What Is Squidoo?

I have heard about something called ‘Squidoo’ being spoken about on blogs for a while now but I have no idea what it is. Cash Juke recently wrote a post on his blog about how it is possible to use Squidoo to help increase sales with affiliate marketing.

Can someone explain a little bit about what this is and how it works?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who would benefit from this being explained.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squidoo

Was that so difficult?

 

well, i was like that a month ago. i didnt know what is squidoo all about but, recently i was the one needed to update our existing squidoo lens.
And btw, thanks "dlm" for that wiki link.

Ok this is what i learned in squidoo:

you could create pages called Lenses. And you can name that lens according to what you like, as long as that name is not taken yet. for example your lens #1 is about pc games and you name that lens "pcgames" thus the lens #1 URL would be like. ww.squidoo.com/pcgames
when you login to your dashboard (link located at top right) you will see all of the lenses you have created in the "my lenses" tab.

Now once you have created your lens, you could add modules in it. remember the Lens is your page then the modules are the "contents" for your page, you could choose from the following:
1. Amazon - feature fav books from amazon
2. Flickr Photos
3. Guestbook
4. Link List
5. Poll Module
6. RSS: Add Your Own Feed
7. Table of Contents
8. Text / Write module
9. Twitter Follow
10. Youtube vids

you could add the same modules again and again. In my case i use text/write module more often coz its where I paste my paragraphs for a specific topic. You could also reorder modules.

and the best thing is you could share your lens to a specific group of the same interest.

ok hope it helps.

 

Squidoo is a website designed to make it easy for anyone, for free, to set up a single page on a topic he or she knows or cares a lot about. Advertising revenue is shared with these content creators, and some of it is given to charity. Squidoo was launched in October 2005 by Squidoo.com, LLC based in Irvington, New York; the site came out of beta testing in March 2006.

Squidoo is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlight one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise. Lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, people or places, hobbies and sports, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Lenses aren't primarily intended to hold content; more emphasis is placed on recommending and then pointing to content on the web. Annotation and organization and personalization delivers context and meaning.

Users who create lenses are called lensmasters. A lensmaster uses the tools available online to provide links, feeds, abstracts, and lists to users who are trying to make sense of a topic. For example, a single lens could point to Flickr photos, Google maps, blogs, eBay auctions, YouTube videos, and other links. Lensmasters are encouraged to promote personal agendas, expertise, causes, products, and opinions.

Squidoo splits its revenue with its "co-op" of lensmasters. 5% goes straight to charity, first. Then 50% goes to the lensmasters. 45% goes to Squidoo. The site is estimating that nearly half of all the lensmasters on the site are donating their royalties to any of 65 featured charities, ranging from NPR and the American Heart Association to smaller organizations like Chimp Haven and Planet Gumbo.

Squidoo was founded by author, speaker, and notable blogger Seth Godin. On Godin's founding team was his book editor Megan Casey, former Fast Company employee Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr.

 

What's cool about Squidoo is that you can create laser targeted lenses with valuable information and create your own network of inter-related lens. Squidoo lenses also tend to rank high with search engines which makes them that much more profitable...

You can also create Squidoo lenses and resell them for profit. Although I haven't tried this method personnally, I've heard of a couple of successful marketers that have been making a killing building and reselling Squidoo lenses for profit...

 

Here are two lenses I've written about Squidoo:

www.squidoo.com/why
www.squidoo.com/what

That should give you a good introduction.

 

do you not know how to use google?

 

It's not about using a search engine. It's about using an online publishing platform.

 

It's really not that hard to use Squidoo for the first time. It will guide you step by step as you create a lens, and the platform is very user-friendly. A little surfing around the site will also give you some ideas on how to improve your squidoo lenses.

 

My squidoo lens doesn't explain squidoo but if you want to take a look its in my signature

 

I think he meant "why couldn't you just Google Squidoo to figure out what it is"

 

I put about 40 hours building a very good lens to educate people about SEO. But in the end I have had maybe 12 visits to my website... Not what I would call good ROI.

 

I spend a few minutes on my lenses and get maybe a free hundred visits.

That's what I call pretty solid ROI.

 

My Quidoo lens is targetted at artists wanting to sell more art online. because it's niche it gets some nice traffic (i hope)

 

nice step by step tips. thanks for sharing

 

I did not search on Google because I thought I'd get a better insight from people on here who have used it.

Thank you to the ones who were not sarcastic or insulting.

 

Do you get paid by the amount of people that visit your lens??

 

Not directly. http://www.squidoo.com/pages/paymenthelp

 

It's revenue sharing so it's by click on ads.

 

Not quite. AdSense revenue is pooled together, and then distributed between Lensmasters. You do not directly earn from click-through and cost-per-click like on other sites. This is to prevent click-fraud.