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Originally published in SiteProNews, January 23, 2008

Since you are reading this article, I know you are looking for a way to make money. I figure you would prefer something that doesn't already have 8 billion people doing it and with a little effort, you have a realistic chance to make money. I am about to introduce you to what you are looking for plus it's relatively new and it's in high demand (aka a hungry market).

Before I get into the details here's my prediction. 2008 will be the year flippers make a lot of money -- it's a hot and growing market with a ton a demand.

You might be wondering what is flipping and also what is Squidoo. If so, I will give you a brief overview of each.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a Web 2.0 social site that allows user to create their own content. This in itself is no big deal but the real attraction to Squidoo is both the user base is growing dramatically and Google loves Squidoo pages. I get front page Google results quite often with a good Squidoo lens. This all leads to explosive opportunity for high volume traffic. Of course, traffic or even the potential for traffic has tremendous value to buyers.

Flipping

Flipping a Squidoo lens is the same concept as flipping a house. You simply build a great lens and then sell it for profit. Like picking a good location is important to flipping a house, you need to pick the right niche, keywords and content to maximize your sales price with a lens.

So how do you do this flipping stuff?

First, you head on over to Squidoo and set-up a lens so it is optimized for sale. This includes picking a niche along with selecting the best keywords related to the niche. You want to select a topic where there is a hungry market. If you are not sure where to start for topics, you can head over to Amazon and look over the non-fiction best seller list to see if you can come up with ideas. There are many other ways to find niches but I will save that for another article.

Once you have your lens set-up, you are ready to add content and further tweak it. The content you add can make or break you -- so it is important you add quality content. The nice thing about a lens is you do not need to add a lot of content. Usually one or two 300-500 word articles is sufficient. You will want to add affiliate links for products that target your niche. You can also use polls to generate affiliate revenue.

The last step is to carefully review your lens for perfection. Just like you would wash, vacuum and wax your car before selling it -- do the same with your lens. Make sure it shines. Review it for typos, add images where appropriate and confirm the layout is good.

The next step is to promote your lens. The more you can promote it the more traffic you will get. Naturally, traffic will lead to affiliate sales. With both traffic and sales, you will have driven up the value of your lens. Keep in mind, you do not have to have traffic and sales to sell your lens but you will get a better price and more buyers if you do.

You can promote your lens in a lot of different ways. Add it to social bookmarking sites like Stumble and Digg. Write articles and submit it to directories like Ezinearticle.com, Goarticles.com and SearchWarp.com. You can visit relevant forums and be part of the community there. Add your lens in the signature of your forum posts. The more promotion the better.

Ok, so now you have both built and promoted your lens. Now you are ready to sell it. There are numerous sites for selling including eBay, Sitepoint, forums and many other locations.

This article is a starting point for flipping a lens. I hope you have found this interesting and useful. Now go flip!

The author Tyler Monesy is an expert in Internet Marketing. For the complete details on flipping a Squidoo Lens head on over to Flips That Lens and can grab his free cheat sheet for selling a lens here: FREE Lens Cheatsheet

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