Squidmusings with Moomette's Gram

I was happy and honored when Cindi of Moomettesgram's Musings asked me to write a guest post about Squidoo.

Cindi is a prolific presence online, blogging on topics of interest to work-at-home moms of all ages, including those of us who also fall into the category of baby boomer. Easy to see why Cindi and I get along so well.

My guest post addresses the WAHM community, explaining to that ever-growing group why Squidoo is a great business choice for them. I hope you'll take a minute, visit Moomettesgram's Musings and check it out!

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! 

I'm Thoroughly Confused. What is Squidoo?

My new online friend, April, asked me this: "I just went to your Squidoo page, but am thoroughly confused! Just what is it? Is it a place to blog, sell, or something else?" Here's my response.

April,

To answer your question about Squidoo, yes to all of those things! Squidoo is a place where "experts" make pages about topics, anything at all, and people then find those pages when they're looking for information about the topic or contents of the page. It's an example of Permission Marketing, where you don't go to people, but they seek you out. If they like what they see, they might buy something you're offering for sale.

You don't actually have to sell anything on Squidoo, but if you do, you earn commissions on those things, plus you as a lensmaster (the pages are called lenses, the authors lensmasters) receive a portion of the overall ad commissions that Squidoo earns.

To understand it, you just have to explore it. My lensmaster/profile page shows all of the lenses that I've created, which cover a wide array of topics. Squidoo is a great way to promote an online business or just to get the word out about something you're passionate about. I just updated my favorite lens, called Nurturing Imagination. That's a topic I am rather passionate about, plus it features my kids. :-) Also, I'm pretty proud of the lens I recently made about my puppy, Daisy. I updated that one again this morning. It's good to update/freshen your pages regularly, but it isn't like a blog where you're expected to post regularly.

There are over 750,000 Squidoo lenses and thousands and thousands of lensmasters, so you can imagine the variety you'll find on Squidoo. I love it! (Can you tell??)

Hope that helps to answer your question!

What All Squids Want - and I Got!

What do all Squidoo lensmasters hope for, strive for, wish for, live for? Do you know? If you're a lensmaster I'm guessing you do. The answer? Having your lens chosen as Lens of the Day.

Today was my day. I woke to lots and lots of Squidoo comment emails, which was my first clue. One said "Congratulations on LOTD" and then I knew for sure. Hooray! This is my first time receiving this great honor. What a way to start the week!

Making Fun of Sarah Palin - Has Political Humor Crossed the Line? is my honored lens. If you haven't seen it, I hope you'll take a few minutes to visit and read all the great comments answering the title question. Do you think political humor has gone too far this year? Add your comments to the duel. It's great fun!

Thanks, everyone, for creating such great content on the lens with your opinions and comments. Thanks, Megan, for choosing my lens. I'm so honored and still so excited!

Thanks to Spirituality

Spirituality, whose real name is Katinka, is one of the many generous lensmasters on Squidoo. I was so happy to receive a request from Katinka for an interview to be featured on her "Thank You Lensmaster - Squidoo Reviews" blog, which she publishes as a way of paying it forward, thanking the lensmasters who have helped us all out.

Today my interview was published; you can read it here. Katinka also supplied me with a badge to display, which you can see with this post as well as on my lensography. Isn't it pretty? I think it's pretty special, too.

It's lensmasters like Katinka who make Squidoo so successful. Without people who give back to the Squidoo community, what an ordinary place Squidoo would be. Thank you, lensmaster Spirituality, for helping make Squidoo so extraordinary.

Okay, I'm a groupie. So, sue me.

Seth Godin just left a comment on my lens! Woah! That is so cool!

Do you know Seth? He's the head squid, founder of Squidoo. He's a very hands-on kind of guy and makes lots of lenses of his own when he isn't busy writing bestselling books, and I know he visits lenses and leaves comments because I see them from time to time. But this comment was on MY lens. And it was a very, very nice comment.

Woah! That is so cool! (Oh, I said that already.) Seth, you just made my day. Thank you!

Controversy on Squidoo

Feeling confrontational? Like a good debate? Think paper’s better than plastic? Just want to pick a fight? Then head on over to Squidoo’s latest love child, Hey, MonkeyBrain!

It’ll take less than five minutes for you to set up a lens with the MonkeyBrain template, which includes a bold red and black layout with a built-in duel module where you and your contributors can debate opinions on any issue you’re passionate about. Post a blurb on the module and you’ll be given the opportunity to alert others via e-mail about the debate. What a great way to spread the word and get people talking.

So, what say you? Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader? Smoking or no smoking? Boxers or briefs?

The Many Faces of Squidoo - SquidWho?

Just when I thought Squidoo couldn't get any better, along came SquidWho. Then along came SquidBid, SquidBoo, and SquidVid. Each of these is a site within the Squidoo site, all part of Squidoo. The same, but different. Got it?

You could call them "skins," I think. They're all basically different Squidoo templates, each for a different purpose which you can probably guess from their catchy names. SquidWho is for lenses about people (famous as well as just regular folks), SquidBid for eBay lenses, SquidBoo for Halloween-related lenses, and the new SquidVid, all about videos. When you set up a lens on any of these sub-sites, Squidoo automatically includes modules that make it super easy for anyone to build a lens.

My favorite of the sub-squids is SquidWho. Choose your person, choose the domain name, claim your lens and add an introduction and you have a pretty darn good beginner's lens, which is probably why there are so many SquidWho lenses; it's that quick and easy. Thing is, too many of the resulting lenses remain beginner lenses, with canned creativity and not enough personal input. What I like is the challenge of doing some research, adding some meaty modules, and making an outstanding SquidWho lens that rises above the rest.

It's a good idea to enhance your basic SquidWho lens, too, as when someone searches SquidWho for a name, only the highest-ranking SquidWho lens about that person shows up. That's why on each SquidWho lens there's a challenge: Think you can do better? If you think you can do better, click on that challenge and make your own lens about that person, improve it and take over the top spot. That's what I did with my latest, new and improved SquidWho lens and I'm pretty pleased with it.

Are you up to the challenge? Pick your favorite person and give it a shot. Then leave us a comment so we can take a look and leave you some stars.

5 Things You Should Know about Squidoo

When I first mention Squidoo to people, I often get a response along the lines of, “Squid-huh?” Squidoo is simple, but sometimes it’s a bit hard to explain. Here are five ways I might answer the question, “What is Squidoo?”

1. Squidoo is an opportunity for you to claim your role as “expert.” I know a little more than the average person about the FairTax, so that makes me an expert on the subject. I built my FairTax lens (Squidoo pages are called lenses) as a means of explaining the FairTax to anyone who might like to learn more about it, thus establishing myself as an expert on the topic.


2. Squidoo is a platform for permission marketing. Rather than jumping through advertising hoops to lure in potential customers, the customers seek you out and come to you. If you type into Google “find stuff to sell on ebay,” you might find my Squidoo link and click, thus giving me permission to market to you. The click takes you to my eBay product sourcing lens, where I then present you with a whole bunch of great information, just what you’ve been looking for, along with multiple opportunities to purchase a product. With your permission.


3. Squidoo is an extension of your business. It allows you to direct people to any site on the web, including the website for your online or even your offline, brick and mortar business, or to your blog or your affiliate website. While this bulldog breeder uses her website to advertise her puppies for sale, she uses this Squidoo lens to expand upon other topics about bulldogs and offer advice and recommend products. This provides a great resource for people who buy her puppies. It also provides a great service to anyone who loves bulldogs or has questions about their care.


4. Squidoo is a great place to make money. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that each of the points above includes a method of making money with Squidoo, but there’s more. Each Squidoo lens contains ads placed there by advertisers who pay for that privilege. You have no direct control over what ads appear (though they are generated by your tags and your lens content), but you do get a share in the advertising revenue that Squidoo earns when your visitors click through on those links. You make the lens, you get a share of that advertising revenue. Additionally, when a visitor to your lens purchases a product that you’ve added to your lens using the Squidoo affiliate modules (such as Amazon.com and CafePress), Squidoo shares that commission with you.


5. Squidoo is a great way to give to charity and, indeed, to publicize your own charity or nonprofit business if that is the topic of your lens. A tiny portion of the earnings of every Squidoo lens is distributed to multiple charities, and any percentage up to 100 percent of the affiliate earnings that your Squidoo lens generates may be earmarked as a donation to a charity of your choice, chosen by you from an ever-growing list provided by Squidoo.

So, those are five important things that you should know about Squidoo, but the very best way to find the answer to the question, “What is Squidoo?” is to dive right in, explore, make your own lens and discover Squidoo for yourself.