Well, I have been at this for about a month and am still having a great time learning.  I have made a couple of sales on Squidoo, but nothing too impressive.

 I think my problem in the first 3 weeks was that I aimed for quantity in backlinks instead of quality content in my articles.  I would take an hour or two writing an article or making a Squidoo lens, then almost the whole day social bookmarking and submitting to 15 different article sites.

 My problem was that I was turning out crappy content.  If 200 people look at a turd, it is not going to magically transform into something educational and helpful! 

 My shift this last week has been to focus much more on analyzing low competition keywords and customers, then implementing the basic SEO principles taught here.  Now I only post to 3 article sites at most and 3 bookmarking sites. It allows more time for research and studying.

I feel much better about what I am putting out now (this could also be from writing practice, I dunno), and hopefully it manifests into some $$.

Have a good one, everybody.