Squidoo is a growing website that is getting more powerful by the day and is excellent to leverage to drive traffic to your blog. Squidoo is really easy to use but before you set up an account, it’s important to familiarize yourself with some of the terms that are exclusive to Squidoo: Lens – having a ‘lens’ is rather similar to owning a blog. It’s like your virtual real estate on Squidoo. And get this: you can either build just one lens or maintain 100 of them! It’s all totally free too. But more on lens later……
Lens Modules
Modules are basically the tools and resources you’re provided on Squidoo, to upload text, images and any other information to your lens. Here are some great modules you want to make use of: All about you: – Includes Write, Make a list, Google Maps, YouTube, Link List, etc, etc. Blogger lens: – Includes RSS feed, BoingBoing, Technorati, Guestbook, etc, etc. How-to lens: – Includes Write, Flickr Pics, YouTube, The MAKE Blog, etc, etc. $$ Lens: – For Ebay and Amazon Just Add Water: – Includes: Link List, RSS Feed, Write, Amazon, Flickr Pictures, Google Maps, eBay, Guestbook Custom Lens: – Here, you have the option of picking and choosing from the modules you want. What’s more, you can simply add or remove them anytime you want to.
How to Set Up Your Squidoo Account
Before I walk you through the steps, let me just expand on what I’ve already told you about a ‘lens’: OK, what is a Squidoo Lens, anyway? Well, just as I mentioned earlier, a Squidoo lens is pretty similar to a blog: – you can post your content, customize it to your liking, post comments to similar blogs, etc. But the similarities end there. For, Squidoo gives you the added ability to add content from external sources, which is way easier to do than with a simple blog. Moreover, it enables you to instantly throw in content and products from websites such as CafePress, Ebay and Amazon.com. Any commissions you earn are split 50-50 – you get half and the rest goes to Squidoo.
You can also insert Google Adsense ads and, depending on the amount of traffic your lens generates, you’re entitled to a sizeable share from the Squidoo Adsense revenue pool. Additionally, you’re free to add videos from YouTube, set up polls, RSS feeds and have readers generate content for you with guest books, plus much much more! With such a lot of variety and some unique tools at your disposal, Squidoo can soon be quite addictive!
Alright, with that out of the way, it’s now time to set up your very own Squidoo account!