What Can You Do With Squidoo?

I think this is probably one of the most used ideas. Everybody wants to talk about their favorite super-star. From movie actors to TV show actors to singers or dancers, to authors and artists and all those in between.

Who is your favorite person? What did they do? Why did they do it? What is it about them that made you love them so? Why should everyone else like them too?

I've heard a few lemsmasters say: "But my fave person has already been done, I can't build a lens about them, too." That's just so not true! Their lens may focus on a different area of their life. It may focus only on one book or one movie or one song or one event. They may have left out an important fact that you know they should never have forgotten to talk about. It's up to you, as a fellow fan, to create yet another lens about him/her and build it bigger and better than the other lenses already built!

You can use either Squidoo or their sister site SquidWho for this one.

Hey, why stick with just real people when there is a whole world full of fictional characters in need of you to build them a personal profile? These can be more fun to create than lenses about real people.

You can use either Squidoo or their sister site SquidWho for this one.

These types of lenses pick a single item (such as a song, movie, book, TV show, etc) and do nothing but talk about how great it is. These are very easy to build, because you already picked it as your favorite ______, so now you just have to tell people why it is the best!

UPDATE: Since I first wrote this, Squidoo has since added a feature that allows to create such a lens via a template. See info on the "Ever" feature farther down this lens.

Why make a Top Ten List? Why not! People love them. People actively search Google for them. Everybody wants to know what the ten best of "whatever" are, and everybody has their own ideas as to which ten should be chosen, so why not tell the world what your top ten pics are. Here are a few samples titles to get you started:

Ten Best Alice Cooper Songs.

Ten Best Vincent Price Movies.

Ten Best Places to Eat in Southern Maine.

Ten Best Movies of All Time.

Ten Best Science Fiction Books Ever Written.

Ten Best Dr. Seuss Books for Your Kids.

Ten Best Candies I Ever Ate.

Ten Best Video Games for Teens.

Ten Best Episodes of Dr. Who.

I know something you don't know!

Than why not share it with us? We'd love to know how you do it, so that we can do it too!

What is it you know how to do? Cook a great pineapple upside down cake? Press dried flowers and make hand decorated cards out of them? Build a bird house out of tin-cans? Create a super-duper rock garden? Are you a wise at html coding? Can you fix an engine? Maybe you know who to pick the best apples off the tree?

Whatever it is you are good at, I'm sure there are people out there wishing they knew how to do it too, so why not tell them what you do and how you do it?

What if? That covers a lot of ground, don't you think?

What if I was stranded?

What if I were a millionaire?

What if I could fly like a bird?

What What if topics can you think of to write about?

Are you a veteran lensbuilder with 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, or like me over 200 lenses? Than you need to build a Lensography, there just are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You MUST have one.

What is a Lensography? It's a personal biography page that you write about yourself and your lenses. The best way to explain a Lensography, is just to look at one, so here into a few of mine, plus some by others too.

One of the earliest types of lenses invented, these are where you showcase your personal CafePress (and Zazzle) shops. These wildly popular lenses are great for driving extra traffic to your stores, so if you have a CafePress shop, be sure to build a showcase lens for it.

Do you live in the best place in the whole world? Than why not tell people something about it? What are the best places to eat? Where do you shop for the best bargains? What local landmarks would visitors like to see? Any interesting historical facts?

Where did you go for your family's best ever vacation? Why was it the best? What would you recommend about it to others? What would you do differently next time?

If you could visit any place in the world, where would it be and why? Why haven't you gone there yet?

There are millions of cities in the world, and hundreds of things to see in each of them, so when it comes to travel lenses, there is no end of what you could find to write about!

When we were kids, it was always a great debate to determine what each person's favorite animal was, and why our favorite animal was so much better than your favorite animal. Now we are adults, and here we have Squidoo, the perfect place to continue the childhood debate of: My favorite animals is ___ and it is the best because ___.

What's your favorite animal?

This is an easy one to build. Simply ask yourself:

What web sites do you enjoy visiting?
Why do you enjoy visiting them?
Why should other people visit them too?

Now write down your answers, add a link to the web site and viola! You have created a new lens!

Huh? Holidays? How can that be a lens topic? But it's true, holidays make a great lens topic. Just think, for Halloween, you could make a lens about the history of All Hallows Eve, another lens about creating Halloween costumes for kids, a fourth lens about decorating for a Halloween party, a another lens about vampires, one about haunted house... you see how the idea of making lenses based on a holiday can just snowball?

Oh... did I say snowball? Snow = winter = Christmas? Santa Claus? Baby Jesus? Christmas trees. You great-grandma's fruit cake recipe... you get the idea right?

And did you know that according to the Chase Encyclopedia of Days, there are at least 3 holidays for each of the 365 days in a year... some days have as many as 12 holidays on them! That's over 1,000 different holidays for you to choose from, and each holiday can be divided into dozens of separate topics, resulting in a literally endless supply of ideas for you to write lenses about.

These are great. You can take your favorite food and build a lens about it. Pizza. Candy. Recipes. History of how a certain food got it's name. How to cook something. How to eat something. What to serve it with. Food lenses are always good and yummy. What do you like to eat?

Shopping lenses are among the easiest and most profitable lenses you can create. The concept is simple: create a lens with gift ideas for a certain topic, such as "The Best Gifts for Cat Lovers" or "Great Gifts for Valentine's Day" or "Great Stuff for Your Kitchen".

You fill the lens with various seller modules, such as Amazon, Amazon Spotlight, Amazon Recommendations, eBay, CafePress, and all the rest. Than fill them up with items on the topic of your lens. Don't forget to add product reviews and tell folks why you choose the items you did.

These are the lenses that bring in the most income for you the creator, so be sure to create several of them.

Do you own your own business? A local Dairy Queen or SubWay franchise? Do you sell crafts online via your blog? Run a family owned restaurant? Do you have a Zazzle Gallery? Sell your paintings to tourists from a sidewalk stand? Drive an ice-cream tuck? There are millions of business owners in the world, from the starving artists to the small family operations to the big corps to the arm-chair entrepreneur who sells things off a website. Are you one of them? If so, why not start a lens or a series of lenses about your business! Tell the world how you got started, what you do, where you are, how to get there, how to buy things, staff bios, future goals, projected sales, and anything else you can think of to tell the world about your wonderful business!

Do you own, work with, volunteer at, or donate to a charity group. Maybe you walk dogs for a local shelter? Did you start a community garden for inner city kids? Run an after school reading program out of your home? Help with animal rescue? Boycott businesses that work against a cause you believe in? Buy food and blankets for the local homeless shelter? Crochet baby blankets for The Linus Foundation? The world is filled with helpful people who give back to the community, are you one of them? What do you do to help others? Create a lens about your favorite charity, shelter, cause, and tell the world why you like it and why they should join in and help them out too!

Pet owners love their pets. Like a grandmother with a purse full of baby photos, pet owners also love to talk about and show off pictures of their pets to anyone and everyone they can corner. Squidoo is the perfect outlet for pet owners to brag to their hearts content! Are you a pet owner? Why not make a lens about your pet! Write a bio. Load it with photos. Keep a doggie's daily activities diary. Share advice of pet friendly family vacation spots you've been to and would recommend. Review feeds and toys your pet prefers. Recommend the best vet for pet owners in your area. The sky is the limit.

Wither you are new to Squidoo or have over a hundred lenses of your own already, there is nothing easier than using Squidoo's Quick Start Squid-Kits to create instant lenses on any topic you can dream up.

Squid-Kits are simple to use. All you do is type in what you want to build a lens about and Squidoo does the rest for you, by selecting modules and filling in all the information for you. All you do is click "publish" and you are ready to go.

While you can leave them as they come, it's best if you go through and add your own unique content to your Squid-Kit lenses to make them truly your own.

What's the most important thing for you to keep in mind when building a new lens? Writing about things that matter to YOU. Forget about what the latest "hot topic" is. Forget about what you think "others" will like.

Ask yourself: What do you like? What are your hobbies? What are YOUR favorite things to talk about with your friends? That's what you should build lenses about. Things that interest you. Things that you enjoy. Why?

Because if you like it, than you'll enjoy writing about it. If you enjoy writing about it, than you'll be inspired to put your heart and soul into writing it. And that's what people who read Squidoo lenses want to read. They don't want mountains of links and Flikr pics and YouTube vids. Those are all good, yes, but they want to hear your take on the subject. They want to hear your views. They want to know why you chose your topic. So be sure to add lots of text modules and fill them up with lots of writing. Lots of content is good... especially if it's content that you care deeply about. Write what you know. Write what matters to you. That is the secret to great lenses.


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