John L. Dilbeck: Squidoo Lenses

Updated Site Build It! 5 Pillar Program lens on Squidoo

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:03:01 GMT

If you don't already know it, I'm a huge fan of Site Build It!, Ken Evoy, and their 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. I've joined and tested hundreds of affiliate programs, and the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program remains at the top of the list. You can earn generous commissions from each sale, and recurring commissions from each annual renewal. This is true lifetime commissions, and the folks at SiteSell go out of their way to make sure you are credited for the sales you make. It is a two-tier program, so you can earn residual commissions each time someone you refer to the affiliate program makes a sale. SiteSell offers outstanding training, a regular newsletter for affiliates, great promotional tools, dedicated affiliate managers, and free members-only forums. The 5 Pillar Program remains one of my highest paying and most reliable income streams. Have you joined, yet? It's free, you know. Come learn more about the Site Build It! 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. If I were going to recommend only one affiliate program, this is it. Act on your dream! JD

Make Your Knowledge Sell! is now free

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:34:36 GMT

After years of selling Make Your Knowledge Sell! for $49.95, Ken Evoy just announced that it has been completely revised and is now available as a free download. My new Squidoo lens, Make Your Knowledge Sell! has more information, and I'll be adding additional resources related to writing, selling, and marketing ebooks. Act on your dream! JD

Calling all Squidoo lensmasters

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:32:35 GMT

Are you a lensmaster on Squidoo? If you are, I'm inviting you to join a new social networking site for Squidoo marketing, where our goal is to help each other do a better job of creating lenses that are used for marketing. Want to increase the revenue you earn from your lenses? Come and talk about them. Attract new visitors. Learn new techniques and share your own. Want to become a Squidoo lensmaster? Everyone is an expert on something. Squidoo provides an easy way to build one-page websites called lenses that you can use to focus attention on a particular subject that you know and love. It's free, and Squidoo even shares any revenue they earn from your lens with you. There are many of us who get a monthly deposit from Squidoo into our PayPal accounts. I just got a deposit into mine a couple of days ago. You can, too. Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It's free, of course. Then, come join us at the Squidoo marketing community. We'll help each other become better lensmasters. Act on your dream! JD

New lens for SFI Marketing Group Affiliates on Squidoo.com

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:29:18 GMT

I just created a new lens for SFI Marketing Group Affiliates at Squidoo.com. (Please note that I created the lens on Wednesday, February 27, 2008, and it may not be viewable until Thursday or Friday, depending upon when the next Squidoo ranking update takes place. If you can't see it, please come back in a day or so.) Its purpose is to syndicate a couple of RSS feeds from our new SFI Marketing Group Affiliates social networking site. The new lens republishes the Latest Activities feed toward the top and the Forum feed toward the bottom. Additionally, you are invited to vote in our poll and participate in the duel. You'll need to be a Squidoo lensmaster to participate, and you can become one for free. I recommend Squidoo and have numerous lenses there with more on the drawing board. Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It's free, and you may even earn some money from it. Please feel free to link to the new lens at: http://www.squidoo.com/sfi-marketing-group-affiliates I look forward to seeing your feedback on the lens and please - if you want - rank the lens (5 stars is best) and offer your comments in the duel or the comments section at the bottom of the lens. You'll note that the people who are participating the most on our new social network are the ones who are getting mentioned the most on our new lens. How easy is that? All you have to do is participate on our social networking site. I'll be republishing those feeds on other sites I own. That means that there will be more links to your profile page as you participate more and as I have the time to syndicate the news feeds on more sites. Can you think of something I should add to the new lens to make it more useful? All suggestions are welcome. Act on your dream! JD

Some thoughts about Seth Godin, Squidoo.com, and the alleged Google slap

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:03:54 GMT

I've been listening to Seth Godin for a few years. His books, blogs and articles have offered good information and he followed up with Squidoo.com last year. I started building lenses at Squidoo back when it was still in beta and I really like the idea of Squidoo and the tools it offers. I'll be the first to admit that some of my lenses are much better than others. I try to do the best I can, but it's obvious that I'm much better at technical stuff than I am at writing. I'm still trying to improve the quality of everything I do, but sometimes I miss the target. Now and then, I feel really good about something I do, especially when it helps other people. An example of this is my Site Build It Webmasters lens where I'm promoting Site Build It and the people who use the service to build their sites. Other times, I don't feel so good about something. If I can't make it better, eventually I'll delete it and consign it to the bit bucket of failed projects. I have a lot more failed projects than successful ones, but I keep trying to improve the ones that work and to try new things as I discover or create them. Examples of failed projects include my attempt to create a success cooperative, a favorite travel destinations group of sites, and others that have disappeared from cyberworld. One thing I never do is try to mislead anyone or use any technical tricks to send you somewhere you don't want to go. Never. I know how to do it, but I won't. The closest I ever come to that is when I use domains and subdomains to redirect to other sites. I don't consider that misleading. For example, I use http://sbi.linktodetails.com to redirect to my affiliate page at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sellmoreonline.html. I don't think that's misleading. Do you? Sometimes I register a domain and point it to another site. One example of this is http://GetAFreeMarketingSite.com which points to my page at LinkScout. Another example is http://BuildBiggerDownlines.com which points to one of my Squidoo lenses. I register these domains to make it easier to market the destinations. I think it is obvious from the domain names what types of sites you'll go to when you click them or type them in from one of my business cards. Apparently, however, Squidoo has been having a lot of trouble with people building lenses that tricked people into going where they didn't want to go or seeing things they didn't want to see. I don't know any specific instances or examples, but I can imagine. I know I'd be angry if I went to a lens that said it was about one thing only to find that it was about something totally different - or that it redirected me to another site that was totally unrelated to what I thought I'd see. So, Squidoo has made some recent changes to try and get a handle on the problem. It has been theorized that Google penalized Squidoo because of these low-quality and spam lenses. Someone called that the "Google slap" and the name stuck. I've seen the rankings of my lenses drop in Google's search results, but now some of my lenses are starting to regain their former rankings. There has been a lot of speculation and many people have started writing their Squidoo obituaries. I don't think this is a major problem and I believe Seth and the rest of the Squidoo team will get past this blip in their growth. Instead of speculating, the Searchingdot.com blog posted Interview with Seth Godin on The Squidoo Slap. Nobody can speak with authority on what Google actually did, but Seth can speak for Squidoo, and he did so in the interview. I still believe that Squidoo is one of the best on-ramps to the Information Superhighway and I believe it is worth your time to build lenses and write about what you know and love. As I'm hearing repeatedly, "keep it real." Don't try to trick people and don't try to game the system. These tactics will always work against you in the long run. I don't know about you, but I keep a list of the people who have tricked, scammed, spammed, and misdirected me and I'll never do business with them - no matter how well their sales pages are written. Conversely, I also keep a list of people who offer great advice, useful information, and outstanding value. Those are the people I'll work with again and again. Maybe I'll write about that second list one of these days. One of the people on that second list is Ken Evoy. I've been buying products and services from Ken for years and I'm a better person because of it. He has perfected the under-promise, over-deliver marketing position. He, and his team, developed Site Build It! and I believe this is the best way to develop, build and market your online business. I mention this because Ken has been recommending to us that we should be careful about linking to Squidoo and the lenses on the system. His position is that Google holds you responsible for the sites to which you link. If it is true that Google has devalued Squidoo, then by linking to the site you may hurt your site's ranking. I pay attention to what Ken says, because he is right much more than he is wrong. This time, while respecting his caveat, I'm going to continue linking to Squidoo and some of the lenses there. I still think it is worth your effort to create Squidoo lenses and offer information about what you know and love. Just be aware that other people, some of whom I admire greatly, disagree. I'm always open to advice and suggestions. Act on your dream! JD

Site Build It lens has been updated

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:41:40 GMT

I've been updating my Site Build It! lens on an almost daily basis for the last couple of weeks. More and more Site Build It! webmasters are adding links to their lenses and websites, are ranking the page, and have posted their own comments on the guest book at the bottom of the page. I want to thank each of them for participating and I am more than happy to link to their lenses and websites. I find Site Build It! webmasters to be a special group of people. Most of them are friendly, helpful, and well-informed. That's one of the free benefits of being a Site Build It! customer. Want to learn more about SBI? Take about three or four minutes and watch this interview with Ken Evoy: (Open this video in a new window) For more interesting, educational, and entertaining videos produced by satisfied SBI customers, see I Love Site Build It! Act on your dream! JD

Vote for your favorite traffic exchanges

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:21:54 GMT

I've had a Squidoo lens about Traffic Exchanges for quite some time and never really did anything with it. A few days ago, I decided to add a module so you can vote for your favorite manual traffic exchanges. I encourage you to rank the page by clicking on one of the stars at the top of the page. Your comments are always welcome. Act on your dream! JD

Stepping stones to being indexed by Google quickly

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:25:51 GMT

What Are The Stepping Stone Sites That Google Loves?. I've experienced first hand how quickly a site can be indexed in Google's search engine after posting a link to it in a Squidoo lens. This isn't an article about Squidoo but rather it describes how posting articles, etc on sites that the author calls 'Stepping Stone' sites can help your listing in Google. Here is Jan Sepstrup's informative article... (Comment from JD: I enjoyed this article. While I've been using Squidoo and other sites in the way described in the article - with good results - I've never thought of them as stepping stones. Perhaps another useful analogy would be on-ramps to the Information Superhighway.) [Traffic Elements: the building blocks of web traffic]

Are you a lensmaster?

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 10:15:59 GMT

Here's why you should consider becoming one. Squidoo opened their public beta testing a few days ago, and during this period, you can become a lensmaster and claim up to 20 lenses of your very own. What's a lens? Basically, it's an outpointing web page on a particular topic. What topic? That's up to you. What do you know about and love to write about. See if the topic is available. If not, find another page name and try again. Write about yourself, your business, your hobby, the organization for which you volunteer, your family, your town or community. Write about what interests you. This is a free service, and you may even make some money with your lenses. Now, the main money-making module is Amazon.com and you can sell any of the products Amazon sells from your lens. There is full information about how the commission cooperative splits the commissions on the site. After the beta period is over, you'll be able to claim as many lenses as you want. However, remember that frequency of updating your lens may possibly be one of the criteria that determines the lens rank, so you may not want more than you can comfortably handle. Yes, this is a beta period and there have been some glitches. I've lost some descriptions as I was writing them, and now and then I lose contact with the system, but it has been remarkably easy to use, overall. I've claimed and published my limit of lenses during the beta test. If you want, you can visit any of my 20 lenses: 21st Century Webhosting Act On Your Dream! Blog Feed Syndication Broadband Data Communications Business Cards Cell Phones and Accessories Cherokee County, NC Discount Coupons Domain Name Registration and Hosting Favorite Travel Destinations Georgia Drag Racing Internet Access - Dial-up and Broadband Murphy, NC 28906 Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich Play Music Promotional Products Real Estate Agents, Brokers and Developers Residual Income Gazette Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion from Ken Evoy and Sitesell Success Cooperative Custom T-Shirts Western North Carolina If you are interested in publishing information about something in which you are interested, you may want to go to Squidoo.com and see for yourself.

Initializing categories at ISucceedByHelpingYouSucceed.com

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 12:05:43 GMT

A few days ago, I made the decision to move all my blogs powered by Blogger off their free storage at Blogspot.com. Over the weekend, I was busy rethinking what I want to do with my blogs, how I want to power them, where I want them hosted, and how to syndicate them for maximum readership. This post is to announce a new website I just created to help me with those aims, and, also, to create the new categories I'll be using here. In subsequent postings, all will be posted to the home page, and some will also be posted to the appropriate category. It will take another week or two to make things work as well as they were before Blogger started blocking my blogs. Things happen, we make changes, time goes on. (Context Tag: Act On Your Dream, I succeed by helping you succeed)