Making Money With Squidoo. Could you clarify?

No; it's not always easy to find exactly what you're looking for (without looking through hundreds of threads). :rolleyes:

Even many of its greatest enthusiasts, and people selling WSO's on Squidoo, and Squidoo-related services of various kinds, are generally not pretending that it's a sensible long-term business opportunity. They're claiming it's a good, quick, easy way to get started and gain some experience (I don't agree with them about that, but I do agree with them that's it's not a "long-term serious business"). They tend to admit openly that they think people should try to graduate from using Squidoo to using their own sites, after learning the basics, and that they earn more themselves from their own sites than from their lenses, and have higher CTR's and conversion-rates that way, too (unsurprising, when you look in detail at how they work).

Yes, they are. I don't think anyone can argue with this, really.

I don't know, but it doesn't matter anyway, because you can make more, and much more safely, by using your own sites instead.

Contrary to what some people imagine, you don't need any money to have your own sites on your own hosting.

This is true of many other things, too.

This thread will really help you, if you take the time to read it through carefully and follow the links to other threads inside it, and read those too. It will take you a couple of hours to do, but I think you'll be pleased you did! http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...en-locked.html

If you're willing to put a lot of work into something, that's all the more reason not to make this your business model: put your work into something you yourself own and control.

I've also noticed those wso's rising up these days. As for your questions, building 330 lens and earning a total of 10k per month from all those lens is total crap. Its not like you set and forget. You also have to do some marketing (atleast SEO) to make money from those lens. And I dont think creating such 330 lens is something too realistic.

My Personal Experience:
A few months ago I set up a really awesome lens. It was a personal review of a guide, and had the potential to earn like +400$ easily, as the keywords I went after were really awesome. After doing some really hardcore SEO for the lens (Off page SEO mainly), I brought it on first page nearly. Took me 2 weeks to get there. I am sure I would have brought it in top 3 for those multiple keywords within 6 days max from that point on, but that was when Squidoo totally screwed it up. They banned my lens with no prior warning, and all that happend was that I was just standing there see'ng my hardwork of weeks going in river as a waste, and there was nothing I could do. Because once a page is banned, they dont change their decission. So that was really bad news for me. Thats when I learned that try to depend on others as less as possible (especially when it comes to business).

Before you rush into this, and go buy squidoo wso's, let me tell you exactly what they are. Those wso's are total waste of money and time for someone with some basic knowledge (like keyword research etc). All they tell you is go to Google Keywords tool, search for low competition keywords, get the content written and outsource the whole marketing thing (go hire someone to build links to those now). Thats all! If you just search a little over internet a little you will already learn all that. So dont waste your resources on those wso's.

My Final Suggestion:
The best thing I can suggest you is that forget about squidoo, simply invest a couple of dollars in hosting and domain, and go build your own ssite. That is something that can even change your life. So instead of creating lens, why not spend time to set-up 1 niche site (with like 10+ pages) every week. Spend some good time on marketing them (social media, seo, video marketing etc), and believe me you will earn much more this way! And who knows when you might hit a golden nugget (like one that can earn you like 100$ per day). And the best thing is, nearly everything is under your own control and creative power. Plus, lets say you need some big sum of money in emergency in your life sometime, then you can actually your niche sites to save your butt. Believe me, it is much better this way.

Feel free to ask any more questions you may have :-)

P.S thanks and rep is definately appreciated lol :-D

Well that certainly is a hell of a lot information. Thanks on that!

But considering creating my own websites involves expenses compared to squidoo. I too thought that squidoo looks risky, but the "free" point here is tempting lol. Creating sites involves hosting and domain and then there's external SEO which either cost or requires learning curve. And to create multiple websites will cost even more of money which I don't really have... And when you put all of that together, for a newbie, it overwhelming. And the reason is because you invest in a website without truly knowing that it will rank and succeed. That was the primary reason to begin with squidoo... there's no guarantee of success with it, but it doesn't take money out of pocket if it doesn't.

And now it's even harder to decide as there are a lot of positive reviews as well as negative feedbacks on squidoo... Tough one here.

I am ,however, grateful for provided information

My answer to using Squidoo, (though I'm no pro at it), is that while it may be able to bring in some side-line income, it would not be wise to put too much time and effort (and/or money) into it, for the very reason that yes, you do not own or really have control over any of the content you publish on Squidoo. I mainly use Squidoo as a secondary site to help promote my blogs. One of my lenses actually is doing well, and is on the first page of Google for a while now, while my website in the same niche has not made it to the first page yet. However the lens IS sending my site around an average of 1,000 visitors a month. Squidoo sent me my first check last month, $11.00, and now this month, $20. That's after I've been on Squidoo for over a year, with about 20 lenses. One more thing - it is never wise to put all your eggs in one basket (I also use Hubpages

It's a good way to make money, especially if you are new to affiliate marketing/blogging. Follow their terms of service and you can build a profitable side business. You can make money directly from squidoo every month based on your traffic. The real money is getting people to buy through your affiliate links like amazon.

I think its a stretch to make a lens every day. Do a little keyword research and find some videos and photos to complement your lens. It should take a couple of days of research, plus I always put up at least one article to link to my lens. Once you have a good lens, you don't have to do much except answer comments and keep an eye on your rankings. I use squidoo as a free testing ground. It shows me if there is a real interest in something and whether I want to start a blog or a kindle book on the subject. Try it out and good luck.

Following on from this discussion somewhat, can Squidoo be a viable option for funneling traffic to an offer / squeeze page / content on your own website?

Im intrigued that realnetworker is bringing in 1,000 visits per month from one lens. Could be interesting scaling that up.

Hey guys, thanks a lot for your answers, that helped a lot.

To Alexa, I respect your opinion and I appreciate information you've provided.
And my mind is by all means not closed to other possibilities as it may have appeared, however I agree I have lack of knowledge when it comes to website creation which includes domain,hosting etc.

But that does not necessarily mean that I don't want to try it just because it is not free. I simply stated that based on my , obviously low, knowledge, squidoo might have been a good alternative to website creation. But now that you mentioned that expenses could be lower than I expect I might as well reconsider my path.

I don't mind buying hosting ( which I already have ), but the thing you said that I could use sub-domains for different websites.... Well let's say I thought I would never look credible having sub-domain for different blogs and thought that I need brand new domain for every blog I create. But is not right?

Again, thank you guys for your input , very much appreciated!

Sincerely

If you are going to use squidoo stick to only doing lenses such as product reviews and best 'x' of 2012 etc... Basically things to do with Amazon or Ebay, since those sites love each other Leave clickbank out of it, and don't go into the niches you find on clickback.

Think tangible goods! And you'll be fine Saying that, stay away from penis pills or anything that suckers people in! I'm sure Squidoo wont like those subjects either.

So watches, kitchen appliances, toys, movies (nothing x-rated or disgusting), clothes (nothing pervy ), garden tools and so forth... you get the picture.

Furthermore, If you do use them, I suggest you try that theory of $2 per lens out on a small number of lenses, and see whether it is true. So only make between 30-50, and see how many of those you can achieve $2 a day on. No need to spend too much time on them to get results. Plus, that should give you enough money to then start on your own sites.

Simples!!

Dude, I know that creating your own website seems like much more efforts, money and time, but believe me its not! If you are that much of a newbee, I can actually guide you throughout the process, step by step. Thats the best I can do for you :-)
Believe me dude, staying from squidoo as a source of income is the best thing to do.

Its possible but its very tough...
Now you have to think it yourself that can you do it yourself?

For me its no.. but if its long term target then you can start... just not losing the stamina

Edit:
I saw some people said about making niche websites...but lets be practical... new bought niche websites are doing bad in Google unless we work very hard on them .. both quality and quantity...
So shall we go for niche websites of so many sites ... 50-60.... for me ..no.

Last month I banked 270 bucks on Squidoo, and I had only 2 big and 3 smaller lenses. (Okay, I have like 15 more lenses, but they are crappy at making money. I created them when I didn't know what I'm doing.) So it's not too hard to earn 1-200 bucks per month, but it's almost impossible to create hundreds of lenses that really earn. I think the best option is to make 5-6 REALLY great lenses, get them to Tier 1, so you'll get 60 bucks for each of them. (And you can earn on Amazon as well. December is really great for me, I gathered $220 until 15th.)

One well-known and reputable marketer, Jennifer "PotPieGirl" Ledbatter has an excellent course and she starts newbies doing Squidoo lenses to get going quickly and get the feel of how all the elements work together
to be prepared for the standard methods, all of which are also included.

Yes i have the course, yes it is endorsed by several big names and no this is not an affiliate link, just a tip for fellow Warriors... go to oneweekmarketing.com and see for yourself. Good luck

Just do it and try it by yourself. Read WSOs and/or in the forum could be the good jump start but please don't let our opinion stop you to move foward.

It is not that easy create and get 2$ per lense. There are many a lot of factors e.g. niches, competition, timing, google algorithm, backlink, on-page, ..... which always keep chaning from times to times. No one can garuntee it will work forever.

The PRO of the Squidoo is free, don't take much time to create (compared to create a website), and it is high pagerank!

The big CONS is that you have a risk because you run on the third party operation. What if Squidoo shutdown or ban your account? What if Google didn't give much credit to Squidoo like today (and your lens become only the same as 1 page website)? If any of the case happen you have to start from almost ZERO again. But if you build your own website, you can move, backup, migrate, 301 redirect, or do everything you want on your own site and your content.

You might use Squidoo just for test a niche, if success then scale up to build as your own website then use Squidoo as a backlink.

So, now Squidoo is useful and can make money - but no one garuntee for the long-run. Just make sure that you dind't put your whole biz on Squidoo alone.

Thank you guys for answering my questions, very much appreciated.

I agree to the opinion that I shouldn't put all eggs into one basket and in this case, all my business to squidoo. It's not like I'm blindly jumping in and working my way to millions there, which is why I created this thread in the first place.

Another reason why I would like to test out squidoo is not only because it's a platform of making money, but also to improve my writing skills and I would like to check people's impressions on what I'll write. As English is not my native language, I have a lot of space for improvement in terms of grammar and the writing itself ( well, you get the point ). But I will as well try to build website of my own. It's not the technical stuff I'm afraid off, but rather all that SEO, backlinking stuff which I have no bloody idea about which I will start learning now I guess...

Anyway guys, thanks for your input in this thread and thanks for opening my eyes. It's sometimes hard to choose what's right from all this information overload.

Sincerely.

This is a bump, but here's a site that started with the review model, worked on quality reviews and wrote Articles based on that niche, and lo and behold - It's raking in the money.

Started in 1999, but I think it gained traction quite soon. But it goes to show just how well a site can do through all the Google changes if the owner just focuses on content and visitor interaction.

The site is:

dpreview.com

It gains well over half a million hits per month, and you can clearly see the person sends people to Amazon via a neatly made widget. I assume that site in particular is probably making over 30,000 sales on Amazon per month.

30k Likes on facebook too, and users are returning and participating.

I used to be of the opinion that Review sites couldn't be advertised in any other way than to get free traffic or paid traffic, with perhaps a few referrals. But, after seeing quite a few sites like these, I see that you can actually do quite well with return traffic, social marketing and every other form of marketing.

To the point where some of your reviews are taken and published in popular magazines and newspapers. What I was right about was that there was not much chance in being able to socially market your review site and so forth with small 5-10 page or even 50-100 page sites that only focus on a small product range and include no articles that relate to that product.

Sure you could perhaps get some traction if you do a great review on an upcoming product and it gets shared around, but other then that it's unlikely.

What you have to do is choose a product type that you can build into an authority site (Juicer in this case), and then start to not only write reviews but also informative articles that relate to Juicers. For example, recipes you can make after you've extracted the juices from certain fruits and vegetables.

It'll take a while but you'll have a single site capable of bringing you a very good income. You don't even have to be as active as this site, or try as hard. Even doing a fraction of what it has done would lead to a great income.

Point I'm getting at is, beyond choosing a niche, buying a domain and some hosting, there should be no other costs other than cost of time to create content, unless ofcourse you decide to outsource.

Build lenses, do some services and slowly build yourself a decent authority site and you'll thank me later Low cost, but don't go picking something obscure that not many people will want to talk about

I don't think you'd be able to do an authority site on Juicers as big as dpreview.com, but I'm sure you could still do it to the point where it earns high 4-5 figures.

Infact I've seen a few sold that did those figures based on Juicers

I've pretty much laid out the basic gist of building Amazon review sites, whether big or small, albeit I've skipped the details but you can learn those for free. No need to purchase WSO after WSO about it.

It really is this simple. I know from experience because I went the route of creating tons of sites with GREAT long reviews, but there wasn't much in the way of articles, or product selection or ways in which people could discuss topics based on that product. Only reviews that people could rate, and then visit Amazon to purchase.

Meaning my only traffic was from Google, and since I was backlinking to get the traffic, I lost it all and now I have tons of sites that don't earn. My reviews WERE good, but great content wont get you far if Google doesn't see that visitors are using your site for more than a few minutes and then leaving. It wants to see users login, browse several pages, leave comments, share things on their social profiles and linking to it. The Google bot follows them, and it observes what that visitor does.

I've got a few things on the horizon, so I'm not stuck, but I have chosen a few products to build sites on that I'm looking to build over a 3-5 year period rather than a few months that will depend on more than just Google, which should be good.

Sorry for the long post but it really is this simple with anything You can earn a quick buck, sniping keywords and building backlinks, but it'll catch up to you eventually, and you'll regret your path. Some people are lucky and they've not yet been hit, but I'm sure it wont be like that forever. The key is to take time to improve things, and to think about your visitor.

Aslong as the product is not obscure and rarely used, I'm sure there will be enthusiasts for most types of products (even Juicers). Just like there is for trains, cars, cameras, socks, shoes, clothes and so forth...

THIS IS BASICALLY A SHORT WSO, IF ANYONE WANTS TO PAY ME FOR THIS, MESSAGE ME AND YOU CAN SEND ME SOME MONEY FOR THE LOW PRICE OF JUST $9.97! Ta!

Make your own website, choose your niche and start building a list! Alexa Smith, always makes excellent points not only in this thread BUT other threads as well. She is extremely knowledgeable and knows exactly as to what she is talking about. So if you want to succeed, you should take her points into GREAT consideration because she speaks reality, and reality my friends is something that we need to be aware of AT ALL TIMES!