Be in the know: Revenue sharing websites

How to market your business online and earn money at the same time

June 02, 2008

There are several ways to market your business online, start a blog, join chat groups, pay for google adwords etc. However there’s a new way of marketing your business online that not only drives traffic to your website, you earn a profit and it's free to use!

These sites are popping up all over the web now and each has their own revenue sharing methods. Most pay you a percentage of google ads and some allow you to sell affiliate products where a percentage is given to you for each sale.

My personal favorite: Squidoo.com

Squidoo was founded by marketing guru Seth Godin. You create pages known as lenses on any topic of your choosing. You can pick from a host of modules such as Amazon, eBay, cafépress and sell products from these sites related to your topic. In the case of eBay and cafépress you can sell your own products from these sites through your lens.

Example of a lens I created for my cafépress store: http://www.squidoo.com/hellobabyonesies

When someone buys a product from your lens you receive a portion of the sale. In addition you receive ad revenue from Google ads. Squidoo gives you 50% of the royalties, keeps 45% and sends the remaining 5% to charity. You can choose to give a portion or all of your profits to a charity of your choosing.

What makes Squidoo so great

Squidoo is fun to use! They have impressive and easy to use tools such as your dashboard which allows you to see lens ranking, where your lens traffic comes from, which keywords they used to get there and what they clicked on to leave your lens.

The Squidoo community welcomes you with open arms. The members of Squidoo are enthusiastic about the website and they’ve always answered any question I’ve had in the forums.

In addition to their standard lenses you can create the following:

Squidwho – write biographies on your favorite celebrities
Squidflix- write movie reviews
Squidlit- review your favorite books
Squidboo – halloween themed lenses
Squidbids – for eBay sellers
Squidvids – make your own tv channel
The ever project – create a lens for the best ever, coolest ever, worst ever etc etc.
Monkey Brain – argue a subject

How you can use this to market your website

Write articles specific to your area of expertise and websites content. If you’re a dog groomer you can write an article about the best way to keep your dogs coat looking healthy, then add modules to sell dog shampoo you recommend or books on the subject. Or write a lens about a specific breed, celebrity dogs, best dog foods, why dogs make such good companions, why dogs wag their tails and so on.

There are several ways you can share your expertise with the world while earning a profit and driving traffic to your own site. Read Seth Godin’s lens on the subject http://www.squidoo.com/whybuildalens

Do you really make money?

Lensmasters report making anywhere from a couple of dollars a month to several hundred dollars a month. This really depends upon how much time and effort you put into your lenses. My lenses have driven 3 times more traffic to my website and are responsible for the bulk of the sales I receive from my cafépress store. I only earn a couple of dollars a month however I only have 8 lenses, the more lenses you have the greater the profit. Earning money through this site is just a bonus for me; the traffic it has sent to my other websites is worth its weight in gold.

They have an impressive tell a friend feature, when your friend signs up and creates a lens as soon as they earn their first $15, Squidoo will give you AND your friend $5.
Sign up for Squidoo

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Squidoo is just one of hundreds of revenue sharing sites out there and if you have some time to devote to it, writing articles for multiple sites will increase your earning potential. Below are a few examples of popular revenue sharing sites:
hubpages.com
www.xomba.com
www.triond.com
www.helium.com
www.oondi.com
www.launchtags.com

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