All about Adsense -

Squidoo has ads on (virtually) every lens. The ads are nearly always google adsense ads but squidoo is always trying to find different ways to monetize the lenses to make more money for lensmasters so occasionally Squidoo wil introduce a new ad format (such as the Glam ads that were present for several months).

In order to prevent ‘click fraud’ – people clicking on their own ads in order to make money – squidoo takes all of the money from these ads and dumps them into a big pot. This pot then has 5% taken  for charity, then is split with 45% to Squidoo HQ and and the remaining 50% to all the lensmasters.

However, not every lens receives the same amount of money from the pot. The pile of money for lensmasters is broken down, with some lenses receiving more than others.

Currently, there are 4 major ‘tiers’ that you lens can fall into when HQ determines payouts for google and other CPC based ads. The tiers vary in payout each month depending on how much money Squidoo made.

The top tier has been paying out $8-$10 per lens for most of 2008. The next tier down usually pays between $1-$2. The third tier usually pays a few pennies (less than $0.10) and the bottom tier receives no money. For exact squidoo payouts stretching back to mid-2007 check out the Squidconomy lens.

The latest information available from Squidoo HQ states that the tiers are calculated off of the average lensrank of a lens for the entire month.

As a very rough guide, the top tier is usually about 2,000 lenses, the second tier is the next 8,000 best lenses, and the third tier is most of the rest of the lenses that rank in the top 100k.

This adsense money does not show up anywhere on your dashboard but can be viewed on the royalties tab as part of the total royalties for a lens in any given month.

Other money paid by Squidoo -

Squidoo has another way to earn money with them as well by using what are called the ‘moneymaker’ modules. There are several of these  for different merchants and in different formats. The three most popular merchants are definitely Amazon, Ebay, and Cafepress.

By adding modules from these vendors to your lens, you have the opportunity to earn a commission anytime someone visits that vendor by clicking a link to them on your lens. If they click through your lens and make a purchase (note: what the guest purchases does not have to be what is listed on your lens) then Squidoo gets a small commission.

Squidoo takes all of the commissions they earn through these programs and creates a bunch of little pots, one for each lensmaster. These pots then give 5% to charity and HQ takes 45% and the remaining 50% is distributed to each individual lensmaster.

I have received commissions from amazon, ebay, and cafepress modules that range from just a few pennies all the way up to over $20 for just my share.

These commissions do show up on your dashboard, usually within a few days of the purchase being completed.

When does the lensmaster receive their money?

The two types of payments are paid out at the same time through paypal, but the payments received often are for separate time periods, which causes a lot of confusion.

Between the 5th and the 15th of each month, Squidoo sends out a paypal payment to each lensmaster that is receiving cash for that pay period.

For example, in the next few days, September 2008 payments will be made. There is a lag time of 30 days on the google adsense money, meaning that the ‘tier’ payouts will be based on how lenses did during the month of July 2008. Money that was listed on your dashboard on the last day of July will also (usually) be included in this payment.

Since your dashboard shows all the money that hasn’t been paid out yet that means that your current dashboard shows your earnings from money maker modules from July 1 through today September 7. After the payout, your earnings in July will dissapear from your dashboard view and only August and September’s earnings will be shown. You can always look up past royalties on the Royalties tab of your dashboard.

When you sell items on Amazon, the specific item you sold will also be reflected in the royalty reports. However, Cafepress and Ebay royalties are not available on an item by item basis. This may change in the future, as reporting from Ebay’s affiliate program is set to undergo an overhaul on September 10th.

Common Misconceptions about Squidoo’s Payouts:

Payout Timing - If you start using squidoo in September, the first time you will receive a payment from Squidoo is in November, due to the lag time in the system. Squidoo can’t pay out money that it hasn’t received yet.

Dashboard Earnings – The earnings on your dashboard only reflect money from money maker modules, not your adsense share.

You can’t get rich on the Adsense Share from lenses - While the adsense share is nice and several lensmasters make over $100 a month with the revenue share, it’s not the path to riches with squidoo. Why not? It’s simply very very competitive to get lenses in the top tier. If you go through some of the top 2,000 lenses on squidoo, they are almost all high quality, high traffic, and very useful lenses. While you should strive to make all of your lenses with these qualities in mind, relying on your tier ranking can lead to trouble.

As an example, in order to earn $1,000 from the revenue share in one month you would need approximately 100 lenses in the top tier (5% of all the top tier lenses!) as well as an additional 200 lenses in the second tier.

It’s possible to make upwards of $1000 from a single lens in a month outside of the adsense payout and many lenses make $100+ a month from sales. Because of this, playing the ‘lensrank game’ often just isn’t a good use of time or resources.

All of that being said, creating high quality lenses and being rewarded for them in the form of the adsense payout is quite rewarding and can be used for other great purposes as well.

Did I miss anything? Are there any other basic payment questions about Squidoo that I can help clarify? Leave a comment below and let me know.

February was a really good month for me, especially the last two weeks. Starting off with Mardi Gras and Valentines Day, my sales were very flat for the first 15 days or so of the month. After that, they really started to take off.

Here’s the recap:

Squidoo Payout ($$ Earned in Jan. and Paid in March):$204.00
CJ (Earned in Feb. – Paid in March) : $480.18

Total: $684.18

Lenses Built : 32 (Weird..this is the same as the number of lenses I built Last Month….)

Total Lenses (as of 3/11/08) : 331

Where the lenses fall: (These numbers should be read as �the number of lenses in the top X,XXX on my dashboard�)
Top 1,000 : 9
Top 5,000 : 30
Top 10,000 : 62
Top 20,000 : 137

Reflections:

The LR numbers above are probably a little low as the LR on some of my top lenses dropped in the last few days through a delayed LR update from Squidoo as well as a number of other factors. Not a big deal as I expect my ‘top-line’ growth to pick back up as we head towards the end of the month.

‘Bottom-line’ growth of my lenses was quite good. the number I have in the top 20,000 increased by 6.2% to 137 from 129. I would really like to see bottom line growth of 10% a month but that is getting harder to do as the sheer number of lenses I have in the top 20k and in my account increases.

Note: I still make sales and significant money from lenses with LR below 20,000. I look at the lenses in my account with an LR of under 20k as having a reasonable shot at hitting one of the top two pay tiers (I know I haven’t updated the Squidconomy lens yet, it’s coming!) and so I measure them accordingly.

For a short month, CJ really pulled through. I had almost zero sales going into Valentines Day. Coming out of Valentines day, CJ really took off and I was able to beat my best month ever (last month) by 20% .

My Squidoo earnings dropped a bit as there was no big commission boost from Christmas sitting on my dashboard. Sales in Jan were absolutely pathetic (I think my dash made like $6) but they picked up a bit in February and March is looking even better.

So far this month, it’s looking like I have a good shot at breaking the $1,000 mark for the first time, which is very exciting.

How was your Payday this month?

Here’s the Breakdown:

Squidoo Payout: $247.98
CJ: $401.69

Total: $649.67

Lenses Built : 32 (woefully short of the number I need to get to 1,000 lenses)

Total Lenses (as of 2/7/08) : 283

Where the lenses fall: (These numbers should be read as ‘the number of lenses in the top X,XXX on my dashboard’)
Top 1,000 : 9
Top 5,000 : 36
Top 10,000 : 69
Top 20,000 : 129

Reflections:

A massive month for the dashboard for me (relatively) and a record breaking month on CJ set for an awesome payday this month. The trek onwards and upwards to $1k a month is continuing. It really can be done folks, I firmly believe it.

I updated the Squidoo Payout Tiers breakdown to show what LRs paid out what this month for those interested.

I grew my number of lenses by 12% or so in January, which isn’t bad. However, my number of top lenses stayed reasonably static. This isn’t because my lenses are getting the same amount of traffic, in fact my traffic did awesome in January. The competition to get into the top 2,000 is getting pretty tough and the top 10k is no slouch either.

How’d you make out this payday?

Today’s Lens Breakdown: Nov 8, 2007

# lenses in:

Top 100: 0

Top 1,000: 7

Top 10,000: 72

Top 20,000: 128

Total Lenses: 178

Iif you want to learn to make $300/mo. or more from Squidoo as well, make sure and subscribe to my RSS feed and stop by to check us out in the Chat Room. There’s always something new to learn about and we keep on top of it like no-one else.

-The Captain

I’m going to provide disclosure of my traffic and earnings statistics on a daily basis.

The Stats are already live and you can find them by clicking on the Squidoo Earnings page. I update this sheet every morning after the LensRank update takes place. The tracking begins on Sept. 5, 2007. This was the cutoff date for Giant Squid qualification. As of today, I’ve earned over $120 since then. I’m on track for another great month of passive income from Squidoo.