1000 Ways to Make Money Online

Squidoo is another one of the web 2.0 websites that allow you to create a webpage using a whole host of different modules. The idea of making money with Squidoo is that you write a website (called a lens) that is based around a product or potentially an ad and try to get web traffic to your lens. The reason to use Squidoo used to be based on the fact that they ranked well with Google without much work if any. You could put together a lens with an unbelievably big link (or picture as a link) and it would redirect them to an affiliate product. So tons of people would sign up for the usual (hair loss, weight loss, acne) affiliate programs, generate a keyword based lens (that looked like it took 5 minutes to make) and because of Squidoo’s clout they would be getting traffic instantly. The obvious problem is that it didn’t provide anything to the user and once Google caught on they smacked Squidoo around. Now to make money with Squidoo you have to play a bit of a diffrent game.

More about How to Use Squidoo

The Squidoo setup is very similar to Hubpages in that you have a handful of different modules such as the usual (text, video, slideshow, amazon) in addition to others that are meant to engage readers (such as polls, surveys, customizable lists). You can arrange them anyway you want with the idea that you want to get people to care what’s on your page. I think because Squidoo got smacked around, they want you to create elaborate lens that both have meaningful content and are engaging (hence the different modules). Using Squidoo’s modules is a little bit clunky, where you have a standard setup that they provide (often with modules you don’t want) and if you want to add more modules you have to order them up on the side menu and then the page will reload. With Hubpages it’s much easier to move the modules around and a lot faster. Also anytime you need to reorder the modules the page gets reloaded adding to the time it takes to get the setup you want. What’s nice about Squidoo is that you can create a clickable image that will take the user to an affiliate product. For whatever reason people like clicking on pictures; especially when they’re told to do so. You do get a small revenue share from the advertising but it’s really meager and not worth focusing on. Unless you have 50 to 100+ lenses don’t plan on seeing much cash.

I’ve found that Squidoo can be picky about your lenses especially if they’re low on content. They will publish 300 word articles as lenses but they poke and prod you to make it more user-friendly. I think there’s some merit to this as the small crappy lenses I’ve put out have gotten shit for traffic, while the ones I spend some time formatting do a little better. You should definitely play around with the layout, but if you’re interested the layout I’ve had the most success with is as follows:

• Stupid Squidoo header that’s already up there. Use the Table of Contents or not; I usually don’t. I do try to add my intro paragraph and some cheesy stock picture. If I’m using the lens for only a backlink I’ll put a link in the intro paragraph.
• Another text module with some decent text. I try to make it 150 – 200 words if I can. Definitely put a picture with a link to whatever product you’re selling and add some instructions such as “Click Image for More Information” or “Click Image to Buy INSERTPRODUCTNAME”. Almost all of my success has been with the Amazon Associates program and it’s easy to find a product or a range of products that you can redirect to.
• Add an Amazon module and just type in the product keyword and let Amazon choose the products. You probably won’t get many people clicking on this module, but it makes Squidoo happy and there’s always a chance.
• Add another text module. More substance maybe another link
• Swipe a youtube video on the subject. It takes two seconds and adds some legitimacy
• You can try an RSS feed if you already have hubs on the subject
• keep the comment or guestbook module. People responding is free fresh content even if it’s just, “great lens. Keep up the good work.” Google loves updated content.

That’s more or less how I lay out my lenses give or take a module or two. Most of the lenses I create nowadays are solely for backlinks. There are a few lenses that I’ve had some success with that I made a long time ago that just started getting traffic a few months back. These lenses were product review type lenses where I took a topic (say bmx bikes) and did a brief review of 5-8 different bmx bikes. These were basically rewrites of the description plus a little bit of commentary peppered in that I got from the reviews. Each module had a picture link and a “Click Here to buy” link that was redirected to an aStore (amazon store) that I was just sort of dicking around with at the time. I didn’t keep very good tabs on it but I found that I kept seeing a “bike” that I hadn’t really been promoting show up in my Amazon reports. Whether or not the aStore format or the lens format (or some combination) was the key I don’t know, but the small amount of traffic I was getting certainly converted well. Just something to think about.

Making Money with Squidoo

Now that I’m nearing the 1K/month mark, I feel a little more confident in saying I know how to make money with Squidoo and the other Web 2.0 properties. Squidoo by itself isn’t that great, especially compared to where it once was, but when used in conjunction with Hubpages, Infobarrel and some of the other sites (and of course time) it all adds up.

The biggest factor in making money with Squidoo or any other platform is that you have to do a lot of writing. Putting decent to great quality writing on these sites is one part but you have to spend time writing for other sites and give your Hubpages or Squidoo sites the links to give them a boost. For instance, whenever I want to promote a product (to make money) I’ll usually start with Hubpages, do a decent quality product review with pictures and good content that isn’t just filler, play with the layout (add a pic and text module under the pic, put it in the right hand corner and make the text look like a caption and you’ll be amazed at your conversion) and overall spend some decent time on it. From there I’ll take the general stuff I’ve learned about the product, the people who use it/looking to buy it, other products that I can compare to it and I’ll write 1-2 infobarrels, 1-2 squidoo lenses, perhaps something on Bukisa (which counts for crap), xomba, associated content, then go for article directories that have revenue share (snipsly, allthatsolive, yousaytoo), then start hitting the article directories such ezinearticles, amazines, articlesupport, articlealley, articlesbase to really beef up the backlinks. If you’re really serious about making some money online, you’ve either got to spend money and have someone else do it, or put in the hours to do it yourself.

If you’ve bought into all of my hype about Squidoo, you should think about joining up. In fact, it’s a good idea to sign up for Hubpages and Infobarrel if you haven’t already. Once you have your accounts set up (should take you less than 10 minutes), pick one topic and write 3 articles on each site with the second two on each site pointing to the first one and the first one on Squidoo and Infobarrel pointing towards the top Hubpages article. This should take you a grand total of about 3 hours and if you give it a little time (close to 2 months you should start to see some results). More articles equals more links equals faster results.

I hope to be putting together a plan in the (not so) near future on how to create a system for making money online for free. It certainly possible to make money spending absolutely nothing, but it’s a lot harder that way. Because I don’t update the blog as much as I should, you may want to sign up for the RSS feed so you don’t miss my awesome system (said sarcastically).

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