I first wrote this post some months ago.  In light of the recent ‘Squidoo Slap’ (the catchy term used to describe ranking drops on Google of Squidoo lenses), this once again gains relevance.

I’m republishing it primarily for the attention of buyers of my ‘Squidoo Marketing Secrets’ and ‘Advanced Squidoo Profits’ reports, since the ‘gloom and doom’ naysayers seem to be writing obituaries for Squidoo.

In my opinion, the recent changes only make Squidoo stronger than before.  Read Seth Godin’s interview about “The Squidoo Slap” and you’ll see what I mean.

But first, learn how to make a giant pay you…

How to Make a GIANT pay you?

If I asked you to name some online GIANTS, you’d likely
include these names:

Google
Yahoo!
eBay
MySpace
Squidoo
Del.icio.us

All of these are places where MILLIONS of people flock
to every day to do many different things.

And each of these giants can be made to pay YOU cash!

This article will share some insights about how you can
get familiar and friendly with these giants, work with
them to further their ends… and make a tidy profit.

It begins with studying the giant’s purpose.

Google and Yahoo are search services.  They compile and
sort through massive mounds of data to give their users
a productive, useful search experience.

eBay brings together buyers and sellers and helps them
exchange value to each other.

MySpace and Squidoo are personal spotlight services,
where the emphasis is on giving each member their own
‘5 minutes of fame’.

Del.icio.us and similar bookmarking services let you
store favorite sites online to recover and share easily
with others looking for the same kind of information.
Online forums foster a sense of community where members
meet, share, and help each other.

Understanding this core purpose of each of the giants
puts you far ahead of the crowd of competitors seeking
to profit from them.

There are ways to take advantage ethically of the huge
crowds they have aggregated. And there are manipulative
ways to exploit them too.  Which you choose to use is a
reflection of your personal philosophy and approach to
working online.

Take Google and Yahoo! for instance.  You could build
a website that is the answer to any searcher’s dream -
rich with solid, useful content, containing relevant
keywords, linked to related sites.  Or you could try
SEO tricks which seek to pervert the system and fool
the engines into ranking you higher than your site
deserves.

Guess which works better in the long term?

MySpace and Squidoo are places where people meet and
network.  If you join as a member, and hang out to
meet folks and make friends, surely it will translate
over time into increased business and profits.  There
is an unbroken rule in business and in life - people
relate to and do business with people they like.

Or take social bookmarking services like Furl, Spurl
and Del.icio.us.  They arose as search alternatives
because the bigger engines threw up irrelevant
results.  By building websites that other users found
interesting, and bookmarked more often, you’d provide
their users with a valuable experience on their site
- and they will reward you with a higher ranking.

Of course, you could try and manipulate the results by
getting many sites (maybe all owned by you!) to list
your wbesites, unfairly loading the dice in your
favor.  Over time, though, you’ll get caught out -
and have to begin from scratch all over again.

Does this mean getting an advantage from these giants
needs to be a long-drawn, back-breaking effort?  No.

You don’t have to work hard, if you work smart.

Instead of painstakingly building links to your site
on your own, pay someone to work on link exchanges.
Pick the most popular forums in your niche and take
time each day to hang out and help others.  Build
content rich sites optimized for your right keywords
systematically, over time - and get them ‘discovered’
by the search engines.

In other words, help the giants help the audience
THEY serve, and you’ll benefit wildly from the massive
crowds they have attracted.  Zig Ziglar said it well:

” You can have everything you want if you give enough
others everything they want.”
Read Seth Godin’s interview about “The Squidoo Slap” - click here.