Making Money on Squidoo - How Much Can You Make?
89
Yep, I make money on Squidoo!
It's a perfectly timed request, Whitney, because I just received noticed yesterday that I am now a Giant Squid on Squidoo. Giant Squid was an invitation-only contest that Squidoo ran for some of their webmasters -- with the hopes of encouraging us to create more than 50 lenses for Squidoo, which is why my Hubpages have been coming kind of slow lately. I was in a frenzy to get my lenses done by the deadline.
Happily I made it just in time and had more than enough lenses to qualify me. The perks of GiantSquid-dom include some bumps for lenses of my choice and a pile of free advertising on their Squidoffers which I will be testing out next week by trying to get more referrals for Hubpages :)
How many lenses do I have?
I currently have 67 lenses on my main account and maybe a half dozen here and there on other accounts. I actually joined Squidoo last year and then never really did anything with it. I actually only started using it after I discovered Hubpages and started creating Hubs. Those were so much fun that I decided to expand my empire.
I run mostly a combination of affiliate product lenses, celebrity lenses and shopping lenses. I use the shopping lenses as testing grounds for niches that I think might be good money makers and then when one pans out I will usually get a domain and start building my own website.
Making Money on Squidoo
I received my first payment from Squidoo directly at the beginning of September and it was for a total of $14 or so. Right now I have another $20 or I've made from affiliate sales that need to clear, but the majority of my Squidoo-related income comes from affiliate marketing for products that are located off Squidoo. I push affiliate products much harder on Squidoo than I do on Hubpages, mostly because Squidoo is much more welcoming of affiliate marketing and Hubpages seems to prefer keeping everything internal.
Since many of my lenses are in the top 10,000 lenses on Squidoo and several of them are in the top 1000, I expect a much higher affiliate payout from Squidoo at the beginning of October. I expect it will probably be at least $50, plus the income from the lenses for Ebay and Amazon sales.
The two sites have different philosophies: Seth Godin designed Squidoo to be a site that points to content elsewhere. Hubpages is designed to be content itself. At least that is how I see it.
I still do plenty of just fun, personal interest stuff on Squidoo and my highest lensranked lens at the moment, on Christopher McCandless, is set up to send all money to charity, but for the most part I use Squidoo to make money with affiliate products.
I make okay money with my Hubpages, particularly on Adsense and Ebay (Amazon is terrible), but I bring in about 20 times as much from my Squidoo lenses on a consistent basis and that is because of affiliate programs like Clickbank and Commission Junction and Copeac.
So if I've convinced you that it's worth your time, I strongly encourage you to Sign Up for Squidoo and create a few lenses of your own. Even if it is just to promote your Hubs. ;)
Lens Making and Hub Making Goals
Right now my main goal is to bring the number of Hubs I have up to par with the number of lenses that I have. Since I don't usually push affiliate products on my Hubs, I try and think about what the returns might be for Ebay and Adsense and how popular the Hubs will be ultimately in terms of natural, organic traffic. If i start with a topic and it doesn't perform, then usually I toss out the idea of continuing with that topic. Right now -- I want to update all my TV network hubs and then write some more Hubs about all the different jobs I've had because the ones I've done so far have been really popular and get great traffic.
In the long term, I want at least 100 Lenses and 100 Hubs and then I might take a break for a bit and turn off my computer for a couple of days :)
I hope this helps answer your questions, Whitney, and if you have any follow-ups, feel free to ask!
vote upvote downshareprintflag
- Useful (11)
- Funny (1)
- Awesome (2)
- Beautiful (1)
- Interesting (3)
CommentsLoading...
O. I meant to ask... Do you think that joining groups helps add traffic and possible clicks and cash?
The best way to start raising your ranks and making money is getting more traffic. I do a lot of article marketing for my lenses to drive traffic to them and submit articles to Ezinearticles.com with links to my Squidoo lenses in the resource box.
Also, build more lenses and interlink the ones that fit together using the lensroll feature. Are you joining groups? It's important to join groups as well -- gets more backlinks to your lenses and may send the right kind of traffic your way.
Are you using the Ebay modules to link to specific auctions? A better way to do it might be to use keywords instead and then use the category/sub-category feature to make sure the most relevant Ebay auctions come up.
Another thing I do is always set min. bid to "1" or sometimes even higher. This makes sure that the auctions that show up are stuff people actually want.
What's your lensmaster name on Squidoo? I could take a look at your lenses and give you some ideas on how to monetize them and drive a bit more traffic to them. There are some tattoo products on Clickbank that might work with your body mod lenses. Animals are definitely popular as well -- I guess it might just depend on the type of animals. So if you like let me take a look and then I'll send you an email or something with a few ideas.
my squidoo is the same as my hubpages... whitney05.. i'd very much appreciate any advice that you could give.
I prefer hubpages because I doesn't require work to drive traffic as on Squidoo.
I agree. I've had much more traffic with hubpages, than squidoo. I'm always writting hubs. I have a few I need to publish.
Whitney, I just sent you an email through Hubpages. Let me know if you have any more questions or if you dont' get it!
Wow what a terrific hub! I'd been wondering if starting up with Squidoo would be worth it and clearly, it can be. Thanks, embitca, I used your link to sign up so hopefully I'll be able to expand my activities over to Squidoo. :)
Your site needs help, though, too many tech issues with Squidoo. Seriously, try and build there. Have aspirin :(
Hmmm I wonder if it would make it worth my while to start a squidoo. Great hub nonetheless.
I enjoyed your Hub!
I write on Squidoo as well. One of my lenses, "Face Painting Small Designs On Kids For Fun & Profit" (http://www.squidoo.com/small-face-painting-designs is ranked about 1,700 overall and gets tons of hits and click-throughs to an affiliate product I'm promoting, however, I'm thinking the sales page to the affiliate product just isn't cutting it since I've only made one sale. It's work to get traffic to the lenses (more so than Hubpages), however, if you know how to do it, then it's just a matter of finding the right affiliate product to promote, and choosing the right keywords to rank for.
Any money I make from Hubpages has been on eBay and Google Adsense. However, Hubpages and Squidoo have both been great at sending traffic to my blog.
I almost forgot...one cool thing about Squidoo is that you can include a Clickbank RSS feed so for instance, I have one account on Squidoo that promotes an acne affiliate product. I received a sale from another acne product that was advertised in the Clickbank RSS feed and not the main product I was promoting.
thanks, mmiller. I didn't even know about Clickbank RSS feeds. How do you find them?
Hello embitca nice hub. I too have about 8 lenses since I joined Squidoo in October I believe. I havent seen any money yet and the ranking is pretty low. I write about things I like and passionate about but it just doesnt seem to get enough traffic. I do use amazon and ebay and everything it has to offer but the traffic is just not there. I am bea63 if you ever wanna see my lenses. Thanks
I just started using Hub Pages and Squidoo and I must say that it's a lot of fun. Nice Hub.
Cute Hub. I took note of your comment about Amazon earnings being not so great. I won't say I'm pleased, but I am glad I'm not the only one who hasn't had much luck with Amazon as an affiliate. I also like your suggestion above in the comments to set min bid to "1" with eBay stuff-useful tip.
Hi - I'm a squid and love it! Just starting out here. There are definite differences, but both enjoyable to work on. I'm hoping to build up some more hubs here in the future. Thanks for your helpful article! : )
I just started out on squidoo, could you take a look at my lenses and maybe give me some tips by leaving a comment or someone on one of them? I wud really appreciate it thanks.
I personally used to sign myself up in Squido but I have never written articles. When doing research on the internet about how to make money online, I finally found Hubpages. I just reached 50 articles this week and hope to write more next year. That's one of my New Year's resolution for writing jobs.
Nice hub embitca, I have used squidoo in the past but it was I bit difficult, maybe it's a bit easier now but it did seem techie at the time. Will squid allow you to do direct linking to your affiliate links? Thanks
Please give us an example of your work on this site so we can go and have a look. Many Thanks
Phil, there's a link to one of my Squidoo lenses right in the hub. Christopher McCandless. You'll find thel ink above.
Whoops, I missed it. Thank you for taking the time to point it out to me. I am enjoying reading the lenses, now
Am I correct to notice that more interaction on the Squidoo site gains more visits, points, rank, etc? I thought it was a bit of a waste, but I'm looking at it again, and realizing that consistent logging in and browsing earns points. I'm also seeing that there is a lot of potential for learning to make lenses attractive and interesting...just don't know if I want to get to tangled up in all of that!
Hi Sagebrush mama, yes Squidoo certainly seems to reward interacting. It also rewards frequent updates. That is primarily the reason I have abandoned it as a platform. If you are writing evergreen content there is really no reason for the constant updates that they encourage. It is just too much work LOL
Yes, it does seem like a lot of work, and much more confusing than HubPages. I like simple!
Nice hub! I joined Squidoo a few months ago so March will be my first pay-out with their weird 2-month-behind system. I'm anxious to see how much I'll get because I've heard such different things from different people. I have 20 lenses right now and even if I don't end up making much money, it's just so much fun that I don't think I could give it up!
Interesting information on Squidoo. I'm currently only on hubpages, but just joined Squidoo. I'm going to try and see how the affiliate marketing is, as it's much harder on hubpages.
I am going to check out squidoo! great information!
I write on Squidoo regularly and get paid consistently. However, it takes time to build up. The first 6 month are a learning process, so if you're serious about writing for pay, don't give up. Squidoo works well and you can make money from their Amazon account.
As for Hubpages, I'm just starting to shift my attention here. The only problem is if you're a writer that lives in one of the states that lost their Amazon account, as I did, I'm not sure how profitable it will be. We'll see.
I agree with you, the constant updates are a lot of work. Evergreen content should be rewarded there, but they seem to have no inclination to change their system anytime soon. On the other hand, I've had a lot of luck (well, wasn't luck - published lots and lots of content) with Squidoo over the years that's paid well.
The biggest difference for me vs. Hubpages, besides the Panda update which affected me pretty terribly, is the use of affiliate links. Squidoo's approach has benefited me, while the 2 link limit on Hubpages hasn't worked out so well for the topics I write about.
Nice Hub!Loads of information and I really like the balanced approach towards both Hub Pages and Squidoo. I think both have good to offer and its up to us to make the best of it.
Cheers
Grace
Interesting about Squidoo. I will take a look, but right now I am just trying to keep up with writing for Hubpages, so I'm not sure I should try expanding right now. Anyway, great hub- very informative. Thanks a lot!
Always interesting to see how others do there. Thanks for sharing!
Whitney05 Level 2 Commenter 4 years ago
Wow... Right now I have a few squido lenses... about 8 or 9 I believe, relating to animals or body modification. I haven't had any success making money with them. I have a few (I believe 3) that are top 1,000. The rest are in the 13,000-14,000 range, and 1 that is further down in the 20,000 range or so... I'm just trying to find out how I can raise my ranks and begin making money. I have amazon products on most of the lenses. Ebay products when applicable, but because they run out of time, I have to redo them, and usually don't think about it. I'm thinking that my subjects just aren't what people are looking for... :-(