Web Marketing Strategy Update

Squidoo is the brain child of popular and latterly philanthropic marketer Seth Godin, who’s also the author of a small pile of marketing books containing some pretty revolutionary thinking.

The idea is that anyone can set up a “Lens” on any topic they choose, sharing information for the purposes of building reputation, drawing traffic to other websites, making money or just for fun.

Simply a web page with a hip new name, besides giving you space to write on your subject of choice, a lens has modules to optionally add stuff like RSS feeds, items from Amazon, polls, photos from Flickr, etc.

A lot of time has now passed, but if I remember correctly, the basic premise in setting up Squidoo was that search engines would never be able to deliver what people want, and that the people themselves would make a better job of it by voting with their feet as it were, from amongst Lenses created by others knowledgeable on a subject.
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I don’t republish articles these days, but here’s a good piece Kim Roach asked me to post that shares some fresher, rarer tips on article marketing.

Confessions of an Article Marketer

I have a slight confession to make

I am addicted to article marketing. You can try and entice me with a number of other internet marketing strategies, but article marketing will always be my favorite.

You probably know about the many benefits of article marketing. Syndicating your articles will increase your targeted traffic, turn you into an expert in the field of your choice, brand your name, and help build your opt-in list. However, article marketing boasts a number of other benefits left mostly undiscovered and I want to share them with you.
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This is something I rarely talk about, but datafeeds are a great way to make money with affiliate programs.

A datafeed is essentially a product database that merchants make available for their affiliates to download.

The data is contained in a large text file, with one product per line. Each line will contain things like the product name, its code number, price, description, order link, and image links.

These different bits of information are usually separated by commas or tab stops, (although the pipe (|) symbol is sometimes used), leading to comma-separated value, .csv or tab-separated value, .tsv files.

Whilst the datafeed might look like an unreadable mess in a text editor, if you open the file in spreadsheet software like Excel or Filemaker, you will see the information is actually in neat columns as defined by the commas or tabs.
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1. Publish A Free Ezine For Selling Products

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to promote your own or affiliate products, MLMs, etc. This is the most common format, and to work well requires quality — preferably original — content related to your business and products so that it stands out from the crowd.

2. Publish Free Ezine For Selling Advertising Space

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to sell advertising spots and exclusive mailings to other businesses. Similar in format to the previous example, except that instead of using the ezine as a vehicle for promoting your own products, you use it to generate ad revenue. This approach is often favored by those new online and / or without their own product, using mainly contributed articles for content and combining the promotion of affiliate programs with ad sales.
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