A FREE Guide to Squidoo for Little Squidlettes

I like to give back credit and pay it forward, without these Guides, I was lost! It was not until I read them (ALL FREE) and put it all into practice, did I start to see results. Now I do not build my lenses any one specific way, each on is different, I have taken what I like out of these guides and made my own way.

FREE Squidoo Step by Step - written by 3 of the most successful squids on Squidoo Step by Step

I learned a lot from Tiffany Dow another very successful Squidler, her 52 week Squidoo guide, This link will take you to the warrior forum page explaining about it straight from Tiffany herself This showed me how to focus on my niches.

FREE report on building lots of niche sites - potpiegirl strikes again! The Dam Way
Picture Credit : Squidsuccess by Tags for Kids

This is MY own list of what information I used in the beginning, and has produced results for me, from motivation to Making Money on squidoo!

So your asking... What do I do next?

When I first came across Squidoo, I thought this was an awesome idea.
I could write about issues and subjects that interested me. Not only that, but I could read about these subjects too.
To top that off you can Earn Royalties for your Chosen Charity or Earn the Cash and keep it for yourself.

So you write your first lens and are sitting there rubbing your hands waiting for the cash to come in...

Yeah...I can hear the crickets too, my biggest mistake was writing one lens and thinking I had made it.
When that did not happen.
I thought "Hey what's going on here"

I don't like to think something has got the better of me, so I started investigating.
I was so surprised to find that my little lens was lost in a sea of lenses, but what I did notice was, there were guys here MAKING money!
So I set out to read as many lenses as I could, and learn as much as possible, but what I found was I got lost.
Lost in all the wealth of knowledge, all this great information available form these great taskmasters.

I found one lens, clicked on it, then found they suggested something else and I lost the original lens, and the cycle went on, until I finally realized I still hadn't actually really found the answer to my first question. I got so side tracked. And wasted a LOT of time.

So my frist trick was to keep track of all my favorite content rich pages.

Favorite this page NOW or press Ctrl D to bookmark this page for Easy return.
If this is all you remember then you will be eternally grateful. It is my most prized TIP. A handy reference right there on your Toolbar!

Image Credite by TagsforKids

If you have not already visited then you MUST get yourself over there, there is even Frankensteins quest to help you. So no Excuses.
***Since I started writing this page the forum is now ran by dedicated lensmasters who are the forum moderators, strict zero tolerance on spam and excessive link dropping is a no,no.****

- This is a great way to introduce yourself in the Forum, ask questions, find others with similar interests, get feedback, and comment on other lensmasters lens.

- It is really important that you to set up your forum signature easy to do, go to tabs at top of SquidU, click on profile, choose personality, and set up your signature, this is great for letting people see what your newest lenses are, or someone might just see something of interest to them, also it starts to build backlinks for your page (see why this is important later!)
please remember the forum uses BBC code not HTML so you can use the Url of your lens like this
[url=http://www.squidu.com/forum/]The Lensmaster Lounge[/url] will produce a clickable link "The Lensmaster Lounge"

You can Join the Squidu Forum HERE

Squidoo has built its reputation for being peer driven and Forum users will not tolerate any form of spam, mostly choosing to ignore you.
A great way to learn and develop is to ask for critique on your lens
- Do not be offended when you receive it! It's like school handing in what you think is your greatest piece of work and getting it back covered in red pen marks.
Take this as a compliment, the experienced lensmaster has taken time from THEIR working day to read, critique comment and reply. I think that means your lens is worth making better, if it was a load of crap . Would they have taken the time out of their busy day?

This is how I felt with my first couple of critiques and it hurt! But I took what was said and made my lenses better, and even today I add and change to make them better.

So this is POSITIVE

Picture Credit Squidlounge by TagsforKids

Over my time at Squidoo I have seen many the same questions being asked, thats great if it is an original question, however I have found EVERY answer to my questions.

At the Squidoo
Headquarters Answer Deck HERE

There are also 2 FREE e-books worth downloading.

You have got to love this place, The help and information is FREE

With the introduction of the new and improved Squidoo HQ - interact and keep upto date with all the HQ News HERE

Download the best toolbar for working with Squidoo HERE

(Supported by Squidoo) - By the Fluffanutta
So you are getting carried away and finding out how wonderful Squidoo is and you think "I want more"
Well there is a great toolbar from SquidUtils to download, it gives you instant access to your lenses, accounts, lens workshop, SEO tools, check your backlinks, add tags, submit your page to many sites automatically...

This has taught me about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) I now understand backlinks, RSS feeds, how to utilize my affiliate links without the risk of being spammy, browser addons to help you with you lens, lens promotion, getting your lens found outside of Squidoo...the list continues.

You can download the tool bar by visiting

HERE

Credit to "thefluffanutta"

Do you look longingly at other lenses and wonder where they got their photos from?
Add Pictures but be careful - make sure you give credit for pictures you use, there are lots of places to get FREE photos
Its great to use Art and photos, but what if you could make money from doing so too. I personally LOVE Allposters
You can promote their images, whilst also earning a commission.

There are some fantastic links on Squidoo for FREE ART

credit and thankyou for permission to post your squidoo clipart greekgeek

Still not convinced you can make money on Squidoo - Check out my Biggest Sale to Date Make money blogging, (will open in new window)
I nearly passed out!

This is why we are all here, and probably This should be at the top of this lens
my biggest downfall was to think once I had made ONE lens I had made it...

"You gotta learn before y'all Earn"

To understand how you are paid visit

Squidoo Payday

Set a goal
Become a Giant Squid

PLEASE - Read the new guildlines for giant Squid Applications Now 25 - 50- 100- 250 benchmarks

Okay, if you have got this far then you are serious about going further with your Squidoo Career. It's easy to become frustrated at lack of progress.
So set yourself some goals. My goal for 2011 was to achieve 5,000 visitors to my Squidoo pages, I now have over 15,000 and rising every day.

I was at a loss on how I was going to achieve 50 QUALITY lenses to become accepted, (***Since I became a Giant Squid they have lowered the criteria to 25! So come on what are you waiting for?)
I had to get organized.
I find it easier to balance my online work and home-life, when not online, by having near me a pen and scrap book, this helps me to remember things I have thought of , perhaps an extra link to another article or an idea about a new lens.

I look at every day as an opportunity to perhaps produce my featured LoTD. i use personal life stories, like My Battle with Chronic Fatigue to create interesting articles, but still make sales,
I use my daughters fashion styles for quirky lenses, like her favourite hooded scarf but I also write about things I am passionate about such as working with childrens learning and psychology.
I write about my Dogs, and our rabbit

Make sure to read the LoTD lenses, this is great for helping you to look at other lensmasters work, who have achieved the standard required.

Set your own goal, how many lenses do you want to make.

I like to make my lenses and spend time, lots of time, promoting tweaking, testing, adding pictures, new information....I have found this much better than creating lots of lenses fast, and having them all disappear, I manage to keep my average lensrank at a respectable figure, and also that means I am rewarded with lensrank payouts.

I love reading so Squidoo is excellent as I can read about everything, which means I visit lots of lenses too! I would suggest this as part of your daily working on Squidoo go and find other lensmasters you are interested in, you will be amazed by how friendly they really are!
By visiting the forum, you know or get a good idea who is Active around squidoo too.

If you are working from home, It is easy to go off on a tangent
So set up your to-do-list

Now, my to-do-list includes phone calls, visit to the shops even includes lunch. (and I used to laugh and scoff at people who had to-do-lists! but I have achieved so much more, I can focus on indiividual projects and keep track of activities that are producing good results.

But more importantly how long I will spend on each activity, I earn money with Having Multiple Streams of Income.
So I need to be super organised, and I need to dedicate time and effort to my projects, perhaps not daily, so I also keep a note of what I need to do for starting the next day.

Creating Backlinks - by Posting your pages links to direct people to your lens in as many relevant places you can. (Do Not Spam, it may seem a great idea AT THE TIME, but you will be penalized, possibly having your lenses LOCKED. )

If you don't understand backlinks, what they are, why do you need them, or how to get quality links driving more visitors to your page, you can find out more about Backlinking HERE

Join in over at Wizzley.com - where you can write articles and earn from adsenses and your affiliate programmes, great for creating backlinks to your articles
These two sister sites are.
Not only Great backlinks building sites but also adsense sharing a nice little side earner
Best Reviewer | She Told Me(they have just started charging membership so not sure if it is worth it just now? | LoveBlinks

join in some Social Bookmarking sites and start making online associates Places I use online to help drive traffic to my articles, and will help you too.
StumbleUpon | | LisaAuch ON TWITTER | @Digg | Amplify.com | Tumblr look around for familiar names, it is wise to choose the same name as you use online all the time, it is amazing the amount of people that will add you because they recognise your work from somewhere elses.

Look out for me, and drop me a line and say hi! AMPLIFY is the best place to start with, thaese all take time to add up, but working away on them and getting them set up slowly even if you just dedicate 10 minutes to one a day! is worth more time in the future! where you can automatically post to other Social Sites too!

Remember if you are just there to add links and run away, then you wont last long, I have a great network of stumblers diggers, FB'ers and tweeters, who we all share each others work online!

Use Squidoo to learn, and put your learning to good use and then you are in control of your future online.

This is how I use my Blog to drive traffic to my lens pages on Squidoo or vice versa.
Check out the real story about how you
make money from Blogging These techniques I learned in Jennifer's One Week Marketing.

What about a FREE, yes FREE 50 page guide to Squidoo, from a lady PotpieGirl aka Jennifer! A highly successful work at home mom, an inspiration to us all, THIS is what really got me going, her hints, tips tricks are brilliant, and make so many things just click to download.
She takes you through the whole process, from setting up a lens to publishing and what do do with it once it is published, I loved it, I thought I knew how to make a lens, but there are things you can do that Jennifer shows you to "optimize" your lens for sales, visitors, clickouts. Should not be missed really.
(when you recieve your welcome email - you will see 2 links one is for One week Marketing, and the other one is for the the Squidoo FREE PDF this is the link you want to follow! please remember this when you download it, you are not going to get FREE info for nothing, the Squidoo Guide is priceless, and of course Jennifer is going to show you what else she does. Her One Week Marketing strategies and techniques are excellent.

Download your FREE copy HERE