I think that this month, the light is showing at the end of the tunnel for several of my projects. The income is becoming more consistent and I’m getting better at reproducing results consistently.

I’ve found the lag time with many projects on squidoo before they begin producing significant results can be up to several months. When you set some big goals and small goals, you begin to climb through the Dip (if it’s worth climbing through).

The most important thing is not to give up on something. Finish a project and move to the next. You may quit after you are already through the Dip otherwise.

Quitting after you are already through the tough part is not what you want to do .

Has anyone else been setting some goals with squidoo? Powering through a Dip, real or imagined? Need some help or encouragement?

While frustrating, it’s certainly not the first time I’ve had a few days like that and it wont be the last. It did get me to thinking on the varying ‘barriers’ to Squidoo Lensmasters and what causes them.

So, in increasing order and thanks to the ‘The Dip‘ , here are the Dips that I’ve seen happen in Squidoo.

Dip 1 : 0-2 lenses – Getting Started (Just Build One!)

Considering how easy it is to do nothing, it can be considered almost a herculean effort to start a new lens. Sure it’s not hard and maybe even a little fun. Sure, your first lens may stink (mine did). When I look at the 10 or so people that have been referred to Squidoo from me, I think 2 people have made a lens, and each has only one at that.

If you view Squidoo as a ‘drive-by’ link drop for your other sites, you are not going to move past this Dip.

Note: Do you use other social sites as a ‘drive-by’ link drop for your lenses? The same principle applies…

Dip 2 : 30-75 lenses (The Aversion to Scale / Quality Check)

Once you figure out how to make a few lenses you really start getting rolling, pushing out lenses. It seems like you have enough ideas for an infinite amount of lenses. Giant Squid? No Problem! I’ll be there by the end of the week. Of course, now is where quality comes into play. If you are unable to provide even a basic level of quality content on your lenses, you will have a nice dashboard full of a lot of lenses with zero traffic.

Conversely, this is the number of lenses that some of the highest quality lensmasters on Squidoo have. They produce insanely good content, beautifully formatted lenses, epic squidbooks and more. For them, this may be their sweet spot. These lensmasters may only make 2 lenses a month, but if both of those lenses are going to consistently rank on the top of the pile, that may be worth it.

Oh yea, and a lot of that second group (and most of the Lensmasters beyond this Dip) put in an insane amount of work to help other lensmasters. Why? Because they enjoy helping people.. *gasp*.

The big reason this is a dip is two-fold:

1. If your lenses are junk, you have to learn to make them better before you can really move to the next level.
2. Learning how to scale Squidoo is hard. Very hard. Changing your mindset from building a lens a week to one a day is too much for some people. Going from one a day to 4 a day? Ouch. It Stings and it’s a Dip to overcome.

Dip 3 : 200 – ??? Squidoo Lenses (The Technical Dip)

Is this a Dip? I’m not sure. I think there is one right around here though and I think there are a lot of lensmasters pushing against it right now. When I started Squidoo a Year Ago the very tippy top lensmasters in terms of lenses that I knew had between 300-600 lenses (JeffyV and Glen and Relache and some of you other old timers, please correct me if I’m off). Now, it doesn’t seem like there are ANY lensmasters with several thousand lenses (well, maybe there’s a spam account running around somewhere, but I doubt it).

It’s certainly not for lack of trying by lensmasters to build more lenses, and Squidoo HQ definitely wants their best lensmasters to make more lenses (duh) so what’s the problem? Why is it increasingly difficult to scale squidoo lenses at higher volumes?

Going from lens 1 – 10 was challenging. Going from lens 10-100 took marginally more time but was less technically challenging as you pretty much know the ropes. Going from lens 100-1,000 has been all but insurmountable for virtually all the Lensmasters so far…

I’ve heard some rumors that a new dashboard may be in the works, that would help. I think part of the problem is the infrastructure squidoo has started with (Although HQ has really been pushing to stay way ahead of 99.9% of their users which I soundly applaud). You have to take a whole new look at usability when you have folks that need to look at 1,000 lenses and know which ones are making money, getting traffic, ranking well, have new traffic sources, or broken links and videos when compared to someone who has 5.

The time spent actually building lenses instead of loading dashboards and workshops, copy / pasting, and other tedious time sinks will have to increase in some way.(It takes approximately 30-90 seconds to load a dashboard with 400 lenses over a cable internet connection, and longer to go to a lens workshop)

Why can’t HQ instantly let people copy modules to other lenses, edit multiple lenses at once, or give them more powerful analytical tools? Because creating tools that power users (i.e. trusted users) find useful but potentially malicious users can’t find ways to exploit is a tough cookie.

I’m not sure how to climb out of this Dip, but when I figure it out it’s going to be awesome..

By the way, if you haven’t read Seth’s book: The Dip you are probably a bit confused about what a ‘Dip’ is. Buy it. Read it.

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?