The Monetizer set up a Squidoo page a week or so ago as another way to promote this blog and earn some extra money. Results of having a Squidoo page or pages are not proven, but some "lens masters" on the site are claiming to make some nice loot. With Squidoo you choose the topic for your "lens" or page and then go to town creating content for it. Squidoo makes it relatively easy as they provide you with Modules for your page. You pick and choose from things such as text areas (where you can also add HTML code), Link lists, RSS feeds, Amazon product lists, Ebay auction lists, Guestbooks Polls and more.
Get a feel for the Monetizer Squidoo here.
A few quick Squidoo concepts to understand:
"Lens" refers to the Squidoo page you set up. It's your piece of free internet real estate on Squidoo. You choose the topic for the page, keyword tags and content. It stays there forever as long as you give it enough content and Squidoo doesn't delete it (they do this if you make a low content lens of under 3 modules). You can continually edit and create as many lenses as you like on various topics that you might want to promote or discuss.
"Lens master" refers to you, as the creator of a lens. You can create as many lenses on Squidoo as you put your mind to (the more the merrier!) Should you become skilled at making compelling and high ranking lenses, people just might want to pay for your services!
"Lens rank" - refers to how your lens ranks in it's particular category (Monetizer is #5 right now in SEO & Affiliate Marketing). More importantly, there is an overall rank for lenses on Squidoo (Monetizer is #144 right now). Hitting the top 100 of Squidoo can be a pretty sweet deal, according to reports.
For more info about Squidoo and lenses see the Squidoo FAQ section.
Here are the various ways you can make money using your Squidoo lens:
1) Earn a share of Adsense revenue - This seems to be top secret in that Squidoo doesn't say its formula for how you earn here. If ads are clicked on your particular Squidoo you earn a share of that. Squidoo's FAQ states:
"Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties."
Squidoo also claims that you'll earn in a share of overall Adsense profits from their site:
"we pay 5% of our post-expense revenue directly to the charity pool, 50% directly to our lensmasters and retain the rest to pay off investors and employees. Don't quit your day job yet, but you should know that as we all grow, our goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity."
"AdSense revenue (these are the Google ads you see on every lens): This money goes into a pool, so as to avoide clickfraud. Half of the pool distributes out to lensmasters, on a PayRank scale that is based on each lens's average LensRank and traffic."
This is where the top secret formula comes in to the mix as you can never know what sort of cut you'll really get from the overall Adsense earnings. However, getting anything is better than nothing at all! So it pays to have a high ranking lens based on the above info. A top 100 lens just might bring in a nice cut of the revenue.
2) Use "Money Making" modules on your lens page. With these modules you are adding products or services to your page which you can receive royalties or commissions for. The best examples are Amazon and Ebay.
Some of the featured Squidoo Money Makers right now are:
Amazon
Barbecues.com
Beauty.com
Better Homes & Gardens Store Add
Better Homes & Gardens Store
Buy.com
Buy.com
CafePress
Cooking.com
Discovery Channel Store
eBags
eBay
iTunes
Legal Seafood
Netflix
Overstock.com
Starbucks Store
Star Wars Shop
Wine.com
You can add any of these modules to your Squidoo page, then select the relevant products to display. Now think of the possibilities based on your lens topic. Adding in products from any of the above, as well as many more merchants, gives you potential royalties income should someone stop by and make a purchase. Squidoo offers you plenty of categories and choices there. Conversely, if you belong to Amazon Associates, you can choose to add in your own HTML code. That way you would realize your full royalty off Amazon sales versus sharing the profits with Squidoo.
3) Pitch your own products or affiliate programs - Use Squidoo as a way to direct traffic to your Ebay, Cafepress store or other sites. Make the Squidoo entirely about the types of products you sell and make it informative. It may encourage potential customers to stop by and make a purchase.
You can also add in the referral links to your various money makers. Make sure they are relevant to your page topic though. For example, if your Squidoo is about children's toys, you don't want a blatant "Sign up for this survey program" link on there. You could however make an entire Squidoo page about "Paid Surveys" or "Auction Ads" if you wanted.
4) Selling the lens itself or ad spots - Some lenses become quite popular spots and get a good amount of traffic. There may be someone out there (company or individual), who wants to buy that page off you so they can use the lens rank and its potential customer base to their advantage. It's not sure how much the top lens page has sold for, but there are lens masters on Squidoo making some nice extra cash by selling pages they already set up or that they set up for someone.
Monetizer isn't sure if this goes on much on Squidoo, but if your lens is popular enough you may be able to charge people so they can advertise their links or even products on your lens. Make sure to set wise and fair prices for this and nothing outlandish. Also, always consult Squidoo's TOS to make sure you aren't violating.
One of the Monetizer's favorite things about Squidoo, is you basically could forget about your lens pages you create, come back to your account any day and see some money in there. Right now Monetizer has earned a whopping $3.72, but sees potential with this site. Monetizer has never been a top 100 lens but is shooting for that goal. If nothing else, it's free advertising and can be found in the search engines. Once found it will direct possible new audience members to this blog.
Give Squidoo a try today and set up a lens to promote your blog, website or product. As with most new sites you join it will have a learning curve, but Squidoo may just provide you some nice additional income if done right.
Visit the Monetizer Squidoo here to help with the latest campaign.
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