How Do I Get Started With Squidoo? What Do I Make My First Lens About?

Today you are going to sign up to Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/ and make your first lens.

This is where many people get hung-up, deciding what idea, subject or topic (commonly called a niche) to get started with. All we are doing today is making a practice lens to get you used to Squidoo and how it works. A great place to start is with something you know so I suggest making your first lens about your home town, city, village or wherever you live.

Take a look at some of these lenses:-
http://www.squidoo.com/Albany
http://www.squidoo.com/plum_island
http://www.squidoo.com/quabbin
http://www.squidoo.com/EugeneOregon
http://www.squidoo.com/cardiff-guesthouses
http://www.squidoo.com/torquay

Take a few minutes to write down any attractions in your local area, places of historic interest, famous or old buildings, tourist attractions or anything else interesting nearby. Have any famous people been born, lived in or visited your hometown? If you don’t know this information, visit your local library and borrow a book on local history or your local tourist information office and pick up some brochures.

The url (address) and title of your lens are important. For this example let’s imagine you live in Squidtown, Squidooland. The url you would claim for your lens would be www.squidoo.com/Squidtown or if Squidtown was already taken then you could have Squidtown-Squidooland or visit-Squidtown or beautiful-Squidtown.

We will talk more about tags later but when setting up your first lens Squidoo will ask you for 3 tags. In this case we could put
Squidtown
Squidtown Squidooland
Mr Squid (who we know is the famous author of the Squid Sagas and was born in Squidtown)
as our 3 tags.

The Intro Module

Your lens will already have an intro module ready for you to edit. Give it a title (the name of your hometown) then just write a couple of paragraphs about your hometown for example:-

Squidtown, Squidooland is my hometown. It is a quiet place with just 4,000 squid residents located between the Big Squid Mountains and the sea.

Squidtown is well known as the birthplace of the fabulously famous Mr Squid, author of the best-selling Squid Sagas. Here, also are made the wonderful leather belts made famous by the top celebrity superstar Miss Squishy Squidx.

Save your intro then upload a picture for your lens, preferably one you have taken of somewhere in your hometown.

Click “Keep this Draft” at the top of your page – don’t click “Publish” yet!

Next add some modules – a write module, link list, another write module, amazon module, another write module, ebay module, guestbook, flickr photos & google blog search. You can of course add whatever and as many modules as you like and re-order them.

With this example you could write a few paragraphs (I suggest you write your text in MS word so that you can spell check and grammar check it – then cut and paste into your write module) about the main attractions in your hometown and insert a picture. The linklist you could use to link to sites featuring attractions, hotels, restaurants or anything else in your area. As you finish each module, click “Keep this Draft”.

The next write module you could include some information and a picture about the famous person from your town. It is ok to take this information from wikipedia as long as you give them credit and link back to them. Then in the amazon module you could feature books or dvds by or about this person. The next write module could be about a product that is produced in your area and the ebay module could feature some of these items for sale on ebay. Make sure you change the title of each module from the standard ‘Great Stuff on ebay’ to relate to the content of your module. Add some Flickr photos and a Google blog search and you’re finished. You can now click “Publish”.

When you first publish your lens you will see on your Squidoo dashboard that beside it there is a huge number and grey circle with a white dash. The number is your lensrank which will get higher (lower number) as time goes on and the day after you make your lens the grey circle should change to a green one containing a tick.

If you need more help with making your first lens take a look here
http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-do-squidoo

How and When Do I Get Paid by Squidoo?

Squidoo pays out every month by PayPal. Usually you get paid around the 10th of the month but I have had payments as early as the 6th or as late as the 15th. Payments are 2 months in arrears, so in March you get paid for January, in April for February and so on.

The money you get from Squidoo is for your share of their advertising royalties, Google Adsense etc. You get paid a share for every lens that you own on a scale dependant on your lenses rank. It works out for a high-ranking lens you will get around $8-$12 for the month down to about $0.06 for a lower ranking one and even nothing at all for a very low one. This can seem like not-a-lot but it soon mounts up if you have a lot of lenses.

PLUS you get half of the royalties for anything sold from the modules on your lenses such as Amazon, ebay, Cafe Press and others. These are the amounts that show up on your dashboard in Squidoo in the $$$s column.

How to Open a Squidoo Account Without Making a Lens?

There seems to be a glitch on Squidoo at the moment where the create account button has disappeared.

To open a Squidoo account without making a lens:

Go to www.squidoo.com

Click the link in the top right 'join the community'

When you have completed the sign in form DON'T click the 'make a lens' button -
instead just press enter or return and you have opened an account without making
a lens.

Have any questions for me about Squidoo? Click on the comments icon after this post and ask your question for me there.

Is it Really Possible to Make Money with Squidoo?

There's a simple answer to that - YES!

It's not only possible (easy) to make some money but it's possible (not so easy ie involves work!) to make huge, life-changing, piles of it!

In my group Making a Living on Squidoo I conducted a survey over 18 months asking Squidoo lensmasters how much money they make every month with Squidoo. Over 500 people replied and of those around 10 confessed to making more than $25,000 EVERY MONTH from Squidoo. That is around 2% of lensmasters overall. When you take into account that the majority of the 500+ who replied are probably very new to Squidoo as they found the survey via my lens
How to Make a Living on Squidoo which attracts a lot of newbies, that makes these figures even more amazing.

Now of course the majority of this money will not have come directly from the monthly payments Squidoo sends out, but will be from affiliate commissions for products sold on the lenses.

I have found various products helpful since I started with Squidoo -

1. Social Networking on Squidoo by Tiffany Dow - this is what started it all off for me and is a pretty basic guide on getting started with Squidoo.

2. The Secret Cash Machine Hiding on Squidoo by Karl Pemberton - this one I found very useful and has some advanced tips and strategies that I have not seen anywhere else.

3. One Week Marketing by PotPieGirl - the newest and the best of the bunch - if you seriously want to make some real money with Squidoo, this is a must have! One Week Marketing takes you right through, step-by-step, setting up a campaign to sell an affiliate product and make you money - and you've guessed it, each new campaign takes exactly one week to set up.

My bonus to you - buy any of these products through my link then send me a copy of your receipt to 1SquidAddict@gmail.com and I will give you a ready made Squidoo lens already ranked and rated and set up to sell a Clickbank product.

Have any questions for me about Squidoo? Click on the comments icon after this post and ask your question for me there.

Hi I'm 1SquidAddict - Ready to Answer Your Questions about Squidoo!

Have any questions you want answered about Squidoo? You may find the answer here or ask your questions in comments.

I first started making pages (lenses) on Squidoo in 2006 just a couple of months after it first appeared. Since then I have seen many changes – from less than 50,000 lenses to close to 1 million now.

The first lens I built was about my then hometown – then I built a few more. After a few days something else caught my attention and I forgot all about Squidoo until a couple of months later I received a payment to my PayPal account. It was only just over $10 but something said to me “Hey, you can make money with this thing!” and that’s how I got started.