Please Share Your Squidoo Tricks

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   anish92posted 13 years ago

   Of all the online publishing forums I write for, I find squidoo the most difcult and challenging and no matter how hard I try my lenses hardly seem to be upto scratch. So plz share ur Squidoo expertise with me and I'm sure 1000s of others like me. In particular:
   1. How much time do you put in per lens?
   2. Do you maintain a lens or just create it once and then just move on to  a new one?
   3. Which topics perform well on Squidoo?
   4. Is it worth the time u put in (both SEO and revenue wise)?
   5. Any 'secret' formula u are willing to share?

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   1. 78

      Greekgeekposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      1. How much time do you put in per lens?
      It varies. Now that I'm experienced, there are some lenses I can create in a day, sometimes within 4-6 hours, but my more comfortable working speed is: 1 day to make most of a lens, 1 day to finish off what I was still working on at 1AM, and then I may stop by to tweak/fiddle a bit for a day or two as I discover ways to tighten prose for clarity and brevity.
      
      2. Do you maintain a lens or just create it once and then just move on to  a new one?
      I try to make mostly self-maintaining lenses through evergreen content, good keyword research and on-page optimization that will draw traffic, because there's no way to do a lot of maintenance on 300+ lenses. But at the same time, I do skim my lenses once every two weeks to a month to check for broken images/links, take a quick look to make sure videos are still in place. Republishing is more important in Squidoo than in Hubages: lensrank rewards you for checking/updating your lenses from time to time.  I add more info as I hear about it.
      
      3. Which topics perform well on Squidoo?
      
      Just about anything you know and love. The trick is that you need to find the vocabulary to talk about your topic that interested readers would tend to search for. For example, if you've got a Photoshop masking tutorial, use Photoshop in the title, don't just call the page "cool graphics tips" or no one will ever find it.
      
      You need specific, narrow-focus rather than broad and general. Lists do well on the web. "Ten great places to visit in South Croydon." Lenses with pictures, printables or free resources for people to click do well, since the lensrank algorithm rewards visitor interaction and clickouts. Lenses that solve a problem do well. "How do I..." The one kind of lens that doesn't do well is what I call "thinky thoughts" lenses: people don't search the web looking for your opinions about life, the universe and everything. Informational lenses can suffer, too, because people tend to read them and leave without clicking on anything. Try to engage the reader. Squidoo lenses emphasize, encourage, and thrive from visitor engagement and interaction.
      
      
      4. Is it worth the time u put in (both SEO and revenue wise)?
      
      It's worth it as a hobby. As a job, I'm still not quite making minimum wage -- I'm expecting $700 on Pay Day this Friday -- but it's increasing nearly every month, and that's not counting my growing commissions from Amazon Associates sales, the odd Zazzle affiliate or Cafepress sale, all of which come from links placed on lenses.
      
      5. Any 'secret' formula u are willing to share?
      What to Write on to Get Traffic
      
      But what you write on isn't as important as the quality of your content. You need to give your readers what they want, something they can't get just anywhere on the web. Make the effort to create something useful, interesting, or well-curated (that is, you can recommend helpful resources, great vids, or the "best of the web" related to your topic, serving as a sort of concierge and reference librarian to help them find the good stuff out there on the web about their topic).
      
      Also, I didin't write it, but get the free Squidoo Step By Step guide written by some experienced Squids who wanted to save newbies some time/trouble. Some of their advice works for Hubpages as well.
      
      I've got a pile of How-to-Squidoo tutorials, but this isn't the appropriate place to shill my own work.
      
      FWIW, here's my Squidoo Earnings so far, updated each month after pay day.

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         mythbusterposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I tried to follow your link but it was a no go page. I will check back later to see what these earnings look like.
         
         In the meantime I am thinking about creating a lens, "The secret formula of remembering to log in at Squidoo and publish."
         
         Oops I forgot about my account over there.
         
         

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   2. 67

      relacheposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      1) As much time as it needs.  different topics take longer, some are quicker.
      2) Given that earnings/performance is tied to activity and updating, if you abandon your lenses, they will eventually stop earning for you. 
      3) Well-written and unique ones, just like what makes a good hub here
      4) I spend no time on SEO so that's a "yes."
      5) The secret is putting in persistent and consistent work, same as here.  If you want to skip that, you just wind up skipping the benefits too.  I started with Squidoo when they first started, and I've earned over $20,000 from them.

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2. 78

   Greekgeekposted 13 years ago

   Oh, whoops, I forgot about my hotlinking protection. Just lifted it for Hubpages. Don't everybody run out and hotlink my photos, now.
   
   (Basically, I'm a little over $10,000 for Squidoo earnings, since unlike Relache I was treating it as a hobby until this year.)

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3. 65

   anish92posted 13 years ago

   Thank u both for ur speedy replies and congrats on earning $10000+ from a site where I have made just $1 in 2 years!! But to be fair I only have 3 lenses online.
   
   Btw, a lot of Squidoo lenses seems to have a lot of cool and unique illustrations (Like giant Click Here arrows etc.) Can you generate them without HTML knowledge? Also, does the adsense ads on Squidoo really work? (I mean compared to other sites they are a bit hard to spot and sure don't grab my attention).

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      Flynn the Catposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Yep! A lot of the background graphic stuff, like the giant arrows, are actually modules - Squidoo has dozens of different modules you can use, from practical to plain weird. And they have about twenty different colour/font themes. You can do a lot more to make them look interesting (or overwhelming!)
      
      The adsense stuff? Ohhhh yeah The nice thing about the tier revenue system is that the total site revenue is shared, so it doesn't matter if you don't get ad clicks. And the payouts have been going up pretty much every month for the last couple of years - in 2008, it was 9c for the lowest payout and about $12 for the highest (per month, per lens). Now? It's 41c and $47 (well, technically $39 was adsense, there are some optional text link and chitika ads as well).

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