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Is Squidoo another blogging platform?

August 18, 2008 by John Dilbeck
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Marketing, RSS Syndication, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Twitter 

Aussie Sire asked a question on one of my twitter update posts and suggested that I rewrite my reply as a blog post. I think that’s a great idea.

He said:

Hi John, I had a look at your Squidoo page and I must say it is very impressive. I have heard of Squidoo and lenses and such but never really looked into them. It seems like another blogging platform but I assume there is a difference?

Hi Sire, thanks for the kind words about my Squidoo page for this blog:

21st Century Affiliate Marketing

Squidoo is not a blogging platform, but it works well with blogs. I try to build a Squidoo lens for each of my blogs for one specific reason: I can syndicate the RSS feed on the lens and Google likes Squidoo lenses. That means that some people may find my blog indirectly via the lens I create on Squidoo.

Squidoo is more of a simple webpage builder and they call each page a lens because the object is to focus on a single topic per page.

You may understand Squidoo a bit more if you read my lens at:

Marketing With Squidoo

That lens syndicates the feed from this blog, my social networking community for Squidoo lensmasters who enjoy marketing, and my blog specifically about marketing with Squidoo.

It also links to other lenses that have information about marketing using Squidoo.

You can build as many (or as few) lenses as you want and it’s always free. In fact, if you build lenses that attract visitors and get clicks, you can earn money from your lenses. Some very few people earn over $1,000 per month; a few dozen lensmasters earn around $100 per month; and most of us earn less than that. Your earnings come from sharing with Squidoo the commissions from Adsense and Glam ads on your lens.

I get a welcome deposit from Squidoo into my PayPal account every month.

Since you already have several blogs, perhaps you could start by building a lens about the main topic of one of your blogs.

You can get started here:

Join Squidoo and start building your own lenses.

But, I earn much more than the payment I get directly from Squidoo, because I promote affiliate links on my lenses and don’t have to share the proceeds from those commissions with Squidoo.

I also promote my CafePress shop on a few of my lenses and link back to some of my websites on other lenses.

So, I use Squidoo both as a traffic generator and as another profit center. It’s also great at cross-promoting lenses, blogs, forums, websites, social networking sites, and other web presences that share common themes and topics.

If you have a blog and you’d like Google to pay more attention, you may want to build a lens about the blog’s main topic and syndicate your RSS feed on the lens. You can also recommend books and other products from Amazon.com.

You can even recommend products from CafePress without having to join their affiliate program, but you’ll be sharing the commissions with Squidoo. It’s worth it because the CafePress module makes it so easy to promote the products you like on CafePress. There are thousands of shopkeepers selling their designs on CafePress and you can select from millions of product/design combinations.

Once a lens is built, it doesn’t take a lot of work to keep it current, and your blog’s feed is automatically updated on the lens on a schedule you can choose, i.e. every hour, every six hours, etc.

Another thing you can do to build interactivity into your lens is to add a guestbook, set up polls, start a duel (conversation/argument), and there are other modules that are of interest, too.

There are a lot of things you can do with Squidoo easily that are more difficult on a blog. I think the two of them work very well together.

Again, you can learn more, if you’re still interested at:

Marketing With Squidoo

I hope that helps you get the idea of what you can do with Squidoo.

One other lens you may want to visit is my lensography, where I write about my lenses, link to some of my blogs, show my Twitter tweets, and more:

Who is John Dilbeck?

If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to do my best to answer them or refer you to another site with the answers.

I almost forgot. There is a social networking aspect to Squidoo where you can meet other highly-motivated lensmasters and help cross-promote each others’ sites, lenses, and blogs.

For example every time you add a quality comment to another lensmaster’s lens, you’ll get a link back to your lensmaster page.

Then there is the ability for a visitor to your site to join your fan club. Whenever you post a SquidCast about your lens, people in your fan club and anyone who has marked that lens as their favorite will see the SquidCast on their favorites page at Squidoo.

You can even get a chicklet to show how many fans you have and it links to your lensmaster page:

A lens is like a blog in one respect. Each time you publish your lens (after the initial build or whenever it is updated), you can send what is called a SquidCast, but which is really a posting that is added to the lens’ RSS feed. Then you can ping that update to spread the word among the large RSS aggregators.

Of course, the SquidCast is also shown on the favorites page of your fans and the people who favorited that lens. It is also promoted on the Squidcast Twitter feed.

So, there are a lot of reasons to include Squidoo as an integral part of your marketing mix, even if you are a blogger or webmaster, already.

And, don’t forget, you don’t have to join Squidoo because you want to make money. You can build your lenses on the topics of your choice, so tell your stories, publish your poems, or show photos of your kids and pets.

Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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4 Comments on Is Squidoo another blogging platform?

  1. Sire on Mon, 18th Aug 2008 7:22 pm

    2. Yep, it’s just like I say to the wife, ‘honey, I am full of good advice, you just don’t want to listen!” See it takes a male to step back and appreciate the wisdom that sprouts from the lips of another man. lol I will now join sqidoo because I see that it has many possibilities. Thanks for explaining it in such a manner that this dumb Aussie can understand it :D

  2. John Dilbeck on Tue, 19th Aug 2008 12:24 am

    3. First of all, I don’t think you’re a dumb Aussie.

    ;)

    You sound a lot like me. I like for people to underestimate me at first and then be completely amazed later when they learn that I’m a wizard.

    I forgot to mention that there are a couple of downsides when using Squidoo as compared to blogging and building websites.

    Last year, Squidoo was almost sunk by spammers and people who were using the site for purposes that were unexpected and unwanted, such as redirecting people to gambling and porn sites.

    As a result, they removed our capability to use javascript, iframes, and forms.

    That makes it more difficult to make lead capture pages or to put up newsletter sign-up forms.

    (For more information on that, see Squidoo module request – Sign-up forms for Aweber mailing lists.)

    And, of course, the inability to use javascript stops us from doing lots of other things that we can do on blogs or our own websites.

    Still, I like marketing with Squidoo and I’ll continue to build more lenses as I have the time and energy.

    If you have any questions about using Squidoo, there is an active forum at SquidU.com and I’ll be happy to offer my thoughts.

    I’m looking forward to seeing your first lens. Please tell us about it when you publish it.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  3. Sire on Tue, 19th Aug 2008 2:00 am

    4. I did join, and used your link but it won’t let me log in. I used the password request form and used the new password but still no go. Just my luck. I did leave a request and am just waiting a reply.

    Sires last blog post..Joining The Crazy Blogging For Money Train

  4. John Dilbeck on Tue, 19th Aug 2008 7:28 pm

    5. Sire, I’m really sorry to hear that you’re having trouble getting started with Squidoo. I’ve never had any trouble signing in.

    I’m sure Gil or one of the others will get back to you soon.

    Let me know if it doesn’t work for you in a couple of days and I’ll post a note at SquidU.com about it.

    All the best,

    JD

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