How I Make Money on Squidoo

I make about $700/mo on Squidoo (click chart at right for my earnings-to-date), so now I'm looking for ways to diversify on other platforms. If you're a Hubpages member looking to place eggs in a few more baskets, you may want to supplement your Hubpages earnings (and add backlinks to your Hubs) with Squidoo.

I cover a lot in this article: what earns money on Squidoo, how to maximize your lens to get tier payouts or sales commissions, how to get traffic, and some miscellaneous tips. You won't remember all this. Just browse, bookmark and return for a refresher. Some of these tips also apply to Hubpages.

There's four ways to earn money on Squidoo:

• Money-Earning Modules. Squidoo's Amazon, eBay, and Cafepress modules earn sales commissions. Squidoo is the affiliate, then it splits each sales commission with you 50-50. You do NOT need to sign up with these programs to earn from these modules. (If you're in a state where Amazon has canceled its affiliate program, you can earn money from Squidoo's Amazon modules!)
• Promote Your Own Products. Many Squidoo members first came to Squidoo to promote their Etsy, Zazzle or Cafepress designs.
• Your Own Affiliate Links. Affiliate programs give commissions for selling their products: and if you register as an affiliate and use your own affiliate links, you don't have to split these commissions with Squidoo! Many Squidoo members make significant income through affiliate programs of Amazon, Zazzle, AllPosters, eBay, Commission Juction and Share a Sale. Place affiliate codes/links in Squidoo "Text Modules." Squidoo has the following rules regarding affiliate links: (a) you are limited to nine outbound links to the same domain per lens (b) you may only use HTML, not iframes (use "text" or "image" links from Amazon), and (c) scammy products like acai berries, MLM and "miracle diets" are not allowed. Google "Squiddont content" for the list of topics you can't write about.
• Squidoo's Tier Payouts. Advertising revenue is not distributed directly, to avoid clickfraud. Instead, ad income is pooled, then paid to the top ranking lenses based on their average performance for each month. As of Sep '11, the best-performing 2000 lenses receive a "top tier" payout of around $40. The next 8000 lenses get paid a "second tier" payout of around $10. Then the next 75,000 lenses get paid a "third tier" payout, which is about 30 cents.

When You Get Paid: Pay day occurs two months after the money is earned to allow for returns. So, for example, September pay day was for earnings made in July. Additionally, a lens is only eligible for tier payouts for a month during which it existed for the whole month. If you make a lens midway through January, it won't earn ad revenue until February, and that income will be paid in April.

TIP: Since I make most of my money through tier payouts, I tend to update lenses and work off-Squidoo at the beginning of the month, make new lenses towards the end of the month, and spend the last few days of each month promoting new lenses so they'll rank well at the start of the new month.

Squidoo tier payouts are based on an in-house ranking system called "lensrank" which compares the performance of each lens against that of all other lenses. Lensrank is calculated once a day (early morning EST) based on each lens' performance on the previous day. Performance is a measure of several factors, including traffic, clickouts, sales, "freshness" (how recently the lens was updated) and community ratings such as "Squidlikes" (thumbs up) and "Blessings" (bestowed by Squidoo volunteers called "Angels" who reward quality and ding spam). Apart from special awards like purple stars, Squidoo community ratings are temporary lensrank boosts that wear off after a couple weeks.

So how do you improve lensrank? My Squidoo motto is: "Traffic isn't everything, but everything comes from traffic." Ponder the "factors" I mentioned above for a moment, and you'll see why.

One way to boost lensrank is to encourage visitor participation. Clicks on links — clickouts — are a strong lensrank factor. Interactive modules like polls and quizzes may not impact lensrank directly, but they turn visitors from passive readers into active participants, keeping their attention and getting them in a clicking mood.

Squidoo is a lot more forgiving of links than Hubpages. Don't link to scammy content -- your visitors will leave -- but DO link to helpful resources, freebies, fun stuff, images and videos, and/or other excellent pages relevant to your topic (which search engines and visitors will like).

The bottom line is that you must create well-written, useful, compelling, original content that will hold your visitors' attention, answer their questions and leave them satisfied. Don't be boring. Don't sound like a scam artist, or they'll leave. Don't just regurgitate stuff you've found elsewhere on the web. DO capitalize on your passion, your expertise, and your insider information to serve up the best content and links related to your topic. Be a helpful reference librarian, a concierge finding what they're looking for, or a DJ serving up cool stuff.

There are two ways to get affiliate sales: direct sales, when you review a product or products, and what I call "coincidental sales," when you write about something else (e.g. Greek art) and include a few relevant products that people interested in that topic might click on.

I'm fond of the "coincidental sale," because it means I can write about things I love, then include Amazon products or Zazzle images that might appeal to my audience. I learned this by accident when visitors began clicking the thumbnails of Egyptian-themed toys I had added as a visual accent to break up a "wall of text" on a lens about Egyptian mythology.

However, coincidental sales can't be counted on, so if you're trying to pay for more than kitty litter and cat food, you need to write product reviews and "selling stuff" lenses. Here's what I've learned about driving sales:

• Keyword research. Yes, you must learn SEO. Keyword research means finding out and using the words, phrases and vocabulary people use who are interested in your product. You need search engines to send you those people.
• Talk benefits, not just features. "Roomy enough for the whole tailgate party and a beer keg" may appeal to your target audience more than "35 cubic feet of cargo space."
• Use engaging writing. "Don't be boring" is even more important with sales, because who wants to read a commercial?
• Be brief. Don't waste people's time. Give them what they want to know. Their finger is hovering over that "back" button.
• Use specific model names. People search for specific models or products when they're thinking about buying, but want to compare or learn more about them. Name your product review something like the "My Review of the Gargleblaster Pro ZX90" not "Gargleblaster Review."
• Alternatively, use "top ten" and "best of" lists. Do your homework-- read consumer reports and real customer reviews to find out which are the "top ten" and "best of." For these lenses, use the year in the lens title ("Best LCDs of 2011") not the url (www.squidoo.com/best-lcd-tvs). People tend to search for gadgets and tech by year.
• Establish trust. Speak as a real person telling somebody about a product. Avoid used car salesman, generic "this is the coolest thing ever!" Be specific about what makes it a good Gargleblaster.
• Use good product images and make them clickable affiliate links. If possible, use your own photos (and say so), but only if they look good. If you're an affiliate, you have permission to use photos and images supplied by the program you're affiliated with.
• Don't just copy customer/product reviews. For one thing, you may get flagged for duplicate content. For another, you're not adding anything new...why should people read your review if there's nothing unique about it? Do your research, use your own words.
• Link to products with good reviews/ratings. There's nothing more off-putting than reading a glowing review, then going to Amazon and seeing a ton of one-stars and customer rants. If people hate it, pick a different product!

I'm still a journeyman when it comes to affiliate sales. I highly recommend these two free resources for more help: Squidoo Step-by-Step, a free download put together by successful Squidoo members to help newbies, and Squidlog, a website where experienced Squidoo members share their expertise. Again, some of their methods are also applicable to Hubpages.

If you're going for Squidoo tier payouts, you want traffic volume: the more the merrier. If you're going for affiliate sales, you don't need volume; you need to understand your audience and write for exactly the people who will be interested in, and searching for, what you have to offer.

There are two basic ways to get traffic:

• Social promotion means attracting human visitors by Tweets, Facebook shares, email, or any kind of word-of-mouth. For social promotion, you need to focus on, "what's in it for my target audience?" Give them something, whether it's entertainment, useful information, freebies (from clip art to free checklists and tips), or even provocative content which people link to in order to settle an argument or start one. (E.g. info about climate change.) Remember that your target audience for social promotion is PEOPLE. Don't be spammy, annoying. Do be engaging, tell them at the outset what they'll get from your page, and deliver on that promise.
• Search engine optimization (SEO). In social promotion, you tell people what's in it for them. With search engine optimization, you tell search engine robots what it is, i.e. what topics and search phrases your page is about. This is a huge topic, so see my keyword research tutorial for more info. Remember that your target audience for SEO is SEARCH ENGINES. Search engines like specific, concrete, focused language and terms that are relevant to a topic. They also like to see links from and to related or similar content.

My second favorite technique for getting traffic is cross-linking my assets. This means that when I discuss a topic, I link to my other lenses, blog posts or content that's related to it and useful to my audience. I don't overdo it — the link has to give something useful, interesting or valuable to the visitor, not just help me with a backlink — but over time, I build up a web of content that visitors and search engines follow. This saves me having to do a ton of "backlink building," posting links on other sites just for the backlink, or submitting to link directories that search engines probably don't count as significant anyway.

My most important technique is quality content. Don't waste people's time writing on things you don't care about or don't know. Brainstorm to find topics which you know and care about, and other people want to know about. If your content is highly entertaining or extremely useful, people will link to it, and then you don't have to. Recommendations drive more traffic than self-promotion. Earn those recommendations.

Squidoo tags (and Hubpages keywords) are NOT the keywords search engines look at. Search engines look at the words you use in URLs, page titles, headers, graphic names, and links — as well as body content — and decide for themselves which keywords your page is relevant for. They don't take your word for it that your page is the best page ever on "snoggle widgets" just because you put "snoggle widgets" in your Squidoo tags.

Squidoo tags are instead best used as an in house filing system like a library card catalog. By default, Squidoo lenses feature 3-6 "Related lenses" in the sidebar. (You can turn this off in the Introduction Module settings, but I don't recommend doing so). These "related lenses" are lenses that have the same tags as yours. In exchange, your lens appears on other people's "related lenses" box.

Squidoo tags are also used (clumsily) by the Squidoo search engine. Finally, they establish cross-links on the Squidoo site: down in the sidebar, all your tags are listed and linked to an index of other lenses with those tags. Search engines follow those links. If those pages are good and related to your topic, those cross-links may boost your lens slightly in search engine results.

To take advantage of Squidoo tags, do two things:

• Get the free Squidoo Workshop Add-on from SquidUtils.com, a site put together by a Squidoo member who's a code monkey. This add-on color codes tags green, yellow or red to show you how many other lenses use those tags. Stick to tags that are relevant to your topic, but make sure you have green-to-yellow ones so your lens will be featured from other lenses. 10-15 tags is best.
• If you write a lot of lenses in a niche, create a unique tag like "Beanie's Birdwatching Lenses" and use it as the primary tag -- the first tag -- on all the lenses in that series. The primary tag gets a little more weight in Squidoo search and "related lenses."

Squidoo lenses are also filed under a Squidoo Category, which you may edit/change in the sidebar of the Lens Workshop. Squidoo's category directory is three levels deep, linked to from the front page of Squidoo.com. Search engines browse the category tree daily, so it's the fastest way to get new lenses picked up by Google. Get your lens into the top 100 of a sub-sub-category if you can (so if it could fit in one of two sub-subcategories, pick the one that's less populated). There's no handy search tool like Hubpages' for finding the best category, so I've created a list of Squidoo Categories.

• Use the "ping tool" from SquidUtils.com's Workshop Add-On which I mentioned above. After publishing or majorly revamping a lens, hit "ping" to encourage search engines to check out your content again.
• Use the Amazon Spotight Module. The content of the regular Amazon module isn't seen by search engines. The Spotlight Module requires you to write an original mini-review.
• Proofread, spellcheck, and re-learn grammar. People trust professional, polished writing; they are less likely to buy from poorly-written pages.
• Become an affiliate of Zazzle, Amazon and/or Allposters.com. Once you're an affiliate, you have permission to use their art, graphics and copyrighted images, provided you abide by their rules and include the affiliate codes/links they provide. You might or might not earn commissions, but this gives you a library of good graphics.
• Make images clickable. People click on graphics, even decorative ones. Weird. Clickouts boost lensrank. So I make sure my images link to larger versions, or I use Creative Commons graphics, which require you to provide image credit and a link back.
• Use images with specific names like "bald-eagle-catching-fish.jpg" not "figure1.jpg." People often use Google to search for photos of particular things.
• Put yourself in your visitors' shoes. Would you read your page straight through, if you stumbled across it? Really? Would you click any links? Imagine yourself as a visitor, and try to see what would bore you, turn you off, or interest you on your page.
• If you have a Google profile, look up this tutorial to give your lenses a small "author rank" boost. Google the following: rel="author" on Squidoo. This is a project that will take about two hours. It should boost your traffic a little once you've got a handful of quality lenses.
• Republish your lenses every two weeks to a month. Skim lenses, check for broken affiliate links and images, tidy up your prose, and respond to search traffic. Lensrank drops if you don't republish from time to time. (I hate this— good content is good content— but I do it.)
• Respond to search traffic. Occasionally, click the "Stats" links under lenses on your dashboard, click the "Traffic" tab, and examine the keywords at right to see what people search for that brought them to your lens. Compare those phrases to your lens to see if you satisfy your readers' questions. Give them what they're looking for! If you're getting search traffic for a phrase that doesn't fit your topic, look for that phrase on your lens and reword it. Then use the "wrong" phrase as the topic for a new lens.
• Stop by Squidu.com, the member forum, to pick up tips (or promote your lenses in the Lens Spotlight). Members are very happy to answer questions in the "Help" forum!
• Compose blocks of text and HTML in an external text editor. Sadly, Squidoo is more buggy than Hubpages. It's very rare to hit a timeout and lose content when you save, but it's not worth the aggravation.
• Participate in the Squidoo community from time to time by visiting, liking and commenting on interesting lenses. People may visit your lenses in return, and their ratings will help your lensrank. But don't just visit to get visitors...people can tell when you're just exploiting them for traffic. Never drop links to your lenses in other people's guestbooks; they'll assume you're a spammer and ban you from commenting on their lenses. (Also, please flag spam using the "Report Abuse" button at the bottom of the page.)
• Do NOT get hung up on Monsters and SquidPoints. They are a cute game that introduces new members to Squidoo features a bit at a time, encouraging newbies to explore so they'll discover what good lenses look like. Points give mini-feedback while you wait for your first payout. But make no mistake: they don't matter outside of Squidoo.
• Get a blog on Blogger, Wordpress, Blogspot, even Livejournal and cross-link interesting content with your lenses, Hubs, etc. Search engines love links from blogs.
• Learn and study. Alas, there are no shortcuts. Like any sort of money-making, it takes time, effort, knowledge (understanding what works), and skill (ability and talent) to build up an income stream.
• Don't copy other people's content, and don't take people's images without permission. No excuses.
• I've just crammed your brain with four years of Squidoo experience, and your head is probably full. But at some point, you may want to seek out my Squidoo tutorials which cover some of these topics in more depth. Good luck!