Dec 2008
23
04:12am


Ever had the dilemma of having to choose which product to promote?  I know I have and it’s quite a headache.  If you’ve signed up as a publisher of Clickbank or PayDotCom, you probably know that these (and other) marketplaces have tons of products for publishers (like me) to offer.

So, what should the confused first-timer do?  There are two things to choose from.  One is to go through a list of products in a particular niche that interests you and choose one product that sells well and start promoting it like crazy.  But why put all your eggs in one basket?  So, the second thing you can do is to simply go through all the products in a particular niche and promote them all.  I call this the “Find out what Sticks” method.

It’s not as hard as you may think really.  All you need is a free blogging service like Wordpress, Blogspot, or Squidoo.  Add to that some basic SEO knowledge and lots of consistency and persistence.  Basically, what you do is create a blog (Wordpress / Blogspot) or a Lens (Squidoo) for each affiliate product that you wish to promote.  Fill it up with relevant and useful content with the right keywords and share it with your friends.

Is that it?  Technically yes.  But always remember the “Consistenct and Persistence” part.  You need to update your blogs regularly with fresh content, keep spreading the word about them in whatever ethical way possible and try not to lose focus.

As you go along, take notice of which products are selling well and which are not and start focusing more on those that work and wean out those that just waste your time – in other words, you find out what sticks.  As soon as you remove those that don’t work, try to add in some new products as well.  This way, you will slowly grow your affiliate marketing business into an empire.

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Dec 2008
13
06:17pm

Have you ever asked the question, “how do I make money?” to yourself?  Well, if you did then you’re in the right track to actually making money because the first important ingredient to earning cash is the desire to make money.  But of course, desires without action is fruitless which is why I wrote this short guide to help you find out how you can make money.

If the desire is the first step, then planning is the second.  Ask yourself, where am I good at?  Are you good at selling?  Then find stuff to sell.  Are you good in building things?  Then build them and sell them.  Are you good in helping others?  Then perhaps start a counseling service of some sort and sell it.  Plan carefully and don’t just jump into anything without thinking.  Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What will I sell?
  • To whom will I sell it?
  • How will I sell it?

The third step is to sell whatever you have to sell.  If you think of selling as something that you don’t want to do then I’m sorry to tell you that you have very little chances of making money because just about any way of making money requires selling.  Even employees sell.  You either sell a product or a service.  In order for you to actually sell, you will need to have a store of some sort.  If you’re planning to do things offline, then it could be your garage.  If you’re planning to do things online, then it’s most probably going to be a website of some kind.

Now that you have a store and you are technically already selling your goods (products/services), the next thing you need to do is build your market.  List down people you know whom you think will be interested in whatever you are offering.  Contact them one-by-one and tell them about what you have to offer.  I know it sounds “scary” but you have to do it.  It’s kinda akward at first but the more you do it, it’ll be second nature to you.  If they turn down your offer then move over to the next person in your list.

Lastly, broaden your market.  If you sell only to people you know then you’re business will die.  Yes, technically what you have now is a business but instead of thinking of it as a milking cow, think of it as a baby first.  You need to nurture it in order for it to grow.  Now, back to broadening your market.  You can do this by putting your computer and printer to good use.  Create simple posters (or have someone do it for you) and mass-print it.  Put it everywhere you can put it.  Also have tarpaulins printed and put it in front of your house.  The whole idea is to tell as many people as you can about what you’re selling. Someone’s bound to buy it sooner or later.

As for online stores, you can start by emailing your friends and giving them a link to your website.  You will also need to do some search engine optimization so you can get traffic from the search engines.  You can get a 30-day lesson on search engine optimization here.  If you have the funds, it will also be a good idea to pay for advertising.  You can do this through Google Adwords.  Before you get started with advertising on Adwords, you might want to learn the tricks of the trade first.  You can get a good Adwords guide here.

Lastly, check how you’re doing and make improvements.  Majority of start-up businesses die in its early stages because their owners don’t make improvements.  You have to learn from your mistakes and take steps to correcting them.

If you think that making money is hard, then you’re wrong.  If you think it’s easy then you’re also wrong.  You just have to be wise and cautious.

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Dec 2008
12
04:19pm

Google has finally extended AdSense for Domains to its publishers but don’t get too excited just yet because it’s currently only open to North American English-language publishers.  I know that sucks for the rest of us but this is still better than nothing.  Hopefully Google will extend AdSense for domains to all of its publishers irregardless of location or language.

“With AdSense for domains, users can find relevant information rather than see empty pages or “page not found” errors. Today we present ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future. To ensure positive user experience and the quality of our network, these sites are monitored for policy compliance and prohibited from using text and images designed to confuse users.” – quoted from Inside AdSense

If this goes full throttle to all publishers then I’m sure many will be happy – especially those who have lots of unused and under construction domains.  Can’t wait to get in to it myself.

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Dec 2008
11
11:57am

Note to reader: I decided to quite Magpie.  Yep, it’s something that I don’t want to promote or be a part of anymore.  The income earned is not worth it as I consider my twitter followers of more value.

I am however retaining this post for those who still want to give it a try.

Yeah, I’ve heard about this making money with twitter thing before and again I wish I joined the bandwagon earlier.  Oh well, better late than never.  Anyway, just about any form of communication on the internet is being utilized for advertising and when there’s advertising then there’s money in it.

Click here to Start Making Money with Twitter Now

You see, it takes three to advertise.  The advertiser (the guy who pays the bills), the publisher (the guy who gets paid), and the audience (the guy who sees the ads).  When it comes to statistics, it is the audience that has the numbers, then the publishers and lastly we only have relatively few advertisers.  The advertisers pay the publishers depending on how much audience the publishers can reach.

Now, how does that relate to making money with twitter?  Well I think the best way for you to understand is just click here to visit the beamagpie website and find out for yourself.  But basically it works like this…

  1. Advertisers advertise on beamagpie.
  2. Twitterers sign-up as publishers.
  3. beamagpie sends the ad to your followers.

Don’t worry about too much ad being sent to your followers because beamagpie has thought of that already.  You can actually specify how many ads are sent in a specified amount of time.  Ok, enough talking for me and enough reading for you and just give it a try.

And oh, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

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The term “making money with AdSense” has been around for years now and I have to admit that while I do make money online, my AdSense earnings is frustratingly low.  In fact, it’s too low that I have thought of dropping it altogether multiple times but some voice inside my head (I swear I’m not insane) tells me to improve it instead of giving up.

I knew I needed some really good advise from someone who’s making much more than what I make but who?  Luckily, I know this guy named Marhgil Macuha who makes 30 times more money with AdSense in just one site than what I make in all my sites combined.  I didn’t waste time in asking him if I could interview him regarding his AdSense earnings…

And he obliged!

Before you expect too much from Mr. Macuha, let me make it a point that he is not one of them “AdSense Gurus” who make “6-figure Incomes” with Google AdSense.  Instead, think of him as an average guy with whom you can totally relate.  During our chat, he didn’t make any promises of gold and silver.  Rather, he told me simply what works for him.

Let me tell you a very embarassing secret…

Ready for it?

I make only an average of $1 a day in Google AdSense earnings (and I have more than one site).  I actually thought twice before telling you this but I think I should because I believe there are many people out there who are like me (perhaps even you) who started with AdSense years back but still haven’t made a reasonable income from it.

But what’s reasonable you’d ask?  Well, for some it’s $100 per day.  To some, $10 a day is good enough.  But I guess $1 is and will never be reasonable for anyone.  So, how much does Marhgil make?

He makes an average of $30 a day on just one site.  That’s 30 times more than what I make.  Heck, even his wife makes more in a month with Google Adsense (also with just one site) than what I make.  So how does he do it?

I think what he told me can be summarized into three easy to remember points.

1. Write Quality Posts
2. Know your Keywords
3. Put your Adsense ABOVE THE FOLD!!!

But we already know that don’t we?  I know I do but do I do it?  Do you?

Points 1 and 2 increases search engine traffic and builds a loyal set of website visitors as well.  Point number 3 is what improves his Click-through Rate or CTR.  But what evidence does he have to tell me what he does?

Aside from the fact that he makes more money with AdSense than me, he also has 1200 RSS readers according to FeedBurner and is getting as much as 3,000 unique visitors and 6,000 pageviews per day.  I think another way to summarize what Marhgil Macuha is doing is this:

Traffic + Good AdSense Placement = Money

Let’s talk about traffic later.  For now, let’s see where Mr. Macuha places his ad on his site.  If you take a look at his website at http://macuha.com/, you’ll notice that he does put his ads above the fold.  “Kita mo naman itsura ng blog ko, mukhang MFA,” (Look at how my blog looks like, it looks like an MFA site) Marhgil said.  MFA means “made-for-adsense” and is generally frowned upon by Google but macuha.com is not an MFA site.  It just follows the layout of an MFA site.  MFA sites don’t have quality content that people like to read but macuha.com does.

His site doesn’t look something that will win the Philippine Web Awards or something but heck he makes money from it. “Ang hirap kasi, based on experience ko nga kasi, kung professional looking talaga yung site mo, mahihiya ka ilagay yung mga ads kung saan ‘takaw-click’ sya,” (What’s tough, based on my experience, is that if your site looks professional, you’d be ashamed of putting your ads in places where they get the most clicks) he further said.

But why be ashamed of putting your ads in places where they almost blatantly say, “Click me” if your goal is to make money with AdSense?  Makes sense right?  If you don’t want to put your ads in places where it gets the most number of clicks, then don’t expect money from it.

That’s what “PUT YOUR ADS ABOVE THE FOLD” really means.  Look at macuha.com once more but this time make sure you read one of his posts and you’ll notice that his ads are definitely above the fold.

Now, let’s move on to traffic.  How does Marhgil Macuha bring visitors to his website?  Well, he does it by doing a few simple things.

1. He writes quality posts to keep his readers from going away
2. He incorporates search keywords in his posts so it shows up in search results
3. He submits his posts to Digg and other social bookmarking site for link building
4. He exchanges links with other bloggers for more link building
5. This he didn’t tell me but I noticed he does it – He twits about them.

It’s not really rocket science if you think about it.  The things he does are things that we can all do so there’s no reason why we must not do it.

He also writes about current events which according to him brings in a sudden surge of visitors.  He however makes it a point that to write what he calls “timeless posts” that will keep getting traffic all-year-round from the search engines.  After all, 80% of his traffic comes from the search engines.

When I asked him what he does to promote his blog, this is what he said.

“Depende sa blog post. Kung current events na gusto ko kaagad magrank in 2 to 3 days, like Pacquiao fights, social bookmarking sites lang gamit ko + links from my other blogs na nakatengga lang.  For timeless posts, yung mga sinesearch whole year round na keywords, mostly, gradual pagkuha ko ng links. Exchanging links sa ibang bloggers. Tsaka write quality content talaga, para may link bait nature yung post.”

(It depends on the blog post.  For current events which I want to immediately rank in 2 to 3 days, like Pacquiao fights, I use social bookmarking sites + links from my other blogs that are not being used.  For timeless posts, those that get searched all year round, mostly, I do gradual link bulding.  Exchanging links with other bloggers.  And really write quality content, to give your post a link bait nature.)

How many posts does he write?  Well, it really depends on his mood.  He doesn’t keep any schedule when it comes to that but he does make it a point to write something useful for his regular readers at least once a week.

His final words for all of us are…

“Aralin muna nila yung sistema bago sumabak. Tyagaan lang, basta tama yung sistemang sinusunod mo, maaabot mo rin yung tagumpay.”  (Learn the system before getting on-board.  If you work hard and follow the right system, success will be within your reach.)

Follow us on Twitter:
Mike Lopez – http://twitter.com/MikeLopez
Marhgil Macuha – http://twitter.com/marhgil

Also download the free “Guerilla blogger’s strategy and tactics on how to make cash online” ebook written by Mr. Marhgil Macuha and Zigfred Diaz.

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Sep 2008
16
02:07pm

I first heard about this guy in the SEO Philippines forum when he posted a screenshot of his $7,000/mo domain parking earnings back in February 2007. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes but soon enough I came to accept the fact that Rostum did it. We had a chance to meet personally in one of the SEO Philippines’ Isulong contests and there he shared as much stuff as he can share about the domaining business.

But who is Rostum? I had the chance to chat with him last night and the chat turned out into a short and informal interview. Here’s a summary of our discussion.

Asked how he earns a living, he simply replied with “fulltime online business, wala ako offline business”. (fulltime online business, I don’t have any offline business). He married his wife last 1998 and currently has one kid. During those days, he was basically jobless, with no source of income whatsoever. The need to provide the needs of his family gave him enough reason to try his luck online back in 1999. He eventually got to earn an average of $55/mo – not much (in fact that’s way below what he needs) – but it’s a start.

Rostum’s Learning Process

Knowing that money can be made online, he decided to learn Photoshop and started selling static and animated banners on namepros.com. It was in 2001 when he learned about the domaining business. “nabasa ko kasi yun $8million sale ng business.com. doon ako nag start mag speculate na baka makakita ako ng domain na puwede ko ibenta pero wala akong pang register ng domain (walang pera).” (I read about the $8million sale of business.com. It was then that I started to speculate that I might find a domain that I could sell but I didn’t have money to register a domain).

Excited by the possibilities, he decided to earn some NP$ (Namepros Dollar) by posting stuff and selling his services on namepros.com. Soon enough he was able to buy the domain e-softwares.com which he was able to sell in 5 days for 10 times the original price. He started getting serious in domaining sometime around 2003 and eventually saw that he can make even more in domain parking in 2004.

“Mas malaki kasi kita ng ‘traffic domains’ kesa mag speculate ng sale.” (Traffic domains earn more compared to simply speculating a sale). “Traffic domains are usually sold at least 3-5 years parking revenue”, he said.

Into Serious Domaining

Rostum gained more experience with each passing day and along with his experience, he also started to gain a more regular stream of dollars. Each time he made a sale, he re-registers expiring domain names that he thinks are of good value. He waits for expiring domains to drop at 3:00am Philippine time and manually registers the domains which he thinks has traffic from old links and bookmarks. He re-registers each for $6.95 and re-sells them based on parking revenue.

That means that if the domain earns $10/mo in domain parking then he can sell it at 3-5 years parking revenue which is about $360-$600. To make it easier for him to sell the domains, he provides screenshots of at least 3 months domain parking traffic statistics. His biggest sale so far was friendsterlayouts.com which he sold for $20,000 back in 2005 – that’s more or less 1 Million Pesos! Knowing he can make even more, he chose to spend 90% of the sale on new domains and kept only 10% for himself. Now that’s entrepreneurship!

The Domain Parking Revenue

What blew my mind off was not his $20,000 sale of friendsterlayouts.com but his $16,000/mo income from domain parking which is basically buying domains and parking them for ads. Money is earned on pay-per-click basis.

But can one really make such a huge income from domain parking? At first I thought that he had thousands of domain names to make such an income but I was wrong. Before I tell you how many domain names he currently maintains, let me show you first the screenshot that he emailed me of his most recent earnings:

Rostum's $16K/mo Domain Parking Earnings
Click to Enlarge

The screenshot clearly shows his total earnings for July 2008 and August 2008 averaging at $16k a month as well as his daily income from September 1 to September 15, 2008 which is now at $8,000! Yep, this guy is making more than half a million pesos a month. How many domains does he have? 3,000 2,000 1,000 500 220! He did use to have over 1,000 domains before but he eventually dropped the low earners as well as those that might cause trademark issues and just kept his best earners.

The guy makes so much in domain parking that he got an offer of $1M for his domain portfolio – an offer that he declined saying that he’d rather keep his domains and pass it over to his son.

More Quality Family Time

The best part of all this according to Rostum is that he is now able to spend as much time as he wants with his family. Gone are the days when he had to work day and night just to provide for the needs of his family. Gone are the days when the landlord comes knocking and shouting at his door because he wasn’t able to pay for the month’s rent.

Rostum now owns his own house and lot, living a life that most Filipino people can only dream of, and yet work only for 1 to 2 hours a day. In fact he can even choose not to work for a month and he’d still be earning.

It was his family that pushed him to his success and now it’s his family that’s benefiting from it.

Rostum’s Advise to Newbies

According to Rostum, domaining is pretty much like real estate. You buy property which you think you can eventually sell at a higher price. Think BIG he said and never surrender no matter what. He recommends aspiring domainer to go and check out namepros.com forum for domainers mainly because it is the biggest domainer forum and the people there are of great help specially for starters.

For domain parking services, Rostum recommends the following because of their ontime payments and great support.

  1. Parked.com
  2. Fabulous.com
  3. Domainsponsor.com

Newbies however may find it hard to get approved on this websites, so he further recommends the following:

  1. Namedrive.com
  2. Sedo.com

And for alternatives to traditional parking:

  1. Whypark.com
  2. Domainembarking.com

Lastly, domainers forum and resources:

  1. Namepros.com
  2. DNforum.com
  3. Domainstate.com
  4. DNjournal.com

In Conclusion…

After our two-hour chat on Yahoo and amidst all the amazing amounts that Rostum revealed, I still felt that this humble Filipino remains just that – humble. It just shows that “rags-to-riches” stories still happen and one doesn’t need to win the lottery to achieve it. All that’s needed is the will to achieve what you dream for and the strength to do what needs to be done.

Rostum, you’re an encouragement to all Filipinos worldwide!

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Jul 2008
23
08:59am

People think of ways to make money just about everyday and a few end up building a business around their ideas. One of these few is Scour. What they did is merge the search results of Google, Yahoo and MSN into one single “search page”, allowed its users to post comments for each search result and a few other cool features to it.

But that’s not the end of the story. They also give points to its users for doing certain actions on their site. You get:

1 Point for Searching
2 Points for Voting
3 Points for Commenting

You also earn 25% of all the points earned by any of your referrals. What to do with all these points? Well you can cash them out with the following values…

25,000 Points = $100
12,500 Points = $50
6,500 Points = $25

Cool huh? I mean, if you do search on a daily basis then this is definitely a good idea to make something out of those searches that you make. Best of all, it’s free to join and it won’t cost you a dime to use. No reason not to sign-up so I say click here to get started now.

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Jul 2008
13
08:58pm

Hey there dear reader. Are you asking yourself why on earth are you still not making money on the internet? Are you thinking why the others are doing it and you’re not? Are you wondering if you can really make money online? Ha! If that’s so then read on because I’m about to tell you why.

Warning… this may hurt a bit.

First, people really can make money online. I thought it was impossible at first until I finally did the right thing. The moment I did that, I started seeing money coming in with very very little work. Yeah, it’s not really that much but I’m pretty sure that my online earnings is more than what 85% of the population in my country is earning. Yes, I’m in the Philippines and the minimum wage here is pretty low but that’s not the point. I’m making enough money online that I can actually quit my job (not that I plan to do it yet) and still not worry about what we’re going to eat tomorrow.

Do I have a yacht? No. A mansion? No. A car? No. But let me tell you what I have. I have a sure income stream of P15,000 monthly (about $300) for about 1-hour a day of extra work. That may not sound interesting for most but heck, you’re reading this article aren’t you? Chances are you’re not making as much as I am. And oh, just in case you didn’t realize it yet, that P15,000 does not include my regular day job salary which is more than that.

But we’re not talking about my day job here. We’re talking about my online earnings and fact is, I’m making that much and you’re probably not. So why are you not making online? Let me tell you the possible answers to that question…

  1. You ramble all the time
  2. You never stop scouring the internet for freebies
  3. You’re lazy
  4. You study but don’t apply what you’ve learned
  5. You’re a skeptic and don’t wanna give things a try
  6. You’re scared to try
  7. You’re too much of a perfectionist that you want to start everything perfect and as a result haven’t started anything yet.
  8. You envy the rich and don’t do anything about it
  9. You don’t want to spend money online
  10. You want to get rich really quick

    Want more??? I can actually add more to that list…

  11. You’re impatient
  12. You quit too soon
  13. You’re afraid to fail
  14. You’ve never failed
  15. You never get past your plans
  16. You’re a dreamer. Yeah it’s free to dream but dreams don’t make money. Action does!
  17. You spend too much
  18. You think like poor people think
  19. You’re scared to your bones to lose the money that you’ve earned
  20. You’re just plain pathetic

    and here’s one more…

  21. You’re too greedy!

Hurts doesn’t it? I warned you didn’t I? Well, I know all of these things because I used to be that. I always get stumped when one of these (and a bunch more) ugly attributes cross my mind. Slowly I decided to fight them one by one just like a mythological hero fights a dragon. The dragon here is poverty and I don’t want it staring down at me all my life. I’m more than that! You’re more than that!

Soon enough I saw the light and started seeing some real positive cashflow. Good thing is you’re free to follow me in my path.

So how do you make money online? Get started with affiliate marketing. Click here and buy the product that’s being sold. Yeah, I have to admit that the website promises too much but that’s not the point. The ebook he’s selling actually shows you real ways you can make money with affiliate marketing. Afraid to buy the product? Well, you can choose not to listen to me but I’m convinced that you should! Stop reading and start making money!

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Jun 2008
27
05:42pm

How to Write Article that SellI’m sure you’ve read the phrase “content is king” but I’ll say it to you again. CONTENT IS KING! Good quality content drives traffic and return visitors and ultimately sales. This is the main reason why serious internet marketers spend time writing fresh articles. Some even go as far as hiring writers.

But how do you write an article that sells?

To help you with that, here are three things that you should always remember.

  1. Use an interesting title
  2. Write with your readers in mind
  3. Make full use of the author’s bio

Use an Interesting Title

The title of your article determines whether it will be read or ignored by potential readers. A boring title is less likely you to be read than one that is written in a unique and interesting way. Here’s a quick example:

Bad Title: Discover How To Write Articles Properly
Good Title: How to Write Articles That Sell

The first one sounds too academic while the second one somehow satisfies a desire, in this case making money.

Write With Your Reader in Mind

Many writers love to brag about themselves but we all know that people don’t want to listen to braggers. Stop talking about how good your product or service is. Rather, write about stuff that will actually satisfy your readers need quickly. Instead of talking about the features of your product, talk instead of how to use your product to solve your readers problem.

Always keep in mind that people read your article because they think it will help them solve their problem. So go ahead and solve their problems and save the sales pitch for last.

Make Full Use of the Author’s Bio

Article directories often won’t allow you to put links in the body of your article. They however will allow you to put links in your bio so make full use of that. The author’s bio is the place where you make your 2-sentence sales pitch. It is here where you entice your reader to click the link to your website. It is here where you tell them that the solution (or a quicker solution) to their problem is just a click away.

Instead of putting in your achievements, put in your call-to-action instead.

That my friend is how you write articles that sell.

P.S. What about writing creating an article in 5 minutes? Click here to see how.

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I took the bait and I don’t regret it! I’ve known about Squidoo for quite a while already and during this time I realized that I can make more money from Squidoo than I ever knew. Aside from the fact that Squidoo does share its income to its members, Squidoo also allows you to sell your own products in it. The best part though is that Squidoo lenses grow in value and just like domain names, Squidoo lenses have the potential of being valued in the hundreds of dollars. Perhaps even thousands.

After learning about these income potential, I decided to buy an eBook on how to “flip” Squidoo lenses. By “flip”, the author meant to sell it. The eBook is cheap (only $19.00) and it’s one of the best and cheapest investments I’ve ever made online (Do yourself a favor and buy it). After reading the eBook, I immediately took action and started making lenses. My SEO experience helped a lot so I knew that making search engine optimized lenses will be easy for me.

I created four lenses and bought a domain name so I can create my own website where I can showcase my lenses. Check it out at MySquidooEmpire.Com. As an introductory sale, I’m selling my lenses at 50% off so don’t waste your time. I’ll be pushing this website really hard by next week so I suggest that you grab this great deal before people start rushing in.

Fresh lenses (meaning newly created ones) sell for $150 but they do grow in value immediately. I will be changing the prices on the MySquidooEmpire.Com regularly based on how much traffic and how much income my Squidoo lenses are generating. Before that happens, I want you to check them out and grab this really great deal. I’ll give it to you for only $75 instead of the normal $150. Click here to check out the Squidoo lenses that I have for sale.

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