Tiers On Squidoo
What Are Tiers
Tiers depend upon how you get paid on Squidoo. You could get paid a couple of cents to almost $50 for Tiers only. Well, what exactly are Tiers? Tiers are levels on Squidoo that affect your Adsense Payout based on lensrank, and lensrank is affected by visitors, click outs, likes, and so on. Squidoo can be a good source of income, but you need good lensranks and Tiers in order to achieve that goal in the easiest way possible.
What Determines Tiers?
Tiers are mainly determined by lensrank. The lower your lensrank, the better your Tier, and the more money you make. There are 4 Tiers on Squidoo, and I will briefly go through good approaches to reach those Tiers.
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Tier 4 Lenses
You don't want to have too many of these, but they simply can't be avoided. Tier 4 lenses are lenses with a lens rank of 85,000 or more, and you'll be extremely lucky to get .04 from the Adsense Pool. How do you get a Tier 4 lens? Well, there is nothing lower than this. Not updating as well as a new lens could find its way to Tier 4, but please try to avoid Tier 4.
Tier 3 Lenses
Tier 3 Lenses have a lensrank between 10,001 and 85,000. These lenses can be hanging on for dear life on Tier 3, be in the middle, or chasing down Tier 2. Tier 3 lenses make about 40-50 cents a month, but that number has been greater. 40 cents may not sound like a lot, but if you have 100 lenses that are all Tier 3 lenses, then you are making over $40-$50 a month! That doesn't even include sales, and yes, I have gotten some sales for my Tier 3 lenses.
Tier 2 Lenses
Tier 2 lenses are harder to get than Tier 3 lenses, and with over 1 million lenses, there is less than a 1% chance of any lens of being in Tier 2. Tier 2 lenses range from a lensrank of 2,001 to 10,000. Tier 2 lenses get a good $10 from Adsense, but Tier 2 lenses have received more as well. Tier 2 lenses also make a lot of sales, so that can be helpful as well. When a lens in Tier 2, you must be having a lot of visitors and daily updates in order to maintain it.
Tier 1 Lenses
Tier 1 lenses are the hardest to obtain by far. There are only 2,000 spots available for Tier 1, and some of those Tier 1 lenses can pop right back to Tier 2. If you want a Tier 1 lens, you need to either get hundreds of visitors each day, get tons of sales, have a lot of people comment/like/bless the lens or a combination of those factors. If you don't have that, your lenses won't be able to go to Tier 1.
Quantity or Quality
I just wanted to point out an important statistic. Based on April's Adpool, Tier 3 lenses got .40 and Tier 1 lenses got about $50. However, the difference is that a Tier 1 lens is way harder to achieve than a Tier 3 lens. So, you could technically have 100 Tier 3 lenses. Those 100 Tier 3 lenses are each paid .40 giving you a total of $40 which is slightly under 1 Tier 1. However, Tier 3 lenses are much easier to obtain than a Tier 1 lens. Quantity or Quality has been a big question, especially with the sales because with 100 Tier 3 lenses, you have 100 lenses that could make sales, or you could have that 1 Tier 1 lenses that is the most likely place to get a sale, but not too many. It is an ongoing debate, and I believe that a combination of both is always key, but it would be very hard to pick one over the other.
Tier 4 Lenses Can Still Get Paid Decent Money
My Tier 4 lenses won't be getting a cent from the Adsense unless Tier 1 lenses get $100, but Tier 4 lenses can still make sales. I have a lens about Fenway Park's 100 years, and I got a sale from something that had nothing to do with the lens. The commission that lens got was .41, but it was better than nothing. Now, because of the sale and visitors, that lens is now a Tier 3 lens, so I will now be getting .40 or something like that per month for that lens. A Tier 4 lens made money, and that only proves that no one should delete their lens. I could have gotten the sale just because Fenway Park is America's Most Beloved Ballpark.
P.S. Someone on Squidoo actually got a sale from their WIP lens (how unbelievable).
Topics Help Tiers
Did you know that the topic of your lens could affect lensrank which affects your Tier as well as how much you get paid? If you didn't know, then I want to share with you why topics are important. For example, if you choose to write a topic about Squidoo, you won't be getting on the Top 100 anytime soon. However, if you write about Amazon Modules, then you have to compete with only 10 people. Also, some topics are easier than others. Writing about Legos is really hard, and I have a lens with a lensrank close to 1,700 that ranks 6th in Legos. That means that 5 other Lego lenses are better than mine. However, there are no Tier 2 lenses at all for the Pokemon topic. That is why I created my lens about Legendary Pokemon. It was in Tier 2 for awhile, but now it is a Tier 3, but not by a dramatic amount. Choosing a good topic can make the difference for reaching the Top 100 list (or Top 10) or not even making the Top 200.
First Payout!
My first payout was $30.78, and I had many great lenses at the time. I had 2 Tier 2 lenses that made me $7.84 each not including some sales. I had a Tier 1 lens during the payout, but not during the actual month (I didn't have a Tier 1 lens by March), and that is why I didn't make more than $50. However, the Tier boundaries aren't exact with payouts because one of my lenses that got Tier 2 payments had about a 10,702 lensrank during March. I am happy to receive my first payout, but at the same time, I know that the Lego Station's (my best lens) total payment for April will be twice as good as the payment that I received a day ago. I am excited to receive my first payout, and I hope to have many more in the future.
What Determines The Tier Payout?
The Tier payout depends on that lens' average ranking for the month. That means if you had a Squidoo lens that stayed in Tier 2 for 30 days, and then it falls to Tier 3 on the last day (at around 15,000 or something like that), that lens still gets the Tier 2 payout. Make sure you work extra hard on your lenses during the beginning and end of each month so that you get the best Tier value for your lens.
How To Get To Next Tier
These are some factors that improve lensrank and get your lens to the upper Tier.
- Squid Likes
- Blessings
- Sales
- Comments
- Visits
- Clicks
- Sharing
- Updates
- And more
More About A Lens Average For The Month
A lens' average lensrank for the month determines the revenue you get from that lens. Since this is the case, I recommend that you look at all of your lenses on the border of Tier 1 or Tier 2 and see their average lensrank. If there are only 4 days left to the month, a lens on the border of Tier 2 with an average lensrank of 25,000 won't quite make it. However, a lens with a lensrank of around 11,000 with an average close to 10,500 can make it into Tier 2. By looking at the average lensranks of your lenses, you can identify which lenses you need to work on the most to get the best payout.
Fun Facts About Tiers
- Tier 1 lenses make about $60 a month from ads.
- Tier 2 lenses make about $10 a month from ads.
- Tier 3 lenses make about $0.50 a month from ads.
- Tier 4 lenses are lucky to make any money from ads.
- 1 Tier 1 lens earns more money from ads than 6 Tier 2 lenses.
- 1 Tier 1 lens earns more money from ads than 120 Tier 3 lenses.
- 1 Tier 2 lens earns more money from ads than 20 Tier 3 lenses.
Getting More Squid Likes
Since Squid Likes have a big impact on lensrank, it is important to learn how to get more of them. There is a simple explanation to getting more Squid Likes, and that is participating in the SquidooHQ Forum. You can post links to your new Squidoo lenses and start conversations in the SquidooHQ Forum. There will be some people in the SquidooHQ Forum who click one of your links to a Squidoo lens of yours. Then, those people have the choice to like your Squidoo lens. There are a lot of people who will Squid Like new lenses that are promoted in the SquidooHQ Forum.
Have Your Lenses Work Together
There is an ad display when you access a Squidoo lens. While these can result in click outs away from your lens, you get to control which lenses the click out option is presented to. If you talk about 1 topic, you can use that ad option to promote your Squidoo lenses right at the bottom of the screen. Not only will you get more visitors to your lenses, but you'll also increase the click out rate of the other lens that your visitors click out of.
Sound Off Now - What's Your Tier Experience?
This was a very good and easy to understand explanation. I had a tier 2 lens for about 2 weeks I think. It was exciting but I didn't earn much.
I have yet to have a Tier One lens, but I have a few Tier Twos coming and going that boost payout, and of the 152 lenses I've published, only a small chunk of them have spent significant time in Tier 4. To be honest, it was the product review lenses from right after that format was introduced that have performed the poorest, though they are some of my best reviews. I think the place was saturated with a sudden influx of product review lenses and some of my mine got lost in the shuffle. Been updating, promoting and pinging like a fiend to try to make up for that.
A great Lens!!! I feel like I actually know what the tiers are now! Thanks for making this topic clearer for a new squid in an easy to understand format!
I'm still not sure about a few things but this helped a lot! Thanks.
Thanks for explaining that. I think I get it now.
Thank you my friend, now i know what tiers Means well done
I've actually found your lens through Google, not within Squidoo. Just what I was looking for, thanks!
Very helpful lens. Just getting started with Squidoo and I'm loving it, but so much to learn.
Very helpful lens. Just getting started with Squidoo and I'm loving it, but so much to learn.
I'd love to learn how to get more visitors to my lenses. I am very active in Squidoo work on it every day - having such a great time! I have had some wonderful comments from people - I have recently become a 50 lens Giant Squid, won 2 cash prizes, 2 LoTD and a Purple Star! I'm trilled to bits. But don't I need lots of links from other sites in order to please google? Do people write articles about their lenses? If so how do you do that? Do they write reviews? I'm really bad at SEO and I'm hoping it doesn't even matter here on Squidoo :0)
thank you for sharing this information has being new to squidoo this lens help out a lot :)
Hi
Thanks for this I think I get it now.
Thank you for sharing this information, I think I actually understand now. It is very well written. And from what I've understood you don't get much from writing this since it is abut Squidoo ;)
Thank you very much for this helpful information. As a newbie, it helps clarify more than a few things.
I still haven't got my first payout, as of today, I have one tier 2 lens and two tier 3 lenses. I hope i get them all to tier 2 at least. :)
Thanks, very helpful!!
Thanks for this help :)
The most helpful lens.
I guess mstcourtjester is right in recommending this lens to read. I learned a lot about tiers. We need to continue what we have started and welcome change. Thanks for this lens! :)
Very helpful, thank you!
Fantastic and comprehensive! Answered all my questions about the tier system. Thanks!
Glad I found your lens - I learned quite a bit about the tier system here. Thank you!!!
What do I need to do to learn such information for myself? This is invaluable. Thanks.
Thank you so much Marc... this lens have answered most of my questions...
Best explanation of the tiers that I've read! Thanks!
Very helpful information. I aim on making a quality tier 1 or tier 2 lens to start.
Thanks for sharing real useful information.
Thanks for the useful info. I didn't know what tiers were and now I know that my first lens has just hit tier 2 today!!
Helpful and concise lens. Useful information especially about topics. Thanks for sharing!
@blestman lm: It basically pertains to related lenses that you can either select or let the site choose for you. You can control which lens links show up by making use of the related lens option that can be found in the Text with Big Picture module. You can also make use of the Featured Lenses module to direct traffic to lenses of your choosing. Hope this helps.
I actually put that lenses work together thing to use with one of my recent releases. I wanted to show a list of games that was age appropriate for young girls and older girls. Really surprised to see Pokemon as a topic to write about. I managed to get all my WIP lenses out of the red. Really glad this lens was found; it really breaks things down into manageable doses. Thanks for sharing.
@blestman lm: blestman, I had the same question, and I'm not a newbie :) I'm not sure I figured it out, but I did find out this: log out of your account and then go to one of your lenses. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. You should see a box that sort of pops out from the lower right corner that says "Related Pages". I guess if you're writing in a niche, some of your lenses might show up here. Mine didn't but maybe they are in too low of a tier. You can opt out of certain kinds of ads from your Dashboard (My Settings) or from the settings of an individual lens. I hope that helps.
Nice information about tiers .Most of my doubts are clear .Thanks for sharing this info.
Thanks for the info. I hope to be getting some Tier 1s soon. :)
I learned something today, good explanation en great info...
Thanks, useful info.
Thanks, I only heard about the Squidoo Tiers today and this is just the info I was looking for!
Being a newbie, I am not sure what you meant by you get to control which lenses the click out option is presented to. If you talk about 1 topic, you can use that ad option to promote your Squidoo lenses right at the bottom of the screen. I am not sure how to do that --YET but this lens has GREAT info. Thank you
Thanks for the info!
This is an exceptionally well written lens and answered all the questions I had, in addition to including the Google Panda changes to Adsense. Thank you.
Thanks you really cleared things up for me. Now I know where to put my efforts towards and what is a waste of time. I am enlightened.
Very beneficial lens for a newbie...thank you!!
This has helped me understand payouts. Mine has gone down and was wondering why. Thank you
You have shared some very valuable information here. I have had a lens that is borderline tier 2 and it teeters back and forth throughout the month. I am in the process of adding new lenses in another niche but I want to really focus on that len's niche. In time I am sure I will be able to balance that out. Fascinating, read... =)
Thankyou so much for this information! I have been with Squidoo since October 2012 and have made $5.60 so far, now maybe I can do better! You have been a big blessing to me, thanks :)
Thanks for the info I am only 6 months old and still trying to figure it all out.
Thank you for your great lens. I didn't know about the tier systems, and I find the information very helpful.
I enjoyed reading this lens. Thank you
Thanks for the definition of tiers. I understand it better now.
i got my first lens to turn to tier 3 im so happy
Great info. I'm bookmarking this lens.
Thanks for this very useful information about tiers. I will keep some of it for sure!
You suggest daily updates for tier 2 lenses. I was wondering what you would do to your lens every day.
I'm relatively new here and came across this lens from a link in the forums.
I didn't know anything about tiers, zilch. I was wondering about a lot of things about payouts and this opened my eyes. Clear, concise and easy to understand.
Appreciate you putting this lens together.
Thanks!
Helpful information. Thanks.
Good stuff. Really helpful to get everyone on the same page.
Very helpful content.
Thanks for this information!
Great explanation of the tier system on squidoo!
wonderful lens.
it is very nice to drop here , thanks for all the info and i hope to be glad not to get zero on my first payday
Thanks for taking the time to explain the tier system. Very informative lens.
Thank you for sharing!
Great information. I'm still unclear about a few items but this does make more sense. I would really like to understand the whole updating more or maybe just why. :)
I`m new and explanations like this really help me sort things out. Thanks for the information.
I've never made a penny, and doubt I ever will. Pleased to learn a few people make something though. Still love Squidoo all the same, maybe one day I'll get a lucky break.
I've never made a penny, and doubt I ever will. Pleased to learn a few people make something though. Still love Squidoo all the same, maybe one day I'll get a lucky break.
Good information in an easy to read format about tiers. Tried to bless it, but you obviously have enough blessings already! :-)
Oops, I tried to bless it, but it was greyed out. Figures that a lens this good would be. I will still give you a TonyB blessing for what it's worth.
TonyB
Well, I came to this lens because I did not understand tiers. I now know a lot more about them and how they work on payday. Since this lens has been such a blessing to me, I'm going to bless it in return. Thanks for the great information, Marc.
TonyB
Hey, very very informative. I see why there are so many likes and comments here!
Good information about the tier structure and payouts.
Appreciate the information. I write on another site and had over 100 articles in only a few months and not earning with their Tier program and is a new site that is only a year old. So let's see what happens at Squidoo
Thanks for this explanation. That means I have to get at least 100 lens and get them in tier 3 if I want to be paid. Tier 2 and 1 seem highly unlikely for an newbie.
Thank u for the information....
My first payday is probably going to be around $1.20, but I am overjoyed at this because the first lens I made is slowly creeping up to Tier 2. I am at 28,000 and its been out for 2 weeks. The product that ut introduces also comes out in a week, so that will help to.
Thanks for the info! It helped me figure that out!
well that is way squidoo has 1 million not so good articles ... tier 3 should not be giving any money, and then people would focus on quality or affiliate sales, or both, eliminating the possibility of having 1000 bad articles per user ... it is a lot more easy to get 1000 bad written articles (1000 x $0,4 = 400$) then 100 really good ones .
I think the tiers need to change a bit!
I have lenses that i would have thought wouldn't be as popular as others actually out rank some of my "better quality" lenses. It is just a matter of interests on the park of your reader.
I have ONLY TWO lenses and one of them is in Tier 2.
I created my second lense only a few days ago,
What happened is that I joined squidoo,made a lens,and kinda left, then after some time I saw my email flooded with comments on my lense and a payment in my paypal, so I came back to squidoo and whoa! my lense is in tier 2!
:)
Just had a lens reaching tier 3.. I want to learn more to boost it!!
Thanks for the info!
Thanks for the help. I am very new and nowhere near a payout. But now I know what I need to do to improve the rank for my very new lenses!
a very helpful lens - thank you :)
Thanks for explaining the tiers on Squidoo. I was wondering how everything worked.
This is SO HELPFUL! My first payday was a bust...$0.00. So I was growing frustrated, but now I have some concrete strategies for my lens goals. Thanks again!
Thanks for taking the time to explain the tier system. Your lens is very interesting and helpful.
Yes, it is difficult to move up the tiers... but I have several lenses now ranking in tier 1, several in tier 2 and many of my pages rank #1 first page on Google for many search terms.. so it IS possible! :)
Thank you for this lens, i'm struggling a bit, but things are finally clicking into place and my lenses are, as of this week, all in tier 3! Yippee! But it's still all a bit tricky getting my brain round it, so lenses like this are really helpful. And, mostly you have used terminology that this Technoklutz can understand! Many thanks.
Thanks for explaining what tiers are in layman's terms. =)
Great information. This is the type of information I need to raise up my Tier level. Thanks for sharing.
I've been on Squidoo for a while, but only recently thinking about tiers and so on. THis was exactly the information I needed-many thanks!
Thank you! Clear description of tiers - and very useful and concise!
Very useful, thanks!
Great information. Thanks for sharing
thanks for useful info. There are a lot of works here
This is great, thanks so much. SOme of my lenses are entering tier 3 and I hope to get some tier 2 lenses soon.
Thanks for sharing!
very nice info.
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