Share Your Hobby and Make Money With Squidoo

What do you get when you cross your favorite hobby with a website called Squidoo?  If you do it carefully, you get a monthly income!  Let me explain.

Squidoo is a place online where regular people, called lensmasters, create web pages, called lenses, about a hobby, activity, gadget, person, or any other subject that they are passionate about, and make money for themselves and for charity.  A Squidoo lens isn’t a blog that has to be updated weekly or even daily to grow and thrive, it’s a stand-alone mini-website put together by an expert, someone who knows and loves its topic. 

Let’s say you have a hobby; let’s choose quilting.  You enjoy the fabric, the colors and patterns that go into a quilt.  You enjoy the method, the technique.  You’ve made a quilt or two or maybe a lot more and enjoy showing them off or even selling them.  You are a quilter.  Thus, you are an expert on quilting.

Now comes the Squidoo part.  First you open a Squidoo account, which is easy, fast, and free.  Then you choose the title of your first lens; let’s call it “I Love Quilts.”  Using the easy-to-understand workshop that Squidoo provides, you upload pictures of some of your own favorite quilts.  Add a section, called a module, that features your favorite quilting books at amazon.com, books that people can click on and buy directly from your lens.  Add a Flickr module and include pictures of quilts that other people have made.    Now add a poll module, perhaps asking the visitors to your lens how many quilts they have made, none, one, up to five, from five to 10, or more than 10.   Add a Zazzle module featuring mugs with quilt patterns on them, which are great gifts for quilters.  Add an eBay module featuring vintage quilts available at auction on eBay right now.  Add a guestbook where your visitors can leave you a message.  Hit “publish” and, simple as that, you’ve created your first Squidoo lens, which might look something like this.

Next step is to tell your friends about your new lens.  Email it, Twitter it, post it to your facebook or myspace page.  This is where the fun really starts.  As people visit your lens, some will leave messages, participate in the poll, and maybe even click through and buy one of those books you recommended, a mug, or even a vintage quilt from eBay.  When they do, you and Squidoo earn a small commission.  No inventory, no shipping, just a Squidoo lens.  Squidoo will donate a portion of their share of the commission to charity; you may do the same with settings on your lens.  Or, keep the money for yourself.  It’s up to you. 

Sound fun?  Trust me, it is fun.  It’s a great way to share your passion with the world via the web and a nice way to add a little spending money to your budget.  Ready to get started?  Simply go to Squidoo.com and follow the simple steps.  If you do, will you come back here and leave a comment with your lens link? I’d love to see it.  Already on Squidoo?  I’d love to read your comments, too.  Have fun with Squidoo.  I do!