Squidoo: I don't get it

[YseUp]

Ok I've signed up to Squidoo.

But I don't get it... it's like a poor version of MySpace.

What's the point in having an ugly site that points to your proper site?

[procopywriter]

Squidoo, so far, has been a waste of time for me. I put a lot of work into creating a lens with great content.

The result? One visitor. Great payoff there.

Now I have to work to get traffic to it? Why don't I just work to get traffic to my real site?

[YseUp]

Interesting Joshua.

Everyone says that Google likes it and it will help drive people to your site, but to be honest I think Squidoo is a terrible site and I would never voluntarily use it myself. Don't care if it's Seth 'Guru' Godin's site.

But all the old-hands swear by it. So there must be something to it?

[quartz22]

There are a few top squidoo lensmasters that do really well out of it,i get a trickle of money from squidoo themselves every month,but i get more from affiliate products that they promote. Although not nearly enough for me to sit up and get excited about,and want to put any effort in to heavily promote them

To be honest i am thinking of just making my own sites and using my energy to promote them instead!

I will most likely just use squidoo to help send a bit of traffic to my own sites as well.

But i do think it could be useful for newbies who have not got any start-up money to do there own site,they can easily build a few lenses and make a some seed money so they can start building there own sites.

and you never know you could be lucky and hit on something big that brings home the bacon

[sgooey]

Google really likes Squidoo pages if they are properly optimized with groups, tags, links, and variety, and good content.

[stacyfox]

I'm no "old hand" but I've got one money site that gets 60 uniques a day from 4 lenses - half of which are from one lens. I've got about 30 active lenses in all. They don't take long to set up and when they "catch" they can give your main site some love.

I also use Squidoo to generate some high pr backlinks to my EZA articles. I publish 4-5 articles on the same topic at EZA. Then, I copy 1/3 of an article and put it in a text box on Squidoo. At the end of the article fragment, I put a variation of the "to continue reading, click here" button.

Then, I use blackboards or sticky notes to direct people straight to my money site.

I don't try to make money with Squidoo itself. I have any profits donated to Kiva. This way I can use the minimize ads feature and not have so many distractions away from the links that I want used.

Anyway, those are two ways I use Squidoo and I find that the relatively little amount of time invested gets some good returns.

Stacy

[Mrs S]

Once you create a lens how long should it take to be indexed into Google?

[TheNightOwl]

That's a nice tip, Stacy. Thank you.

I'll be watching this thread because I have to agree with the first two posters in my experience to date.

I know, i know, it gets crawled like every 13 seconds by the warm hand of Mummy-G, and all that... but as far as I can tell, it's basically just a fancy article directory that I can put my own affiliate links on.

I'm keen for the Squidoo-folk (squids?) to wade in to the debate (as it were).

TheNightOwl

[BlueJam]

Originally Posted by Mrs S

Once you create a lens how long should it take to be indexed into Google?

I've found a couple of days. Also if you drop a link to your lense from another site you own it can help a lot. Lenses aren't just for the traffic, they are also for the links you gain from the lens.

[timesaver22]

Hi been playing around for a few month now with squidoo and hub pages as a way of just increasing the numbers of links to one of my sites and it is working..

the site has moved up in the search listing on Google and I am seeing more traffic.

Ok I’m not making much from the lens and hubs...but that was never the idea..I am making from the traffic from Google...

they are free to set up easy to use so why not use them.....in the past i have played for links that got me a lot less then they do

[CDawson]

What I like to do is take my ezine articles and flip them alittle bit and paste them to a squidoo lens and put my actual site below every article, as far as getting traffic to the site, social bookmarking can take care of that.

[dmarzean]

Squidoo is useful with an article marketing campaign. It is just one more site with high pr to increase the seo of your main landing page.

It has its advantages over the typical article database due to the lack of editorial guidelines.

I don't think anybody will be making millions from their Squidoo lens, but I could be wrong.

If used in conjunction with other marketing efforts to drive traffic it can be effective in that aspect.

The trick to getting indexed quickly with Google, is the same as getting an article indexed. The lens has to be optimized for the keyword you are targeting and there can't be too many competing pages. Under 150,000 is usually best.

I think the confusion with BUM marketing methods is that you can see quick results by submitting just a couple of articles and setting up a lens. BUM marketing is a very time consuming endeavor. It can be effective, but for every dollar that you are saving, you better be willing to invest a couple hours of your time.

Doug

[Traffic-Bug]

i agree with the first 2 posters. I never see any point in Squidoo. You can just as well concentrate on driving traffic to your real site. The AJAX interfacce of Squidoo is horrible and there is no indication of any progress whatsoever when you click on buttons like Save Edit etc. I dont believe anybody is making any good money from their squidoo lenses though I have seen enterprising individuals put up "squidoo lenses for sale" but I never thought who would buy these.

[yourreviewer]

Some folks are making a killing from Squidoo. To think Squidoo is a waste of time and money is WRONG. People often come up with horrible lens and thoroughly deserve what they get. Take a look at the link below and you will understand what I mean.

Are you a Stay at Home Mom (or Dad) Interested in Earning a Monthly Income?

[Kay King]

To be honest i am thinking of just making my own sites and using my energy to promote them instead!

That's a "light bulb" comment.

I think of Squidoo as a TOOL - just like hubpages, article marketing, reciprocal links (a few good ones), directory submission, bookmarking, etc.

Using those methods will get traffic to your site or your blog when they are used correctly.

kay

[Simon74]

I traied squido in the past but did't work for me, I do think it's a bit of wast of time.

[Traffic101]

Hi, I've just come around to squidoo, so I can't really weigh in here. I've read other posts where people make a killing. But I've created a few lenses, what's the harm in getting more backlinks. But I've heard hubpages are great, and I really know nothing about them. Anyway this weekend i plan to do some reading and figuring things out. We'll see if it's time well spent.

I do know there is a warrior on here who offers a squidoo course for those wanting to learn more.

[Marhelper]

I primarily use Squidoo for SEO help but not to make sales from a product. There are those that swear by it and apparently do pretty well however.

[JackieLee]

Wow, it's so amazing to see this point of view since I do a lot of work on squidoo, make quite a bit of money from it, and teach people how to use it successfully.

There is money to be made with squidoo. Like anything else online it takes work, focus and you have to know what you are doing. To set up successful lenses you need to make sure you are making them very keyword targeted. You can easily build a few backlinks to the lenses and find them ranking very well.

You can put the RSS feed from your own site or blog in a module on your lens so people can click through to your own site. I get quite a bit of traffic to a variety of my money sites via sqiudoo. Whereas I may target bigger/more competitive keywords with my money site, I use very long tail keywords/less competitive keywords for my squidoo site, so I can get some traffic and then move it through to my money sites.

It is also great for a nice high PR do follow link back to your site.

I make a good deal of money from my lenses on squidoo every month. It's just like having a mini site up. It doesn't happen overnight, but what does?

IF you really think it's impossible to make money on squidoo I suggest you take a look at this post: Can Squidoo Make you $500 in one day? Yep. | Captain Squid

I love squidoo, it is a valuable tool in my SEO and money making arsenal.

Jackie

[Janet21]

@yourreviewer: I received your PM, but I don't have enough posts here to be able to respond. Please contact me through my lens and I will be happy to give you some advice on your lens.

Janet~

[mikemcmillan]

Most people don't stick around with Squidoo long enough to figure out how it works. I've had lenses get #1 front page rankings for affiliate product names for searches that returned over 400,000 pages on Google. I've got a Sqidoo lens right now that shows on the front page of Google and it has held it's position for over 4 months now. The search for the name of the affiliate product promoted returns over 300,000 pages.

I don't care what anyone says, if you learn the ropes you can make a killing with Squidoo. Apparently, no one here likes Squidoo, so I'm not going to spoon feed my techniques, but you need to have a keyword density of from 2.8-4.5% to make Google love you. I go for 3.5 and it works well.

Do some homework. Squidoo rules!

[SMD Marketing]

I have worked extremely hard on squidoo and have no results to show for it.
I had 2 lenses even up in the top 50 and nothing.

I am beginning to believe the only person making money is the owner, who is sucking the majority of the google adsense profits and calls his "sharing" with his members sharing.

When it comes down he is making a killing off the clicks created by all of us and not by the owner.

Smart man, he has us all doing his work with a smart way to get people to try.

I am willing to bet some people might be making alittle profit but the owner is creaming some bucks from all of us who thought this was the way to go.

The other Squidoo guru who is making money is the lady selling the "how to be successful using Squidoo". Catch the idea?

Follower the leader type of thing, more of a MLM idea that the owner dreamed up and is making a gazillion from us all.

I am going to buy a lense from someone else and do my marketing of it and see if I am wrong here. But something tells me only a select few are making any money with Squidoo while the rest of us bring those select people all the traffic.

[plexpert]

I use squidoo mostly for backlinks to my main sites. One of my friends in real life is making about $500 a month of squidoo and she doesn't know a think about making webpages. I guess it has it's appeal there where you can build pages easily without know much about seo, html java etc.

I haven't put much time into squidoo because:
1) You can't have an opt in page in squidoo and I do a lot of email marketing
2) You can't effectively use ppc marketing in my opinion because the user is sent to a content site with too many bounce links (other squiddo lenses, advertisements, etc).
3) You cannot track your affiliate sales.

I see a few people doing using PPC for squidoo lenses, I just don't know how it would work.

I guess it can be good for adsense if you find good keywords and work on seo. Good for people to get started with internet marketing if you've never built a website.

[Rebtl]

In my experience the people who make the most money from squidoo are making money by teaching other people how to make money on squidoo.

[GeorgR.]

its extremely wrong to think that squidoo is a waste of time.

However, it needs GOOD lenses and time, then the traffic will come. The benefit is also not the lens alone, but the PR coming from the lenses, and interlinking the lenses with your sites, adding your site's feed on the lenses and vice versa.

I have a bunch of lenses which rank VERY high on google for certain search terms and products. So it cannot be that wrong.

As always, this rule applied:

Don't depend on ONE thing - but use EVERYTHING you can get your hands on to your advantage.

[Samuel Lee]

What many have said is true for sure, squidoo is a free alternative to making your own site and a great one at that. I have mostly used it as a landing page in the past quite effectively. Google tend to love squidoo pages when they are properly optimized and tagged correctly, so if you don't have a website, its a great place to start!

[KentuckyJeff]

Wow, it's surprising that a lot of people don't know what's possible with Squidoo. There's a lot of people making a lot of money with Squidoo alone, but there's also a lot (more ?) that use their lenses for links to their other sites too. Some use several lenses in a network on whatever campaign they'te running. Setting up one campaign after another.

I just read a while back that one of the Big Guns at Squidoo had just had his first single lens to do $2,000 in a single month (1 lens). I know that's not Warren Buffett money, but the guy has like 400 lenses.

Google loves Squidoo, and if you put up a decent lens, submit a couple articles to eZineArticles with links to your lens, and a little promoting it, and you could be near the top of the SERPS for really not much work. Monetize the lens, have a link to any other of your money sites, and you've got a winner.

Also, for those that complained of getting traffic...if you put up a lens and then just leave it you won't see much traffic.

Also.....

I just bought Micro Niche Finder a couple of weeks ago. Just for the heck of it I did a Google search on it just now, and there's (2) Squidoo lenses on MNF on page 1, positions 3 & 4. That doesn't mean a whole lot with only 174,000 pages competing, but MNF pays a healthy commission through ClickBank, and I guarantee you that both those guys have made enough to be worth the 2 or 3 hours it took to do the lenses and maybe a couple of articles and/or links from other sites.

I have too few posts to add a link, but go to Squidoo dot com/micro-niche-finder, he's on page one.

Bet it didn't take this guy an hour to do this lens.

[brandonhess]

I use it for the SEO end. It ranks well with google so it helps get traffic to your site. They take about 20-30 minutes to set up, then you just let it go. Update it every so often,just to keep it fresh.

I like them.

[ss61288]

I have been using squidoo aswell and haven't had much success with it, but I'm not going to say that its been a waste of time because I've seen the power of lenses showing up in the first 2 or 3 results of google for a very competitive keyword. If you are using squidoo i think stay focused with it, im certainly going to be revisiting my lenses to clean and optimise them

[Nathan Hangen]

I've used Squidoo quite a bit, and I'm not sure if I can recommend it. I have sites that rank #1 for busy keywords...I don't have a lens for any of them.

Squidoo hasn't done me any favors, but it only takes a few minutes to make a lens.

[4deb]

Squidoo lenses help me drive traffic I may miss otherwise to websites...they aren't huge numbers

here's an example from my analytics for one of my websites:

squidoo.com (referral) 67 7.17%

on this lens, it has the opportunity to:

1. go to a website
2. buy my book

so if someone doesn't come across my book website, or my main site this is working for -- this is an extra net to catch visitors

[Alex Sol]

Oh, Squidoo... When I first started Internet Marketing, I was only building Squidoo Lenses and writing articles for EzineArticles. Was it worth it? Heck Yeah! Just look at my DAILY traffic stats for just ONE LENS:



... and I get 25%-35% CTR to my links from all my lenses.

- Lenses are free to build
- Lenses are easy to build
- Lenses are very easy to get indexed
- Lenses are relatively easy to get ranked HIGH in the SE...

I still build occasional lenses and all of them start getting decent amounts of organic visitors within weeks, sometimes within days. Google still seems to love Squidoo as well, so why not?

Alex

[AnneE]

I've had reasonably good luck with Squidoo. I like it for topics that I want to spend a day or two on and then periodically update. Probably my most successful lense is one that is gradually growing its number of visitors (okay, it's still only about 80 a WEEK).

I have some affiliate links in there about where to buy this product and periodically I make a sale from them. Just in this last month I sold $200 worth of a product which garnered a $50 affiliate payoff. Okay, I can't pay the mortgage with it, but you can bet the $50 made me think about what I could do to continue to increase visitors.

I think Squidoo is great for topics where you don't want to do even a mini website or a blog, but you have some information that people would find useful and some products to associate with that information.

Others use it as described above, to drive traffic to other websites or blogs.

[rlnorthcutt]

Marketing with Squidoo is just like any other strategy... it takes some time, effort and it needs to be part of a comprehensive larger plan. You may have to create several lenses to get one that is "worth it", and figure out the system.

If you are looking for immediate results, then you probably are not going to like ANY strategy out there... it can happen, but it can rarely be counted on.

One of the great things about Squidoo is that it is work that is done once with repeated pay-offs over time... getting one hit from a squidoo lens is not so exciting, but getting one hit a week forever is a different story. And - if you take the time to study what works and practice a bit, you could get great results like Alex!

One more note - not only can Squidoo pages get indexed quickly and build up PR for your site, but they are located on a different IP from your host. This means that most Search engines will give them even more importance when evaluating YOUR site...

One way link, different IP, easy to setup, no cost and highly flexible... its a fantastic tool. Your job is only to figure out IF its the right tool for you, and then how best to use it in your strategy.

Ron

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by KentuckyJeff

I just bought Micro Niche Finder a couple of weeks ago. Just for the heck of it I did a Google search on it just now, and there's (2) Squidoo lenses on MNF on page 1, positions 3 & 4.

one of them is mine

[mikemcmillan]

Plexpert said,
I haven't put much time into squidoo because:
1) You can't have an opt in page in squidoo and I do a lot of email marketing
2) You can't effectively use ppc marketing in my opinion because the user is sent to a content site with too many bounce links (other squiddo lenses, advertisements, etc).
3) You cannot track your affiliate sales.

Not true at all! You can have an opt-in page through Squidoo. I simply take a screen shot of my opt-in pop up from my main site, insert it into Squidoo with a clickable link to an HTML page I've set up at one of my domains, and bang--the names go into aWeber as slick as you please.

You say that you can't track your affiliate sales. Why not--everyone does that.

By the way, and I'm not criticizing folks here, but Squidoo is much more powerful than you think. I can pick any niche I wish on Squidoo, do some research, put up a lens and have it rank #1 or #2 on Squidoo for the name of the product and get it on the front page of Google 99% of the time. A lot of big name gurus use Squidoo lenses and I slap them silly even for the names of their own products. I do this because I have taken the time to study how it works and test, test, and retest my techniques.

I'm not being critical when I say this, but a lot of you are missing the boat on this.

Like anything else, it takes time to master.

[Alex Sol]

OPT-IN in Squidoo? Possible!
And using an image that when clicked takes you to a blank page with an opt-in form is outdated.

You can have an actual opt-in form on your lens now
Check this out: How to add an opt in form to your Squidoo lens
(not it is not my lens, or my method, but it works!)

Alex

[philleep]

squidoo could work if you put more time into it.

[FearlessIncome]

I never did well with Squidoo, either. I'll take the advice from here and modify my lens and see what happens.

[gerrihabib]

I would agree that Squidoo is a great place to start if you don't have a webpage or blog, as its free and it has heaps of easy to use templates. I've been using squidoo as a general information page about my business and it does well as a landing page for me! I wouldn't want to host my entire business on it, but as far as giving people general information and posting some affiliate links for my business, it works great! Some great posts on using it as business tool here though!

[tonywarrior2]

I followed some of the links in this thread and it looks like there are some dedicated and focussed people here making some money directly off their squid pages. More power to them.
My particular interest is in how lenses support a hub network beefing-up the backlinks, themes etc etc. Does anyone have some insight or experience into that aspect ?
Tony

[ebizman87]

Squidoo can be used to provide backlinks for your main site.

[Bennielechat]

Hey it's free to use folks that counts for something.

[Rich Mann]

I have been using Squidoo for months now and I think I have some descent lenses but the traffic is pathetic. I have spent a lot of time promoting, pinging, bookmarking, Twittering you name it to drive traffic but the results are dismal. Maybe someone would like to critique my lenses and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

[GeorgR.]

i am now #1 (yes, ONE) for "micro niche finder" on google...should asnwer your question. I have other lenses which rank well too.


Secondly, you all know how "reviews" can turn many visitors into buyers. And the lenses are excellent to make pre-sell review pages for whatever products.

[hanleo46]

Originally Posted by YseUp

Ok I've signed up to Squidoo.

But I don't get it... it's like a poor version of MySpace.

What's the point in having an ugly site that points to your proper site?

Hello YseUp

We all need to find ways to get content in front of visitors that are interested...some call it getting in the way of traffic....( thats what Squidoo has lots of)

Think of it as owning more internet real estate, or building our virtual assets....so how do we get our content marketed?

There is a great way to integrate Squidoo, articles, and blogs together into a giant traffic net, by building keyword targeted lens campaigns....that not only builds links, but generates direct traffic to your website, blog, or affiliate landing pages==>>

[A8ch]

This is quite an interesting thread.

I am a Squidoo newbie. I published my first lens less than a month ago as a tool to drive traffic to another site. Traffic to that site has already increased and so have sales. I'm still learning about Squidoo and finding out what it can do, and I find this thread particulaly informative because it reveals an interesting range of points of view.

A tool can only be as effective as the skill of the person using it. So before I started working on my lens, I looked at scores of lenses to see how they were presented and to get a general feel for Squidoo. I looked at lenses with high rankings and those that were probably never seen by anyone besides the lensmaster.

I noticed the various ways people use Squidoo. Not everyone has a primary money-making motive. Some simply want to socialize and meet people who share their interests, and that was obvious from their lenses. I recognized those who specialized in making money directly from Squidoo and could see the strategies they use.

As I climb the Squidoo learning curve, I know that I've got to use my lens in conjunction with other tools and tactics to get the most benefit from it. I do have the advantage of a few years of online marketing experience so I'm familiar with many of the pitfalls. I also understand the elements of SEO and so on.

I think every lensmaster owes it to him or herself to first develop a clear understanding of Squidoo benefits and limitations, and then figure out if (and/or how) they can navigate these components to reach their objectives. And that ought to be done without being distracted by what others may be experiencing - positively or negatively.

BTW, my lens is in my signature, if you care to take a look.

Hermas.

[misterlmno]

i have never tried Squidoo, I was going to give it a go soon, I hope I do not waste my time!. Thanks for the input guys.

[ConnieMuller]

There are a few sites like Squidoo that can be used for the same purpose.

In the end - it pays off - in my mind anyway.

[Droopy Dawg]

Originally Posted by Mrs S

Once you create a lens how long should it take to be indexed into Google?

I had 1 lens that got indexed within 24 hours... but that was 1 out of the 20 or so lenses that I've created.