Is Squidoo worth the effort?

Squidoo is OK IMHO as a supplement to one's main blogs. It is free to create a mni-site and can result in backlinks. However, one needs to be dilligent and patient to see results. Squidoo can also help you achieve a higher page ranking. I'd say give it a whirl if you enjoy building lenses.

Like Sandra just mentioned, I too heard Squidoo recently changed all of their links to nofollow ... that certainly makes it much less appealing from an Internet Marketing perspective.

I heard one guy who was making 6 figures a year from Squidoo lenses lost his account after a few years, cutting off his entire income.

Might want to be careful about that..

I wouldn't spend time on it. I've tried various Squidoo stuff over the past couple of years and not had any of it make money for me (other projects have done pretty well). And as Sandra mentioned above, there are changes afoot that are going to make it even harder unless you want to spend all your time over there. Add to that the potential to lose everything on someone else's decision (ie, Squidoo owns the lens, not you), and it's just too much trouble – and risk – for too little reward.

did you guys know squidoo was noindex/nofollow now? I was trying to get this squidoo indexed and ranked #1 but it seems impossible, i fired about 100 backlinks to it to see if it would index.

I heard you have to be at a certain level and they will remove the noindex/nofollow.

tbh im not suprised if they don't charge people to increase their level.

Yes Squidoo is no follow now and I certainly wouldn't be building any business around it but that was a given from the start.

I use it to promote products that just come on the market or are soon to appear, but I also would add put up a you tube video and a blog post. The ideas to rank 2 or 3 different platforms on the 1st page.

Squidoo can be a traffic source for your site. Also, there are some earning opportunity from Squidoo itself. Though squidoo is nofollow now but still they will provide dofollow backlinks to the trusted lensmasters. I think it can be worth the effort and a reliable traffic source.

there is a good amount of traffic flowing through the squidoo community especially if you get lens of the day.

If Amazon is part of you strategy squidoo can be useful to you. Most of the modules work hand and hand with Amazon. What a lot of writers on squidoo seem to be doing now is picking an issue with a product, and telling you how to solve that problem. Then using the modules to make money around the product.

Another common strategy is just general review, or something personal like "Help me pick a wedding dress", or "7 games I love to play on PS".

As far as how long. I can't really give you a time frame since I've only made a few dollars with squidoo. There are some Warriors that have done real well with it, and they would be good to talk to.

Also the new changes seem to have made it more difficult to make money using squidoo as a link source. Maybe simply easier to just create your own blog and put your effort into something you actually own.

Since it's no follow now, means you can forget about it, because it's just a waste of time.

The value of no follow links........................

a lot, as it looks so natural to have 100% follow links.

squdioo is an excellent source of income as it allows and still has massive amounts of traffic potential.

chose a niche, write quality content about the subject, comment on the top 100 articles on squidoo related to your niche (make sure these interesting, whitey,funny) two reasons to do this.

first - the original writer needs to approve the comment
second- readers do read comments, if they find your comment useful they will click on your profile which will lead them to your lenses (exposure)

once they are on your lenses, lead them to articles on your personal blog.

once they are on your blog = $$$

if i was starting from scratch with a low budget it is an ideal step.

With Squidoo going Global No-follow I'd say no.

Everything is now self-contained. From their Adsense engine to sharing Amazon and other affiliate network profits. You can do better on your own with your own sites and own accounts. Find some narrow niches. You'll do better.

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the great information - I've been meaning to start a Squidoo lens, and in addition to the fact that I just started publishing on Kindle, thinking it would help my books.

However, how valuable is it now? I know you don't want all "dofollow" links because that looks unnatural - you want a combination of "dofollow" and "nofollow" links, but how useful would it be to build a lens there for my current and future Kindle publications and other online marketing projects?

Any further information would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

Take care,

Joe Chengery

If your looking to use Squidoo as a linking platform ... those days are over. Squidoo was sailing high up until the end of "2012" ... shortly after that big "G's" Panda and Penguin updates sent it tumbling.

By Squidoo managements own admission, the site was becoming inundated by authors that were taking advantage of the open atmosphere by writing hundreds of pages of thin and spammy content.

At the end of it, there were too many pages that consisted of little more than a few sentences of text and dozens upon dozens of affiliate and outbound links.

Squidoo took proactive measures and is currently in the process of culling out pages and lensmasters that are gaming their tier payment system, violating their TOS, or utilizing their platform as a venue for building link wheels.

Yes- At least a handful of lensmasters (with hundreds of pages of content) have had their entire accounts removed for various reasons outlined above... Cry for them of you will , but they weren't following the rules.

Most Squidoo lensmasters as they are called have had to tweak or delete at least of few of their lenses to stay in compliance, for some it's been many.

As for making money and the time and effort involved... If you start now you can probably build a small residual income by the end of this year... If you continue to grow your Squid account, and Squidoo can get back into big "G's" good graces, you may be able to eventually make a modest or part time income with Squidoo.

It's just like any other type of online venture - you'll get out of it what you put into it. Squidoo is a great platform for learning the in's and out's of IM. I don't think it's wise to put all of your eggs into one basket though. For me Squidoo is only a part of my IM portfolio.

and as for backlinking ... From a Squidoo HQ post:
you can read the entire post here : Changing Link Status On Squidoo | SquidooHQ powered by Squidoo

Squidoo is great for an extra traffic source for your websites, as the articles seem to rank quite well so they are always a good web 2.0 to use for SEO.

In terms of how much money the make, it isn't a lot even if you have one that is getting a lot of traffic. I had a lens that had 12,000 unique visitors in one month in June of 2010 and yet it was only making about $30 a month. However, it was making me a lot of money because I was getting a bunch of that traffic coming to my money site, and the visitors were highly targeted.

I always used Squidoo to create backlinks and to get traffic and the result was awesome. You should give it a try it will not cost you anything and it takes very less time to monetize content.

John, good points. Think I'll order curry for takeout as well. Sounds good!

A decent squdio lenses costs $5, add another one hour's work to make it a good lenses.

Their are pros and cons, weigh them up and make a judgment call, I would say use it as a traffic source.

said it 100's of times, do follow links are not the be all of seo.

internet marketing forum not seo forum.

Squdioo is a great marketing tool, even if the seo purpose has been hit it still has value.

will I carry on using squdioo - yes I will.

Yes. If you have someone to do it for you.

I had the same Question as China here and I'm glad to know about these information about squidoo. I created a new account on squidoo a few days ago and I had a hard time publishing my lens.

To be successful on Squidoo you must have a belief in your own abilities. If you believe that you can be the best around here, your belief will manifest into beautiful lenses which will be appreciated by all the others. You need to believe that you have the skills and courage to learn and do what it takes to be an excellent lensmaster. Believe in your self and the world will believe in you.

Well IDK if it's harder or easier than normal niche sites (however free) because I haven't made a penny with either, but it takes a lot of work to many anything from Squidoo. Good for back links and you can monetize the lenses pretty easily, if you have good content and a good niche--you could make some money. But it won't be much. Sure a couple people may make a fair amount of money but it takes a lot of work and it's really hard to rise to the top of that hierarchy. Most make nothing.

If you want to be under the grace of someone else by all means do it. I would recommend you get your own domains instead though.

No, it's not. I've tested this extensively with part of my staff of VAs and have found it's ROI not to be worth the time invested. And I've been testing this since it's inception and still have over 2 dozen lenses out there that are undergoing some traffic testing, but I've come to the conclusion that it's not worth my resources.

When you're investing time and effort into a 3rd party property you have to look at the aggregate ROI it's giving you when you benchmark it compared to others such as iTunes, Youtube, Kindle, Nook, CB, FB, POF, etc.

I'm a huge Seth Godin fan, but to me, Squidoo falls short on so many levels I don't even know where to begin.

If anyone has a radically different experience, I'm all ears. But I've had far better success focusing on my own blog network(s) and other websites such as Youtube, eBay, iTune, the Kindle platform, etc.

RoD

Careful Rod, bit of common sense kicking in there

Squidoo used to do very well for me. I have 25 sites that point to my $$$ sites. I tracked and monitored these sites EVERY day for a year for a book I am writing. Anyone could create a Squidoo site, blast links at it and end up on Googles page one in less that 2-3 weeks and would stay there forever by just adding posts every 2-3 weeks, but NOW, since April 1st, between Google Algo Updates and Squidoo being basically de-ranked lower than HubPages I cannot even get my 1-2 yr old sites to show up in PAGE 2-4.I lost all of my page one property at Squidoo and out of roughly 20 GREAT longtail phrases for each site, only 1/2 pull up my Squidoo site anymore. I think more is happening there , than they are telling us!!! Truly a shame and a mess and I cannot figure it all out and don't intend to spend even more time doing so. I have thousands of hours invested in 2012 getting to this level of income from my money sites and now nothing on the ones that rely on Squidoo traffic and high PR. Luckily I know better than to put all of my eggs in one basket like before, so its not a bankrupt situation, but it's what we live with and deal with when using other peoples real estate and rules to drive traffic. I think Squidoo is having a 1929 Crash , and i don't want to be part of the crowd jumping from buildings.

It depends on what you're using it for.

If you want to monetize it directly, it might be okay, but they seem to be tightening everything up there, making it harder to get started, at least than it used to be.

If you want it for backlinks, they're all nofollow, so much less use than it used to be.

Hi,

I think marketer like Seargent Logan making a few hundred $$$ with squidoo btw. with only 1 lens?
Does now hubpages ranks better than squidoo?

Squidoo vs Hubpages is it better to use it as a traffic source to get leads?

best wishes
marco005