Squidoo is a website that lets anybody create a page (lens) on any topic. A Squidoo lens is a bit like a web page (or mini blog) that you can fill any way you like. The great thing about Squidoo, is that it has Adsense already set up, so any lens you create will make you earn money. You can also use affiliate programs such as Amazon or Ebay, and easily display the products you like on your lens: people who buy those products will help you earn more money from your lens. The income generated by those ads is split between Squidoo, you and charities as follows: 45%, 50% and 5% (well, you didn’t think they would let you make money that easily for nothing, did you?). I think this is a pretty good deal, as we all know how difficult it is to make a name for yourself in the big web world and being on the Squidoo website will give you and your lens a boost, as other user lenses get promoted on your lens (which means that your own lens gets promoted on other people’s lenses as well).
One thing I like about Squidoo lenses is the layout: you can add different modules on your lens and each module can be used for a different purpose. Module are a bit like paragraphs; you can use one module to write some text, another one to add your blog’s or your articles’ RSS feed, one to promote Amazon products and anything else you can think about. You can add, change the order of or delete modules as you like, and Squidoo’s advice is to update a lens at least once a week; any lenses that are not being updated regularly risk being deleted out of the system, meaning any money accumulated on those accounts will be lost forever by the lensmasters.
When I first started to use the Internet to make money, I suffered from information overload: so many money-making ideas being thrown at me but no real plan on how to use most of these in my advantage. I started too many projects without really knowing where I was going; I read a lot of articles saying that Squidoo was a good way to make money online so I created a Squidoo lens. I didn’t really know how to use it until a few weeks ago, when another Associated Content producer sent me a message asking me if she could use the RSS feed of my articles to put on her Squidoo lens. Naturally I was very curious so I went and took a good look at it: it is called Know It All Moms and contains a lot of advice on children, parenting, homeschooling, women’s health and money (that’s where I come in).
The interesting thing about this Squidoo lens is that it doesn’t require much maintenance; there is an introduction followed by the RSS feed of Lisa Carey’s own articles, plus a few other RSS feeds, so the updating of her lens is being done automatically. One very positive thing about Lisa’s lens is that it helps not only her own articles, but also other people’s articles to get more page views, which means more money for her friends as well as for herself. She also uses Adsense and Amazon in order to earn money from her Squidoo lens.
Since most Associated Content producers write on a lot of different topics, I wouldn’t really recommend using their RSS feeds, as this means you could get an article on the American election thrown in the middle of parenting articles, so selecting individual articles would be a safer bet. Another option would be to add the RSS feeds of different blogs, always with prior owner’s consent of course, and this is what I have done with my own lens: How to Make and Save Money. Using RSS feeds is different from copying whole articles, so there is no risk of being penalized by Google for using duplicate content.
On top of the money you earn from programs such as Adsense, Amazon and and a few others that can be integrated in Squidoo lenses, you can use your own imagination to fill those modules with anything you fancy and that you can make money with (or not). The text modules let you include html so if you know a little about html, you can promote your affiliate links: the best example I can think of is Clickbank. I already wrote an article on how to write Clickbank reviews that sell, so I won’t explain here how this affiliate programme works, all I will say is that if your lens is mostly about pets, you can write an article about pets and include a few pet related affiliate links in there.
You can use your Squidoo lens to advertise your freelance services, Ebay auctions, books you wrote and whatever else can be promoted on the Internet. There is no limit on the number of Squidoo lenses you can create (as long as they are not duplicates) and it doesn’t cost a cent, so you can create your own Squidoo money-making empire, but if making money is not on your list of priorities, you can just talk about anything you like, use your lens like a small personal blog, and even set up your lens so that the money earned by it is sent to charities.
If you have a little bit of imagination, there has never been an easier way to make money online than this, and the main thing to remember if you want to make money with Squidoo, is to have fun doing it!
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank fellow Associated Content producer Lisa Carey for giving me the idea for this article and also for helping me understand a little bit more about how to make money online with Squidoo. You can find a link to her lens, Know It All Moms, in this article’s resources box.
