YOU need to do to make the post fulfill it’s purpose. You can also incorporate some elements of other types of posts ~ like you may want to link to amazon via your visual call to action in a post that the primary purpose is link building, and that’s ok ~ just keep in mind WHY you are writing what you’re writing and doing what you’re doing and make sure when you’re done the lens or blog or post is fulfilling its purpose.
I know all of this can be kind of confusing ~ if you have any questions about what the purpose is of something you’re doing let me know in the comments and we’ll see if we can figure it out together. 
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I am a litle off topic because your article title mae me think you were going to talk about how to link to Amazon. I seem to be the only prson outside of squidooing that does not know how to link to Amazon.com from a website. I read and read and just don’t get it. It’s these little nudgy things that hold me back.
Sorry for rambling on is 6 am and I’e been up all night.
Hey Alecia,
This post may be more helpful: http://internetmarketingformommies.com/how-to-get-html-from-amazon/
Thank you. I was using the Search mode and I realize now I should have checked through the articles instead. Btw, I have been using the articles in conjunction with the Blueprint.
Thanks again.
Hi Bea,
Here’s what I did to find it. I went to the articles page (because everything is in the order you need it there) and went to the first post about creating a free blog ~ and there it was. http://internetmarketingformommies.com/create-a-blog-to-support-the-squidoo-christmas-cash-blueprint/
Jackie
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Hi Jackie,
I’m really trying to take action, but I keep running into bumps. Yesterday, as I was building my blog, I kept referring back to your site. At one point, I found a video that showed how to do Linklist on our blogs, but I’m pretty sure I did it incorrectly. I have come back and used your search option, but Linklist does not come up, probably because it was in a video. Could you please direct me to the correct video? Thanks again for the wonderful help and all the valuable information. I figure if I do it once, keep taking action, sooner or later I’ll be at the ‘wash, rinse, repeat’ stage of the game.
Thanks for the info Jackie! Everyday things become clearer! I took your advice and downloaded the SEO Tool to check Page Rank today. That is a VERY helpful tool!!
not really ~ I’d just submit the RSS feed to directories to give you some links to it.
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So, for the Christmas Cash we are doing a “linking blog” then, correct?
The purpose is to point people to our lenses and the lenses’ purpose is to point to our affliate link? Is that right? This is scary that this is all clicking.
One question I do have – is there any reason that we would want to write articles and try to point people to our Christmas blog?
That is for a specific type of blog called a niche blog ~ that’s not what we’re working with here, so you can disregard it.
I just wanted to make a point that there are many different purposes and uses for the same platform.
A post is simply one entry on your blog. Each time you put content on your blog you write a “post”.
Jackie
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
I know I’m really very, very new at this, but I’m confused with you saying “only 5-10 posts” to one blog.
What are you referring to when you say “posts”
Thanks, Angie
jackie, awesome post
love it so much..
mac , over 200 lens in a month? fuu.. that was amazing. look like i need to work harder..
mike , you can refer that squestion at squidu.com , i have read somewhere that we should register with both amazon. Usually, major of the visitor is from google us, a few of them from uk.
Thanks Again Jackie. Your answer was right on the mark!
Larry
Hi Mike,
Unfortunately being from the US I’m not really sure how it all works in the UK. I suggest you contact Amazon.
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Hi Jackie,
Great article. Just to expand what you have just mentioned. How do you get amazon links that know where your reader is located? USA or UK I just ask because it is my understanding that if you are a UK amazon affiliate and you happen to send trafic to the US site you wil not receive any commision.
Thanks in advance
Mike
WOW!! That is a LOT of lenses.
Congrats on taking action and making money.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Hi Jackie, Just wanted to give you an update on week 4 doing the Christmas Cash lenses. I made $25 this week but my lenses have been bouncing around a lot this week. I know from what you’ve said that this is perfectly normal.
I also got my first check from my affiliate program on my lenses of $72 (Yayyyy)
So in 4 weeks I have made almost $200. I also am doing what you said and taking action and now have over 200 lenses made since I started. Can’t wait to see what happens…
Thanks so much
Mac
I am not familiar with exactseek ~ what is the purpose of the ad? Is it to build links to your site or to sell a product?
If it is to build a link to your site you should be linking to the site ~ if it is to sell a product link directly to the product.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Thanks for the great info, you provide answers to the mundane but important questions that we all need when starting out.
One question though, I have a couple ads on exactseek.
Should they be linking to my squidoo page on the topic or directly to the affiliate page.
And thanks for the great blog info.
April and Jackie,
Thank you for answering the question that I’ve been thinking about lately – the date/time thing on niche blogs (are you two psychic or something?
Tons of value each day around these parts!
Frank
Follow me @FrankDickinson on Twitter!
Hi April,
On niche sites I do pull the time and date ~ dateless sniper is good but you can easily go in and take the date/time out of any blog theme.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Jackie,
Thanks so much for all of your help! I really appreciate getting emails linking to your blog posts and find that they’re a great way to keep learning at a comfortable pace.
Question: when you do a niche blog, do you always use a format that doesn’t show the dates of the blog posts? Does this help extend the life of the blog? I only know about the dateless sniper theme. Do you know of any others?
Best,
April
I got your email yesterday ~ thank you, it warmed my heart. I’ve starred it for those days when I feel like it’s all more trouble than it’s worth.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Jackie,
As always, makes perfect sense. Excellent stuff!
I need to remember to change up my achor text a bit more – I forget that strategy sometimes.
BTW…Are you still using your momtohanna Gmail account? I sent you mail.
Thanks!
Frank
Follow me @FrankDickinson on Twitter!