Does anyone here have experienceof Squidoo? If so do you think it is a good place to build up your business?
I have heard great things about Squidoo but I have not had any luck with the site personally. My Squidoo does not get any traffic at all. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!
Hi southbank63 and Money4Mommy, Here are a couple links to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/ Newbie Shield
You may get some traffic if you update your website regularly, but it is often not worth the effort since the site is very very slow
I read a bit about squidoo and was given a free ebook giving a quick tutorial, so I decided to give it a try. I didn't really do it expecting to make any money or anything, but I figured I could always use additional links to my regular site. As mentioned, my lens doesn't really get much traffic, but I don't promote it much at all. It took no longer to build it than to write an article so I chalk it up to an added back link and don't worry about it. I try to update it every week or two, but honestly, I'm too busy building my regular sites (and of course nosing around in forums ) to bother. Although, if some people are to be believed, you can definitely make some money with lenses if you put the time and effort into them - that old song again.
You need a big mailing list, awesome and unusual product, a huge downline, or unusual copywriting skills in order to do well with the social networking sites. "Social networking sites"...social...mailing list or downline. Your time is much better spent creating a WordPress Blog or getting a cheap hosted site. Newbie Shield
Squidoo is great if you understand how to use it. It has a lot of advantages... -High PR This means that you can use your squidoo lens primarily for high PR trackbacks -Quick and High Google Indexing Because of the high PR, if you create your lens with keyword optimization in mind, you will get a top ranking on Google very quickly -Very Simple Lens Creation Even if you have no website design experience at all, you can create your own place on the internet very easily. Everything is right there for you...all that you have to do point and click (and a little bit of writing of course) -Great Community Squidoo is not just a place for you to advertise your business. It is a great place to do some networking. The forum is great and there are groups as well. -Perfect for Bum Marketing If you are unsure what Bum Marketing is, feel free to message me, and I will give the full run-down. To answer the question about building a business with squidoo... Squidoo is just a tool (a very effective one though). If you learn how to use Squidoo to your advantage, you can definitely generate a few sales. Don't plan on primarily using Squidoo as a means to build your business though.
Jay284, Thanks for breaking it all down like that. Bum Marketing looks promising. It seems like the easiest way to go. Keep the info coming..
2bwahm, you are welcome. Bum marketing is not necessarily the easy way to go. It does take work... and a lot of it actually. If you are not good at writing, you might as well stay away from bum marketing. Personally, I write between 5-10 articles a day (300-600 words each). I submit 6 of those articles to the various article directories that have a high PR, I use 2 of them on a blogger blog (for backlink purposes), I use 1 for a squidoo lens, and I use the last one for my blog (where I actually promote the main product that I am trying to sell). pcwork, as far as the loading time for Squidoo, Ive never had any problems. If you don't have a broadband connection, that may be the problem; otherwise, Im not sure why its loading slow for you.
Quoting: jay284Personally, I write between 5-10 articles a day (300-600 words each). I submit 6 of those articles to the various article directories that have a high PR, I use 2 of them on a blogger blog (for backlink purposes), I use 1 for a squidoo lens, and I use the last one for my blog (where I actually promote the main product that I am trying to sell). 6 articles on single subject? How could you do that? I think it requires a lot of effort and expertise.
inominds, you would be amazed at how easy it is to write that many articles on a single subject. In order to make money anywhere, including online, you have to put in some work. Think about when you first started out at your job. You weren't an expert at whatever your job required you to do yet, but as time went on, the job became easier and easier. Writing articles for Bum Marketing, or any kind of article marketing for that matter, should be looked at as a job! It will be hard at first, but after you do the job for a little bit, it becomes easier. When I first started out, I thought writing that many articles was really hard. I started out only writing 1-2 articles every day, on different topics. Once I figured out the best way to do write, through trial and error (just like you would do at work), the articles began to come out almost naturally. Also, remember... since you post these articles using different platforms (article directories, squidoo, blogger, etc..), they don't have to be much different. For example, if I approach the Bearded Dragon Care niche, I could write 5 articles on the proper housing of bearded dragons. Each article can say just about the same thing, but I would word each article differently. I suggest that you enroll into the Thirty Day Challenge. The challenge is over now (although, I think they are starting a new one soon), but they still have all of the lessons posted. It is completely free, and they aren't trying to funnel you into buying anything (there isnt even a single affiliate link). The challenge is set up so that you can make your first 10$ online, but that isnt why I recommend it to you. I learned a lot about writing articles that sell while completing the challenge, so thats why I think you should check it out. If you have any other questions, feel free to drop me a message. If i cant help you, I will try to point you into the right direction.
Squidoo has come a long way since I first checked it out. I didn't care for it at all in it's early days. Now it is much improved and I am entirely addicted to it. I can't get enough of it. I joined this month - Nov 2007 and I made my first lens. I have a music lens. I monetize via adsense, amazon, and my favorite online guitar lessons link. You can monetize with the available modules or you can add your own affiliate links. I recommend both ways. Your own affiliate links is where you will make the big money. They have a great forum and there is a lot of interactivity between lenses - guestbooks, polls, etc Building a lens and monetizing upon it is easy. You don't need to buy any programs for it. There are tons of lenses that offer that information for free and the info is often of high quality. It's a wonderful community and building lenses is a blast. You don't need to know anything about web coding or web design...it does help though. I've fancied up my lens quit a bit and I am working on a second lens already. Both lenses are music topics. Advice of the month - go build a lens. Put it in your sig (mine is in my sig) and I will pay it a visit. Be sure to add a guestbook at the bottom if you want me to sign it and rate your lens. I won't rate it unless I feel it deserves 5 stars! But I will sign your guestbook no matter how good your lens is. You must be logged into Squidoo to rate a lens and to sign most guestbooks (including mine) Okay, more later! Newbie Shield
southbank63 Squidoo is just a tool. It is great, as long as you post every single day... and the tags you are using are searched by others. Use Google Keyword Tool to find the popular searched keywords. Most people do 10-20 lens and give up ... make 100 or more, and they you'll see value out of it.
I like squidoo a lot. It is very easy to work with and you can use it to promote your business or to just put up a fun squidoo lens. I haven't promoted my page enough to make any money from it but google seems to like it a lot and you can get a good PR from it and google seems to index it rather easily. It is really easy to create and lens and you can use it for a backlink which is a plus. Going to start promoting it a lot more in the future.
Just like article directories and other Web 2.0 properties, Google has fallen out of love with Squidoo to a certain extent and you won't find them crop up in search results as much as you would a few years ago. 3 or 4 years ago they were excellent for building niche product lenses but now they have lost their impact. I'm not saying they are not worth your time, just that they are not as effective as they once were...
I make enough money on Squidoo alone to support myself. I have lens that rank on the first page in Google, some in the number one spot for some competitive keywords. It's not my only source of income, but it sure is a good one. This did not happen overnight by the way. It takes time. My top earner was built over a year ago and has soared in the last few months.
