Only I don’t think many of those hyping the site fully understood it, because since it launched, I don’t recall hearing or reading much about it, other than the odd passing reference. I might just be looking in the wrong places, but it seems Squidoo was rather underwhelming for most.

Which is a shame really, because I think it could be a really useful tool if used correctly.

What is it?

Squidoo is all about “Lenses”. A Lens is a page which acts as a sign-post to stuff out on the web, all based on a topic. The idea is based about “permission marketing”, trust and the idea that everyone’s an expert at something. Would you trust Google over a human with a passion for a particular topic? I wouldn’t. Google can be gamed and manipulated, real people are a bit harder to trick.

What can I do?

At the most basic level, you can create a page on the Squidoo site which links to other pages and resources all over the web. You could use this as an additional means to market your blog. I’m only just getting started with Squidoo, so to try it out, I created a very basic Squidoo Lens on the Get Rich Project. It displays excerpts of the 3 latest posts, links I think are relevant, and related items from eBay and Amazon.

This last point is a nice feature of Squidoo – you can make money from your Lens. You earn a cut of all Ad and affiliate profits generated by your Lens. Having a Lens is a nice way to potentially earn an extra bit of passive income, all while providing an extra source of traffic. It’s not often you get to advertise your site and make money at the same time!

Or you could give any revenue earned to charity.

Do You Squidoo?

Are you using Squidoo? If so, what for? Do you use it for your blog, for products, or for personal use? If you are using Squidoo, please share your Lenses and tips in the comments!

The Get Rich Project on Squidoo

You’ve probably seen posts linking to their free report over the last few weeks. If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you do as it’s rather good. Unsurprisingly, it gives a taste of what’s to come in the full online course.

Normally I avoid these online “guru” courses like the plague, but this time I have stumped up the cash (currently $97 for 3 months “charter membership”), as I have been a long time reader of Brian’s Copy Blogger and I know the material is going to be good. I’ve been reading through the first batch of materials, and so far it’s living up to my expectations. I’ll need to go back over it tomorrow, as I’m skimming just now to just get a flavour of what’s to come.

Initially the course is about taking good content – knowledge and information – beyond the usual confines of eBooks and text-based websites. From there, the idea is to grow into a means of using effective learning techniques to build a booming business.

By moving beyond what 99% of your business rivals might produce, you stand a much better chance of making sales, and at a higher volume or more profitable margin. This makes more sense to me than the standard online entrepreneur “path”, and is possibly why I’ve not really put more than maybe 80% effort in at any one time.

That said, I do still see a big place in the market for those who want the traditional means of selling information products.

Teaching Sells

From the back (emphasis is mine):

At 26, Scott is a successful stockbroker and media commentator. He runs his own weekly finance radio show, chooses to drive a wreck and lives a full and rich life. His radio show has been described as finance for people don’t do finance. He makes money funky; your money can look after you once you learn to look after it.

The Barefoot Investor is the only finance book I’ve managed to read from start to finish; lets face it – finance is a bit of a boring subject for most people. The book distills much of the jargon and dry subject matter into a form which can be easily related to, easily understood, and easily acted on.

It’s hard to describe the difference this makes. While reading The Barefoot Investor, you start thinking about how you are going to implement the tips and ideas you get, and more importantly, when. This book makes you want to take control over your finances, and it gives you the information you need to do it.

It’s important to note that this book is (mostly) not about short-term gain. Most of the advice is based on long-term strategies which will make you “financially free” (i.e. not worrying about your finances and not living payday to payday). There are some short-term strategies for helping you get on the right track, but mostly the book looks at the “long game,” or – in Barefoot Terminology – “working your Mojo.”

For me, the best chapter (or “step”) in the book, is #3 – “Repo Your Repayments.” This chapter primarily deals with debt and what can be done about it. It clearly looks at many of the common forms of consumer debt, why they’re bad, and more importantly, what can be done to get out of the trap.

So in summary – buy this book. If you’re looking for a book to help you understand your finances, with clear, practical advice, I don’t think you’ll find one much better than this.

¹ Examples would include: Your Money or Your Wife, What Price the Little Things, and Be a Bank Account Tart

So how kind of him to share what he knows, in the form of a free eBook?

‘Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com’, is a compendium of previous articles from John’s blog, with a little updating to bring older information up-to-date. Tapping into his blog archives like this demonstrates the power of a good blog – the content for a book is already there, it just needs to be reformatted. if you’ve been reading johnchow.com for a while now, you may well know all of the contents of the book already. Even so, having John’s articles collated into one easily portable format is quite handy.

Anyway, the eBook itself; it doesn’t quite have the professional appearance of the usual internet marketeer fare, which is part of the point, I guess. The purpose of the eBook is purely to act as a traffic generator for johnchow.com, not to upsell another product. The first few pages actually deal with this, and it’s refreshing to read something which isn’t acting as a giant sales brochure. The Jerk, John is not.

Obviously the book does still have a monetization plan. The plan is affiliate sales. It’s the chapters relating to this which I found most useful. At the very start, we are given a list of recommended money makers. While there were some of the usual suspects, I’ve now learned of a few new schemes to try out on the Get Rich Project, and how best to optimize their use.

Much of the book deals with growing a blog. While it is all good advice, a lot of it has been written before (and not just on johnchow.com), so it can get a little repetitive. However there are still snippets of gold hidden away in there, so it’s worth at least skimming each section.

All in all, the eBook serves best in one of two roles:

1. a quick catch-up, if you’re new to making money online
2. a “pocket reference” style book – you already know the stuff, you just need a little reminder now and then.

Shortnd is a free link shortening/obfusication tool. In a nutshell, it turns a really long URL (like http://www.example.com/this/is/a/really-really-really/long/url.htm?and=its&even=got&some=extra-parameters) into a much shorter URL like http://shortnd.com/123.

Uses of this tool (from an internet marketing perspective) could include:

• hiding your affiliate links
• emailing the link of a download to a customer

As well the usual “making a URL easier to remember” use these types of tools have.

Not all of the planned features of Shortnd are in place yet, as the aim was to get the main service rolled out quickly and with as little complication as possible. Over the next few months I plan to add a number of really helpful features to the service. As new features are rolled out I will announce them here.

To me, Shortnd was simply about scratching a particular itch I’ve had for a while – build something useful, quickly, and release it. In all, Shortned was built in less than 18 hours (spread over the evenings of 2 weeks, as time allowed).

Shortnd is the first of a small number of web-based tools I have lined up. As always, watch this space!