What’s Your Biggest Question?

Hi Jackie! I know I'm a little late to this post, but I do have a question. I downloaded your Squidoo Christmas Cash blueprint a few weeks ago, have written 4 lenses so far, and am considering starting a blog to get links and help drive traffic to my lenses. I'd like this blog to focus on kitchen-related gifts because that's where I'm headed with the lenses. My question is, how do you determine a good niche? How do you know if it's too saturated or competitive?
Thanks!

Question? I am trying to integrate my squidoo acct. with Google analytics. Is this possible?

Thanks

What I do not understands is why anyone goes to a squidoo lens. I know about
Amazon and if I wan to buy a product I just go there and look it up for myselp and make
a purch=ase.

Why would I go thru a squid lens?

Hi Jackie,

First off, I just want to tell you how much I love your fantastic Blueprint! Right now, I'm trying to decide on a cut-off price for amazon.com products to feature in my Christmas lenses and I have some questions.

For higher priced items (anything over, say, $200-300), do you ever worry about amazon.com's short cookie duration of 24 hours? I know that when I am shopping online for some higher priced item, I take a fair amount of time (at least several days) to think things over before I finalize my purchase, and my guess is that many other people probably think much the same way, especially in this crummy economy.

What I worry about is that on the higher priced items, people will click on my links (from my Christmas lenses) to amazon.com but not add the item to their shopping cart within the first 24 hours. Perhaps they might bookmark the product webpage on amazon.com and come back later. Then, by the time they do decide to add the item to their shopping cart and finalize their purchase, the amazon.com cookie on their computer will have expired and I won't get properly credited.

It seems to me that there is a trade-off between promoting lower-priced products and getting lower commissions, but having a higher immediate conversion rate and losing fewer prospective buyers due to cookies expiring, and promoting higher priced products but getting few or no commissions, not necessarily because the products are bad and don't convert on amazon.com, but because the prospective buyers did not finalize their purchase before the 24 hour cookie expiration period because of hesitating over the higher prices.

Do you think there is such a trade-off, and if so, do you have a cut-off price above which you generally do not exceed on amazon.com products because of the 24-hour cookie?

Sorry this is so long. I hope I have worded my question clearly. Please tell me what you think.

Hi Jackie :) How are you?

I've been following your blog recently and to be honest, your blog is amazing! You're offering so much useful information here. I've learned a lot about Squidoo and Affiliate marketing. But today I have some questions that need advices from you.

They're about the affiliate program of Amazon.

The first question is about the registration phase. It looks like they want a bunch of information from me. I mean the "Your Website Profile" section. You know, I'm an affiliate, and I own many domain names but none of them are being hosted. I just simply redirect them to my affiliate links. What confuses me is Amazon requires my site's information. I don't have any "real" website (hope I made my point clearly), how can I provide them such information? Things like "what your website is about?" and "what is the URL of the website you will send traffic to Amazon?", etc.

Another question is about the commission percentage. I believe I heard someone says that it's 4% or 8% but I don't remember. Could you please let me know? I used to work with Clickbank so I'm a little inexperienced with "physical" seller like Amazon LOL!

That's all for today. And thanks again for providing us so much useful content. Best wishes for you and Hanna!

Duy.

Dear Jackie,

I have purchased your famous Christmas Cash Blueprint videos and found them very, very valuable and much more "doable" by any newbie.

Thanks a lot for such a wonderful product. But, I now have questions about the "product" to be promoted thru Squidoo. My IMPORTANT Questions are given under.

a) Some people say that, "Don't attempt for Big Money items like LCD, HDTVs/ Computers etc., in your beginning as they are highly competitive, because many giant sites are promoting such items."
Is there any point in it? I don't think so. Because, as per your Christmas Cash videos, I already searched for Top selling items in Amazon and found many tv's with big price. And if we search for Google for competition it gives a total page rank of 25 or less.

Can I select any top brand hdtv as product to promote in order to get "Big" commission? Pleaaaase Advice!!!

b) Is it necessary to write articles? I hate writing and also no money to get them written (being a Bum Marketer). What is the Best Alternative? Please help................

Jackie,
How many articles do you suggest we submit to e-zine when promoting one product?
Thanks,
Deb

Just got your e-mail about posting questions here after I posted a question on another blog. So I guess I'll post here also.

Do you recommend PR<30 and <30,000 pages with the keywords we are using?

Thanks Jackie,
Deb

Hi Jackie,
I saw an email that showed a Squidoo lens you had done,Where would I find it again?I looked in the kiss forum,and through emails you sent,but cannot seem to find it.I am still working on my Christmas blueprint and would like to see yours as an example.

Have a great day
Phyllis

Hi Jackie,

I've been following you and christmas cash blueprint for awhile, but first time posting a comment. I have located a good product on amazon for my christmas cash lens, but I have a question regarding quantity. When I visit the Amazon sales page, there really are not many of these products that are new. Many are used, it's a specific type of golf club, there are different models I am looking at, but if there is one available that is new, the quantity is only 1 or 2 of them in stock.

Do you have any suggestions or guidelines regarding picking products that amazon has a lot in stock on? Or is that something I should not worry about.

Best Regards,
Carol

Hi Jackie,
i am working on your blueprint,and my question is regarding the pictures to use with Squidoo.I think I saw an email regarding this from you,but I cannot seem to find it now.

Where can I get pictures for free to use for the products,or can I just use a picture, of the product by itself from Amazon?

How do I put the picture there?

Thanks for doing this,and other peoples questions are already helping.

Phyllis

Hi Jackie!

I've been systematically plugging away at your Christmas Cash blueprint (found a few excellent products on Amazon, created a blogger blog yesterday, registering for an Amazon Assoc account this morning - more comm $!)and I have a question. In a large nutshell, would you explain the benefit of using the Squidoo lenses over Blogger blogs? Or is there even one? I understand that the premise of your blueprint revolves around Squidoo, utlizing Blogger, but was curious if there was a specific advantage(s) using Squidoo over Blogger. Reason why I ask, just reflecting back at the commission split with Squidoo with regards to any sales or ad activity, also it seems Blogger blogs are less "busy", other stuff going on around the Squidoo mods and content on any particular lens. Wasn't sure if Squidoo was better at ranking for keywords via SEO over Blogger, or some other reasons. Just a 'newbie' thought that occured to me when I was setting stuff up. As noted before, love your blueprint, look forward each day to 'taking action' - I've found so many excellent products and keywords with so little competition! Just hurdling the 'learning curve'! As always - Thanks in advance for your time!!

Hi

Somewhere on your site i saw a page where you offered various telephone and email support packages at very attractive prices.

For some reason I cant find that page again today ! it might have been on another of yur sites?

regards

Steve Wyman

thanks a lot. My lens is actually dancing, today it jumped from 6 page to 2nd page all of a sudden. Strange but great.. :)

I personally don't do bookmarking backlinks ~ but if you are going to do them I suggest you choose one or two, and use them to bookmark not only your stuff, but other stuff you like ~ as they were intended to be used.

I would say build a fair amount of backlinks ~ 10 or 20 (depending on the kw you chose and how competitive it is) and then move on to another lens.

Check back in on it in a month and see how it's doing. If it's not on page one then do some more links for it.

I wouldn't keep messing with one lens for too long though. It takes time for your links to be found and counted. It's normal for lenses to bounce around in the ranking in the beginning. It's part of the "dance". Give it time, and see what it does.

Hi Jackie

The lens that i have given above was ranking on the 5th page without any backlink but now after it has 10 odd backlinks reflecting in the SEO quake, it has slid down to the 6th page.

My question is... do you keep building backlinks till the time it gets on to the first page, or do you build sufficent backlinks to a page and get down to the next porject ?

Moreover none of my social bookmarking links are showing as backlinks. Does that mean it is not worth backlinking from social bookmarking sites ?

Thanks a lot.

Hi Susan,

Here's what I suggest.

1. Choose a system. Whether it's One week Marketing, or if you want to create micro niche sites ~ go with Commission Ritual ~ but choose one thing.

2. Follow the steps as outlined to follow that system.

It may appear that the LearnIt lessons jump around ~ but actually they take you through each thing you need to do, in the right order to create a successful campaign as outlined in the OWM manual.

Certain things go in certain order ~ if you don't do them in the right order you're going to find you may have to go back and start over again.

ex. you have to do keyword research before you create your lenses.

You have to choose a keyword before you can check competition.

Following OWM you create lenses first, and then if you see a campaign take off you can (if you want) build a small niche site on the topic ~ which you then own.

Every system has its own order ~ so the first thing is to decide what you're going to do, and then follow the system.

If you have questions regarding the LearnIt tutorials ~ make sure you ask on the site ~ we'll help you figure out why things are when they are. :)

Hi,
Is there not an organized, orderly, step-by-step one can follow to break into Affiliate Marketing. I've been reading and trying forever. I have so much information floating around in my head! I'm so overwhelmed with the sheer volume of "stuff" each guru publishes. Even the Learn It Tutorials don't seem to follow any real order, but bounce around from one subject to another.
Am I asking too much? It seems to me that there just has to be a starting place, and then a next step and a next step until one has built whatever it is, website, blog, lens, something.
I certainly do not mean to be critical, but I do need some real direction.
Please respond.
Thanks.

Thank you, Jackie, that makes sense. I followed all the links you provided to see how the urls read, and I see how using a subdomain works. Appreciate the response.

This is using subdomains a little differently than putting your site on them. This means using the subdomain address to point to your affiliate page.

You set up a subdomain like cheaphosting.internetmarketingformommies.com and now I just have to remember that address if I want to point people to hostgator instead of having to remember this link: http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/cli...

They both go to the same place, but it looks better to use the cheaphosting subdomain address, and it's much easier to remember.

Now whenever, wherever I want to send people to my hostgator affiliate link I just use the cheaphosting.internetmarketingformommies.com address.

I have a question about your post regarding using subdomains to redirect affiliate links so you don't have to keep looking them up, and you can easily use that address elsewhere - that's pretty much the quote.

How do you use the subdomain to redirect, how does having it on the subdoman help not having to look them up, and did you mean use the subdomain address elsewhere or the post address? Just looking for clarification on how you use the subdomain that way.

I have several subdomains, basically because I was running out of money buying domains, and I also wanted to have a couple of practice sites as I am learning a lot of new technical as well as informational techniques. I didn't want to crash a domain site. LOL!

Thanks!

Hi Jackie,

I have a few questions regarding building backlinks to Squidoo lens using blog commenting.

(1) Do you only comment blog post at a certain time frame? For instance, you only comment on post that is dated less than a year.

(2) Is there any difference in obtaining link "juice" when comparing making one comment with making more than one comment within the same blog?

(3) After you have submitted a comment, do you use any method to get the link/post indexed at a faster rate?

Yes, it's fine to use the images as an affiliate ~ and just don't try to say the reviews are yours, talk about the fact it's what other people are saying. You'll be fine.

Hi Jackie,
Very useful report, thanks. But is it really okay to take product pictures and reviews straight from Amazon? I've been wondering about possible copyright issues.

It's not about someone clicking the link ~ it's about Google finding the link. You can help that process by bookmarking your article ~ or tweeting the article. Any links pointing to your article make it easier for Google to find it.

Hi Jackie, My question is about backlinks using articles. Does the backlink work as soon as you publish your article, or does someone have to read the article and click on your link to activate it? Reason I ask is that when I list my backlinks for my site not all of the articles that I have written are showing, so I was not sure if some other process has to be done before they show.
.-= Joey´s last blog ..How To Draw Cars Like a Pro ... Nurture Your Natural Artistic Talent! updated Sat May 15 2010 ... =-.

Another question for you? When submitting comments to blogs or bookmark sites etc you are often asked to leave a description of your site. Should this description be different for each site?
.-= Jon´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.

Commission ritual is a very specific type of site. Since they are so small and so specific I think that he's probably right about the affiliate links (and he's done a lot more testing about it than I have). When I do commission ritual sites I make sure to cloak the links ~ on bigger sites, and lenses I don't worry about it as much.

What makes you think Google won't rank sites with affiliate links? It ranks plenty of pages from this site and many affiliate sites I have very well.

I wouldn't worry quite so much about these little details. I also think links directly to amazon are fine ~ without cloaking them. The links I worry about cloaking are clickbank links since they are so easily stolen.

I also like to use subdomains to redirect the affiliate links I use the most so I don't have to keep looking them up, and I can easily use that address elsewhere.