India’s IT / Software sector is booming and more and more foreign companies are thinking of opening up their Off Shore Software Development units here. You can get a head start with this brief but informative eBook on the process involved. Get your Setting Up An IT Company In India: Free eBook now.

Major search engines like Google evaluate your incoming links to help determine your search engine positions. However, a link is much more than just a ranking factor. A quality inbound link can bring your website a steady stream of targeted traffic and buyers. You can use a Squidoo “lens” (explained below) to increase the number of authoritative inbound links to your site, position yourself as an industry expert, announce the latest news within your niche, or promote your podcasts.

How do I Squidoo? Well in this part we shall find out more about what is Squidoo and the meaning of the terms lens and lensmaster.

What’s Squidoo?

With Squidoo anybody can make their own web page (known as “lens” in Squidoo) for anyone to see. Squidoo is absolutely free!

Seth Godin is an authority in marketing and has published many books on the subject. He is also the founder of Squidoo and strongly believes that “Everyone is an expert.” If you are skeptical about this, then you should read his Everyone is an expert free eBook.

What’s a lens?

Seth says that a lens is a place where a stranger can go to get insight and meaning - and then leave that site and go somewhere else. Leave to go back to work, or leave to read your best blog posts, or leave to go transact somewhere else online. A lens should be the best place to start. An online lens is a page, a single page, that highlights one person’s view of the Web - not the whole Web, just one tiny part of it. A lens is a guide. Provide the meaning, and the surfer will go ahead and take the action. Lenses don’t hold content. They point to content. And like all good guides, they comment on what they point to.

What’s a lensmaster?

Seth calls the person who makes a lens a “lensmaster”. A lensmaster uses the tools available online to provide links, feeds, abstracts, and lists to users who are trying to make sense of a topic. These are users in search of meaning, users in a hurry, users who won’t wait. Lensmasters are individuals with strong personal agendas, expertise, causes, products and even opinions. They are not employed or directed by a corporation. Lensmasters build their lenses for fun, or for ego, or to drive traffic to their corporate sites or their blogs. Lensmasters build lenses to raise money for charity or to earn royalty checks for themselves.

Squidoo will host your lens for you at no cost, makes it easy to build and you can even generate a profit. Your royalty payments can be sent directly to you or to your favorite charity or organization.

In the next part, we shall learn how to start a lens and so till then think about your area of expertise. Squidoo makes it possible for you to write about it.

Commenters Note: I use the “DoFollow” plug-in.

Google Adsense Referrals are paid to you on a cost per action (CPA) basis instead of on a cost per click (CPC) basis. You only got paid if someone actually signed up for whatever Google service/product was being referred. I have been using Adsense Referrals for some time now and the results have been disappointing - absolutely no income from them wherein using ad units and link units I do make money online. I recently crossed the US$ 10 per day barrier.

However, with Google’s launch of its new referral system wherein you can select advertisers based on categories and keywords, things may look up. One positive feature is:

Unlike AdSense for content ads, Google’s program policies allow you to make specific references to referral ads on your site. If you endorse the product that you are referring, feel free to let your users know. By adding your personal review of the products you refer, you can help your users make more informed choices.

I’d suggest that you play around with the new Adsense referral system and then decide what best suits you. Ashwini Khare has this to say:

I can display an image/banner/text referral (subject to availability) of any advertiser I want and can personalise the ads look and feel.Also the ad doesn’t change if the option is unchecked.

I have found a service (can’t disclose name) which is agreeing to credit my account with ~60$ if I refer one visitor to use their services. What about that! To be frank I can’t earn that much in a month by Adsense for content.

What has been your experience with Adsense Referrals? Do post your thoughts.

How many times has your hard-disk crashed? How many of these times you did not have a backup? I too have been through the pain of losing data but now no more.

Mozy has been a savior. Backing up all your computer files is a chore but Mozy can keep all of that stuff safe and encrypted on its own servers. It will store 2 gigabytes worth of your files for free, or an unlimited amount for $4.95 per month. You download and install the Mozy program and it does all the work; you tell it precisely what you want to protect. The first backup can take hours, but after that, Mozy will continue to work behind the scenes to backup new files. Mozy also lets you view your backed up files from any PC, and let you restore files as needed.

Mozy is a must program to have on your PC or Laptop. Be Safe!

Kingsley Willis currently works as a digital artist for Summit, a multimedia research lab in the Stanford School of Medicine. There he is heavily involved in teaching, web design, video editing, 3D design and animation, as well as print design.

His passions are deeply rooted in film. From an early age, he aspired to be a film director. Desiring to learn every aspect of production from lighting, shooting, editing, special effects and directing, he decided to major in Art History at Stanford University (class of 2001) to learn film theory and teach himself the practical and technical aspects of film by working at the student television studio and directing numerous short films both live action and computer generated.

I asked Kingsley to tell us something about his blog.

My blog started out as a personal holding tank for best practices, inspiration, tools, and tutorials related to film, visual effects, animation, games, and web design.

I wanted to remember how to do certain techniques, as well as review and bookmark helpful resources. As I continued, I realized it was also a helpful resource for others doing similar work. I had been blogging privately since March 2005 by sending myself emails with links, images, and other useful notes. I never looked at those emails again and they are only on my computer at work. So, on November 15th, 2005, I decided to launch a public version of these notes.

Since the launch I have had more than 100,000 page loads. My blog averaged 148 unique visitors per day in 2006. Today, I’m averaging 276 page loads. That said, most of the traffic is new visitors. However, there have been fewer returning visitors than I would like. Also, the users do not tend to stay very long on one page on average. I do try to write short posts, so that maybe a factor. In the beginning I got a lot of spam both through comments and trackbacks, so I turned them both off. I started requiring users to register, and starting September 4th, 2006 I now have 27 commentors registered. My goal is to build a community that shares information freely. I would like more page loads, sure, but also more returning visitors who comment.

I use Moveable Type blogging software to quickly create posts. My favorite feature is the “quickpost” feature which allows to save a bookmark to a script. When clicked, it copies whatever text you have highlighted on a particular page, and opens a new window with the text and the link to the page you were on. Other than that, I actually like Google’s Blogger from a maintenance standpoint. Moveable Type features a few too many oddly named templates to maintain and update. However, it gives you ultimate control over the look and feel, which I like.