If you've been looking to build up your online empire, you've almost certainly been exposed to Squidoo.
Squidoo declares itself as a site where you can publish a web page (or a whole set of web pages) on topics that interests you. In Squidoo terminology, each of these pages is known as a lens, and a lens is made up of a series of modules provided by Squidoo. This provides a common interface to help you to create and manages the lenses, and ensures a consistent style and approach across them.
Provided they meet minimum quality requirements, (mainly that they provide varied, interesting and engaging content), lenses are easy to create and publish. But how can you best make use of these as as Internet Marketer.
I've been exploring Squidoo, and in this post I'm going to show you three methods you can use to get cash, all by using Squidoo.
Squidoo Cash Method #1 – Promote One Of Your Own Products
This is probably the first method you'd think of when considering using Squidoo. Use the lens to promote one of your own products.
The important thing is that you have to be subtle about this and not oversell. You can include self-serving links, so long as they're in proportion to the lens as a whole.
You still have to include valuable information.
Here's an example of Video Sales Tactics, a lens of mine that operates under his principle. This provides good information about how to use videos within marketing, but also cross sells a product from 10 Buck PLR, which is on the same topic.
Generally, any of your products or sites will be suitable for this method, providing it means the Squidoo terms and conditions (no gambling lens, no adult lens, no illegal lens etc).
Squidoo Cash Method #2 – Promote An Affiliate Product
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This method works well if you don't have a product of your own to promote. You can use this lens to promote a product as an affiliate.
Apart from that, this technique is largely similar to Method #1 in terms of the design and structure of the lens.
I'd recommend that you try and cloak the affiliate link wherever possible. This is always a good idea, as it gives you full control over where the links goes to, in case you want to change it in the future.
Here's a lens of mine which demonstrates this, Earn 1K A Day Insider Club. This promotes a top membership site for Internet Marketers of which I'm a long-term member. It's also a site that I recommend without hesitation, and would do so even without an affiliate opportunity being in place.
You'll also notice that the information on this lens is generally useful, even for people who don't join the site. This is an important aspect of pre-selling using Squidoo.
Squidoo Cash Method #3 – Use The Squidoo 'Cash' Modules
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Squidoo itself makes money from advertising on the lenses, and from links to affiliate products, and a proportion of this is paid back to the lensmaster who created each lens.
Now, this isn't a method I've explored so thoroughly myself, but a lot of marketers have had success purely through creating Squidoo 'Cash' Lenses and taking the commissions offered via Squidoo.
The secret of this technique is to base your lens around a popular topic, with a well selected keyword phrase. Here's an example of one of my older lens on Coffee and Tea Makers, which promotes EBay and Amazon products, as well as providing plenty of useful information.
The promotion goes through the built-in Squidoo EBay and Amazon modules, so commissions go directly to Squidoo. A number of other options are available, such as CafePress, Zazzle and Etsy, depending on the type of 'Cash' Lens being created.
By default, Squidoo also displays advertising on the lens, which also earns you commission.
Now, this lens isn't a brilliant example, as it has a dual purpose to drive traffic to a site of mine too, but there is a lot of potential to quickly create lens which solely bring in income through Squidoo's affiliate modules.
Squidoo Can Be Profitable
Squidoo went through a period of popularity about two years ago, and hasn't been mentioned as much since, but it is still a good web property to build part of your online empire with.
By default, Squidoo ranks very well with Google, particularly for terms without high competition, and the style of the lens makes them more engaging to readers than similar sites like EzineArticles.
Do take a look at Squidoo, and do set up some new lenses, whether these are to promote your own products, promote affiliate products, or solely to use Squidoo's own cash modules.
Please Leave Your Comments
I enjoy reading each and every one of them.
Do please leave a comment in the box below. Feel free to say if you've used Squidoo, if you've been encouraged to start, or to share any Squidoo tips you may have.
24 replies on “Three Methods To Make Cash By Using Squidoo”
Thanks for sharing these ways to make money on Squidoo. I have made money with lenses built to promote specific Amazon products. It's in my future plans to promote some of my own products as well. Squidoo is pretty easy to work with which is a definite plus.
Keep sharing your marketing ideas. They're always interesting and innovative.
Thanks Jenny, glad to hear that you're enjoying reading the blog posts.
I think posts promoting a single Amaxon product are a great idea – almost like a cross between technique #2 and #3 above. It means you can offer a great focus to your lens.
You can also make pretty visual lens with Amazon products, as there are usually plenty of photos for each product available to use.
Might have a go at producing a lens like that soon myself!
Thom
Hey Thom,
Guess it's a good thing you sent that reminder email about this post.
I've been with squidoo awhile and have a few lenses that have pr 4 or 5, which I figure makes for a good back-link to my main site. I get a monthly payment to my paypal account from your #3 technique. Not a lot, but at this point I'll take it I've also has some success selling affiliate products off the lenses,
They have a nice setup and make it easy to build a lens.
Tips? I like to put a Table of Content module below the intro section, and not use the one that's part of the intro block. I like the format of the module's ToC better.
Dual and Poll modules can be fun, especially if you enable comments on the poll.
You can also do a lot of html formatting in the text blocks, even though the text editor doesn't have html controls. Just write it up in some html editor and copy/paste.
Thanks Greg,
Yes, I agree totally that a lot of Squidoo lens get great Page Rank in Google. Just been looking around and I've seen a few people selling backlinks off their high PR Squidoo lens, so that's another potential money making opportunity to investigate.
I like the idea of a separate Table Of Contents. I'll definitely experiment with that one too. Could be useful to have one at the bottom of the lens to catch people who just scroll straight to the end.
Thom
Hi, Thom!
This is a very interesting post about how anyone can make money by putting up a Squidoo lens. Certainly it's all about words, where you put them, how you create them, and which producdts you want to tell others about.
I like the way that you set up each cash source, and showed us a great looking cover for your own product.
Congrats on such a good looking lens, and thanks for sharing these most helpful secrets.
Candace, yes it's all about the words – how you draw both people and the search engines in to read the lens in the first place. And, of course you can direct traffic to the lens like any other web page.
I like Greg's idea above to use HTML to format the text areas. It means you can work backlinks into Squidoo text areas, and you can draw attention to the most interesting sections.
Support that with some good images and a video and you have a lens to be proud of.
Thom
Good tips, Thom. I've made one Squidoo lens, and it was pretty easy. Sort of forgot about it, though. They've added some things since I created mine, so it's even easier to add Amazon and other products.
Hi!
Interesting to read. I have started to work with squido, but so far only in the beginning. I will take this with me and work further.
Thx
What's your preferred method of getting traffic to your squidoo lens, Thom?
I've never really tried that hard with a Squidoo lens, but I hear them mentioned all the time.
Obviously there's the traditional method of building backlinks and so forth, but are there ways to take advantage of Squidoo's internal traffic?
Max, yes you can get traffic by building back links to the lens in the usual ways. For instance, I often use EzineArticles, and there are a few backlinks scattered around this post as well. Squidoo's also accepted as an authority site by Google, maybe not to the extent it was a few years, but most lenses still rank pretty well without too much effort.
Internal linking in Squidoo is good. You can add your own internal links to each lens, and they're linked off your profile, but the Lens Roll feature does a pretty good job of linking your lens with similar lens from other people.
The Squidcast feature is well worth checking out too, as are the RSS feeds and the links with Facebook and Twitter.
Thom
Thom, I have a few Squidoo lenses already, but I've made maybe twenty cents. I've spent hours upon hours working on them without success.
I've done everything you've mentioned above.
The main reason I created them was for backlinks, so I guess it's not a total failure.
These are all excellent points. I am experimenting with using all three methods. We'll see how this works. I have to work on getting links to my lenses now.
Hey Thom,
Nice looking lenses you have! I've created several lenses over the years and will often notice them in my AW Stats so I know people are finding my lenses either through the search engines or from someone else's lens … and I'm getting traffic as a result.
I really should get back to building more as I hadn't really thought about building several in the same niche and then interlinking them. Thanks for that tip!
Cheryl, thanks, yes I agree completely about the backlinks – as well as getting the traffic from people who click through the Squidoo links to your site and may buy from you directly.
Yes, there certainly are people who make good money from Squidoo, but in my opinion they're few and far between.
Thom
Here are just good ways to use Squidoo off the top of my head:
Using Squidoo to get backlinks to your site or linkwheel.
Using Squidoo for branding you as an 'expert or go to person' .
Using Squidoo to find JV partners and optin subscribers for your ezine, newsletter or ecourse or membership site.
Using Squidoo to network and build a fan/recommend base for you, your lens/sites, offers/service.
Using Squidoo to build lens around your passion/hobby and make money with Adsense and affiliate/own products.
Using Squidoo to list your service/business and contact info.
Putting up a meaningful and unique article, case study, or tutorial on your Squidoo lens, gives you a good opportunity to showcase who you are, what you are about and what you are offering in terms of products or services. You get interested fans to recommend your lens, getting you further traffic virally.
Backlink, traffic, branding, information dissemination and ideas getting, profits, JV, networking, viral recommendations, and more are all associated with using Squidoo.
Squidoo lens are easy to do, fast and effective – for all marketing efforts and showcased content for leads and profits.
NIce post with great information, as usual. I think that is exactly the right tactic to use on Squidoo (or any off-site publishing) – great information. Good quality content sprinkled with some good keywords is evergreen. It has value to the reader, value to the search engine algorithms (regardless of changes) and will not likely find itself banned or downgraded by Squidoo. One can never go wrong with good content. The monetization is much easier if the content is valuable to the reader. Thanks agin for great info.
Hey Thom and greetings to your viewers as well.
At 65 yoa, mentioned only to provide some insight into my brand of ethics, I really appreciate your sincerity. From where I stand, that seems to be in short supply on this thing called the internet.
I’ve been on one of your lists for a bit and have picked up a couple of your referrals (WSOs I think) without any complaints. Legitimate products are also a little rare. Most stuff I get pitched these days seem to be of the “pigs in a poke” and “pie in the sky” variety.
Some of them are tantamount to outright theft that do little more than encourage others to steal material and trash the web with total disregard for the properity, time, dollars or values of others.
Their only contribution is just more web pollution.
Well, maybe I’m still too naive to think real value and real contributions will sell and make someone an income comparable to the value contributed and I encourage your readers, the ones who happen to see this, to think about it.
I’ll bet everyone of them has some real value to offer and there’s there’s plenty of room on Squidoo for that too.
Good luck with your new product, Thom.
Picture Frames (unusual name you have) and Ed, thanks for the great ideas. I agree completely about how valuable content is, and I think a lot of people miss that by producing poor quality content. I think I'm lucky in that I can usually produce content quickly, and it's still of a higher standard than that of some people who spend a lot of time creating it. Unfortunately there's no shortcut to that, apart from practice, hard work and education.
Doc, thank you greatly for the kind words. They mean a lot to me.
Thom
This is just what I was looking for today….I was wondering if squidoo was a viable option anymore.
Great info and tips. I am going to print this out and refer back to it. Excellent info.
Thanks for sharing it so freely.
Warm Regards,
Hannah
Thanks Thom for the easy to follow article. I know for fact that squidoo is the easiest and fastest way to get any site ranked fast on google.
Keep up the great content.
Looking forward to your future posts.
Douglas J Gregory
Great post! I have used Squidoo for a long time now. Find it to a good way to help get my releases (or affiliate) products ranked faster in search engines.
After having my product / affiliate online, I build a Squidoo lens and link it to those pages.
Has always helped get better ranking and faster listing in Google and Yahoo.
Terry
Thanks Hannah, Douglas and Terry. I must admit I did wonder if people were reading the blog posts, but so glad to hear that you're getting useful insights from them.
Terry, that's a great strategy building a Squidoo lens for every product you release. I should certainly do the same, but often I end up so pleased to have the product released I forget to do it. Definitely something I can improve, and a suggestion I can put forward to everyone reading this.
Thom
Hey there Thom,
I need to start using Squiddo more in order to promote my blog.
Going back to your money modules, I have also heard that you can "flip that Lens", like website flipping and blog flipping. I haven't investigated this and if some one here has more info boy oh boy, i would love to hear it.
Thanks, keep up the great work Thom!
I just started using Squidoo. It's fun and easy to use but I have not made any money yet. Need to do a little work to build my traffic.
I found that I can get some traffic by participating in others peoples lenses. Overall I really like Squidoo but I'm wanting to try making my own product and see how that goes.
Really enjoy your posts Thom.