I am getting off the subject of seashells for a moment to talk about the place that has helped me a great deal with online promotion of my online stores while making a little extra money as well.
I first heard of Squidoo through some co-workers at Zazzle. I am not computer savvy and it seemed like just another waste of time trying to figure out something new that would just get me nowhere. I was wrong.
Once I made my first “lens” – or page of information at the site I saw how easy if was to create something interesting and nice looking. And it was fun sharing my favorite recipes and garden photos with people from all over the world! I never expected to make much money – and I haven’t! But I do appreciate that $20 or so extra dollars a month and I am hooked on making lenses. I do however get lots of traffic from Squidoo to my Zazzle stores, which in turn does make me some very good money.
A Squidoo page is made up of “modules” and the lensmaster (that’s you- the creator of the page) chooses which ones to add to his or her page and you work on one module at a time and add or delete them as you choose. A module can be a Flickr account, Amazon list, e-bay account, a poll, you tube video, writing (text) module and comment section - there are many to choose from. Some of the modules have an “add a photo” area to make adding pictures easy too.
If you have something interesting to write about just create a page, add some pictures and begin. You can always add more to it – in fact updating pages is encouraged.
If your lens is worthy, you might even get a “blessing” by a Squid Angel. This will increase your lensrank and move you closer to the top 100. Creating a LOTD (lens of the day) is a goal as well.
As I mentioned, you can make money on Squidoo too! Besides being an excellent tool to point potential customers to an website or online store, if your lens places well and attracts a lot of visitors, a percentage of overall ad views is partially yours. Add an Amazon link or two and one from e-bay and earn money that way. If you have a Zazzle store, Squidoo has a “Zazzle module” to easily add up to 9 of your products at once (but you won’t get Zazzle referral money when using it).
Many Squidoo lensmasters have written lenses with helpful information about CSS, basic html, Squidoo do’s and don’t’s, and even ideas for what to write about.
If you want to get started go here and begin by choosing a name for your lens – choose wisely as it’s the one thing that cannot be changed on your lens. **Here’s a hint I picked from Squidoo – put a dash between your Squidoo title words; such as “Favorite-Vacations” for better SEO (search engine optimization).
**I have been a Squidoo member since October 6 2008, have rated 460 lenses, favorited 288, and have created 18 lenses from scratch. My top-ranked page is “Seashell Identification“. See all my lenses .
