Surprisingly I am ahead of schedule for building 52 Squidoo lenses this year. Ironically I think it is because I am lazy. You folks that are flogging a WordPress blog a day are the ones working hard. Having to sling a post every 4 hours, then every day, then once a week. Hoping your Google daddy notices you. Me, I build a lens in about an hour. Come around every month or so and move a module around or add a slug of money widget and click Publish to “keep it fresh”. Easy stuff. Some make a buck. Some don’t. Some are great for affiliate sales. Some aren’t. I have no real time or money invested in the damn things so I build and move to the next one. Those that flop become backlink providers.
Another thing I’m doing is building Tumblr blogs. I have a discovered a love that only Bing can provide. Posting to Tumblr could not be simpler. People are clickers so I provide them a tasty text link to an Amazon product or Crapbank offer. What do I post to Tumblr? Photos. Videos. Links. I have the bookmarklet thingy and surf around in my niche and share. Zemanta is good for sharing too.
You realize the only people that are creating “original content” are naive niche marketers. Social bloggers, you know, the ones that supposedly don’t make money, are simply re-posting and regurgitating all the content that is being posted. It’s a good gig. Look at Gateway Pundit for instance. Damn fine site. Whether you write it or not you can cobble together a good post quickly and stick in a few money making links all the while coat-tailing on the efforts of main stream. Political type blogs do it all the time. Trust me, it can be done relatively successful with a topic as non diverse and overused as acne. Understand there is a difference between copying and sharing. I promise you, visitors, and search engines for that matter, can tell the difference.
Easy now. Yes, original content is important. I create a lens with nothing but original tripe (Look it up. Gross). But my Tublr blogs are quick posts with an original keyword encrusted title and intro along with a video or post someone else is happy to have distributed. The sum of the post is wholly original, yo.
I am trying to find a way to make money with what is already available on the web. I may buy used domains. I hate spending money so that annoys me. But it’s useful. I don’t use Blogger that much. Hell, even it’s owner treats it like a pile of doggy do. Google seems to like to stay above the Tumblr, Hubpages, Squidoo fray too. It’s only my impression. Daddy G doesn’t want to acknowledge their existence but sometimes he has to let them come over for the barbecue. On the other hand Bing and Yahoo are telling them to come over, grab a drink and get nekkid in the hot tub.
I make use of keyword stats. If a keyword looks like it is in play it gets dispersed onto Tumblr blogs and/or Squidoo lens and/or Hubpages and/or other hosts I’m not sharing. Again I am a big fan of bookmarklets and such.
I use RSS feeds to keep up with shit. Feed demon is tasty. I like to troll around and make comments. Still using Answer Analyst to figure out what questions people are asking. I’ll answer them in a post using other people’s content.
I’m a fan of Twitter. EverTweet finds me new followers every day. Most are completely worthless. Some are now re-tweeting my tweets which are tweets of new lens or posts. That is always cool.
I built a Facebook page this weekend for a niche that is working very well. Not sure what to do with it yet as I’m still experimenting. The last couple of years all I’ve heard is that Facebook is a waste of IM time. How could that be? Guess I’ll find out.
Tags. If you aren’t making full use of tags you are wasting a great opportunity. People on Squidoo, Hubpages, WordPress, etc. sometimes stay on the network. They find you with the tags. They find me at least. The tags are even ranked on Google.
Feeds. There are some RSS directories that Google seems to like. I do submissions.
So yea, I’m not sweating building a niche website with PLR. I’m not running around trying to get many backlinks. I’m having some fun building blogs/sites that have good content with easy and free tools.
Making money? Sure. Ebay is humming along on self owned domains, Hubpages and Squidoo. Still making money with Adsense. Sites like Tumblr among (secret) others, do OK with Adsense. Affiliate offers are fun. Don’t you love getting that email saying you made a $51 sale? I do. CJ and Shareasale. I pimp it all. Some work. Most don’t. But I have enough shit slung around the wall that a few pieces are sticking.
I guess some of the nicherati think I’m wasting my time. It’s my time. I can tell you without a doubt in my narrow mind that I cannot glumly sit down and type out or re-write some shitty PLR niche article. Hell no. I prefer to go my own way and have at least a thimble full of fun. I’m glad the 8 people reading this shit think this is stupid. Anyway, IM will suck the life out of you if you let it. I’m fighting the fucker.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
“I guess some of the nicherati think I’m wasting my time. It’s my time. I can tell you without a doubt in my narrow mind that I cannot glumly sit down and type out or re-write some shitty PLR niche article.”
“You realize the only people that are creating “original content” are naive niche marketers. ”
I get that the niche route isn’t fun, but are you saying that you have tried to do it Grizz’s way and it doesn’t work?
I think you are missing the boat by not using blogger. I have tons of Blogger blogs and most of them make money. Two of them make $300 to $500 a month and I rarely post to them anymore.
I have plenty of blogger blogs. Glad they work for you. I’m moving on.
I don’t know what Griz’s way is really. He writes long posts and gets ton of backlinks. Not for me, but then again I don’t make 20K a month either. He’s a smart and crafty fella. My guess is simply writing a blogger blog and asking a friend for backlinks is not all there is to it with him.
Splork- I can’t even tell you how much I enjoy reading your posts. I don’t always know what to make of them, but I always read ‘em.
This gives me an idea. I rarely have any lately, so I must say thanks to you Splork.
Grizz’s method, whatever it is, works for Grizz. I think the lesson of your post is you gotta find your own way. Unless you can be successful using somebody else’s way, of course.
Nope – there is a bit more to it but not as much as you think. The trick is having a large enough backlink pool – something I think you must have by now Splork. Maybe start using your inventory to build a legit site in a high volume field and watch what happens… just a thought.
Hey Griz. Yea that’s where I’m headed.
Funny, the thing that now sucks is going back through all those damn sites and adding links. Thank god I created a spreadsheet with all my logins and sites I used over the last couple of years. I’m surprised I was that clever. I built all these little satellite sites thinking I’d use them for backlinks. But I never really got around to using them much for that. I’d build and move on. But it’s easy enough to add a video or photo or something to get it juiced again and post a link back to my main site. Hopefully you are right and it helps. Just gotta make sure the anchor text is proper…
Tom, I’m too impatient and distracted to stay with any one thing for too long.
I don’t really know what to make of my posts either. It’s really just randomized thoughts…for that day. My mindset will change 15 minutes after I write something. I’m just putting my thoughts down in a journal is all. Thanks for reading Don.
Good post.
Even if it was just randomized thoughts which may change overnight!
And yes, going back and adding links to old sites you had ‘built to forget’ is a real pain in the backside.
Thanks for reading Zania.
I am not sure what to do with my facebook page either. Just added my link. Let me know what you decide to do with yours. Thanks.
“Anyway, IM will suck the life out of you if you let it”
LOL, I can understand that, like – totally.