I tried to make Giant Squid on Squidoo a few months ago but got rejected. They said my lenses still needed work. Fair enough, they really did. I haphazardly threw my last lenses up there because the deadline was fast approaching. I’m going to try again but I’m not submitted my application this time until I feel ready. I thought I’d share with you my strategy.
My Existing Lenses
I’m going through the process of deleting, combining, and/or fixing up my existing lenses. I noticed that only about 1/3 of my lenses are getting any traffic – probably because the ones in the bottom aren’t that great. I also noticed that my lenses that are performing the best are the ones that are older and have been “cared for”. I’m constantly adding new content, keywords, and tags to them. Some of the ones that are doing poorly I’m keeping – they’re fairly new and have potential as long as I keep working on them.
Making New Lenses
I have a new strategy for making lenses. For a while I had a ton of lenses about writing topics but they all said pretty much the same thing. I’ve since combined them into my Make Money Writing lens. My new strategy is to start a general lens on a topic and then put together an offshoot lens if the traffic potential is there. For example, I put together a lens on Christmas Greeting Cards and noticed that people were arriving to that lens looking for info on Christmas postcards. I set up a separate lens on the postcards and that one ended up performing even better than my original!
Separate Accounts?
NOPE! One of the reasons why I don’t buy into the idea that you need one Squidoo account per niche is because I feel that if people don’t believe I am qualified to share information about something, then I’m not a good writer. Besides, I don’t believe in flooding Squidoo with random keywords when all the lenses seem to be saying the same things. I’ve read so many eBooks on the topic of Squidoo. I’ve liked all of them but this is one thing I disagree with pretty much all of them on.
Make Them Fun
Fun lenses do the best. I don’t mean that each lens needs to be silly – but each one needs to show my personality and style while also telling stories. My How to Make Apple Pie lens is one such example. I’ve even started a section highlighting all my apple pie making adventures. My Make Money Writing lens is also filled with personal anecdotes because it basically establishes me as an authority on how to make money writing because that’s been my profession for the past seven years!
This is my strategy for making Giant Squid and is also one that I feel will make me successful on Squidoo itself in terms of boosting my income. My most successful lens makes $50-$150 a month. If I can get the other lenses to make a consistent income I’ll be happy.
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very interesting to hear about how much your best performing lens makes, that’s pretty impressive! I’m hoping I can get Giant Squid once I complete the Tiffany Dow squidoo challenge this year.
Ruth – Web Career Girl´s last blog ..The Benefits of Fixed Working Hours in Your Web Career
I applied for Giant Squid twice so far and got rejected both times. But don’t you all worry – I’ll make it at some point. Ruth, how is the Tiffany Dow challenge going so far?
Katherine´s last blog ..Make Money Online Bootcamp – But Don’t Forget the Rewards!