Bee True Info. Systems created 
by Debbie Kay Brown~
What Is Squidoo?
Squidoo is a social networking site that’s the creation of
Seth Godin, who is a best selling author, entrepreneur and renown speaker. If
you aren't familiar with social networking, it means people coming together in
groups to act as a community around one common interest.
There are several types of social networking sites on the
web, which include interests such as religion, dating and politics. Social
networking sites are very popular now and almost everyone online has experience
with at least one social site – whether it’s Squidoo or MySpace, Facebook or
LinkedIn.
Squidoo is a unique social site that allows its members to
come aboard and build their own web page, which is called a lens. Members can
build a lens about almost any topic as long as it isn’t illegal.
Lenses can be made as personal pages to connect with other
people and share your details with them, they can serve as marketing machines,
or they can be made about a civic group or church. Just about any organization
that would like more exposure can set up a lens and be capable of sharing their
information with the world.
Building a lens on Squidoo is really easy with its
step-by-step build-a-lens interface. To create a lens of your own, all you have
to do is follow along with the easy to use guide and enter details of what your
lens will be about. Once you’ve entered all of your details, all it takes is a
click of the mouse to publish your new web 2.0 page.
Once you have your lens created, you’re free to fully
customize your lens with videos, articles, visitor polls and much more. Squidoo
gives you the option to easily make your lens a cash generating machine, which
is something that makes it unique among the many social sites online. As a lens
owner, you have an option to add advertisements from vendors such as Amazon to
earn a commission on sales generated from your Squidoo lens.
If you wish, you can create lenses solely for charity. Money
that’s generated from commission sales and Google AdSense ads are given to a
charity of your choice. Many people use this option to help raise funds for
charitable organizations.
The search engines tend to rank well-created, informative
Squidoo lenses favorably in their search results, especially Google. This
allows individuals to build lenses and get them in the search engine rankings
fairly quickly. This is great for webmasters who can create lenses and point
them towards other existing websites they own.
There are Squidoo lenses for just about anything imaginable,
from home business how-to lenses to gardening to model railroading. Just about
anything you could be interested in would make a great topic for those who
share your enthusiasm.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of creating a Squidoo lens,
you’re truly missing out on a really easy method to create a web presence in
mere minutes. You will also be able to connect with others who share your
interests and trade ideas about your passions and hobbies - all with just a few
clicks!
Can I Market My Business on
Squidoo?
By now you’ve probably already heard about Squidoo, and how
easy it is to set up a Squidoo lens. If you’re a business owner, you may have
never thought about using the free service for your marketing and sales.
It's understandable, because there are several business
owners who are reluctant to put their business on social networking sites. The
reasons may vary, but the majority of them aren’t sure if their business would
be well received by either members or management of the social site.
Squidoo was founded by Seth Godin, who himself is a marketer
and entrepreneur. Seth Godin has made it clear that businesses, both large and
small, are welcome on Squidoo as long as they conduct themselves in a
businesslike manner.
Of course there are rules that apply to everyone on Squidoo
about sending spam, which is against the terms of service. These rules are for
businesses and individuals alike. Some social sites frown upon the use of
affiliate links, and won’t allow them to be posted on any of the pages that are
hosted by the site.
Squidoo is a refreshing change from the stringent and
unnecessary rules of no affiliate links, as they allow lens owners to post
affiliate links to products openly. Not only are you allowed to promote your
business on Squidoo, but it makes good sense to do it!
Search engines usually treat high quality content Squidoo
lenses well in the search engine rankings. If you have a quality Squidoo page,
there’s a good chance it will be indexed in Google very quickly and with a
little promotion it will rank fairly high in the search engines depending on
the amount of competition in the niche.
There have been many Squidoo pages that rank number one in
the search engine results pages. These lenses have been meticulously crafted
and offer true value to visitors, so the search engines reward the lens with a
higher ranking.
When setting up a Squidoo lens, you have the option to
create a lens which allows you to set up what amounts to an affiliate page.
This lens can make use of the built-in Amazon, eBay or various other modules to
earn commissions.
That doesn’t mean you have to put anything on your lens you
don’t want to promote. You have a lot of freedom with what goes on your Squidoo
lens. You can place a full-page overview of what you and your business has to
offer and include photographs as wells as videos via click-to-add modules.
Once you get to know the Squidoo user interface, which won’t
take but a few minutes, you’ll see just how simple it is to get you business up
and running with its own lens. You will be able to link to other lenses, and
increase the traffic you get to your business lens.
Others can rate your lens and recommend it to others,
thereby exposing your business to even more potential customers. If you’ve been
thinking about putting your business on Squidoo, then you should go for it now.
If you’ve been putting it off, then you might want to consider the fact that
your competitors might be stealing your traffic with a lens of their own. Build
your lens and build your business at the same time.
How Profitable Is Squidoo to
Online Sellers?
Squidoo offers its users several avenues to make money
online. It’s one of the few social networking sites that have a built-in co-op
system which will allow users to split commissions made from sales of items from
sites such as Amazon.com.
It also has a revenue sharing system from Google AdSense, so
you can potentially make profits without having any type of product of your
own. The only thing about using the co-op method for generating cash online is
that you’ll have to create a substantial amount of lenses or generate a
mountain of traffic to see any amount of money accumulate.
If you’re thinking of using Squidoo for profits, you would
be much better served by building lenses that are either a direct sales page,
or set them up as affiliate pages for products that you’re currently promoting.
Since Squidoo has made it very simple to do your own thing
when creating a lens, you have complete freedom in how the page is set up from
the point of creation until it’s a finished lens.
Squidoo makes the perfect partner if you’re promoting a
business that you own yourself such as a freelance writer or graphic artist.
The popularity of Squidoo plays in your favor with the search engines, and can
potentially get you in front of the eyes of millions of people, some of which
are guaranteed to need your products or services.
One of the strong points of Squidoo is that you can make as
many lenses as you need, as you need them. Squidoo doesn’t charge a fee for
using their service, so it’s ideal for any business owner who has no experience
in building websites but would like a web presence. You can literally set up a
Squidoo page in just five to thirty minutes, so there’s no real excuse not to
have your business on the Internet.
Since Squidoo is a social site, it uses the tools of the
trade to get your lens circulated among users, and expertly attracts search
engines. Users of Squidoo have the option to rate your lens and to mark it as a
favorite so they can come back at a later date, or even share it with friends.
If you already have a website for your business, Squidoo can
definitely help you in search engine rankings and in getting traffic to your
main website. You can inform your target audience about the solutions you provide
in the form of products and services and hyperlink the content back to your own
domain.
Squidoo makes an excellent addition to your existing
business website, and can bring both extra traffic and extra profits. One big
factor in your success with Squidoo is how you present yourself, so you must
create your lens as you would any other serious business web page. Make use of
all of the tools at your disposal to create a professional looking lens, and
you’ll be very satisfied with what Squidoo has to offer your business.
Marketing to a Niche Market
on Squidoo
Breaking into a new niche can be accomplished quickly and
cleanly by using the tools available on Squidoo.com to create niche lenses.
These lenses can then be used to send traffic to your product site or to an
affiliate site.
Once you’ve signed up for a free Squidoo account, you’ll
have access to a very powerful niche marketing tool, which you can use to put
up as many new niche pages as you can possibly imagine.
Squidoo not only allows you to have as many free lenses as
you want per account, but you can also have as many user accounts as you like.
This plays very well in the strategy of niche marketing. Having the ability to
own more than one user account at Squidoo will enable the smart niche marketer
to use separate accounts for each of the niches being marketed to at once.
Since you can have an unlimited number of accounts, you'll
be much more organized and be able to focus more tightly on your target
audience’s needs. By choosing a niche topic and developing a list of keywords
for that niche, you’ll be able to take each keyword and build a lens around
each individual word or phrase. This will also enable you to create lens tags,
which will be narrowly tied to each of the lens topics.
You can further tighten your niche marketing effort by
joining Squidoo groups that are related to each niche. You can find Squidoo
Groups by going to Squidoo.com/groups. Within these groups, you’ll be able to
make contact with others who are promoting a related product or service.
You’ll then be able to leave a review of their lens and a
nicely worded request to visit your lens in return. Carefully word the comment
you leave on other lenses and work your lens link in casually so that the lens
master will approve it. This lets others see the comment you left and visit
your lens, too.
You can also use RSS feeds to create feeds for all of your
lenses and tie them into your blog that so you get instant updates on your
lens. After you add the RSS module, all you need to do is copy and paste the
feed from your blog into the module and you’re all set.
This will help get more traffic to your main site, making it
more likely that you’ll get a sale. Creating a niche lens on Squidoo can act as
a pre-qualifier for traffic. Anyone who is interested enough in what you have
to offer will click through to your main order page or affiliate site.
One thing to remember is just because you’re on Squidoo, it
doesn’t mean search engine optimization is out of the window. You should treat
your Squidoo lens just as importantly as you would any other niche site you
would create on your own hosting account.
SquidU Is Continuing
Education for Lensmasters
When starting out at Squidoo, you should make a stop over at
SquidU, which is short for Squid University. You’ll find a wealth of
information about building lenses and getting the most from your efforts. One of
the hallmarks of SquidU is the friendly and helpful nature of the staff and
overall community.
The first thing you’ll probably notice is the Squid
University site is laid out to clearly show what’s available. SquidU is on its
own site, located at SquidU.com for easy reference. From the home page, you can
easily spot where you need to go if you have questions regarding lens creation,
promotion or even to get a critique of your latest lens creation.
SquidU has a very active and supportive forum community. If
you have questions or would like to just hang out with other lensmasters, you
can do it within the forum. There are sub forums that cover every major aspect
of lens creation and also a place to list your lens for sale, should you wish
to part with one. The forum is very active, so if you have a need, you’re
likely to get an answer fairly quickly.
The Answer Deck houses all of the most frequently asked
questions about Squidoo and lens creation. This should be your first stop if
you have a question - you may be able to get an instant answer because so many
before you have had the same burning question.
The questions cover such topics as how the royalties earned
are split and received, common newbie mistakes, using certain modules correctly
and general how to questions which everyone seems to have at one time or
another.
The Learning Library brings frequently updated articles
about lens publication, charities, moderating groups and more. Here, you’ll
learn how to max out your lens and make a good impression when your visitors
start arriving to your lens.
You’ll find a helpful glossary to enlighten yourself to the
entire new verbiage Squidoo has introduced along with its lens building
process. This glossary is invaluable to the newbie!
The Lensmaster Lounge allows lensmasters to come and show
off their latest lenses and ask for feedback. It’s a great place to see what
areas you may need to strengthen in your lens.
Overall, if you’re into building Squidoo lenses, you won’t
find a better place to go kick back and learn, while making a few extra
friends. The community there is close knit, but very welcoming to newcomers.
There are moderators who visit and hang out with the
regulars, and you’ll find them to be courteous and helpful. Even if you’ve been
building lenses from the beginning of Squidoo’s days on the ‘net, you’ll
benefit greatly from becoming a regular at SquidU.