How NOT to Make Money on Squidoo

Greekgeek's Top Ten Ways Not to Make Money Online

It's so easy! A strategy anyone can learn!

1. The Homeric Epic: Make sure a lens takes longer to read than it would to watch all three Lord of the Rings films back to back -- extended editions, of course!
2. Pliny the Elder's Natural History: Choose obscure subjects (I have two on invertebrate mollusks!) for which there is little interest and no related products.
3. Herodotus' Handbook: Tell readers absolutely EVERYTHING they need to know, so they just read and leave. Who cares that Squidoo's lensrank system favors lenses that get lots of clickouts?
4. The Anti-Rameses: Refuse to promote one's lenses on Facebook, Twitter, or social bookmarking sites. Do NOT establish a social media presence or claim authorship on Google; that would be egotistical!
5. The Anti-Cicero: Don't use Call to Action style language. It feels too pushy.
6. Cato the Stick-in-the-Mud: Use Amazon modules sparingly, eBay modules once in a blue moon, and never investigate other money-making modules.
7. Emily Dickinson's School of Self-Publishing: Don't make lenses on your Cafepress/Zazzle/etc stores. Or, if you do, never update them to reflect new products you've made.
8. Greta Garbo Does Web 2.0: Let your email box overflow. Don't reply to comments. Let pending blurbs incubate, like fine wine.
9. J.R.R.Tolkien's Business Model For Highly Effective People: Ignore Squidoo for 5-6 months while engrossed in other creative activities. This allows Top 100 lenses to drop from earning $10+ a month down to just $0.08, or even lower! [Update 4/12: It's more like $40 and 30 cents these days.]
10. The ANTI-VESPASIAN: NEVER, EVER, EVER, sign up for or look into affiliate marketing programs.

Anti-Monetizing Tips by Other Lesmasters

1. Spew out clone armies of cookie-cutter lenses with the bare minimum of modules, repeating the same key phrase over and over! Of COURSE poeple are going to buy "home warranty" from someone who repeats "home warranty" over and over!
2. Chase after the same get-rich scheme as everyone else! Of COURSE people are going to click on your poorly-written shill instead of all the other gazillion pages selling the same bogus product!
3. Don't worry about keywords. What's that? Search engine optimization? Bah, why bother!
4. Or, DO your keyword research. Grab a top-ranking keyword URL for your lens! Then leave it under construction forever, so later lensmasters trying to cover the same topic will curse your name.
5. Inane copy! Too many exclamation points! Flashing blinking text and bright colors! BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!
6. Make a lens consisting of nothing but a huge long list of Amazon products in the hope somebody will use it for a dart board, accidentally clicking something and buying it!
7. Add modules at random. Be sure not to fill in the content. "New Links Plexo" sounds so edgy.
8. Don't add tags. Don't fill in module titles. Don't fill in your bio. Leave the cartoon default avatar. Don't even file the lens under the right category. You are part of the Squidoo Witness Protection program, and you must NOT be found!
9. English my first language is not and world wide web expectation other countries participants are. Understanding is needed perhaps. Can you my products with real feeling sometime taste?
10. Spam links everywhere, including forum sigs, free link directories, Facebook, Twitter, all the social networking places, and paid link directories. Don't forget "Nice lense, please rate mine!" <link> comments in guestbooks. Of COURSE Google thinks those are impressive backlinks.