I keep seeing all this stuff about Squidoo and how good it is and how Google indexes it fast and you can make a lot of money and ... I logged on once but I couldn't really understand ... What is it?
A lens is basically just a cutsie name for a page. I've never done a proper blog, but it reminds me of what blogs look like. Each entry or section is called a module and you can have only a limited amount, I think 15 (maybe that number is off) modules to each lens. I have a couple of lenses created to use as backlinks to my chocolate site, but I don't really maintain them well and I don't get much traffic to them. Still they are free and only take a short time to build, so they don't hurt. Some people build hundreds of lenses and then they get a share of the Google Adsense from Squidoo and also any affiliate sales they may make through their promotion. Newbie Shield is getting right into Squidoo, so he would be the one to go to for advice. He'll probably get around to replying to this thread before long. I got a free ebook tutorial on building a lens from someone a while back, but I think it is pretty easy if you just go in and sign up. Once you indicate that you want to create a lens they sort of talk you through it.
HappyWife is correct, though I don't think there is any limit to the number of modules you can have in a lens. There may have been a limit in the past, but I have well over 15 on my main lens. Squidoo is a web 2.0 technology. It's a social network composed of lenses (single free pages). They have a free forum there as well. You can make as many free lenses as you wish on almost any topic you wish. Hatred lenses are not allowed though you can make adult lenses (I hope you don't decide to do that!). It's true that Google LOVES lenses and indexes them quick - less than a week. They rank the lenses much higher than usual. You get adsense inserted automatically. Even though it is free, there is profit sharing on the adsense. Yep, money for free. Last month a friend made over $500 just on adsense plus a ton more off affiliate links and they had a tatoo lens. Each lens is composed of "modules". Some examples of modules are text, picture, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, and others. You just add them and tweak em to your liking. No need to know html. You can also add your own affiliate links, product reviews and almost anything you can think of. It is much easier than a hosted website or a blog. You get to add up to 40 tags without using code. It's all extremely user friendly. It's so easy, anyone can create modules on the lenses. The more lenses you have the more adsense coop revenue you get. Many folks Squidoo for a living and have over 100 lenses. You can sign up for free from my sig. I have several blue CREATE LENS buttons throughout both sites. Plus, I have to admit it, my site keeps getting compliments from squidoo staff on it's appearance and extensive development (for a single page). So, right off the bat, if you go to my lens, you can see a good example of a nice lens. I have a mix of polls, videos, pictures, text, adsense, affiliate links, a guestbook, and other kewl stuff. Warning Squidoo is extremely addictive. Note: Before you publish (go live), make sure that you have at least 4 modules in additon to your guestbook and intro module. Hey, I'm in bliss over at Squidoo. I live there...and here I can't speak highly enough of Squidoo. Go get some, don't pass up free, easy and very profitable. That's my advice of the year. You'll get a $5 dollar bonus just for signing up using my blue CREATE LENS button. Sign up there. Let me know when you publish your lens, and I will tell you how to get your $5 bucks. Newbie Shield
Thanks Newbie Shield for the advise. I am in the middle of creating one as well. What do you mean by Adsense will be inserted into your lens automatically? Meaning when you publish your lens, Google will then insert the ads into your lens randomly? Many Thanks, MWB
This is great information. I have to finish a big list of online actions - you know how it is. I have several sites under development. But I will sign up from your sig and start creating on this as soon as I have some other things under control. Thanks!!!
Hi! I signed up from your blue button. Though it was hard to find ... I am still figuring this all out ... but I did publish it. Now what?
mywirebiz (and juno below), You're welcome. Yes, adsense is added automatically but not randomly. It is delivered according to you content and your tags. Juno, I know how it is to have a plate that is over-filled. Mine certainly is. Once you clicked my CREATE LENS button, you should get directed to creating an account. Didn't that happen? It's a quick 3 step process where you choose a user name and other simple things. You then have your first lens. After that you set your preferences from the edit page. Then you fill out your bio. Then you upload a picture to your intro module and fill the rest of that module with intro text - what your lens is about. Then you click the add modules button located at both the top and bottom of your edit page. I'd suggest adding a guestbook module three text modules, an amazon module, and what ever else you want. After you create that and fill them out, add some another text module. This will be your first affiliate link module. Don't forget to add the affiliate links. This is where your biggest money is. Click on the SAVE DRAFT button after you complete each module. Then when you feel your lens is good enough, you click publish. They update everything each morning. In order for the lens publishing to be complete you have to wait for them to update everything. You'll know that it's complete when you go into edit mode and there is a green check instead of a gray minus sign. In your guestbook you should set it up so that: Only Squidoo members who are logged in can sign You have to be asked to approve guestbook entries (blurbs) Don't send every approval to email Show 10 blurbs per page Show commenter pics Strip all html out of blurbs Okay, to edit modules you click the orange dropdown arrow while in edit mode. Notes: When you log in you are brought into your My Dashboard. This is the main control "room". There are tabs in the upper left corner. You check traffic stats and other stats here. You can go into either edit mode or view mode (says under construction before you are published). You can set your paypal preferences up for coop profit sharing. You can change your personal info and choose to hide it. You can decide how much you keep from your module income. This has nothing to do with your personal affiliate programs, you keep 100% of that. You can join groups and so on. It's a lot easier than it sounds. It's nice that it is powerful yet simple. You'll get the hang of it once you goof around with it. Just look at my lens. I've only been there a bit over a month but already I rank extremely high because I put a lot of time into making it nice and driving daily traffic to it. Look at it as an example of a good lens. There are some where over 600 music lenses and I am currently ranked 10 within music for my music-resource lens and out of over 250,000 lenses I am flat out ranked number 141 as of today. That is my personal record. Okay too much information in one post, sorry if I overwhelmed anyone. I just know a lot about it since I've been obsessed with it every day for over a month. OH! By the way, do a search and look for squidoo tutorials. Furthermore, join SquidU. That's their forum and folks are dying to help you out there. Plus once you can get traffic if you put your published lens in your forum SquidU.com sig. The more traffic you get, the higher you rank and the more you make from adsense. By the way, a lower rank number is better. Okay, enough of my blah blah blah, your sick of it now Feel free to ask all the questions you want and let me know when you have published your lens. If it has four modules besides an intro module and a guestbook plus you have filled it out with a lot of writing (not copy/paste), I will tell you how to get your 5 bucks. Newbie Shield
PS. Someone just reported making $800 bucks in one day - Dec 15 - from the amazon module in sales. He gets a percent of it. That's because it's a pre-made module. Still it shows how good it can be...even in a single day. Several folks make hundreds off of just the adsense each month.
I REALLY wish I had found this forum before trying to create my lens! I just kind of threw one together and published. It is really lame. Now I'm going to go back and do all the things that you've recommended, Newbie Shield. Thanks for all the great advice!
Thanks Newbie Shield for the advise. Wow lengthy explanation but fully informative. Need to bookmark this page when constructing my lens later. You sound like a squidoo king. Good to have you around mate! Appreciate that Rgds, MWB
Oh my god Newbie Shield. Yes it's a lot of data but it is fantastic. I did publish a lens but it barely says anything for now. This looks like it could be really good! I will have to do it, I will finish up some other things first. I have to discipline myself to finish some things first ... and in the middle of everything my Internet connection is being ... whatever ... and I have an hour a day to do everything online if I am lucky ... Do you think Pay Per Play will be allowed on Squidoo?
Quoting: mywirebizThanks Newbie Shield for the advise. Wow lengthy explanation but fully informative. Need to bookmark this page when constructing my lens later. You sound like a squidoo king. Good to have you around mate! Appreciate that Quoting: devandjenI REALLY wish I had found this forum before trying to create my lens! I just kind of threw one together and published. It is really lame. Now I'm going to go back and do all the things that you've recommended, Newbie Shield. Thanks for all the great advice! Quoting: juno44444Oh my god Newbie Shield. Yes it's a lot of data but it is fantastic. You're all welcome. Juno, A PayPal account is required for coop revenue sharing. As far as making the code or button work on a Squidoo lens goes, I'd imagine it would if it is pure HTML rather than JAVA. You might experiment in various ways. You can always ask questions at the SquidU forum. Lots of people love to help out there. I'm finishing up my third music lens. I'll be starting a fourth one next week. The more lenses you make (must be quality), the more you get in revenue sharing. Newbie Shield
Quoting: pcworkNewbie Shield , how much traffic does your lens get? Hi PC_Work, Right now my main lens only gets 30+ visitors per day. I have been very busing building lenses and I haven't done very much to drive traffic yet. I haven't submitted any articles. I haven't submitted my lenses to any directories yet. I will do that early next year. I'm making sure that I get a trickle for now to keep the ratings from diving but I need to use my time for development for a little while longer. The good thing is I am number one at Google for several keyword phrases. I won't share the specific phrases with anyone but I am very happy about it. It happened in less than a week with each lens. It's so dang easy to rank super high I can't believe it. I am already on the front page of a PR 7 site and I get the full PR 7. I won't give out that one either, sorry. That's why I push the education and tweaking comments so hard. You have to know what you are doing. Then you have to tweak. Who ever skips either is cutting their own throat. Actually I have you to thank for convincing me that the free sites are quite valuable. Thank you. By the way, though I am not getting much daily traffic yet, I am getting my adsense and affiliate links clicked on every day. I'm liking it, I really am. Newbie Shield
Quoting: Newbie ShieldI am already on the front page of a PR 7 site and I get the full PR 7. I won't give out that one either, sorry. That's why I push the education and tweaking comments so hard. Do other websites feature Squidoo lenses? What is the education and tweaking comments ?
Another great post with good info, Newbie Shield. I'd like to add another advantage to creating a lens and driving traffic to it. Because squidoo is so loved by the search engines, say you write articles to a blog - if you put them on the squidoo lens, for most people (especially with new blogs) the lens will rank much higher on searches than your blog. The strategy here is to put a "teaser", maybe title and a short description of all your blog posts on the lens then link to your blog. This has a couple of benefits. Since squidoo lenses can quickly be built into high PR sites, the links to your blog will actually pull your regular site up in PR and you benefit from the "teaser" being ranked higher on search results than your regular site. Long-term, when you start a site on a different subject, you can do the same thing and get those same benefits from that one lens. Assuming all your products are geared toward the same general audience, you can concentrate all your promotional efforts on one site (the lens), then use that lens to distribute the traffic. This is usually more effective than diffusing all your promotional efforts among the various sites you have. You can write only so many articles, buy so many ads, etc. .
pcwork, A site didn't decide to feature me. I just have links to my lenses on a PR7 site. And...the comments about education and tweaking were not directed at you. You're a seasoned marketing veteran and you know what you are doing. The remarks were directed at those who read a few things on marketing, toss up a junky site without understanding marketing well. Then they complain that they aren't making any money. I wish they wouldn't put the cart before the horse and I wish they wouldn't fire and forget. Sorry if I confused you by placing the remarks in that reply. MyOwnBoss, Thanx. Excellent idea, good thinking! Work that PR! I see lenses with a 5 PR every day. It takes 3-6 months but it takes relatively little work compared to a blog or a regular website to get a high PR. ~Newbie Shield~
