Inside Pauls Brain

Sorry about the delay in posting.. it has started warming up here and most of yesterday was spent away from my PC, cleaning the yard, playing with my dog and all the important things like that..lol

Ok onto Calamari..

well not quite calamari but Squidoo at least

What is Squidoo?

The site describes it self preety well I think..

Squidoo: SKWID-OO, n. v., adj., addiction. 1) thousands of people creating a handbuilt catalog of the best stuff online 2) a free and fun way to make your own page and get traffic 3) a place to find what you’re looking for, fast.

Squidoo is a site that is definitely benefiting from the viral effect, I heard about it on a forum and now I am mentioning it here, the viral traffic stream will keep them growing for ever..

So what is it, well in many ways it is very similar to a blog, they call them lenses though.

It costs you nothing to get your own lens and I would suggest that you go right along and get one for yourself now.. well maybe finish reading this first..

Notice how they describe it as a place where people make pages about “the best stuff online” so by having a apage there about you or your product the assumption seems to be that you and yours are the best..

Now squidoo lenses (in my experience and from the things I hear from others) won’t necerssarily drive thousands of hits your way , but they are ranking well in google and they are well linked and the spiders definitely love them.

Now I am not going to pretend to be a Squidoo expert, but it is definitely something that is worth looking into, it is free and quick to set up so the risks are nothing beyond some time and the rewards could be worth it.

Why not make one explaining all the tools you use to make money online and include aff links to them all?

Please if you dont already have a account over at Squidoo go there now and have a look..

Remember to bookmark this blog and come back soon, I will be working on some more videos as people said they found them useful..

In a previous life (well in the UK) I worked in a phone centre and spent hours a day on the phone and I also had a mobile phone , or a cell phone if you are American, on me 24/7..

Since moving to the USA and working online I don’t think I have used a cell phone more than 20 times in 2 years.. so I am not really keeping up with developments in the field.

Lucky enough we have a teenager in the house..

Last night we finally went out to get new phones, nothing was wrong with the old ones but my wife felt we could get a better deal and replace our old phones (2 years old is ancient in cell phone terms apparently).

I spent some time looking at cell phones with large full color screens, email, Instant messenger and windows something or other installed..

The sales guy was showing me how he IM’s with his wife and showed me some sites as well..

So with the huge jumps in cell phone technology are phones becoming the browsing method of choice for a generation?

I know that there is a fair amount of Porn available for phone users (that is one group that is always ahead of the game) But what about teh rest of us?

Are you designing products or information specifically with cell phone users in mind?

Should we as marketers be looking at cell phones as a income stream?

If I can ever work out how my new phone works maybe I will see what I can make it do…

Or maybe I should get my 15 year old to do it all for me..

Morning

No video today, it is to noisy here to make a recording, they are working on the house next to ours so it is a bit like having a construction site in my yard.

If you have looked at my videos or read any thing about web 2.0 you will probably have seen the word “viral” used more than once.

What does viral mean and how can you get it working for you?

Viral traffic is where you person sees your site and passes it on to two of his friends, then they like it so much they pass it on to two of their friends. YouTube is the ultimate in viral traffic generation.

I know some of you are reading this thinking that is impossible to achieve..

Hands up everyone who had a forward in their inbox this morning, you know a joke, photo or maybe a short video clip..

When you look at the email see all those email address’s that are there at the top, that’s all the people that your friend sent it to as well as you (I won’t even get into discussing that they should Blind Carbon Copy everyone so no one else can see the email addresses) In my experience there are normally, 10 names at least there, so friend A has sent the joke to 10 people.

Those people are , B, C, D, E, F,G, H, I, J, K (not original names but you get the point)

Now 4 of those 10 hate the joke so they just delete it..

The other 6 thing it is the funniest thing ever sent, so they forward it to their 10 friends..

So the original joke has now been sent to 70 people (original 10 + (6×10))..

And if just 20% of those people send it to 10 more then you are up to over 200 people..

My wife gets these forwards all the time, I actually looked at one of them and counted over 20 names on the header.. so this one friend of my wifes sends all the forwards to 20+ people..

If a Joke can go viral why cant anything else..

A real life instance of viral traffic is Hot or not

Now I am not suggesting that you start a joke site (been there done that, they don’t pay) so how can you make money from the forwards?

If you run a very generic site (relationships, online games, pets, dating) then you could just put a link at the top and bottom of the joke.

or

(take into account that this is me thinking outloud) find a pay per lead program that allows email promotion and sign up for them, then put that info in the forward.

Some ringtone offers are paying $10 a sign up!

Ok thats your view inside Paul’s brain for today. I hope you like at least some of what you see.

I am paraphrasing a bit but the title of this post is the one that I have been asked most often over the last week or so.

Yesterday gave you a introduction to social bookmarking, I gave you a taster of a free way to get website traffic and hopefully by now you are using it to start traffic moving your way.

A wise man once said that 10% of your day should be used to build sites and 90% to promote the site, so I have done another video about driving traffic to your site.

Please feel free to leave comments or ask questions, I want to give you information that helps you, so ask for more details or tell me what you want me to cover next.

Until tomorrow

Paul