Why I Like Squidoo or What Squidoo Means To Me

Well, the first question at hand here, is what exactly is this thing we call Squidoo? Okay, so you can go to the Squidoo home page and click on FAQs and get the official explanation, but chances are you are not interested in the "official" explanation, otherwise you would not be here reading this lens right? Most likely you have already read the FAQs and now you are asking yourself if you can believe what the company says about themselves. What you want to hear now is what people who use Squidoo have to say about what Squidoo is.

Okay, fine, I can do that. Where to start?

Well, first off, I joined Squidoo in April of 2007. When I joined, I had no intention of building lenses, in fact I had no idea what a lens was. I was in the process of building a web site about my home town, and needed some info about the population levels, so I searched on Google to find the answer I needed and the #1 search result sent me to a Squidoo lens about fall foliage trips to Maine. I had never seen a Squidoo lens before, never heard of Squidoo before, and my first impression was that Squidoo was a cross between a blog and an e-zine like Helium or Associated Content.

I was intrigued by the fact that here were REAL PEOPLE, talking about things that they loved. This was not a corporation telling you how great something was as part of an advertising campaign. The lens I had found was not put out by the State Gov or some travel agency, what I was reading was one man's story about how he had packed up his family and went on a road trip to Maine to photograph the red and gold trees. For me, it was love at first sight. Squidoo was amazing, because here was people sharing their experiences, dreams, goals, likes, and dislikes. It was heartfelt, it had meaning. I loved it.

I read the entire lens, enthralled by the fact that this guy was writing with so much detail about local sights. Things that for him he had never seen before, but things that for me, I knew and loved because this was my home town he was talking about. It was so wonderful to read this story about one family's visit to my town. It opened my eyes to how tourists saw things that I see every day in such a different light.

When I got to the end of the lens, I noticed a guestbook that asked readers to comment on the lens. I clicked the comment box, only to find that the settings only allowed members of Squidoo to comment. Well, I was so touched and moved by this lens and the story it's lensmaster had told, that I decided as long as it was free, I might as well sign up for Squidoo, because I really wanted to tell this guy how much I enjoyed reading his article.

When I signed up with Squidoo, I didn't read the Terms of Service or the FAQs, so I had no idea that lensmasters made money for writing these articles. All I knew at that point was, people were writing some really amazing stories about things that had happened to them and their families and their pets. One of the first lenses I found during my first day on Squidoo, was a lens that told the story of a woman and her beloved dog. It was a wonderful bio about the dog's entire life, from puppy-hood, to adult-hood, till the day the dog finally died of cancer. It was a really, REALLY long lens, and the lensmaster had poured her heart and soul into it.

As my first day on Squidoo progressed I found several other such lenses. Lenses written by REAL PEOPLE. Lenses that shared little glimpses into their lives. Lenses that told us a little bit about others and made me feel that I had a real connection to these people whom I had never meet before. They had felt the same joys of family road trips that I had felt. They had felt the same joys of a beloved pet, followed by the same heart-ships over that pets loss. I could understand how these people felt. I could feel the joy of seeing those red and gold trees for the first time. I shared the tears of the dog that lived no more.

Squidoo lensmasters were doing more than writing articles, they were sharing pieces of themselves with the world. I felt a connection with these people. By the end of the day I had written 15 Squidoo lenses of my own.

I'm known around the net for my rampant posting style. I say the first thing that pops into my head, or as Capt. Steel put it: "The Eel-Kat suffers from excessive online vomiting of the brain." uh-huh, no arguments there. *Waves hello to my Capt, where ever you may be.* That was said back in February of 2005, when me and *Scrooge* hit eBay by storm, with a record breaking 14,000+ comments posted on the eBay forums in a space of 48 hours. Yep, when I have something to say, I just all out say it, no matter how long it takes me to say it. The end result of me entering the eBay forums was the creation eBay's now famous Padded Cell *may it rest in peace*.

I liked eBay forums because it was better than a blog. More people to talk to. More topics to talk about. No limits on how many posts I could post per day.

A blog can feel a bit lonely at times, because it's just you, and unless people comment, you have no idea if anyone reads what you write. Also, blogs scroll posts off the front page, so readers are only going to read page one and everything you wrote over the past 5 years goes unread once it falls off page one.

I love blogging. I have 32 blogs with a total of more than 4,000 blog posts. Blogging allows me to write whatever, whenever.

Than there is Squidoo. Squidoo is like taking a blog and throwing it into a forum. With Squidoo, you never have to worry about your post falling off page one, because each lens is like a blog totally devoted to that one post alone.

Think of it this way: This lens which you are reading right now? Well, it's a blog post about how much I love Squidoo! This lens will act forever as a blog devoted to how much I love Squidoo. Whenever I think of new reasons why I love Squidoo, I'll come back here and add new sections to this lens.

I have 323 Squidoo lenses, this lens being lens number 323. Having 323 Squidoo lenses, is for me, like having 323 blogs, each one devoted to a different topic. None of my lenses are ever finished, because whenever I feel like writing on a topic, I rush back to one of my lenses and add new info to it.

Squidoo lenses are like forums, because, people can rate the lenses, comment on the lenses, debate about the topic of the lens, and in doing so, I have made some 200+ new friends who I would never have meet if not for Squidoo!

Squidoo is the greatest!

Squidoo is a social networking site. People on Squidoo get to know other people on Squidoo, through reading each others lenses. It's like a massive newsroom where everyone is writing news reports about events in their lives.

You know that lensmaster #1 just watched Dark Knight, because as soon as they got back from the theater they logged onto Squidoo and wrote a review about it on a brand new Squidoo lens. You know that lensmaster #2 is listening to Linkin Park, because they are writing a lens about how great they think Linkin Park is. You know that lensmaster #3 is rescuing feral cats because they just updated their feral cat lens to tell us about the latest cat to be placed in a new home. Lensmaster #4 is talking about their family vacation, while lensmaster #5 is talking about cancer research they are doing to help their grandmother. And so on and so forth. You don't get these kinds of updates on MySpace or FaceBook.

On MySpace you get quick comments and drive by night bulletins.

On FaceBook you get quizz results and other apps.

On Twitter you get quick updates one sentance at a time.

All of these are well and good, but none of them are like Squidoo. O Squidoo, the person has room to write and write and write and write and just pour every essence of their heart and soul into it.

That is what I like best of all about Squidoo. I love the deep detail ad the truly personal lenses that tell us how a person feels about the topic. Those are the types of lenses I read here on Squidoo, and those are also the types of lenses I write on Squidoo.

I love long lenses. I love to be able to sit down and spend an hour or two reading something that someone cared enough about to sit down and spend that kind of effort to write.

I joined in April of 2007, and was happily building lenses, completely unaware of the fact that you get paid to build lenses, until 75 lenses later in August of 2007, when PayPal told me that Squidoo had just sent me $37. I could not understand why Squidoo had sent me any money, so I went back and read the ToS and FAQs for the first time, and found out that low and behold, Squidoo pays you to write articles. Well, that was a great added bonus, as well as a completely unexpected one for me.

I thought nothing of this money I had received though. Yes I was happy but I just assumed it was a fluke of some sort and did not expect to ever see another check again.

By the end of August 2007 I had 100 lenses, and than in September of 2007 was hit with yet another surprise: an email from Squidoo telling me that I was among the 70 lensmasters chosen as the best of the best to be named a Giant Squid.

A week later I was farther surprised by yet another PayPal deposit, this time of $42. From that day forth, like clockwork, the first week of each month brings in yet another payout. The average being $65 - $94 per month, though I'm running in triple digits during my *busy season*: National Novel Writing Month, because more than 40 of my lenses are just for writers..

Today, just one year later, Squidoo now pays all funding for The Pidgie Fund and my Lord Sessho Maru costume budget.

What do I think about this? Well, it's icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned. I did not join Squidoo to make money, and was a member with well over 100 lenses before I even realized you could make money, and had more than 200 lenses before I even started TRYING to use Squidoo to make money. For me Squidoo is all about me being able to write info and share my knowledge and experiences with others. I'm here because I love to write and hope that in some way my writing will help others. That I could making money doing this was an after thought.

So you can see why that person's Twitter comment shocked me so much. They looked at Squidoo and they saw money-grabbers out to push ads in your face and take every penny they can. To me, seeing Squidoo in that light is a total shock to me, because I have never looked at Squidoo in that way. It never occurred to me that any one looked at Squidoo lenses in this light before. In my eyes Squidoo is about learning and teaching and friendship and sharing, not money, not ads. I am here to teach others what I know and help them to learn something new. I think it is for that reason that my lenses have become so popular on Squidoo, and why not one, not two, not three, but more than 10 of my lenses rank in the top 3 search results on Google's page one for their primary keyword.

There is a bit of confusion in this area, because when people are new to Squidoo, and they hear stories about $400 - $2,000 paydays, they assume that Squidoo is the one behind it. Nope, not at all! In the fall of 2007, Squidoo sent out an announcement saying they had hit a record when the paid one lensmaster $130 in one monthly payout. That was about a year ago, so no doubt that figure has risen since than. What newcomers fail to recognize is that, the $400 - $2,000 paydays you hear about are not being paid to the lensmaster by Squidoo. When asked, these lensmasters tell you that the paycheck was sent to them from Commission Junction, ClickBank, LinkShare, ShareaSale, PepperJam, Zazzle, CafePress, AllPosters, or some other such company, as a result of the lensmaster placing links to products from that company on their Squidoo lens.

(If you haven't done so yet, be certain to join several affiliate programs and start using them, because that is how you are going to make a big income with Squidoo.)



Also a point to consider, not every lensmaster has their payouts set to monthly, like I do. Many say their settings give them quarterly paydays... 4 per year instead of 12 and this accounts for many of the big one-time-payouts, as the money had accumulated for 4 months. You see, 4 $300 paydays a year is still the same as 12 $100 paydays a year: $1,200 a year!

One thing all lensmasters agree on is that as the months go by paydays get higher, so in the long run, I can see Squidoo becoming a huge source of income, but to say that it is already or that Squidoo is only about making money is just plain wrong.

Yes there are people making money on Squidoo. Yes there are people who are making A LOT of money because of Squidoo. Yes, Squidoo's goal is to help you make money online. But it's wrong to focus only on the money side of Squidoo or to say that lensmasters are just looking for a quick buck, because making money on Squidoo is only one small fraction of the big picture. Squidoo is so much more, means so much more, does so much more.

EDIT:

Since the original writing of this, the Squidoo paydays have increased quite a bit, and paydays directly from Squidoo are now as high as $600 per month for some of the top lensmasters!

I don't know why, but that guy saying that Squidoo was all about money and pushing ads in peoples faces, really got under my skin.

When I come on here to edit my Squidoo lenses, the first thing on my mind is usually something like this:

OMG! I can't believe this just happened, I've got to tell somebody about it. I know, I'll make a Squidoo lens and tell everybody in the world about it!

Okay, so maybe he was right, maybe there are a lot of people on Squidoo looking to make a quick buck and shove ads in your face. Okay, you find that EVERY WHERE, on all free hosted sites. But does that mean that EVERY Squidoo lensmaster does that? No! Of course not! A lot of my lenses not only do not have ads on them, they are not even talking about product promotion or reviews at all! I think 90% of my lenses are a result of me needing to rant about something. hhhmm... like this lens here is.

So what exactly does Squidoo mean to me? Squidoo to me is a place when I can just talk about any old thing that pops into my head. Squidoo is a place where I can let my passion for my hobbies run wild. Squidoo is a place where I can share with the world a look into the things I enjoy in life. In other words, for me, Squidoo is all about having fun and sharing my joy with the world, so that others may learn something and hopefully have fun as a result.

In other words, I like being happy and I like making others happy, there is so much pain and sadness and suffering in the world... I've had my share of it and I'm sick of it! From now on, I choose to be happy and make others around me happy, and I'm taking advantage of Squidoo's free hosting service to do it!

What does Squidoo mean to me:

Finding Joy in Living & Sharing It With The World!