«

»

Is Squidoo a part of your marketing mix?

December 17, 2008 by John Dilbeck
Filed under: CafePress, Communities, Lenses, Marketing, Poll, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing 

I am a huge fan of Squidoo and use it as a major part of my marketing mix.

I recommend Squidoo for a number of reasons. The lenses are easy to build and you can always go back and modify them whenever you want. It’s free to use. They even pay you to use their free service – how’s that for a deal!

Why do they call it a lens?

Squidoo calls it a lens, actually one page on their site, because you can focus the page on a particular topic. Not every lensmaster does this, but the more successful ones tightly focus a lens on just one subject. If you want to cover multiple subjects, you can always create new lenses, and Squidoo offers several ways to help you cross-promote your related lenses.

Are you a Squidoo lensmaster?

I am happy to be a squidoo lensmaster and I currently have about 70 lenses. I had more, but had to delete almost 50 of them when one of the companies I was promoting changed direction. It’s time to start creating new lenses about the topics in which I’m interested.

Here’s my profile page: John Dilbeck, Squidoo Lensmaster.

If you examine this page, you’ll see that in addition to listing all my lenses, I can customize the page to link to other sites, including this blog, my Cafepress store, my Lulu store (which needs lots of work next year), my profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more.

If you’re reading this, I invite you to follow me on Twitter and become my friend on Facebook.

I think you can see at a glance that your Squidoo lensmaster page is a good way to link to other sites that are important to you.

If you get serious about Squidoo, you may want to create your own lensography to list your lenses in whatever way you want to present them. Here’s my main lensography (you can have more than one): Who is John Dilbeck?

Now, remember that you don’t have to build a lensography about yourself, although it is recommended to keep track of all your lenses and to present them however you want. You can build multiple lensographies.

Let’s say that you are promoting a particular product or service and you want to have multiple lenses, each of which discusses a major feature or benefit. You can create a lens about the main topic and then link to each of the sub-lenses. Even though each page is totally separate on Squidoo, you can present them organized logically and all together. That gives you a lot of flexibility.

Do you have a blog?

If so, you need to create a lens about it.

Why? Because you can tell people about your blog, syndicate your RSS feed, and get the benefit of Squidoo’s high rankings in the search engines.

For instance, I have a lens for this 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog.

Do you have a CafePress shop?

How would you like to promote not only your store and the products within it, but also be able to promote other products sold on Cafepress – and earn some money doing it?

CafePress has an affiliate program on Commission Junction, and it pays a nice commission when you sell other people’s products. However, just by building a Squidoo lens, you can promote products without having to join at CJ.

But, you’ll make more money if you sell your own products from your lenses.

I have a CafePress shop at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com and sell products just about every day.

I created a lens, John Dilbeck’s Shirts, Mugs, and Hats, where I link to the store and some of my best-selling items. There’s also a section where you can add a link to your Cafepress store, and I show random products from searches farther down the lens. I earn money on every sale, and you can do the same thing. It just takes a little time and creativity.

I even created a lens mainly designed to help you promote your CafePress shop. Several dozen shop owners have taken advantage of this, but few have gone back after adding their shops and voted them up higher in the list. Always remember to reload the page after adding something to a Plexo list so you can vote for it.

Come and Promote Your CafePress Store.

By the way, did you know that you can open a CafePress shop for free? Once you’re serious about it, you may want to upgrade to a pro shop. I did, and it’s basically free for me since my first couple of sales every month pays the fee and the rest of my sales are all profit. Not a bad deal.

Learn how to get started at CafePress and Make Your Own T-Shirts.

Promote Your Favorite Products and Services at Squidoo

As you may already be aware, one of the services I enjoy promoting the most is Site Build It! I’m both a satisfied customer and a very happy affiliate.

I have several lenses where I promote Site Build It!.

One of my most popular lenses is Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion and I invite you to visit the lens, if you’re interested.

I think one reason this lens is popular is because I help other fellow SBIers promote their sites and lenses there. If you are an SBIer and have a website powered by Site Build It!, you are welcome to submit your site to the appropriate module on that lens. If you have lenses about SBI, there is a place you can add it, too.

You’ll note that I even welcome affiliate lenses from competing 5 Pillar affiliates.

As I have time, and as more services are announced at SBI, I’ll be adding more lenses discussing the benefits of those services.

Hint: I can’t tell you any more right now, but Sitesell will be announcing an exciting new educational service in about three weeks. Stay tuned for more information. I was on a conference call about it, just this afternoon, and I think there will be people who will want to take advantage of this new service. That’s all I can say, right now.

Squidoo offers much more

There are many modules that can be added to lenses to help you promote what you’re doing and help people find what you’ve written.

They offer a Twitter module where you can show your latest tweets.

Lijit.com has a special module so people can search your content via their search engine. When you add it to a lens, you can specify which lenses to include in the search results.

By going directly to Lijit.com, you can get code to add their search to your blogs and sites, too. You can see it in action in the right column of this blog.

Want to sell products from Amazon? There are modules designed to make it easy to do just that.

It would take a lot of blog posts to cover all that Squidoo offers to help you accomplish what you want, so I’m going to stop here.

How do you become a lensmaster

It’s easy to start building lenses on Squidoo. Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it. Do it now, while you are thinking about it.

Remember, you can start simply and then expand your lens(es) whenever you want. I edited three of my lenses and republished them while I was writing this. It’s pretty easy once you learn how to do it.

Learn more from other Squidoo marketers

I would like to invite you to join us on the Squidoo Marketers community.

Come and learn from people who are using Squidoo in their marketing mix. Share what you know. Tell us about your lenses. Promote your CafePress shops.

It’s a friendly little community, and I’m looking forward to you joining us and participating there.

What’s your opinion?

So, what’s your opinion of using Squidoo as part of your marketing mix? I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts, opinions, and comments about your experiences with, or lack thereof, using Squidoo.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: ,

Comments

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Delicious
  • Technorati
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg

34 Comments on Is Squidoo a part of your marketing mix?

  1. John Dilbeck on Wed, 17th Dec 2008 8:03 pm

    2. Rats!

    I forgot to mention that I have a lens to help promote our Squidoo Marketing Community on Ning.com.

    I syndicate the latest activity and forum RSS feeds from the community and link to a few places where you can learn more about marketing with Squidoo.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  2. John Dilbeck on Wed, 17th Dec 2008 8:10 pm

    3. If you’re a Squidoo lensmaster, please feel free to link to your lensmaster page so we can check out your lenses.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  3. John Dilbeck on Wed, 17th Dec 2008 8:25 pm

    4. Marti Lawrence just sent me a tweet saying, “Why yes, Squidoo is my new book’s home page!”

    Learn more about her new book: 7 Ways You Screw Up Your Life.

    Thanks, Marti.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  4. Marti on Wed, 17th Dec 2008 9:06 pm

    5. Thanks, John! I appreciate the mention. Wishing you all the best!

    Martis last blog post..I Have a New Book Out

  5. katinka - spirituality on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 7:44 am

    6. I started at squidoo to promote my other online ventures. Now my online marketing consists of blogging, squidooing and promoting my squidoo lenses elsewhere :)

    This online stuff gets more complicated by the day :)

    http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/spirituality

    katinka – spiritualitys last blog post..The place of astrology, tarot, aura reading etc. in spiritual development

  6. John Dilbeck on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 9:18 am

    7. Good morning, Marti.

    You’re welcome.

    I love how fast the word gets around with Twitter. I posted this and a few minutes later received your tweet.

    Best of luck with your new book.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  7. Joan Adams on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 10:46 am

    8. You know I love Squidoo! I now have 97 lenses, working toward 100 by December 31. Squidoo is fast, fun and easy! And a great way to increase your internet visibility as well as market your products.
    My Squidoo lensmaster profile is at
    http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Joan4
    And everyone is invited to stop by and visit – and join us on Squidoo – it’s a great community, too!

  8. John Dilbeck on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 11:19 am

    9. Good morning, Katinka.

    I agree. It’s all getting more complicated.

    I also think that it’s getting more synergistic in the process.

    Now, in addition to setting up our sites, we can easily cross-promote other sites using RSS feeds. These can be integrated into our lenses and social networking sites. Services like FriendFeed and Twitter extend our reach to places we may not even imagine.

    I’m not sure complicated equates to harder. I know you didn’t say that. I’m just trying to look a little deeper into the process.

    What do you think?

    Do you think it’s getting harder to promote your online ventures?

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  9. John Dilbeck on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 12:01 pm

    10. Good morning, Joan.

    I agree. Squidoo is great and keeps getting better.

    Building more lenses is high on my priority list of things to do in 2009.

    Thanks for dropping in.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  10. Dennis Edell on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 9:48 pm

    11. I’ll be there come the new year! The squid is at the top of my marketing plans. :)

    Dennis Edells last blog post..$100 First Prize! The *Best Blog Review Contest* Is In Full Effect!

  11. John Dilbeck on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 11:16 pm

    12. Good evening, Dennis.

    Keep us informed as you build your Squidoo empire. :)

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  12. Setia Miami on Fri, 19th Dec 2008 8:32 am

    13. It sure is! It started using Squidoo simply as a site that would help me with seo … but after a while I realized that’s only the tip of the ice berg, so to speak. Soon Squidoo became one of my favorite tools and it is to this day :)

  13. Sam Nichols on Fri, 19th Dec 2008 12:41 pm

    14. I am not a big fan of Squidoo to be honest. I read on many forums people building links and all that stuff for their lenses.
    Why in the world would I do that? I prefer buying my own domain and develop it rather than develop a page on other website.

    Yes, I know, you will say Squidoo lenses have trust and rank well.
    I answer: that is/might be today. Let’s see how Google will see all the spam from all these websites in the future. Because Squidoo like sites are heavily spammed :)

  14. Dennis Edell on Fri, 19th Dec 2008 9:10 pm

    15. I sure will! I also responded again on the other thread. :)

    Dennis Edells last blog post..Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Follow Me On Twitter?

  15. John Dilbeck on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 1:59 am

    16. Good morning, Sam,

    Welcome to our discussions.

    Squidoo and Google did have a falling out last year because of not only spammy lenses, but also because of unethical use of iframes and misleading redirects, and the other things you’d expect from people who have no ethics.

    As a result, they removed our ability to use some of those standard HTML tags, so the good guys are paying for the wrongdoings of the bad guys.

    Finding and removing spam lenses is an ongoing process at Squidoo, using both automatic and manual methods.

    Since last year’s “Google slap,” rankings have indeed improved.

    Still, there are spammy lenses, just as there are spammy domains.

    Building lenses doesn’t mean we don’t build our own sites, too, but nobody has to do it. I respect your decision to build your business following your own path.

    Squidoo isn’t everyone’s “cup of tea.”

    In addition to making affiliate sales, one of my main reasons for using Squidoo is to direct visitors to the various domains I own. It works.

    Thanks for your comments.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  16. Sam Nichols on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 5:29 am

    17. Hey John
    I understand perfectly what you say and it makes sense. Is just that I don’t liike Squidoo vrey much. That’s all :)
    Thanks for the reply

  17. Houston search engine optimization on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 8:48 am

    18. I signed up for a squido lens recently and I guess I just felt like I was missing something. Basically it’s a single webpage you can focus on a topic and link it back to your blog if you like?? Is this pretty much it or is there anything more to it than that? Thanks.

    -Gerald Weber

    Houston search engine optimizations last blog post..Round Out Your Social Networking Portfolio…With Your OWN Social Network

  18. John Dilbeck on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 11:43 am

    19. Good morning, Sam.

    I know what you mean.

    Hubpages is very similar to Squidoo and offers many of the same features, but I don’t like it. I think I have one page there and may add more in the future, but I have plans for over 100 more lenses on Squidoo.

    So, I understand what you’re saying. No particular site is right for all of us, and I think it’s right to do what you prefer doing the best. You’ll have better results in the long run, if you enjoy what you’re doing.

    I’m always happy to discuss things related to affiliate marketing. I hope you’ll come back and join in on other topics.

    Maybe we’ll agree, maybe we won’t, but we’ll always be friendly.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  19. John Dilbeck on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 12:12 pm

    20. Good morning, Gerald.

    Yes, you can do what you describe with Squidoo, but that’s only a tiny portion of what’s possible.

    For instance, you can host a debate on a lens, by using the duel module.

    You can link directly to commercial sites and post commercial content, which is something that most similar sites don’t allow.

    Some people have a dozen or more lenses on a similar topic and link them together to form a virtual website using Squidoo’s resources, and get paid for doing it via payments from Squidoo’s earnings co-op and from selling their own products and services or linking to affiliated sites.

    You can post entirely personal (not commercial) content. Write a tribute to something or someone. Post your poetry and short stories. Connect with school buddies and co-workers. Develop lenses about your town or city. Share news about your favorite non-profit. Write about your favorite hobby. Review your favorite books, movies, and songs – or just talk about that wonderful/lousy movie you sat through last night.

    For some of us, it’s important to create a lens about our blog, our business, the services and products we recommend, and so forth. That’s how I make my living and it’s what I concentrate on doing. Squidoo works well for this.

    I link back to my websites, blogs, forums, social networking communities, other lenses, and sites I don’t own, but where I have a presence. I also cross-promote between all of these sites.

    I syndicate RSS feeds on lenses, which introduces new visitors to what is currently happening on other sites I own, manage, and participate on.

    If I were in a different line of business, I might use Squidoo more for talking about my hobbies and other things, rather than as an additional revenue stream for my business.

    Linking to our blogs is one important possibility with Squidoo, but that just scrapes the surface.

    As with an iceberg, there’s a lot more below the surface with Squidoo than what is immediately obvious when you first encounter it.

    Think of Squidoo as offering an easy way to build and host tightly focused pages on one particular keyword or phrase, and then build it and link to whatever sites you think best for that particular topic.

    The last I saw, there were well over a half-million lenses on a huge variety of topics, and it continues to grow as more people add more content.

    Thanks for joining our conversation, Gerald. Your comments are always welcome and I hope you’ll come back often.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  20. Sam Nichols on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 5:29 pm

    21. Hi John
    Just subscribed to your feed so I will be “bothering” you soon :)

  21. MMA gloves on Sat, 20th Dec 2008 11:47 pm

    22. Squidoo seems like it would be a good component to utilize for marketing. Also looks simple and really focused. I will definitely check it out. Thanks.

    MMA glovess last blog post..Choosing Shorts for Mixed Martial Arts

  22. John Dilbeck on Mon, 22nd Dec 2008 12:25 am

    23. Good evening, Sam.

    You’re welcome to come back and “bother” me anytime! I’ll look forward to your thoughts and ideas.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  23. John Dilbeck on Mon, 22nd Dec 2008 12:35 am

    24. Good evening MMA gloves.

    Welcome to our discussions. What should I call you? “MMA gloves” seems a bit awkward when talking to a real person.

    Yes, I agree. Squidoo is easy to use and lenses can be tightly targeted. I think it’s well worth the effort it takes to use Squidoo in my marketing mix.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  24. Gerald Weber SEM Group on Mon, 22nd Dec 2008 5:50 am

    25. @John,

    Thanks for the insight/explanation. I’m definitely going to spend some more time working with it now.

    Gerald Weber SEM Groups last blog post..10 Examples of Creative Twitter Uses

  25. John Dilbeck on Mon, 22nd Dec 2008 11:12 am

    26. Good morning, Gerald.

    I’m always happy to help, if I can.

    If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop back in and share them.

    When you really get into working with Squidoo, I think you’re going to find things you really like about it.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  26. comiclens on Fri, 27th Feb 2009 7:10 am

    27. squidoo are good but does it really helps?

  27. Joan Adams on Fri, 27th Feb 2009 10:44 am

    28. oh yes, Squidoo is a major help. articles are a great help too. as are blogs. everything counts! and if you get involved in the Squidoo community, you will get some traffic from within the community. that exposure jump-starts things.

    Joan Adams´s last blog post..Updated my lensography

  28. John Dilbeck on Fri, 27th Feb 2009 12:09 pm

    29. Good morning, Comiclens.

    Welcome to our discussion.

    I see that Joan beat me to responding to you. I agree with what she said.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  29. John Dilbeck on Fri, 27th Feb 2009 12:15 pm

    30. Good morning, Joan.

    It’s always great seeing your smiling face in the morning.

    ;)

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  30. steve on Fri, 27th Feb 2009 4:15 pm

    31. I am new to squidoo . I am still figuring out stuffs.Hope fully , Once I get used to the operation I too will use it too its full potential .

  31. John Dilbeck on Sat, 28th Feb 2009 5:23 am

    32. Good morning, Steve.

    Welcome to our discussion.

    I know what you mean about still figuring out what you can do with Squidoo. There are so many options that it can be confusing.

    My best advice, especially for anyone new to Squidoo, is to use a minimum of modules, perhaps four or five, and build a lens that is mostly text.

    After you publish it, you can always go back and modify it whenever you want.

    I’m starting to think that many Squidoo lenses are getting unnecessarily complex to the detriment of what the lensmaster is trying to do.

    When in doubt, I think, keep it simpler rather than complex.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  32. ringenvy on Wed, 18th Mar 2009 12:11 pm

    33. I am a newbie to squidoo . I hope I ll learn it all soon and use it to its full potential !

  33. Tom Iron Beds on Sun, 5th Apr 2009 2:22 am

    34. I have always struggled with squidoo .
    I just cant get a hold of it .
    looks like it has good potential !

    Tom Iron Beds´s last blog post..Black shades by Karboxx

  34. John Dilbeck on Wed, 8th Apr 2009 10:45 am

    35. Good morning, R. and T.I.B.,

    Squidoo can be easier to master if you start simply.

    You can put a lot of information in the text module and the text links module.

    If you have a blog you’d like to syndicate, you can do that easily using the RSS module.

    Later, as you learn more and feel more comfortable, you can update the lenses and add additional modules and interactivity.

    I’m not sure, but I think they recommend that you have at least five modules if you’re planning to build a great lens.

    Like everything else, you improve with practice.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

«

»