Arr... This Be The Captain! Thanks for Stopping by to check out my piratey bag of Squidoo Tricks! If you are new here, you might want to get free updates and squidoo tricks delivered straight to you via RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Two years ago this month, Squidoo looked like this:
Courtesy of WayBackMachine
If you click through, you can browse around the squidoo of early ‘06 a bit. Sometimes it’s good to look back on where things were in order to see how far you have come. More lenses have been built in the last 2 weeks than Squidoo had built in all of their first year. (granted, they were in Beta for pretty much all of it) . Looking back at the site, virtually all of the changes are for the better.
One constant about squidoo is change, which is a good thing. Do you have some lenses that just wallow on the bottom of your dashboard and don’t get any traffic? I know I have my fair share. As much as it pains you, crack those back open (even if it’s just one a day) and take a look. I bet you will be surprised at how much better you have gotten at making lenses since you made those old, dusty lenses. A few quick tweaks and you could easily be back on your way.
Another thing that changed? Looking at the Squidoo Top 100 lenses from Jan 2007, there were definitely some familiar names on the list. There were also a lot of people that kind of vanished into Squid History without a peep. The Lensmasters that are still here are doing pretty well for themselves and getting better every day..
Are you still going to be on Squidoo in Jan 2008? or will you be Squid History?
I switched The Captain over to Do-Follow late last week and I thought I’d announce it officially today.
What’s ‘Do Follow’?
That means that the URL you leave with your name when you leave a comment will get a little bit of link juice when google comes by and follows that link. Most blogs build on WordPress (like this one) automatically have google stay away from comment links. Being the (mostly) nice pirate that I am, I have decided to lift this restriction.
A few guidlines to consider when commenting:
These have always been in effect, I’m just voicing them.
- I do see the comments before they appear, so if you wouldn’t let someone post that comment on your site, should I? I’m referring to poor grammar and Spammy link-heavy comments, not those that contradict me. In fact, I like posting dissenting opinions, it helps spark good conversation.
- �As long as it’s not ‘porn or pills’ you can link to whatever you want in the ‘URL’ field of the comment. However, I do ask that links in the body of the comment at least be remotely relevant to what we are talking about.
- No Ninja’s allowed.
So do-follow your little hearts out mateys, it’s Monday!
-The Captain
Squidoo can be really frustrating at times. Perhaps you have tons of great content and you still aren’t getting more than a trickle of traffic. Perhaps you’ve tried submitting your lens everywhere under the sun with less than spectacular results. Maybe you just can’t make that first sale off of your eBay or Amazon modules.
I was discussing different challenges from Squidoo with a few people in the Chat Room today. Between all the people talking there were hundreds and hundreds of lenses that we had all built. Some of the things we were talking about:
- a giant stream of traffic is a great measure of success (obviously) but it doesn’t necessarily make you a ton of money. Some lenses get a lot of lookers and no buyers. While this is a problem I would like to have with more lenses, it’s still annoying when you are getting several hundred (or thousand) hits a week with no money ringing up on your Dashboard or in your CJ or Amazon accounts.
- A lot of lenses are not focused or optimized enough for your target audience. For example, a lens on ringtones is competing with an insane amount of sites, many of which are run by people full time trying to climb in the rankings.
- On the other side, if a lens is too focused your potential pool of visitors may be too small to really earn you any money or fame. I think I’ve made this mistake in the past.
- Getting ego-centric about your lens can hurt it. ‘My lens is the best resource out there, why don’t people just find me?’. Getting the word out about your lens can be tough (In fact, it’s probably the hardest part) but if you don’t tell people about it, how can you get all that fame and recognition you deserve?
- Content is in the eye of the beholder. A lot of times you can create a lot of value by combining information from a lot of sources. However, you still need that twist to get people to visit your lens..
What does this all mean? Squidoo is not a magic bullet. I want to emphasize that. There are a lot of people that say you can’t make money with Squidoo. I think that those are the same people that said you can’t make money with eBay… At the same time, building a portfolio of lenses that rakes in the cash does take time, trial and error, and creativity (like most things in life).
To take a page out of Seth’s Book The Dip, I think there are a lot of ‘mini-dips’ in Squidoo. Making that first sale, making your first $10, $100, $1,000 in a month. At each of these levels, more and more people quit because what they are trying isn’t working so they figure nothing can work. And you know what? Time and time I see the lensmasters that power through those dips make more and more money. By pushing the boundaries of what is possible, you can teach yourself a lot about business, life, and getting ahead.
My current Dip? Squidoo doesn’t currently have a way that makes it exactly easy to manage 270 lenses in one place. Does that mean I’m going to stop building lenses until HQ can build one? umm…no.
What’s your current Dip with Squidoo? What ‘Dips’ have you had in the past?
