Saturday, December 29, 2007

Internet program: Squidoo update

$.76

I've earned $.76 since May 4, 2007, with my Squidoo Lens on Gifted Children.

Well, that's a waste of time. Squidoo's payout threshold is $10. At this rate, I will earn $10 in 2016, at which point it will be worth $4 Canadian or 1.33 Euros.

Is anyone earning money on Squidoo? It took me a few hours to get the site set up, and to be fair I've promoted it with another hour or so of time, but 4 hours = $.76?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I found some commentary here and here and here, with people raving about earning $10 or $70, but that's with 13 or more lenses, and after many months. Or, using Squidoo to post affiliate links. Again--why do that when you can drive traffic to your OWN site?

Unless you have a reason to drive tons of traffic to a site (and if you do, why waste that traffic on another site?), Squidoo seems like a waste of time.

Internet program: Make money through affiliate programs

Now, this is 100% ancient in terms of the Internet. I've had an Amazon.com Associates account since 1997, when I started fooling around with HTML and established some basic, incredibly lame websites.

Affiliate programs work like this: someone clicks on a link to a store. They buy something. If they click on YOUR link from YOUR site, you get a % of their sale.

That's it.

For instance, we eat a gluten-free diet. We recently discovered Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Click on that link. I dare you. It takes you to Amazon.com's Grocery section, where you will find a 4-pack of the chocolate chip cookie mix for 31% off the retail price of $6 per bag, right?

(Don't get me started on the cost of gluten-free products. $2.40 for a box of mac n' cheese, and that's the sale price. I might cry.)

If you buy that 4-pack of Bob's Red Mill Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix, I get a cut, anywhere from 5-10% of the purchase price, depending on the whim of the Amazon.com marketing gods, who determine how much to throw our way.

If you don't have a blog or a website, you might be wondering what this has to do with you, and with making money working from home.

Let me ask you: how much do you spend on online shopping each year? $500? $1,000? $5,000? More? What's 5-10% of $5K? Do the math, and now I might have your attention.

I spend a LOT on Amazon.com, because their bulk gluten-free products are the cheapest price anywhere. I buy through my own Amazon.com link and shave 5-10% off their sale prices. You can email your affiliate link to friends and family and encourage them to buy through your associates account.

You can--check terms and services before doing this--link to Amazon or other companies' products when talking about them on message boards, and make a small affiliate commission. You can help a charity of your choice by setting up an affiliate store on their website and encourage their supporters to shop through it.

But more to the point: you can use affiliate links through Amazon.com, or Commission Junction, to affiliatize your Internet life and make a little money.

By the way, those gluten-free cookies are GOOD. You know you want to click. Click and buy. Now.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Last-minute shopping, or: how desperate are you?

So work deadlines tighten for me around this time of year, and it's always such a pain to deal with holiday shopping and work. Why can't Christmas be in February? Seriously.

I'm getting increasingly desperate, and turning to Amazon.com Gift cards as an avenue for presents. We did this back in 1998, when our first child was only 7 weeks old. Christmas shop? I'm trying to manage a 12 lb baby and recover from being turned inside-out and you expect me to Christmas shop? Um, no.

Back in 1998, though, no one knew what to DO with the e-certificates we sent them. I suspect half of the gift certificates are sitting in email accounts long abandoned, while bean counters at Amazon.com count them among the 27% of gift cards that go unused.

Happy shopping!