Thread: Work from Home with Squidoo

Hey everyone
I have some pretty good experience making a little bit of side money (100/month) from my Squidoo lenses, spending about 20 hours a month on them, I own about 40. If anyone wants to learn the secrets, you can join my lensmasterworld.com site, it isn't too big yet, but I'm building it up slowly, as it is a side project.

Can you tell me what a "lens" is? I've seen it mentioned in Web Gazelle's sig, and can't figure out what this is all about... I didn't see anything that looks like what I'd think is a lens on his site.

A "lens" is just a web page on a sub folder of Squidoo.com. So you can go in and create a "lens" about anything you want, and they give you a wisywig editor and a bunch of prebuilt "modules" to use to create your lens. The best part is that squidoo has such a large user base, that if your lens is in the top 100 lenses (out of the 300K or so) you can expect to get quite a few visitors just from Squidoo itself, and there is adsense and amazon and ebay affiliate links that you can put up with the click of a button on your lens. I own some pretty funny ones myself, http://best.slut.ever.com and http://ugliest.model.ever.com
As you can see, the urls are pretty unique, and the ever.com part is also a squidoo project, they bought that domain for I don't know how much.

$100/month and 20 hours makes for only 5 buck an hour.

Not worth my while.

Can you explain more...

Dilpreet

Originally Posted by axemedia

$100/month and 20 hours makes for only 5 buck an hour.

Not worth my while.

True, that is below minimum wage.
I looked at them and the only way I see to make it worth while is to advertise it.
ANd for pennies, not worth advertising.

Originally Posted by iowadawg

True, that is below minimum wage.
I looked at them and the only way I see to make it worth while is to advertise it.
ANd for pennies, not worth advertising.

Some people are making a living off of squidoo lenses. I think yummytork has just scratched the surface on the potential there is with squidoo. :3071:

Originally Posted by Web Gazelle

Some people are making a living off of squidoo lenses. I think yummytork has just scratched the surface on the potential there is with squidoo. :3071:

Yes, those using it to network and promote their services are making good use of it. But to simply have pages on there and make a few bucks of people clickn adsense ain't the optimal way to make use of the squids.

I set up an account a few weeks ago but not doing anything with it yet. When i find the time I plan to use it a bit.

Originally Posted by axemedia

Yes, those using it to network and promote their services are making good use of it. But to simply have pages on there and make a few bucks of people clickn adsense ain't the optimal way to make use of the squids.

I set up an account a few weeks ago but not doing anything with it yet. When i find the time I plan to use it a bit.

Exactly! The best use for a lens is to promote your website and the products or services it offers. I think that is what yummytork might have been implying. You can promote you site and get a few extra bucks from squidoo at the same time. Anyway I am interested to see what yummytork says about all this.

Well, here is what I have to say about all of this:
First, the 20 hours is what it takes to get the ball rolling. Any venture takes a lot of time and not much payout in the first month. Now, I just go in and update my lenses once per every other day, and send them stumble traffic now and then, which cuts my time way down to about 5 hours a month, still making the same amount of money. So that means I am making about 20$ an hour. Not bad eh? Of course like iowadawg and Web Gazelle said, the true potential of Squidoo comes from making a lens that people really like and appreciate, like Web Gazelles seo nutshell lens. I think he did a great job with that. Mine are more entertainment/adsense type lenses, but they still bring in quite a bit of traffic.

I just opened an account and I think its pretty neat. I like the idea with the domains you can create, such as best.videos.ever.com

They limit you to 10 a day. I am creating as many as I can. I see this getting popular fast.

Originally Posted by xsnoboard

I just opened an account and I think its pretty neat. I like the idea with the domains you can create, such as best.videos.ever.com

They limit you to 10 a day. I am creating as many as I can. I see this getting popular fast.

I had no idea there was a limit on how many lenses you could create. I go and create multiple accounts though, so I can give all of my lenses tons of stars and add them all to favorites. I have about 40 accounts that I have access to.

You are limited to 10 Lenses created a day...


What your doing looks like TOS violation...


Info on how you make $$$

It's simple. You make a lens. You recommend great stuff. Sometimes these you'll recommend a product from Amazon or eBay or CafePress or one of our hundreds of other commerce partners.

Since Squidoo is free to use, we have to run a few ads on your lens in order to keep our doors open. So you'll see a few Google ads and SquidOffers on your lens.

Now, since you're the brain behind the lens, you should get a cut! And better than a cut: you get HALF. That's right. Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties.

Some lensmasters are in it for the content and not the money. Maybe they earning $0.50 a month. More often than not, they select one of our 80+ nonprofit partners to donate these royalties to. Other lensmasters make lots of lenses, work hard, and earn thousands of dollars a year. Still other lensmasters are here to fundraise for charity, and group up to send thousands of dollars to their favorite organizations each month. What would you do with your royalties?

Sounds like xsnoboard knows more about Squidoo than his original "I just created an account" post implies. So, do you work for Squidoo or something xsnoboard? Sure sounds like it. And I'm not violating tos because I'm not a spammer with my separate accounts. I created them to sell in the future once they are built up.

Sounds more like Xsnoboard copied and pasted part of Squidoo TOS,
either that or he's Seth Godin in disguise.

No I am just posting information. Isnt that what this forum is about?

I bet somewhere in their TOS you are allowed only 1 account per user. Why would they limit to 10 lens a day if multiple account creations were legal.


???

Originally Posted by xsnoboard

No I am just posting information. Isnt that what this forum is about?

I bet somewhere in their TOS you are allowed only 1 account per user. Why would they limit to 10 lens a day if multiple account creations were legal.


???

Why don't you go read their TOS: Squidoo : Terms of Service
It says nothing about multiple accounts, and the reason they limit you to 10 lenses per day is because spammers like to go in and create a bunch of lenses, with the exact same content, with no real value to squidoo. All of my lenses and accounts only have one or two lenses associated with them, all with perfectly legal content.

I had some fun with this:
The Best Mexican Recipes Ever!

Originally Posted by yummytork

Why don't you go read their TOS: Squidoo : Terms of Service
It says nothing about multiple accounts, and the reason they limit you to 10 lenses per day is because spammers like to go in and create a bunch of lenses, with the exact same content, with no real value to squidoo. All of my lenses and accounts only have one or two lenses associated with them, all with perfectly legal content.

I did read the TOS. And if a spammer wanted to he could get around creating 10 lens by creating multiple accounts.. Kinda like what you're doing.

It also says you are not allowed to have more than 1 lens with the same topic.

Interesting. I am going to register at squidoo and try it.

squidoo alows you to have as many accounts as you wish and you can sell them too or transfer them fur free

Originally Posted by webfashion

squidoo alows you to have as many accounts as you wish and you can sell them too or transfer them fur free

It is true that they let you have multiple accounts. Nothing in the TOS that says you can't. However I think your thinking of lenses. People sell or transfer lenses not accounts.

guess it's time for me to get around to making a squidoo account and see how it goes...i gotta get into the game somewhere...lol

Originally Posted by Stax

guess it's time for me to get around to making a squidoo account and see how it goes...i gotta get into the game somewhere...lol

It has been pretty good for me. Lenses show up in the search engines.

Originally Posted by Web Gazelle

It has been pretty good for me. Lenses show up in the search engines.

Just gotta figure out something I'm interested in that would make decent money and be semi-easy to handle

Build a lens based on the content of one of your websites then you can also post links to your site and drive some extra traffic to it.

I don't have any sites at the moment Gotta get those going again lol

In situations like that you look at what sites you have in the works or just build one about a favorite topic of yours. I created 3 about different wildcats because I am in the process of putting a site about wildcats together.

So basically it's a free hosted page similar to blogger but with more content plugins?

and they take 50% of advertising revenues...

Originally Posted by Web Gazelle

In situations like that you look at what sites you have in the works or just build one about a favorite topic of yours. I created 3 about different wildcats because I am in the process of putting a site about wildcats together.

I'm making one for my spam mail of the day i'm gonna be doing on my blog we'll see how that works out

Originally Posted by Stax

I'm making one for my spam mail of the day i'm gonna be doing on my blog we'll see how that works out

Best of luck with that. I hope you signed up using my signature link. :swink:

Originally Posted by Web Gazelle

Best of luck with that. I hope you signed up using my signature link. :swink:

I did

Hi, I joined Hopefully it picks up.

Squidoo had been very useful to me. In the sense that, I learn so many things. I've created a lens, Employee Leasing Solutions. So far, don't have profits yet but lots of stuff can be found here.

Originally Posted by yummytork

Hey everyone
I have some pretty good experience making a little bit of side money (100/month) from my Squidoo lenses, spending about 20 hours a month on them, I own about 40. If anyone wants to learn the secrets, you can join my lensmasterworld.com site, it isn't too big yet, but I'm building it up slowly, as it is a side project.

oh yess i would be interested in doing this can you tell me more about it?
vixz16 (@) gmail (.) com

To make any money you have to work hard, especially at first.

I created my lens camping stuff some months ago. I worked at it every day, adding content, text & images.

Then I got others to visit, rate the lens out of 5*, lensroll mine, write feedback comments, become a `fan` of mine, and more. Joining groups also gets you noticed. There are lots of modules which are freely available to help interactivity, as well as things like YouTube vids.

At this moment the lens is No.9 in its category, so that in itself gets it more hits. A lensmaster can put as little or as much work into his little `creation.` As someone has already mentioned, there can be some useful spinoffs from a lens, as you are allowed links to other sites etc, as long as it isn`t viewed as a purely spam lens.

Some members have hundreds of lenses, so they must find it wothwhile. Me, I view it as more of a pasttime, a bit like my blogs, but with a lot more scope to be creative.

Many of the Lensmasters who have 100 or more lenses are making pretty good money from them so their hobby or pastime is also a nice second income for them.

I`m not sure I could come up with so many different topics to write about. lol

You just start with your main interests and spread out from there. I have almost 30 lenses now and I keep thinking of new topics all the time.