Make Money using Squidoo

Hi, today I want to discuss this wonderful site called Squidoo. I mentioned it yesterday, but didn't go into much detail about it. It has many pros, but what I consider the best one is the fact that you can actually promote your blog and earn money at the same time! So, what is Squidoo?

Welcome to lens-making!

First off, Squidoo.com is a site where you can write lenses (some sort of articles where you can add a lot of additional features to make them more appealing to the public) and get paid for it. Not good enough? Well, let me tell you this, then. You can also promote your site! And, if you like giving stuff to charity, you can.

The site offers the possibility of giving out all the money you earn for charity, giving just a small percentage or just keeping it all. And even if you choose to keep all the money, you are still helping, since squidoo.com distributes it´s earnings the following way: 50% for you, the lens maker, 45% for the site and 5% for charity. So don´t feel bad for keeping your money!

Now, where does that money come from? Squidoo.com places ads in your lenses, and you get paid per click. They also make an income from affiliate programs, like amazon.com.

Your lenses are ranked in two different ways: the overall ranking, and the ranking corresponding to your lense's particular category. If your lens has a very low ranking, it is considered to be WiP (Work in Progress) and isn't displayed in the search results within the site. However, don´t panic! It´s rather easy to get found on Squidoo.com, and I´ll show you proof: My first lens.

My own experience

My lens was created on May, the 19th and was ranked 600,000+ (1 being the best, 1,000,000 being the worst); the following day it ranked 300,000+; after that 67,000; yesterday 32,000 and finally today, 27,968 quite good, right? On top of that, it ranks 944 on my specific category and shows up on the first page when looking for the keywords "PTC sites".

All of this without having the most minimum idea of how Squidoo.com worked. My lens was considered "WiP" for the first 2 days, but after editing it a bit, I managed to get it "indexed" by Squidoo. And I linked to here from my lens, too! So that´s one backlink more, and Squidoo has a PR (Google´s Page Rank) of 5, so that´s a really valuable link to have! My blog got indexed by Google this way, even though that is not enough, since I´m still on Google´s bottom pages.

Until now, I have received 5 people on my lens, but Im positive that will increase in next few days! Just remember to apply everything I've taught you until now on blogging ( what isn´t much, but it´s something to start off with) and don´t go mad if your lens isn't published the first day! Take into account that Squidoo has a delay to update your lense's information, so your rank gets updated once a day, not real-time. Be patient!

How to get your lens noticed faster!

First off, tell your friends, family, etc. Post it in forums, directories and just about anywhere you know of! MySpace, MyLot, your personal blog, anywhere! There are 2 keys to this: be patient and persevere.

Actually, there are some good places to get started, as Squidoo itself recommends: del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. Just register and download the malware-free add-ons they offer, to make it easier for you: with this, you can get your lens AND blog noticed easier. You may realize you get to promote both at the same time, and link from one to the other to improve your traffic on both of them!

Well, I guess that is enough for today´s review. Make sure to join these sites and start building traffic!