New Rules at Xomba Lead to My Account Being Suspended!!

At Xomba you can write articles and submit bookmarks and you have the opportunity to earn money from Adsense (60% of the ad impressions are yours). For the bookmarks you have to write more than most sites - 120 words. Recently what I have been doing is for every Squidoo lens I have been building and every article I have written I have submitted a Xomba bookmark. Rather than writing new content I have just copied and pasted a paragraph from my article. This has allowed me to quickly and easily created more backlinks and earn a little money from them at the same time.

However, in the last couple of weeks Xomba have changed their rules in order to make it more of a writing community and improve its standing with the search engines. Specifically, you cannot submit duplicate content, even if it is your own. Also you are now not allowed to link to your own articles and blog posts, or as they say "bookmarks were never meant to be a marketing tool or anything like that; they should be used to share interesting links". Actually the quote is from an e-mail I received telling me that my account was suspended for a breach of these rules. I have had to reply telling them that I agree not to breach these rules in the future and I am waiting for my account to be reinstated. In the meantime, my bookmarks remain live and have still been earning me money.

In the future it would appear that the only I can use Xomba for backlinks and for increasing traffic is to write articles and to include links in the signature. Just when I thought I had found something quick and easy to boost traffic and make a little money, it is taken away.

Save Money on Turbo Tax at The Coupon Album

I don’t know about you but I always like a special offer. The Coupon Album offers plenty of special deals and has loads of vouchers and codes where you can get a discount. As an example, they are offering Turbo Tax coupons where you can get a discount on this popular tax preparation software. When you are working for yourself, such as making money online, it is easy to get into a mess with your tax. Even the most organised of us can start to lose track with income and outgoings, as well as understanding what expenses can be offset against earnings. Keeping track of it all can be a challenge, but failing to do so could land you in serious trouble.

This is where Turbo Tax comes in useful and it means that you spend less time keeping on top of your tax returns and more on your business. There are several different versions of this software which is designed to help you get through your tax returns (only suitable for US residents) step by step and is suitable for both federal and state returns. It also provides tips on tax as well as highlighting anything which may be picked up on audits.

Apart from this there are a huge number of other offers available on The Coupon Album including everything from pet supplies to travel. Some of these deals can offer you a considerable saving on the listed price for many items. The Coupon Album is definitely worth checking out and you can save yourself lots of money.

Monthly Earnings for January 2011

Here is the first earnings report of the new year. All in all it has been a pretty frustrating month having made no Clickbank or Amazon sales at all. Even Adsense has been slow going. I don't know if it's a post Christmas thing or what, but it has pretty depressing really. Here are the figures anyway:

Clickbank: $34.86 (from December's sales)
Squidoo: $1.08
Surveys: $53.22 ($40.32 - Opinium, $12.90 - Pinecone)
Swagbucks: $5

Total: $94.16

I hope things pick up soon. I haven't really decided what to concentrate at the moment and keep flitting from one project to another as not much seems to be working. I clearly need a plan!

Squidoo vs HubPages: Which is Best?

Squidoo and HubPages are popular user generated content platforms which work in a similar way. Both allow you to create your own web page about pretty much anything and earn money from it. Although they both work in a similar way, there are some fundamental differences and there is a certain amount of debate by users as to which is the best. So, let's take a look at how they work and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

Squidoo

Squidoo allows you create your own page on something that you are interested in or simply build a page with the sole intention of making money from it. The pages (known as lenses) are build from modules which a allow a range of functions. The range of modules available is huge and growing. It is tempting to put in more and more modules that have various gadgets in them, but it is important to keep it relevant and not off too much from your chosen topic. The basic module is the Text Module, but other useful ones include RSS, polls, You Tube, Link List, and many many more.

As well as these there are a number of money making modules including Amazon, Ebay and Cafepress. With these modules you receive a commission every time someone makes a purchase via a link on your lens. If you prefer, you can you your own affiliate links from Amazon, Clickbank or other affiliate network. However, if you are an affiliate with Ebay Partner Network you can no longer place your own links on Squidoo as EPN's rules stipulate that you can only place your links on your own website (with one notable exception - more of that later).

In addition, you can also earn from a share of Squidoo's Adsense earnings. This is worked out through a complicated formula involving how many visits your lens receives in a given month and what its Squidoo rank is. Also you can earn from clicks on in-text advertising. It is important to note that you do not have to sign up with any affiliate networks - all of your earnings are paid directly from Squidoo. As stated previously you can put in your own affiliate links in if you want, but this is entirely your choice.

Up until relatively recently there were very few restrictions on what you could write about and what you put in your lenses. However, amid concerns that Squidoo was becoming something a bit of spamfest, they introduced some rules and have introduced a spam filter. As a result, if your try and write a lens about some subjects such as weight loss, gambling, etc you are likely to have your lens locked. You can find a complete list of offending subjects here.  Having said that I have some lenses around one of those banned subjects which remains unlocked and attracting traffic. Go figure!

If you are looking to use Squidoo lenses to create backlinks to other projects then it is important to note lenses generally rank well in the search engines and that all links are dofollow.

Want to find out more about how to use Squidoo? Why not download this free guide.

HubPages

HubPages works in a very similar way to Squidoo. Again, you can build a page (or a hub as they are known) about pretty much anything. Like Squidoo, HubPages work with modules of which there are good range (although not nearly as many as Squidoo). Again, the basic module is the Text Module - if you are writing in HTML this also has a feature to clean up your code.

Where the main differences lie is in relation to the money making model. Like Squidoo, HubPages has modules where you can sell goods through Amazon and Ebay. However, unlike Squidoo, you need to sign up with Amazon's affiliate network and Ebay Partner Network in order to earn money, and your earnings are paid out through these affiliate networks and not from HubPages themselves. You should be aware that only half of the ad impressions are yours. You can also earn from Adsense and Kontera, but again you will have to sign up with both of these ad networks to make money. If you want to, you can place your own affiliate links from Clickbank or other networks on your hubs.

Whilst you can write about most things on HubPages, if you write duplicate content or spammy hubs then you will find that your hub score will suffer and you will receive fewer visits.

Hubs do rank well, but links are initially nofollow, but will become dofollow as your score of your increases.

The Verdict

So, which is the best? Well I suppose that depends on what you want to do with them. If you are building lenses specifically with the intention of selling a particular Clickbank product then Squidoo is probably your better bet as the structure of lenses is better suited to this and it is easier to provide a strong call to action (via the Big Arrow Link module). Also, one of the issues with HubPages is that as you have to sign up with a number of affiliate networks so in order to actually get your hands on your money you will need to reach the various payment threshold to do so. Whereas with Squidoo you do not have to sign up with anyone else and you can set the payout threshold to just $1.

However, if you have other projects on the go and you are looking for other ways to boost your Adsense total or your Amazon earnings then HubPages could be for you. If you are looking to use these sites for link building then Squidoo is probably your best bet as your links will be instantly dofollow, but then why not just use both to give the search engines a variety of inbound links to look at.

So, which do I think is better? Well, I use both, but I tend to prefer Squidoo, purely because it has more options and for lenses that I am looking to sell stuff it easier to provide a call to action that grabs the reader's attention.

Do you want to find out how you could be making real money from Squidoo? Why not try the One Week Marketing Plan. You can download the first 18 pages for FREE to get a flavor of what is involved.