Click here to view the embedded video.

Edited video with lyrics and names of the memes.

50 dollars, bucks, bones, clams

Both contests END October 31, 2008 so don’t delay entering.

The Lazy Slacker Contest #1: Win $50 or $100 in PayPal Cash

This is the easy one that takes just a minute.

• Subscribe to LazySlacker blog via RSS or e-mail
• Leave a comment on the post saying you subscribed (Registration required.)

He’ll pick the winner using a random number generator.

Enter Contest #1

The Lazy Slacker Contest #2: Win $75 in PayPal Cash

This one takes more than a minute.

• Subscribe to LazySlacker blog via RSS or e-mail.
• Leave a comment on the post saying you subscribed
• Link
• Tell friends
• Promote it
• E-mail him or leave a comment saying what you did

Enter Contest #2

I learned of his web site after he started following me on Twitter.
Me: trustavenger Him: thelazyslacker

Nevertheless, I’m still very impressed by the 30 DC lessons and am looking forward to seeing how WordPress Direct can make it easy to add content.

Viper’s Video Quicktags will save you lots of time embedding video from YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Veoh, Viddler, Metacafe, Blip.tv, and more. Get the plugin.

One of my favorite YouTube videos.  And I don’t even like soccer.

• Numa Numa (19.8 Million views)
• Numa Numa - digitally remastered (2 Million views)

Numa Numa Yoda #09 (2 Million views)

And my favorite spin off without CGI. Numa Numa Girl (0.5 Million views)

Anyone interested in information marketing should watch the video on Seductive Selling by Frank Kern. Here’s a word of warning; near the end of the video he states, “This stuff is a little bit sneaky. It’s a little bit black ops stuff.” Even though this is the type of stuff I usually detest, there is enough valuable content to make it worth your time.

It’s a bit of a sales pitch on how to do a sales pitch. Frank used Jeff Paul as a good example for a loss and redemption story. I know very little about Jeff Paul except that he’s listed on several scam sites. Here are two links: infomercialscams.com and federalhomebusinessreview.com

Even with these disclaimers, Frank’s video has a number of valuable insights that are important for anyone marketing and selling information. For that reason, I’ve included some notes below so you can refer to them later.

Watch Frank Kern on Seductive Selling

• Old Way: Now that I’ve hit you over the head with this ad and therefore gotten your attention, let me hard-sell the hell out of you before you get the chance to escape.
• Real World: Now that you know me and we have a relationship, it’s time to invest in my stuff.

• A search engine user is usually in a problem/solution or a getting ready to buy mindset
• A blog reader is usually in a news-getting/entertainment frame of mind.
• An e-mail reader is usually in a “Let’s be productive” or “I wonder what’s up with so and so” frame of mind.

More “C Words” for Fun and Profit!

• Why You Got ‘Em: Content
• How You Keep ‘Em: Character (You become a character they follow and are interested in.)
• Bottom Line: We remember and respond more to entertainment

You Can Assume Different Roles

• The Leader: You’re their drill Sgt. Think Tony Robbins.
• The Adventurer/Crusader: Makes shocking discovery. Kevin Trudeau. It’s THEIR Fault, not yours.
• The Reporter/Evangelist: Before and after story. A story of loss and redemption. Rocky, Karate Kid, Jeff Paul, Neil Strauss.

Story Line

• The Before and After
• Discovery story
• Telling Secrets
• Third Person Testimonial
• Us vs. Them Saga

Eliminate Resistance

• Find your market’s FRUSTRATIONS and hammer them remorselessly

Associate Objections with a Common Enemy

• Stir up this frustration, find the common enemy, and blame it all on them.
• The object is to bond with the reader and give them absolution for their own incompetence.
• You’re not making money because those pesky guru’s aren’t telling you everthing
• They’re trying to sell you these crazy PPC schemes and Joint Venture schemes …but they quietly use the REAL secrets to make fortunes
• It’s simply not their fault.

Absolution yields Obedience

• REALITY: If you’d actually read the directions, take action, quit hanging out in forums, stop being a whiny shitwad, and not quit a the first sign of trouble, you wouldn’t have this problem.
• WHAT TO SAY IF YOU WANT MONEY: Of course you’re having problems. The so-called GURUS aren’t telling you the whole story. It’s THEIR fault. Follow me as I show you what they’re hiding.

Go Ahead, Admit It

• We love flawed characters
• Make a damaging admission
• It can be about your product or yourself
• This isn’t a magic bullet. Sometimes, you’ll use this system in a new market and it won’t work. Hell, nobody hits a home run every time…
• Turn your damaging admission into a selling point. (FTC Story.)

With You…

• Use your damaging admission to invalidate the other guys.
• Sure, I might be bad but at least I told you about it. These other guys are much worse …I guess that’s why they try to hide it.
• Sure, learning to write copy might take time and effort. …But you wouldn’t want to waste time building tons of trashy AdSense sites …only to have Google kill your account.

Total Loserdom

• You’re not one of those people are you?
• My stuff isn’t for everybody. It’s not for losers, terrorists, or people who kill kittens.
• So if you’re not a kitten-killing terrorist loser, you will benefit from putting my methods to work for you.

Real World use: Mass Control is not for people who don’t take action, not for people who aren’t willing to step out of the box a bit, it’s not for people who are unethical.

These trackbacks are tagged with the “nofollow” attribute so it won’t help Google Page Rank. WordPress 1.5 and above automatically assigns the nofollow attribute to all user-submitted links (comment data, commenter URI, etc). Source: WordPress Codex

In contrast, Blogger doesn’t support trackbacks.

First, here is WHAT NOT TO DO: There are no shortcuts. NONE. With all of this craziness in the stock and financial markets, there will be scams popping up left and right. The less money you have, the more likely someone will come at you with some scheme . The schemes will guarantee returns, use multi level marketing, or be something crazy that is now “backed by the US Government”. Please ignore them. Always remember this. If a deal is a great deal, they aren’t going to share it with you.

The 2nd rule for getting rich is getting smart. Investing your time in yourself and becoming knowledgeable about the business of something you really love to do.

This is not a short term project. We aren’t talking days. We aren’t talking months. We are talking years. Lots of years and maybe decades. I didn’t say this was a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich path.

How to Embed YouTube Videos WordPress 2.6.2

• Log into your WordPress admin dashboard
• Click the Users tab and your User Name
• Uncheck the Visual Editor (illustrated above)
  
• Scroll down and click Update Profile

This turns off the Visual Editor and allows you to successfully paste the YouTube Embed code. After the post is published and edited, you can turn the Visual Editor back on for future posts if you like using it.

I plan to create video for information marketing purposes. Therefore, I’ll upload video to both Blip.tv and YouTube. I’ll embed Blip.tv into my WordPress blogs and use YouTube to reach more people.

In light of the horrific financial news of this past week, I recommend a video from Frank Kern to help everyone in information marketing keep the proper frame of mind. This economic crisis is going to result in substantial changes. Therefore, a select group of people will improve their financial situation while many others’ situation will degrade. Even before this video, I knew that this was a great time to start an online business. This video just gives my belief more credibility.

Watch: How to Profit in This Recession

It was not simple and I had second thoughts several times during the multiple day ordeal. The WordPress import tool simply didn’t work (despite moving Blogger to classic), so I moved all the posts by hand. My tips are lots of patience, CuteFTP, HostGator Tutorials, and Google searches.

But now I have that sense of accomplishment and know that I can easily open new add-on domains in the future. So far so good with HostGator and it integrates easily with the 30DC software.

Per the instructions of the 30DC, I chose the baby plan because it has unlimited add-on domains. The baby plan is advertised at $7.95 a month. However, I pay $9.95 a month rather than paying 2 years in advance ($214.80) to average $8.95 a month or 3 years in advance ($286.20) to average $7.95 a month. At this point it seems smarter to have the option of moving web hosts if the need arises.

In a similar vein, Daniel McClure gives the 30 Day Challenge a big thumbs up.

This time I decided to swallow my pride and join, see if there was anything I could get out of it. Quite Frankly: I’m Shocked… From what Ive seen so far it’s quite literally the best Intensive course to get someone up and running… The Truth is installing this browser [Flock] with the tips given in the 30DC could save you up to an hour or more a day and I REALLY mean that… At the price of FREE you really can’t lose anything and could gain more than you think. I know I have already!

I recommend checking out the 30DC. You can go through all the steps without spending a dime and learn a lot of new tips for information marketing.

• Flock rocks. Link
• The 30 Day Challenge is awesome. Link
• Market Samurai is truly amazing. Link
• The Squidoo bubble is bursting. Link
• Twitter is cool and effective.
• FriendFeed is kinda freaky but useful.

In the name of transparency, here are my earnings for the month.

• Expenses: $170.95  Market Samurai ($87), Domain Name Registration ($74)
• Income: $0.00
• Time:  105 hours

Net Earnings:  -$170.95

I have $3.00 pending in Google AdSense and $0.94 pending in Squidoo but I’m only going to count income when payment is received.

• Search term: best wineries in temecula
• Visits this month: 149
• HubScore: 75
• Google Ranking: 22
• Yahoo! Search Ranking: No (means not in top 50)
• MSN Ranking: 7

Best Temecula Wine on HubPages

• Search term: best wine in temecula
• Visits this month: 126
• HubScore: 75
• Google Ranking: No
• Yahoo! Search Ranking: No
• MSN Ranking: No

Ranking reports courtesy of Mike’s Marketing Tools.

Google Wealth Maker promises to be nothing short of a pushbutton traffic generation solution. The proprietary software uses the social network Twitter as a base to draw its traffic from. The software creates, populates and adds followers to niche based Twitter accounts. These accounts are then used to grab free clicks from Google.

I can’t get too excited about any of these tricks since I expect that Google is going to not count them if too many worthless links show up in their index.

I’m a big fan of contrarians so I’m going to keep my eyes on a new web site called Life After Google. The related Squidoo lens is a kind of manifesto.

I’ve seen a number of these types of sites come and go since the Google IPO. The best ones simply disappear one day and leave no trace, no cache, no evidence. The mediocre one like Xooglers just stagnate and rot.

It will be interesting to see where Life After Google stands in a year.

Magicality is a Squidoo lensmaster who’s goal is “to make $500 per month by the end of 2008 using only Squidoo lenses.” His blog reported a September payout of $96.42 on 73 lenses. I suspect this is frustrating since he passed the $100 a month milestone seven months ago and has been on a plateau since.

Most importantly, he’s noticed a drop in traffic to his fashion lenses. One of his lenses gets 1/20 the traffic that it used to. This is his explanation:

The fashion lenses used to rank Top 3 for their keywords, just because of the quality links received from the Squidoo Tag pages. However, those pages have been altered to no follow links, no idea why. The result is they don’t give PR anymore. Since I never promoted these lenses outside Squidoo, they dropped significantly.

The bottom line is that the web traffic per Squidoo lenses is dropping as I reported earlier. Lensmasters like Magicality continue to create new lenses but the drop in web traffic has caused their earnings to plateau over the past seven months.

Magicality (Tom) works Squidoo the tried and true way—he posts unique and relevant content. The trickster marketers are hurting him by dropping Squidoo’s authority in Google’s ranking algorithm. My advice to Tom and all other Squidoo lensmasters in the same position is to give HubPages a shot. Check out my Quick Start Guide for Squidoo Lensmasters.

The Insider Scoop » Blog Archive » The Wine Region Next Door - It may still be summer, but the harvest is well under way in the Temecula Valley (about 60 miles north of San Diego). Growers of sparkling wines started picking in the middle of August. Now the whites are being harvested, with reds and then late-harvest varietals soon to follow

After reading that article, check out the Best Temecula Wineries and the Top 10 Temecula Wines.

I licensed the full version of Market Samurai ($87), watched Ed Dale’s videos, and all of Noble Samurai’s Video Tutorials. Good stuff/amazing stuff. Whew!

I wonder how much I’ll retain tomorrow. The last video taught me about Blog Pingbacks from Market Samurai. I’m going to test it in the next post.

I love learning new stuff and the 30 Day Challenge is filling my brain with Web marketing techniques. And most of them will improve my abilities at my “real” job (where the 30 Day Challenge Web site is blocked). I recommend the 30 Day Challenge to anyone who wants to improve their Web marketing ability.

Caro is a 30DC forum moderator. Her YouTube video is genuinely inspirational.

I point to two recent posts:

• One Eyed Monster – A “successful” blogger points to Squidoo as a place to create a page with high Google ranking with links to your own website. I was going to comment that HubPages would give a better Google ranking and then realized that I didn’t want those type of pages showing up on HubPages.
• Freaking Damned Lazy Idiots – A lensmaster (flowergardner) with 15 months of experience and 93 lenses (18 of which are ranked in the top 2,000) laments that the quality on Squidoo is declining drastically.

In contrast, the HubPages terms of service stresses quality content that is going to pay off in the long term.

Quantcast numbers show that the race has tightened with both Squidoo and HubPages achieving 19.2 million page views in the past month. Squidoo and HubPages are both “Quantified Publishers” which means that Quantcast directly measures their visits. Therefore, the Quantcast numbers are an accurate view of what is happening now.

In fact, looking at the monthly page views for Squidoo (top) and HubPages (bottom), you notice that HubPages had a slight lead in monthly page views in June and July although Squidoo recently closed the gap.

Squidoo Page Views According to Quantcast (click for latest)

HubPages Page Views According to Quantcast (click for latest)

Hubs Get More Traffic on Average

However, Squidoo has approximately 5 times more pages than HubPages. That means that the average page on HubPages is getting 5 times more visits than the average page on Squidoo since the total pages views are the same.

Given that most of the income on both sites is via Google Ad impressions, the average Hubber is receiving 5 times more income than the average Squidoo Lensmaster. I recently posted similar pages on HubPages and Squidoo and my HubPages got 7-8 times more traffic. Once Squidoo Lensmasters learn this, I expect many will shift to HubPages as their primary publishing method for new content.

Alexa Shows a New Trend

Alexa Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL request for a site. Therefore, they are a sample of all internet traffic since they represent those who have installed the Alexa Toolbar. Recent Alexa traffic shows that HubPages page views have started on an upward trend while Squidoo pages are on a downward trend.

Squidoo vs. HubPages on Alexa (click for latest)

Quantcast vs. Alexa

According to Quantcast’s directly measured traffic, page views on HubPages in June and July were slightly ahead of Squidoo. According to Alexa’s sample of internet traffic, page views on HubPages in June and July were about half of Squidoo. In August, Alexa is finally starting to show short time periods where page views on HubPages are exceeding Squidoo.

Analysis

I suggest that the Alexa sample is made up of people who are early adopters. They may have been early to adopt Squidoo in 2006 and had no reason to adopt HubPages when it appeared later. HubPages made some changes early this year that may have appealed to the early majority.

The fact that Squidoo page views are showing signs of weakening on Alexa may signal real trouble in crossing the chasm from the early adopters to the early majority. The early majority is choosing HubPages over Squidoo and that means trouble for Squidoo in the future.

What To Do?

If you’re a Squidoo Lensmaster, read the following links:

• Top 10 Reasons to Switch from Squidoo to HubPages
• HubPages Quick Start Guide for Squidoo Lensmasters

SunSeven is a well respected Hubber who has had tremendous success with the Lifetime Referral program. In March 2008 she posted a forum entry when she reached the 500 referral sign up milestone. Those 500 sign ups created 1,930 hubs that had generated 3.8 million page views. That’s quite an accomplishment and an inspiration.

SunSeven posted an update in August on her second anniversary on HubPages. Her 500 referral sign ups had jumped to 870 but her hubs dropped from 1,930 to 1,750. (I guess HubPages cleaned house during that time.) She was personally at the 150 hub mark.

More importantly, she reported her earnings so far:

• AdSense: $5,011.0
• Amazon: $107.81
• Ebay: $90.35
• Kontera: $48.30
• Total: $5,257.46

That number surprised me since I had expected more earnings from such a successful Hubber. It averages $219 a month which is less than I expected.

I realize that revenue builds over time and that she earns more a month now at 150 hubs and 1,750 referral hubs than she did her first month. Yet, if you assume that her income has grown in a linear fashion that means she’s earning about $440 a month now from HubPages. (I knew my engineering degree would prove of some use.) However, nothing happens in a linear fashion so I would predict that she’s earning approximately $500 a month now.

Compare that to Yanik Silver; his first site in February 2000 earned $1,800 in the first month and then roughly $3,400 in the second month. HubPages aren’t a quick way to wealth that compares to the Yanik method. But the lifetime referral bonus is a nice incentive.

Because of the 30 Day Challenge (30DC), I installed the web browser Flock yesterday. I only did it to learn about Flock and didn’t expect to switch from IE7.

Last night while creating a new hub in IE7, I couldn’t access HubPages. This has happened frequently in the past week. I finally figured out that using a different browser like Firefox fixes the situation. Wonder how many other people experience this situation with IE7 and think that HubPages goes down regularly.

I decided to use Flock to continue editing my hub. In sum, Flock rocks when editing hubs. I craft my hub text in Microsoft Word but the hidden formatting codes wreak havoc in HubPages. In the past, I’ve copied my text into Notepad first to remove the formatting codes. This works but is cumbersome.

Flock has a plug in for HubPages that automatically sends text through a text only pop up window first. It simplifies the work flow of creating hubs and saves me lots of time. I’ve switched from IE7 and highly recommend Flock to all Hubbers.

I recently stumbled on the 30 Day Challenge (30DC) and signed up for the 30DC e-mail notification list four days ago. Ed Dale’s first e-mail was to sign up for the Private Members area. I finally got around to that yesterday and began reviewing the 30DC Pre-Season Training.

I am extremely impressed by the content. The content is both educational and entertaining. The format includes the elements I wanted to use for promoting my killer margarita recipe. (The fact that Google doesn’t allow AdSense on sites that promote hard alcohol complicates the promotion of margaritas.) Because of 30DC, I now have a better idea of my information architecture and a business model.

Pre-Season Training

During Pre-Season Training, he introduces the tools and concepts that are the backbone of the 30DC: The Flock Browser, Twitter, Twhirl, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Google Subscribe, and FriendFeed.

Anyone making a go at earning money in a new online business should sign up for the 30 Day Challenge.

One of the newer services is AttentionMeter which lets you easily access those four plus Technorati. AttentionMeter is a great way to do a quick comparison but the display options are more limited than going to each site individually.

Last week I got caught by the Google Duplicate Page filter. I checked this morning and discovered that they had reindexed the pages so I’m #1 on Google for top 10 temecula wines. That’s good news that the penalty didn’t last too long.

I created two Squidoo Lenses on a whim in the past week. Both give me a place to promote things I’m passionate about and possibly earn some Amazon Associates money.

Love to Flip is about Flip video camcorders. Since its lens rank is between 10,000 and 100,000, it may earn $0.07 a month. As an experiment, I added links to some of my YouTube videos today to see if that bumps it into the buck a month club.

Books about Wine is a holding area for me to add books about wine as I read more. It was a minimal effort and it’s already near the 4 pence (groat) a month club.

Whether it’s a buck a month or a groat a month, they’re never going to amount to much even if I had 100 such lenses. Nevertheless, I appreciate that Squidoo gives me a FREE canvas to create better web pages than I ever could have otherwise. And, even at $0.07 a month, that’s more passive income than most Americans.

It took hours to clean up the mess after being flagged by the Google duplicate page filter. Therefore, I needed to change titles, text, and images so that the flag could be removed. I eventually followed the tack of using the Squidoo lenses for long polls where people could vent their frustration at my choices on the hubs.

A blog post on Blue Magnet explains duplicate content, the Google penalty for duplicate content, and how to remedy duplicate content. It had taken Google two to three days to index the pages and flag them as duplicate content. We’ll see how long it takes for them to re-index the pages and remove the flag.

Photo credit: John H. Kim

Early in the day I had done a Google search for top 10 temecula wines and was thrilled to have my hub #1 and my Squidoo lens #2. Around midnight I did the search again to get a warm fuzzy feeling that would relax me for bed. This time the Squidoo lens was #1 and the hub was gone. It wasn’t in the first 50 results; it wasn’t anywhere. Oh! the calamity!!! For the time being, my wrecked Squidoo pages were #1 on a Google search result. I didn’t sleep well and hit the ground typing early this morning.

Several lenses gave instructions not to duplicate content on Squidoo and HubPages but they never said why. I read the Squidoo and HubPages terms several times and couldn’t find any prohibitions. Tonight, I found a really good reason.

An interview with the HubPages Marketing Manager Jason Menayan noted seven things they did to gain market share against Squidoo. Number 4 caught my attention.

4. We checked all articles for copied content, and applied a score penalty to
those with content already published on the Web (even if they had rights to
republish that content). Those articles with very low scores were not shown to
search engines.

Ack, Ook! For my duplicated content (which I had rights to republish), I decided to remove duplicate versions quickly before the filter caught me.

The question was, “Which one would stay?”

For Best Temecula Wineries, this was a no brainer. The Squidoo page had been up longer, I had promoted it more, and yet the HubPages page had 68 views versus 8 for the Squidoo page. That’s a ratio of 8.5:1 in favor of HubPages.

The decision was as easy for Top 10 Temecula Wines. The Squidoo page was promoted more and yet the HubPages page had 35 views versus 5 for the Squidoo page. That’s a ratio of 7:1.

Moreover, 42% of the traffic came from hubpages.com. See the diagram below for Best Temecula Wineries on HubPages. In contrast, Squidoo hadn’t sent any traffic to my Squidoo pages. So I removed the duplicate content from Knol and Squidoo and those pages became shells of their former selves.

Note: The HubPages FAQ clearly states that copying content already available on the Web will be penalized by lowering the HubScore. I was focused on Squidoo at the time and didn’t bother to read the FAQ until now. Count that as a lesson learned.

Photo courtesy of AckOok

UPDATE: I later learned that the HubPages penalty isn’t nearly as bad as the Google Penalty.

There are two recent blog posts that everyone creating (or considering creating) lenses on Squidoo or hubs on HubPages should read and consider.

Little Debbie is a lensmaster generating more than 30,000 visitors to Squidoo per month. She wrote about her concerns in Changing Gears:

My ultimate goals? Be my own boss. Control my own internet real-estate in every way. I cannot do this with Squidoo. I have given them a year of my devotion and my unique original articles. They have given me a free opportunity to learn and hone my skills about internet marketing, and an income. My year’s worth of work is not secure. It is in the hands of others, and I have absolutely NO input of any changes that would affect my work.

Hubpages Author recently noted that many hubbers income is down. His is down 80%:

This month like a lot of hubbers, I have noticed a dramatic fall in earnings from Google adsense. The reasons for this drop are unclear but my earnings have dropped from between $5.00-$7.00 a day to just around $1.00 a day.

Right now I’m glad to have the free opportunity to learn and hone skills about internet marketing and make a little income. The tools on both Squidoo and Hubpages are great for brainstorming a web page. But I can see a time in the future when …

Photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

Up to this point, I’ve been focused on creating original content. Now I’m looking at the Squidoo business model. According to Loyalis (Captain Squid), the Squidoo payout follows a tiered structure.

For August, it was as follows.

• Lens rank higher than approx 2,000: $7.78 per lens per month
• Lens rank approx 2,000 – 10,000: $1.32 per lens per month
• Lens rank approx 10,000 – 100,000: $0.07 per lens per month

This falls in line with what some lens masters are reporting.

• Loyalis, 476 lenses, more than $3,000 per month: $6.30 per lens per month in August
• Janet21, approx? 80 lenses, $484 per month: $5.69 per lens per month in July
• Janet21, 85 lenses, $297 per month: $3.49 per lens per month in August
• Christene, 91 lenses, $200 per month: $2.20 per lens per month

There’s a big difference between the first tier versus the second but I’ll bet it closely aligns with the traffic difference between the two tiers. The key to getting in the first tier is creating relevant content on a compelling topic that generates traffic.

I researched the most talked about exceptional wines and created People’s Choice Award pages on Squidoo and HubPages. Since Knol is for experts to give their opinion, I didn’t place this content there.

• Top 10 Temecula Wines: People’s Choice Awards on Squidoo
• Top 10 Temecula Wines: People’s Choice Awards on HubPages

Photo courtesy of mihenco.

UPDATE: On Sep 5, I significantly modified the content on Squidoo so that it didn’t duplicate the content on HubPages.

I rely on Google Analytics at work and want to track Web traffic to this blog. Adding the code to a Blogspot blog is a snap.

1. Sign up for Google Analytics
2. Follow the instructions in Analytics Help

I knew there was a reason for selecting products in the Google family.

Every month I’ll review lessons learned related to Internet Marketing.

• Squidoo has potential to generate personal income. Link
• Squidoo is a great way to create an interactive web page. Link
• My content on HubPages is getting more traffic. Link
• This isn’t a get rich quick scheme and requires time. Link

In the name of transparency, here are my earnings for the month.

• Expenses: $214.80 (Two years hosting of trustavenger.com)
• Time: 30 hours
• Income: $0.00

NET EARNINGS: -$214.80

UPDATE: I canceled trustavenger.com and received a refund of $210.85 on Oct 8 from InMotion Hosting. That means my Net Earnings for August were the equivalent of -$3.95.

Best Temecula Wineries on Squidoo

• Visits this month: 8
• Squidoo Rank: 23,639
• Google Ranking: No (Means not in top 50)
• Yahoo! Search Ranking: No
• MSN Ranking: No
• AOL Ranking: No

Best Temecula Wineries on HubPages

• Visits this month: 34
• HubScore: 72
• Google Ranking: #26
• Yahoo! Search Ranking: #1
• MSN Ranking: No
• AOL Ranking: No

Of note, Best Temecula Wineries on HubPages ranked #1 on AltaVista. I didn’t even realize that site was still operating. Oh well, the experiment is only a week old. So far the HubPages copy is doing better than the Squidoo original.

Update: On Sep 5, 2008 I significantly reduced my content on Squidoo and made HubPages my primary publishing method.

I copied the content from my Best Temecula Wineries Squidoo lens to HubPages and Knol. Neither of these are as sophisticated as Squidoo in helping someone create an interactive web page. My hope is that they will help drive traffic to the Squidoo lens.

• Best Temecula Wineries on Squidoo
• Best Temecula Wineries on HubPages
• Best Temecula Wineries on Knol

Update: On Sep 5, 2008 I significantly reduced my content on Squidoo and Knol and made HubPages my primary publishing method.

The Top Three Temecula Wineries are:

1. Falkner
2. Thornton
3. Frangipani

One of my friends who knows a lot about Temecula wine doesn’t agree with my score. He’s a member of two Temecula wine clubs (Churon and Wiens) and neither of them made it into my top wineries. That’s fine since his tastes are different than mine. The great thing about the Squidoo lens is that he can vote for his favorite wineries. In addition, this is wine and not hard alcohol. The wines change each year and I expect my picks to change over time.

Vote for your favorite wines in Best Temecula Wineries.

Photo courtesy of miheco.

Update: On Sep 5, 2008 I significantly reduced my content on Squidoo and made HubPages my primary publishing method.

Squidoo has a wide variety of modules which caused me to create a more interactive web page than I could have ever created on my own. People can vote on each category in addition to leaving general comments on the lens. Even if you don’t make a bunch of money on Squidoo, it’s a great brainstorming method for creating an interactive web page.

Vote for your favorites in Best Temecula Wineries.

The #1 lens on Squidoo is a great example of killer content which is on the opposite end of the spectrum from bait and switch marketing which is a scam. Are you a Stay at Home Mom (or Dad) Interested in Earning a Monthly Income? is authored by Janet21. She’s now the author of 85 lenses which earn her nearly $500 per month.

It took Janet21 over 14 months to reach that level and the secret is original, creative, and useful content. She also reported about Christene who’s averaged over $200 a month in 2008.

Loyalis is another lensmaster who follows this formula. He’s created 476 lenses in 16 months and reports earning more than $3,000 a month.

All of them inspire me to create killer content.

The Squidoo Queen reported her May 2008 income and expenses: only $441.72 from Squidoo but a grand total of $18,217.52 from all Internet marketing activities. Yes indeed, trickster marketing can work as long as you can still sleep at night. To me it’s just a scam that I don’t want to be part of.

That Squidoo lens and all the ones like it are what motivated my TrustAvenger moniker. I would have taken Trustinator but someone already had the domain. My belief is that building trust is the goal of marketing rather than trying to trick people. My goal is to show that Internet marketing can work without bait and switch tactics.