Amazon Affiliate RSS Feeds for Your Lens

 Something I've been doing for a while is using my Amazon Associates feeds in the "RSS Feed" sidebar widget. This allows me to create an automatically updating list of bestselling products relevant to the lens topic, and hopefully make some sales.

So, how exactly do you create Amazon RSS feeds and tag them with your affiliate ID?  Let's start with an example:

http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/1048424/?tag=yourtag-20

You need to customize the following parts of the URL:

•  1048424 is the Browse Node, which describes what group of products you are promoting. You can get it from the Amazon URL when browsing a department or a sub-department:

• yourtag-20 is obviously your Amazon Associates tracking ID. Don't forget to add it at the end of the link, so the sales are credited to your account.

There is another way of creating RSS feeds that is described here. Rather than showing products from a single Browse Node, it picks up products from the whole site, as long as they're tagged the same (for example, "blu-ray" or "sci-fi"). If you want to show a broader selection of products, use tags. If you want to focus on one type (e.g. top computer motherboards) use Browse Nodes / departments.

June 2012 Squidoo Payout

Squidoo has made the payouts for June 2012 today. I've received a four-figure payout ($1081) this month. I think the fact that I'm able to receive such nice payouts despite not working on my lenses all that much lately really demonstrates the earning potential of Squidoo. As long as you write on "evergreen" topics, your lenses will give you a steady income. Even tier 3 and tier 2 payouts add up when you have hundreds of them.

Speaking of tier payouts, here's the data for June 2012. Ad pool profits are up slightly, but the biggest improvement is due to text link ads, which jumped by nearly 30% compared to last month:

Ad pool:

Tier 1: $37.04
Tier 2: $6.30
Tier 3: $0.32

In-Text Ads:

Tier 1: $13.13
Tier 2: $2.23
Tier 3: $0.11

 As for Squidoo news, perhaps one of the most important things this month is the removal of all Squidoo co-brands. This includes not only projects like SquidLit, but also clubs like the popular "Cupcake Club" and the like. Apparently all lenses in these co-brands will be converted to the default theme, and some of the co-brand templates will be turned into regular themes.

 I guess Squidoo wants to focus on their new magazines rather than co-brands. This means my lens which lists Squidoo co-brands is now quite outdated. Once again, this shows that it's better to focus on outside traffic rather than Squidoo lensmasters, and write on topics which will be relevant for years to come.