Squidoo Lens Case Study

1940s Coca Cola Collectibles
Date Created: August 14, 2011
Lens Rank: 5,433

Updates:
- Some of my modules didn't have Subtitles, which are important to search engines to help tell them what the page is about. I added subtitles, making sure to use variations of my keywords. For example if the title of the module used the word "Coca Cola", I used the word "Coke" in the subtitle.
- I also took off many of the links that when to "SOLD" items on eBay. Too many links on one page is not good. So I kept the links on the first 1-2 highest priced sold items in each category, and unlinked the rest.
- I also added some text at the top of modules that were RSS feed modules, so that when Google crawls the page, which takes only a milisecond, it can read words, instead of just seeing "Fetching RSS feed....please wait". With text on the page, Google will now see some the words and actually know what this part of the page is about. This is also why, on some sections on this Squidoo page and others, I've listed some of the recently listed items, so both Google and prospective buyers, will know that these products are found here on this page, even if at that moment the item is not showing up in the feed.

picture credit: This 1940s Coca Cola Cash Register sold for $440 on eBay on 6/5/11

9/1/11
LensRank 6,137
August was a good month for sales. 15+ ebay sales in my Royalties tab. Sometimes when we are actually paid, more sales show up, than were originally reported in my points and royalties tabs during the 60 day pending period. I'm excited to see what I'm actually paid once we get paid for August sales on Oct 15th.

12/6/11
LensRank 5,033
This 1940s Coca Cola page continues to bounce around in the Tier 2 level (lenses that have a monthly average Lensrank between 2,000-10,000). Because of this it continues to earn me around $8 a month just from the ad revenue split. Traffic has been slowly creeping up as the page gets older. The monthly traffic has been: June (1st month) 328 visits, July 690, August 929, September 993, October 1069, November 1208. Although traffic is steady, the sales are a bit sporadic. For example I stated earlier how happy I was for the 15 sales in August. But that was followed by 0 sales in Sept, only 3 sales in Oct, and 6 sales in Nov.

*** An important note about traffic ***
My main topic and keyword for this page is "1940s Coca Cola", which is a keyword that when using my keyword research tool only estimates that a page on Google page 1 would only get about 10 visits a month for. That's hardly a topic worth writing about. HOWEVER, most of my traffic comes from variations and "long tail keywords", which are phrases with lots of words in them that are very specific. I may only get 1 hit per month for a very specific long tail keyword like "1942 canadian porcelain coca cola thermometers".

In the last 30 days this Squidoo page has viewed 1,090 times via 668 different keywords. 543 of these keywords were only searched for by 1 unique visitor. That's a lot of long tail keywords bringing me traffic one keyword at a time.

My point of mentioning this is that sometimes a topic can do well even if the keyword research tells you that your main keyword will only give you about 10 visitors a month. This is usually the case when your keyword can further be broken down into many subcategories, or many different single items fall within your keyword. In this case, if I had made this page too generic, such as "Coca Cola", I would have never been able to get on the Google Search Results on page 1. But by being more specific and using "1940s Coca Cola", as of right now, I'm ranking on page 1 of Google for that keyword. Furthermore, most of my traffic is even more specific than that. "1940 WWII Coca Cola Coupons" doesn't get enough traffic to write its own page about it. But it falls under my 1940s Coca Cola page and therefore I got 1 visitor last month looking for this. Multiply that concept by 668 and you can see where I get my traffic (from 668 different very specific keywords).

Many of my Squidoo pages get traffic in a similar fashion. When thinking of a topic to write about write on a piece of paper your idea. Then, almost as if you are making a Table of Contents, write down subcategories of your topic, like chapters in a book would be. Then, further subdivide these categories, listing even more specific topics or items. If you have plenty of "chapters", and furthermore plenty of even more specific topics/items below that, you've got a good topic. Make each "chapter" a separate module on your page. If one of your "chapters" has a long list of topics/items that fall within that subcategory then make a new Squidoo Lens just about that "chapter".

Antique Typewriters for Sale
Date Created: 06/21/2011
July Stats (first full month): Avg LensRank 28,997; Total Visits 167; 1 ebay sale

8/14/11
LensRank: 8,481
Updates:
Some of my text modules didn't have very good subtitles. Some just said "For Sale on eBay". I changed them to be more keyword specific, such as "Vintage Royal Typewriters for Sale on eBay".
I also added some a paragraph of text at the top of any modules that were RSS feed modules, because Google doesn't read the feed, so the search engines aren't getting any information about what is included in that section. I just wrote a brief paragraph about some of the models of typewriters that were included in that section.

8/22/11
LensRank: 6,220
1 sale since last update 8 days ago

8/25/11
LensRank: 6,836
6 total ebay sales so far in August

8/29/11
Added some photos, took off some RSS feeds

9/1/11
LensRank: 5,233

11/8/11
LensRank 6,120
This lens has been averaging about 8 sales per month and has been sitting in the Tier 2 ad revenue pool for a few months now. The Tier 2 ad revenue pool alone is worth about $8 per month. So far I've earned $37.89 total for July, Aug, September (first 3 full months).

Antique Sewing Machines for Sale
Lens Created:
6/23/2011

Updated:
8/27/2010
LensRank: 4549
Weekly Traffic: 135
Likes: 4
Click through Rate: 62%

This lens already has a high click through rate (how many of your pageviews click through to a link on your page), but I had a lot of RSS feeds on this page, which were giving visitors a lot of choices for sewing machines to buy, BUT they were very slow loading. In addition to taking too long to load on my page, I also recently read that the clicks from RSS feeds ARE NOT included in your click through rates, and therefore give you NO boost in your LensRank. So I decided to replace some off my RSS feeds with a big picture and a link to a specific search on eBay instead. I will come back and update this later to let you know if my click through rate increased because of this change.

I also added a picture between some long paragraphs of text in my introduction module. Prior to this I felt the top part of the page was too "wordy" and needed to be broken up with a picture. I also added some YouTube videos relevant to my vintage sewing machine topic, added a poll module, a guestbook module (can't believe I forgot that in the beginning), and also some Bookmark Share modules. These are all good reader interaction modules, which help your Google rankings and Squidoo LensRank. Please visit my Antique Sewing Machines page and give me a thumbs up and leave a comment if you like the changes I've made to this Squidoo Lens. Thanks!

Hopefully, these changes will bring me more traffic, more reader interaction, more sales, and further on my journey to Make Money on Squidoo

9/1/11
LenRank 4,656
Click Through Rate for past week = 59%
Click Through Rate for past 30 days = 52%

11/9/11
LensRank 5,915
I just did some updates, adding in some more recent sales prices from eBay. Prior to this I hadn't updated this Lens since September and my LensRank was slowly getting worse. Hopefully adding some fresh content will push my Rank back up. So far this Lens has made 6 eBay sales, and has been sitting in the Tier 2 ad revenue pool for a few months. I've earned $27.51 for July, Aug, Sept (first three full months).

Make Money with Squidoo
I had this lens as a Work In Progress for about 6 months before I finally put enough good content on it to actually publish it. (ok, it really just sat there for 6 months...then I worked on it). Now it's published!

Created 1/5/11 then just sat there as a DRAFT
LenRanks: 1,700,000ish
Added content and first published it on 8/11/11.
After I published it, when I checked the LensRank again it was down to 280,508 on 8/13/11.
Also added a photo in the case study module (corresponding to the lens i'm talking about) with a link to that particular lens.

More Updates:
8/13/11
Added the websites that I use to get backlinks to my Squidoo pages. They also are Adsense revenue sharing sites, so I get a little extra income too. A win-win. Added a text module explaining how each program works. Also added a big pic of my traffic screenshot showing how these websites actually bring my Squidoo pages traffic.

8/14/11
LensRank: 93,955
Added some modules about how to use Keyword Research before you even start your Lens so you can get good traffic to your site. Also added a YouTube video about keyword research.

8/22/11
LensRank: 49,534
Added some more green color coded tags that the SquidUtils.com Workshop Add-on told me were used a lot on Squidoo. (relevent to my topic, of course).

8/23/11
LensRank: 50,051
I added my newest Squidoo Lens as a text module case study, Night Splints for Plantar Fascia.

8/25/11
LensRank: 29,445
5 total Likes
updated some of the Squidoo case study modules on this page with their updated LensRanks

8/27/11
LensRank: 22,618
Added a new Make Money with Squidoo Case Study highlighting some of the edits and changes I made to my Vintage Singer Sewing Machines squidoo lens.

9/1/11
LensRank 18,475
Stopped by to update some of the LensRanks on the Case Studies featured on this page. I'm thinking I should update these at least on the first of the month, even if I didn't make any updates to the Lens.

10/20/11
LensRank 37,076
24 Likes
I've been slowing adding all my new lenses as case studies on this page. However, I ran into a glitch when publishing. Apparently this lens got snagged in the spam filter, and I can't republish any of my edits. I've requested a hand review from Squidoo HQ, but have yet to hear anything back. So now I'm going through each module, cutting it out and trying to republish it to see if something in that module is triggering the spam filter. This has been very frustrating to say the least because I'm trying to add in my most recent earnings report.

Update: Found it! After cutting out each module, trying to publish, then pasting it back in if that wasn't the reason for triggering the spam filter, I then turned my attention to the comments. I had looked at the comments first, but since the comments had no active links in them, I figured Squidoo wasn't too concerned with links (none were live). However, I did see some commenters had left suggestions to other keyword research software programs, so I had to delete some comments, hoping that one of them was promoting an affiliate program on the No-No list, strictly identified by the title since there were no links. What I found out was that it was my own comment reply that was triggering the spam filter. And unfortunately I can't even type out the two words I used, or I'll get catch in the spam filter again. But I'll tell you that it started with the word "Free" and ended with a word that starts with a "T" and together means "to test something without paying for it for so many days before purchasing".

Update: 11/10/11
LensRank: 15,434
39 Squidoo Likes
I keep making updates to this lens. As I continue to create new lenses I am adding a case study at the bottom for every new lens I make. I am also adding in more tips as I think of them as I go along. Also, of course, I'm coming back monthly and adding in my updated earnings report. If I continue to do this as I go along, this Lens will become quite long! I hope that readers are finding this information useful!

Update: 11/21/11
LensRank: 13,447
Squidoo Likes: 51
I continue added my new lens to the bottom of this page. I've recently added 3 new Squidoo pages that were all about simple activities I did with my kids. I just snapped a bunch of pictures and narrated them. My husband is excited for me to do more pages like this so our family who lives out of state can see what's going on in our lives.

12/25/11
LensRank: 10,989
Squidoo Likes: 115
I keep adding more and more to this page as I make more new Squidoo lenses. Because this page is getting so long, I'm thinking of breaking it up into separate pages. Maybe I put all my comments and case studies for my lenses on a separate page, while keeping the tips at the beginning of this page on the original page. I'm excited to see that the number of Squidoo "likes" has doubled in the last month. I'm getting more traffic on this page. Hopefully I'll start averaging under the 10,000 Lensrank mark so I can start earning at least $8 a month with this page from tier 2 advertising revenue share.

1/7/2012
Lensrank: 4,610
Squidoo Likes: 148
As I have continue to add more and more new case studies to this page, this lens was simply getting too long. So I decided it would be best to split up the page. The first section I removed and put on its own page were these case studies, which you are now reading on the new page. I hope that removing all this info doesn't negatively affect my lensrank. We will see.

Also, recently I've received an increase in traffic to this page from other Squidoo pages. I think this is due to the fact that I made a new introduction picture that was more eye-catching. I like to make my own graphics so that they stand out. Although I have no graphic design skills whatsoever, a do my best with my limited ability. All I did was make a collage on Google Picasa. What do you think of my new intro photo....is it eye-catching?

Night Splints for Plantar Fasciitis
Date Created: 8/22/11 Day 1 LensRank: 279,150
8/25/11 (Day 3) LensRank: 194,931
(more LensRank updates below)

I just wrote a new Squidoo Lens last night about night splints for plantar fasciitis, which causes heel pain. I have a lot of personal experience with this condition, and personal product knowledge about which night splints work the best, in my opinion, so I had a lot to say about the subject. That made it relatively easy to create the page because it was something I know a lot about, so I didn't have to do a lot of research for the content.

However, I still did my normal amount of keyword research using Market Samurai to determine what keyword phrases would be the best for my topic. For example when I started I wanted to name the page "Heel Pain Night Splints" because I thought (prior to my research) that more people would be searching for a general term like that, rather than the official name of plantar fasciitis. What I found was that not enough people search exactly for the words "Heel Pain Night Splints" so it wasn't even showing up on my report. (Note: I like to do my research using the "exact" match of keyword phrases, rather than broad match or phrase match). But Market Samurai told me that a better option would be to use the exact phrase "Night Splints for Plantar Fasciitis".

Furthermore it told me that a lot of people search for this topic with the word misspelled. So in order to help these people find my page, I put the misspellings in my url too (but not my title, because I wanted it to look professional). I also listed the misspellings in the first few sentences, simply stating ".....(commonly misspelled as ......)". This will help Google return my page when people search for the misspelling of the phrase, yet still gives my page credibility. If I only used the mispelled version, even though it gets more traffic, I feel it would degrade the credibility of my page and the information on it.

That being said, this is a very specific niche topic, and I'm only looking to get traffic from very targeted visitors, those looking to buy Night Splints for Plantar Fasciitis. My research on Market Samurari told me that only 22 people search specifically for the words "Night Splints for Plantar Fasciitis" per day, which is quite low. However, there are only about 35,000 other websites that match the same the keyword phrase. Although the top 10 search results in Google are from domains with an old domain age, they fail to match very well with the title, url, description, and tags, so I think my page can rank on page 1 of Google for this term. And if I'm on page 1, receiving even 5-10 very targeted customers per day, I hope to see some sales. I'll let you know.

Added a link to my Lens on RedGage, as well as put it in my profile links on RedGage.
Shared my new link on Squidoo specific Facebook pages here and here.

9/7/11
LensRank: 71,386
I added two more poll questions to the Lens, to increase reader interaction with the page. Both are simple "Yes" or "No" answers. By keeping it simple I hope to get more readers to answer the quick question. More reader interaction increases my LensRank and Google places value on it also.

I also added a YouTube video that shows how to use the specific Night Splint that I am recommending. Even though the video encourages the buyer to buy the night splint from them, I still think it adds value to the readers on my page, helping them make a decision whether or not to buy the night splint. And if they watch the video directly from my page, where its embedded, then the most logical thing to do is to buy the night splint directly from my page, rather than typing in a completely different url to purchase the item. We will see if this will help buyers make a "Buying" decision.

11/10/11
LensRank: 86,112
Although I thought I had a good topic here and put alot of personal experience content on the page, I have yet to make a sale on this Squidoo Lens. I've earned $0.10 for September (first full month) to be paid out Nov 15th.

1/07/12
Lensrank: 127,087
This page continues to be a disappointment for me. Although my topic seems to have a decent amount of traffic according to my keyword research tools, my page is not getting any at all. I've included a lot of personal experience on this page but yet it has only made $0.10 in its short life. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Maybe it will all of a sudden pick up traffic in the future, like my Michael Jordan Posters page did.

Egyptian Mau Cat Gifts
Date Created: 8/17/2011

This is going to be one of those lenses that doesn't do great with traffic, and its VERY narrow focused. But hopefully the traffic I do get will buy something. This was my first attempt at adding some Zazzle products to my Squidoo pages. And I was happy to get my first sale on 9/15/11, selling two Zazzle products. NOTE: This was through the Zazzle Associates program, which I made the html links from the Zazzle page, then pasted the code into text modules. You DO NOT earn commissions from the Zazzle Squidoo module (I don't know why). So you have to join the Zazzle program yourself and get the links through Zazzle.

11/10/11
LensRank ***57,816 (a few days ago it was in the 80,000's)
I want to talk about LensRank for a minute. I few days ago, this page had a Squidoo LensRank in the 80,000's, which is where it has been sitting for about a month. But on 11/3/11 I made my first Amazon/eBay sale (Egyptian Mau Christmas Gift Tags - which were featured on my page), and now my LensRank has jumped up to 57,816. My traffic is about the same, so it's not due to an increase in traffic. This is a good example of how sales help increase your LensRank.

I also added one eBay and one Amazon module to this page, as I noticed that prior to this I only had one eBay module offering the Egyptian Mau Christmas card tags but no other ones showing any other gift types. Most of the items on the page are Zazzle products which are shown from the html code that Zazzle gives you to use when you are a Zazzle associate. Writing this just reminded me of this additional revenue stream, and I just logged in to my Zazzle account to see that my referral commissions have increased as I sold 11 Zazzle items on 11/1/11, most of them postcards.

But one of the items was this cool Egyptian Mau mousepad, which sold for $13.00 and earned me $1.95, which is a 15% commission.

As you can see the Zazzle items are a great compliment to the eBay / Amazon items you can sell. They can also add a lot of visual "pop" to your page, as many of the items are very artistic and beautiful. Plus, as I mentioned above, you can earn a lot higher commissions, as I earned a 15% commission on this item. This is the first page that I added any Zazzle items to, and I am happy with the result. I plan to go through all my lenses and add any relevant Zazzle items to my pages.

For more information on how to use the Zazzle associates program to add Zazzle products into your Squidoo page and earn commissions from Zazzle, read this great Squidoo lens: Want Graphics? Promote Zazzle Designs.

Christmas Gift Ideas 2011
Date Created: 8/20/11
I was hesitant to create a Christmas gift idea lens because there seems to be so many of these on Squidoo already. But I decided to try my hand at it anyway, and to get started in enough time so Google would know my page existed many months before the actual Christmas shopping season.

10/4/11 LensRank: 34,859
No Sales Yet, but I made this lens early enough so it would have some time to rank well for Christmas. When all the toy catalogs come out I will probably be adding more products and reviews to the page.

Stats Update: Nov 5, 2011
LensRank: 2,881
Now that Halloween is over, people are starting to think about Christmas gifts for 2011. I've seen a huge increase in traffic starting at the end of October and into the beginning of November. I will be updating this lens with more great Christmas Gifts Ideas for 2011 as I see more and more interesting items in Christmas catalogs that will start flooding my mailbox! I am also asking various people what THEY want for Christmas and using it for ideas lists! This is my first attempt at a Christmas gift lens, so bear with me as I improve it.

Date: Nov 28, 2011
LensRank: 822
My Christmas Gift Ideas 2011 page continues to climb in traffic and LensRank leading up to Christmas. I expect to make the Tier 1 ad revenue split for November and God-willing for December too. I've made a couple sales from the page, and also made about $10 on my individual Amazon Associate account from sales made on Amazon starting from this page. I use a separate tracking id in my Amazon Associate's account for each Squidoo page so that I know where the sale came from.

Because this is a seasonal page, I know that the earnings will be very short lived. However, my traffic stats on my Squidoo dashboard have given me some good ideas of other Christmas pages I could make for next year.

12/25/11
LensRank: 420
With the Christmas shopping season over, I'm very happy that I decided to make this page for the Christmas shopping season. While my Squidoo earnings only show that I've earned $17.16 in Squidoo commissions, I've earned much more from my individual Amazon associates account from Amazon sales coming directly from links on this page. So far this page has earned $299.16. Plus it had a few sales from the Squidoo modules and will be in Tier 1 for both November and December earnings. So Squidoo will be paying me around $125 for sales and ad revenue.

I was a little apprehensive about making a Christmas gift idea page because there seems to be so many of them on Squidoo, but I'm pretty happy with the $425+ dollars that this one page has earned me this Christmas shopping season.

Used Generators for Sale
Date Created: 8/31/2011
This is my attempt to reign in some larger commissions by offering for sale larger ticket items. And being raised in the Midwest working on a farm, I'm not afraid of heavy equipment. And, in fact, I realize that many people cannot make a living without it. Therefore, they need to buy it, sell it, or trade it. And just like everything else, people look on eBay to buy a used piece of equipment for a better deal than buying something new.

What's interesting about this Lens is that ALL my traffic is from really long tail keyword search terms, NOT from my main keyword phrase of "Used Generators for Sale". Rather, I'll get traffic for very specific search terms like this -
"onan commercial gas generator cmm 5500 used"
"generac 15 kw gas generator with trailer"
"5.5 onan generator remanufactured for sale"
I may only get 1 hit for that specific keyword phrase, but over the course of my first 35 days of this lens being live, I've had 198 visits. Within the first month it went from a LensRank of 274,780 to 10,054.

Keyword Research Stats: 22 exact/day; 69,400 competition (a broad match yields 167 visits/day to the #1 search result in Google).
But since all of my traffic thus far is from very specific long tail keyword phrases, my keyword research didn't help me much at all. Except to get me into this niche.

However, note to self, think about how to take a general phrase like this, which emcompasses a product with various brands and types. What other types of things may have similar long tail traffic?

Couples Halloween Costumes
Date Created: 9/5/11
I hadn't done a Halloween Lens before, but any holiday is a great opportunity to earn some extra cash, so I made a lens about Couples Halloween Costumes.

Status Update: Nov 5, 2011
This one never really made it off the ground this year. It's best LensRank was only 39,943. It sat around 40,000- 50,000 most of the time. Now that Halloween is over I expect it to plummet in Lensrank until next year. And it didn't make ANY sales. I will however get a small share of the ad pool revenue for October as a Tier 3 lens. (Paid $0.44)

However, it's a topic that will get traffic each year, and as the page gets older, Google will place more weight on it because it's an older page. So hopefully it will do better next year! I probably will leave it alone and not even touch it until next August or so. Then I'll update it will next year's costume selections! See you next year!

Grand Canyon Pictures
Date Created: 9/8/11
LensRank 10/4/11: 60,140

I made this lens because I am actually going to be hiking down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with my sister in November 2011. I wanted to see some pictures that would inspire me to workout to get in better shape before our big hike. It was really a lens about a topic I was interested in without really having anything to sell. But I did do keyword research and added pictures, titles and topics based on that research.

I used pictures from Flickr that were marked with Creative Commons License and didn't exclude commercial uses. Since Squidoo shows ads on their pages and earns money, it's considered a commercial use. You can find Creative Commons and commercial use pictures by using the "Advanced Search" option on Flickr. Then check the box all the way at the bottom that says "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" AND check the box that says "Find content to use commercially". Then you can use those pictures as long as you give attribution to the photographer.

When I completed my hike I made a new Squidoo lens all about it - you can read about my Hike to the Bottom of the Grand Canyon

Above Ground Pool Supplies
Date Created: 9/21/2011

This is another seasonal lens that I hope to get good traffic and sales in the summer. Since I made this page after the summer swim season was over I don't expect to see any sales until next summer, as most people who own above ground pools drain and cover them for the winter. But making the page 9 months ahead of the next summer I hope that Google will have plenty of time to find my page and figure out what it's about.

Small Travel Trailers and Campers
Date Created: 9/29/11

This will be a very seasonal Lens, and I expect traffic and sales to pick up in the late spring and early summer. This will help balance out some of the high earnings from the holiday seasons.
Keyword Research Stats:
Small Travel Trailers: 61 exact/day; 33,800 competition
Small Campers: 50 exact/day; 36,300

Update: 10/22/11
LensRank: 28,486

Update: 10/28/11 (1 month old)
LensRank: 17,899
After looking at my traffic stats on this Small Camper page, I realized that my first 11 days had absolutely ZERO traffic, which is sort of odd. But since then traffic has picked up, and I'm now getting about 40 visits per week. No sales yet on anything, but if this lens can continue to improve its traffic and lensrank, then maybe it will get into Tier 2 (under 10,000 average LensRank) and earn a share of the ad revenue (about $8 per month right now). When I make a new lens, my goal is to write about a topic that has enough traffic to make it to Tier 2 so that it can earn $8 per month without selling anything. My goal is to build a lens that will give me a passive source of income, regardless of the ups and downs of items selling on your Squidoo Lens.

First Sale: 11/8/11
Current LensRank: 20,041
Today I got my first sale on this new lens. It was a small item that sold for only $8.99, but it's a start. I sold teardrop building plan manual: Teardrop Tear Drop Camper Trailer Plans How to Build - 31 Vintage Assembly Plans!. This item WAS featured on my page, in the form of an RSS feed that automatically pulls in eBay listings for "teardrop camper trailer plans".

Update: April 10, 2012
Lensrank: 1,392
Now that it's spring, this RV page is picking up lots of traffic. I've been averaging about 110 visitors a day so far this month and traffic is increasing. I've had 14 sales over the winter. Just small items, mostly build your own teardrop camper plans and books. I have yet to sell any type of RV or camping trailer from the page. But the next 4 months will be the busy time for this page, as summer is quickly approaching.

Carriage House Garage Doors is one of my newest Squidoo Lenses. More stats to come.

Date Created: 9/26/11

Keyword Research Stats
14 exact/day; 42,500 competition - these numbers are pretty low for the traffic, but I like the topic so I built it anyway.
How did I get on this topic? I started looking into "Barn Pictures", which I love, but the competition is just too high to get any decent traffic. Although I still might make a page just for fun. Or I might just add a section to this page that has Barn Pictures.

10/22/11
LensRank: 52,398

1/07/12
Lensrank: 22,846
I've sold a few carriage house styled garage door hinges and handles from this page so far, but have only amounted to about $5 in commissions. Hopefully sales will pick up when spring and summer time come around and people are more likely to make repairs or upgrades to the exterior of their homes.

Best SnowBlowers
Date Created: 10/2/2011
Seasonal Lens for the winter months.

Relic Handbags
Dated Created: 10/4/11
Here's the keyword research numbers I was looking at when I made this squidoo page about Relic Handbags. My initial idea was "Best Selling Handbags", because I know Amazon has a best sellers page for handbags. But when I typed that into my Market Samurai software, the showed me that the "exact" match for the keyword search only resulted in the #1 website listed in Google getting only 2 hits per day, and the competition was 404,000 other webpages that mention those words in that order on their page. I thought this was too little traffic and too much competition. So I expanded on those words and asked Market Samurai to suggest other keywords that were similar and tell me the traffic and competition on those phrases.

The words "Relic Handbags" had 18 traffic hits/day with a relatively low competition of 48,300 other websites. Here's some of the other words I tried to incorporate into my title, description (first few lines of the intro), module titles, and tags.

Relic Handbags: 18 exact/day; 48,300 competition
Relic Wallets: 4 exact/day, 45,000 comp
Relic Wallet: 4 exact/day, 18,100 comp
Popular Handbags for 2011: 4 exact/day 18,000
Most Popular Handbags 2011: 2 exact/day 20,800
Relic Handbags Website: 1 exact/day: 30,100 comp
Relic Paisley Handbags: 1 exact/WEEK: 2,860 (this one is only 1 visitor per week, but the competition is ultra low at only 2,860 competing websites)

Listing this info here is useful for me to go back later and look to see if the "exact" searches are high enough and the "competition websites" is low enough to get any traffic to my Squidoo page.

For the most part, if one of the Squidoo pages I make ends up getting around 100 visits per week, then that lens has been able to be in Tier 2, and makes about $6 per month just from the ad pool and text link ads, without making any sales and commissions (as of Oct 2011). So my goal is to create Lenses that get at least 100 visitors per week. If one of my new lenses only stays in Tier 3, I would only be getting about $0.40/month in advertising revenue. However, sales from the products I list on my pages also earn me commissions.

18 Months, 2 Blogs, Six Figures
Date Created: 10/11/11
Strategy: Catchy Title which is of interest to anyone trying to make money on Squidoo, yet isn't a Squidoo How to page. Monitization will be primarily the ad pool revenue, as the ebook itself that I'm reviewing is FREE. However, I did add some related books towards the bottom of the page that can be purchased on Amazon.

This is a review of the free ebook written by Corbett Barr where he discusses how he built a six-figure small business online in a year-and-a-half doing what he loves. My Squidoo page summarizes some of the topics and discusses them in relation to my own online income adventure, mainly here on Squidoo. I wrote A LOT on this Lens. It probably has the most written content of any of my lenses. Well have to see if Google finds any value in anything I've written. I've added plently of debate and discusssion modules, so please voice your opinions about the ebook! Please read it, like it (if you like it), and answer some of the debates and comments. Thanks!

Update: 10/21/11
Lensrank: 24,891
I'm pleasantly surprised at how well this lens if doing. It's only 9 days old and already has jumped to a lensrank of 24,891, and already has 10 Squidoo Likes. I think that the title of the ebook helps (which I used in my Squidoo page title) - "18 Months, 2 Blogs, Six Figures". Who wouldn't want to click on that and see what it's all about.

Question: Why didn't I use the ebook cover image for my Squidoo introduction module image?
I had to make my own picture for my introduction because the ebook author gave me permission to use the ebook graphic image, but only if it linked back to his page where the ebook was located. Since the picture featured in the Squidoo intro module doesn't allow you to hyperlink the image, I made up my own graphic of a stick guy reaching for a dollar sign. Then I included the ebook graphic further down the page, making the image clickable to go directly to the ebook page, as Corbett asked me to.

Best Daily Facial Moisturizer with SPF
Date Created: 10/17/2011
Strategy: Very Low Traffic but also Very Low Competition

I made this Squidoo Page because I realized that if I just ordered my moisturizer on Amazon instead of buying it in Walmart, which you have to admit is a pretty inexpensive retailer, I could save 34% on the price by using the Amazon subscribe and save feature. Then I realized, hey why don't I make a Squidoo Lens about this product. I know about it, I like, and I use it everyday, which makes it a perfect item to do a product review type Squidoo Lens. I can make money if anyone buys it from Amazon. And I'm showing people how to save up to 34% off the regular retail price they would normally be paying in Walmart. That's a win-win for everyone.

In doing some keyword research for this topic I determined to use the phrase "Best Daily Facial Moisturizer with SPF", because
And for me, it is the best moisturizer. I have very sensitive skin, and it's practically the only moisturizer I can use with out it burning my face. And because I live in Arizona where I am outside almost every day of the year, I need a moisturizer with a built in SPF. This one has SPF 50.

However, I'm not expecting much traffic from this lens. My keyword research told me that there is only 3 exact match searches per day for this term, and the #1 website can expect to get only 1 of those hits. However, there are only 4,790 other websites in competition and only 17 of them have all the words in the title of the page. Furthermore only 5 pages mention that specific keyword phrase, in the same word order in the URL, within Google's index. So my thought process was that if I can get on the #1 page of Google easily, and maybe even the #1 spot, even if I am only getting 1-3 hits per day, they are highly targeted traffic hits, and may result more easily in a sale. I'll have to wait and see.

Print this Awesome Coloring Page

Awesome Free Kids Coloring Pages
Dated Created: 10/18/11
Strategy: Pure FUN! Any money made will be from the ad pool revenue as there is really nothing to sell on this page.

This was a fun page to make. I shared some colored pictures that I made with a digital coloring book app, then also shared a link to print off a .pdf version of the page so people can color in the pages at home.

The whole process was pretty time consuming because I had to make the pictures a .pdf file first, which I do with the cutepdf app. Then I had to upload that .pdf file to Google docs so I could have a link that would go to a printable .pdf. Then, because Squidoo only allows 9 links to the same domain, I had to have some of the links go directly to the google docs .pdf, and other ones be shortened with bit.ly so the link would be a bit.ly link.

All in all, it took a lot longer to make this page then many of my other pages simply because of the technical side of things. Squidoo doesn't offer any way to upload a .pdf file. You have to host it somewhere else and then link to it. I also individually colored each of the pictures myself, so that took a lot of time to create the coloring pages too. I know a lot of the other coloring page lenses on Squidoo just link out to other printables on the internet, but I wanted to do something different and make completely new pictures.

Date: 1/07/12
Lensrank: 37,659

Tree Wall Decals for Nursery
Date Created: 10/19/11
Strategy: Not much traffic, but highly targeted visitors.

Visitors will land on my page because they want to buy a Tree Wall Decal for their baby's nursery. And there's not much product specifications to review and analyse, like there would be with some type of electronic device. It's just a sticker. And a removable one at that. Basically they are just choosing which one they like best. They probably already have something in mind.

I was inspired to write this lens after having good success with my Super Mario Wall Decals page. It only gets about 30 visitors per week, but has had 12 Amazon/eBay sales in August, and 8 Amazon/eBay sales in September. I think these types of lenses are ones that won't get much traffic, but will get some sales. Using my Super Mario Wall Decals as an example, I made $15 in the first 3 months of its lifespan. So I'm hoping these types of lenses to give me about $5 per month in earnings. My Super Mario Wall Decals page has earned the following: June (created) $0.30, July $0.37, August $12.43, Oct $5.93, Sept $3.84, plus an additional $9.42 in the last four months on my individual Amazon associate account.

Shorty after making this page, I also made one for Toy Story Wall Decals.

1/07/2012
Lensrank: 20,703
This Tree Decals page is really the first page that I've featured a handful of third party affiliate links. I have some tree decals pictured through the store Roommates Peel and Stick. So far I've earned the following commissions from sales of decals from this page:

Dec 2011: $16.23 in third party commissions

International Harvester Scout II
First Publish Date: Nov 5, 2011

I actually made this lens to complete a quest on Squidoo, but I had problems publishing it and missed the deadline. So it sat unpublished as a work in progress for about 3 weeks, and every day the LensRank got worse and worse. I finally just published it today, and my LensRank is currently 1,618,020.

What I've learned from this is that if at all possible it would probably be easier to you to move up in LensRank if you start a new lens and then publish it on the same day. Because each day that it sits as a work in progress lens, it loses LensRank and gets worse and worse. I've found that if I start and publish a lens in the same day, it usually starts out around 250,000 LensRank and works it's way up from there. The sooner you gets traffic and "LIKES" on your Lens, you quicker you will increase your LensRank.

11/21/11
Lensrank: 88,813

12/21/11
LensRank: 15,741
My LensRank has really improved in the last month. Now it's sitting aroung 15,000, which is great.

I just finished hiking the Grand Canyon with my sister and I thought "What better way to share my experience than on a Squidoo Lens". So here's some pictures from my hiking adventure along with my narration about the hike. Enjoy!

I lumped together my pictures and description of my hike along with a section about what I packed in my backpack for the hike, which could be it's own lens in itself. I might break this portion off into its own Lens later when I have more time. What adventures have you went on lately that you could write about on Squidoo?

Date Created: Nov 7, 2011

"Taking a Break" while hiking in Keen Shoes by Jeff Moser
Pictured featured on my Squidoo page about Keen Shoes

Keen Shoes
Date Created: 11/14/11

What started out as a boring sales page about Keen Shoes turned into an awesome adventure page before I even published it. I started out by adding Keen Shoe product listings on Amazon. But then my page was nothing but sales, sales, sales. I needed to add something more engaging to my page. I had already added some poll modules to get reader feedback (which gives you points and increases your LensRank). But the page was still looking very boring and too much of a sales page.

So I checked Flickr using the advanced search option to see if there were any photos that were allowed to be shared under the Creative Commons license, AND didn't prohibit being used for commercial purposes.

Instructions for How to Properly Use Flickr Photos on your Squidoo lenses
When using Flickr photos, start by entering your keyword in the Search box. When it shows you the results, it will also show you an "Advanced Search" option underneath the search box. You must do an "advanced search" and scroll all the way to the bottom and check the box that says "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" and also check the box that says "Find Content to use commercially"...since Squidoo has ads on the pages, all Squidoo pages are considered commercial in nature.

Once you have filtered the results down to the photos that grant this type of use, you can use these photos by copying the html code and sticking it into your text module. Or you can download the photos and upload them into your Squidoo page. But you must credit the photographer with an attribution statement. I usually just say "Keen Shoes" (with a link to the Flickr photo) photo by kiminseattle (the Flickr user). See my example above.

After checking Flickr, I found some great photos of Keen Shoes out on adventures with their owners. The pictures were great and so I added about 30 Flickr photos to my page. I choose to add them in the very first text module underneath the introduction. After seeing all the awesome adventures these shoes have been on, who wouldn't want to buy a pair! The pictures actually became the main content on my page, with the Amazon sales modules just a compliment to the cool photos!

This is a great example of how Flickr photos can really make your Squidoo pages stand out from the competition! Just make sure to use the advanced search option and search for creative commons photos AND ones that can be used for commercial purposes.

And as an added bonus, you'll get more traffic from using Flickr photos too. Why? Because when you add Flickr photos into a text module with the html code, the code includes a alt image tag which tells search engines like Google what the picture is about. Google then can feature these photos in their Google Images search results. Someone may see your photo in the Google images search result, click on the photo, and land on your Squidoo webpage. How cool is that?

Check out all the photos on my Keen Shoes page and let me know what you think! Thanks.

Homemade Noah's Ark Bible Costume
Date Created: Nov 14, 2011

This Lens is a how to guide on a project I recently made, a homemade Noah's Ark Costume for my son to wear to his preschool Bible character costume parade.

Because I spent a lot of time scouring the internet to find this idea, I figured I might as well take some pictures as I was making it, so that later I could make a Squidoo lens about it. Hopefully, my page will help someone else wanting to make a homemade biblical character costume. I know there were many other parents in his preschool scratching their heads for ideas for a what type of Bible character costume their child should wear. I'm sure I wasn't the only one that googled for ideas.

This is a great example of how you can turn any project you are working on into a Squidoo Lens. Some other examples are things such as your child's science fair project, or boy scout or girl scout badge project. Take pictures and make a Squidoo Lens out of it. Did you recently take a class where you learned how to knit something, play the guitar, or make origami? Creat a new Squidoo Lens about it. Do have experience in helping your daughter sell girls scout cookies? What worked better, door to door sales in your neighborhood, or setting up a table in front of Walmart? Tell us what worked best for your troop. Did you just create a new scrapbook? Show it off here on Squidoo. Turn your everyday activities into a Squidoo Lens!

Interesting eBay & Amazon Items I've Sold
from my Squidoo Lenses
Date Created: Nov 15, 2011

This is a page dedicated to the interesting and sometimes whacky things that get purchased after someone follows one of my links to eBay or Amazon (meaning I get paid a commission for these items). Many of the items I list on this page were welcome surprises like a big sale, or maybe an item that had nothing to do with the content that was on my page, like the Kitty Kat toilet training kit.

Phoenix Children's Museum
Date Created: 11/18/11

This is an inside look at the Children's Museum of Phoenix, which I visited recently with a couple of my kids. We had so much fun. I took extra pictures of everything that I thought was interesting, with the intention of making a Squidoo Lens about it. I also added some great videos from YouTube highlighting other kids playing in the different exhibits. It's a very fun lens.

11/21/11 (5 Days Old)
Lensrank
27,319
Even though I just published this page, its already jumped up to a 27,000 lensrank. I attribute this early success to the fact that I shared this on my personal facebook account with a note that my kids were in many of the pictures. So of course, some of my family and friends went to the page right away and read it. My facebook share accounted for 11 visits out of 21 visits in the last 5 days. And I've had 5 facebook likes (from my friends and family on facebook probably), and I also received 2 Squidoo "thumbs up Likes" right away in these first 5 days. And I've had 11 tweets of the page. This type of reader interaction increases your lensrank because Squidoo and the search engine see that your readers find your content useful and well liked.

Vintage Fire Truck Birthday Party Phoenix
Date Created: 11/21/2011

I never planned on making this Squidoo lens. I'm not a big "birthday party idea" type of person. But then my son attended a friend's birthday party where a REAL vintage retired Fire Truck came to the birthday party and did all kinds of cool fire truck games and activities.

Luckily I had my camera with me, so I snapped some pictures and thought "What a great idea for a new Squidoo page". This is just another example of how you can turn your everyday experiences and your family's adventures into a Squidoo Lens.

Check out all the cool pictures and descriptions of the
Fire Truck Birthday Party

I haven't made a new Squidoo Lens about any vintage collectibles in quite a while so I decided to make another one. I love anything that is old and has some history to it.

I started a separate Squidoo account under the user name Vintage-Antique-Collectibles so I could group together similar type lenses. That way at the end of my pages, when I put a "featured lenses" module, it will show my best 25 lenses, but they will all be about vintage antique collectibles, which my readers would likely want to see.

I'll continue to use this account (klaird) for more of my personal family activity lenses and my Squidoo How To lenses. As of right now, I'm going to leave any antique or collectible lenses I have on this klaird account here for now. I may transfer them over to the other account in the future.

But nevertheless, I did make a new lens called CURTA Calculators, which are hand crank mechanical calculators that were developed by an Austrian prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in Germany in the 1940s. The history behind these calculators is amazing to me. Since they were only produced from the late 1940s to the early 1970s they are fairly hard to find, so naturally many people collect them.

Did I already say that I love old collectible items? As in, my husband and I routinely watch TV shows like "American Pickers", "Pawn Stars", and "Storage Wars", which by the way, can have great ideas for new lenses! I should make a page just about the TV Shows!

New Squidoo Lens:
Curta Calculators
Date: 11/23/11
How Long Did it Take to Create: about 5 hours including all the research about the history of Curta Calculators

Pictures of Fall Leaves and Autumn Scenery
Date Created 11/23/11

I made this Squidoo Lens after getting an invitation to participate in the
Purple Thanksgiving Quest, a Squidoo quest designed to highlight great new or updated lens about Black Friday or Thansgiving theme, and the lens had to include an Amazon module. Squidoo would pick 25 lenses to receive a Purple Star and a $25 Amazon giftcard. I usually don't enter many quests, in fact I believe this is only the 2nd lens I've made because of a Squidoo Quest (and the first one never got entered by the quest deadline due to a publishing glitch). So really, this was the first lens I had entered in a quest. And I almost didn't enter this one either. I made the page, then was doubting whether my lens would qualify or not because it really wasn't a sales lens....but the qualifications said that it only needed one Amazon module with personal recommendations or commentary on the products sold. I added an Amazon module with silk leaves for sale, commenting about how I never knew you could buy fake leaves online! I actually officially submitted my lens to the Quest on my dashboard only 1 hour before the deadline.

In addition to entering the lens in the contest via the dashboard, contestants could also leave a link to their Black Friday or Thanksgiving lens on the Quest instruction page. So I left a link about my new lens.

Here's why it pays to enter quests: By completing the quest, the lens was then reviewed by Squidoo for consideration for a purple star. I received two Squid Angel blessings within the couple days of publishing the lens. Even though I didn't receive one of the 25 Thanksgiving Purple Stars with the $25 Amazon Gift Certificate, one day later I got a nice surprise. My new lens DID receive a PURPLE STAR the very next day. I don't believe this lens was necessarily heads above my other lenses in quality, BUT it was put in front of high level squids for review.

So the results of my entering the quest, I received extra points for being blessed, extra points for completing the quest, a purple star right after the quest purple stars were handed out, and plus I guess when you get a purple star you also get a boost in LensRank. Prior to getting the purple star, my Lensrank was 62,579. We'll see what my LensRank is after receiving this purple star.

LensRank Update:
11/25/11 - 68,579
11/26/11 - 55,073 - Received Purple Star Today
11/27/11 - 38,940
12/04/11 - 31,713

So there you have it. If you see you have a quest waiting for you on your dashboard, consider entering it. Even if you don't "win" a contest, your lens still gets valuable traffic from within Squidoo and get looked at by Squidoo HQ and other high ranking squids! After the positive experience with this Squidoo Quest, I'll be be sure to enter as many quests as I can!

Antique Edison Phonographs
Date Created: Nov. 26, 2011

I made another antique lens on my Vintage-Antique-Collectibles account about Edison Phonographs. Besides my new Curta Calculators page, I've haven't made many vintage or antique pages in a while. I've missed writing about all the wonderful antiques people collect. I'm looking forward to getting back to writing about that niche.

Vintage Christmas Images
Date Created: 11/28/11

I wanted to make another Christmas lens this year, but I have also wanted to get back into writing about Vintage collectibles, so I though I would combine the two ideas into one and write about Vintage Christmas Decorations.

This Squidoo page is also a test run for a new keyword research tool I'm going to try out for a month to see if it can help me with my keyword research for my Squidoo pages. I have been using Market Samurai, which I think is great. However, it is a software program downloaded onto my computer so I can't access it anytime I'm on my mobile web browser or iPad web browser. But this keyword tool is hosted on a website, so I can access it from any computer, any mobile phone or tablet computer. But it comes at a cost of $19 per month.

I am going to use it for one month and try to make as many new Squidoo pages as I can in the next month by using the tools it provides. At the end of the month I'll either continue to pay the $19 a month if I think it's beneficial, or I'll cancel my membership. As soon as I have enough experience and results from using it, I'll be sure to come back and post my results, along with a link to where you can get it for yourselves. Until I've had time to test it out I'm not even going to mention it's name.

Pipe Cleaner Crafts
Date Created: Nov 30, 2011

Here's my second new Squidoo page I've made based off a new keyword research tool I'm testing out. I'm going to try to make as many new lenses this month as I can, so I can see if this new keyword research tool is worth paying $19 per month.

My original idea for this page was to write about my mom's pipe cleaner turkey (pictured).

So I put in that keyword phrase into my software and it gave me back a list of other ideas that it thought were good keyword phrases, as defined by the perceived ability to get onto page 1 on Google with those words, as well as showing me expected traffic numbers.

I found out that making a page only on the turkey wasn't going to be a good idea because 1) I really didn't have that much to say about it because I didn't have any step by step directions to give people and 2) that phrase only would give me expected traffic of about 17 visits per month if my Squidoo page was on the first page of Google. 17 visits is hardly enough to warrant wasting my time.

However by combing the "pipe cleaner turkey" with other projects like a "pipe cleaner horse" etc, I could pool together all the little "20 visits per month" into more traffic on one page. Granted, I will have to rank high for a bunch of different keyword phrases for this philosophy to work, but that was really the only way to go about it if I wanted to feature my pipe cleaner turkey. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Update 12/26/11
Lensrank: 6,816
This page has done surprisingly well thanks to the holiday season and lots of people looking for instructions on how to make pipe cleaner reindeer. Now that Christmas is over, I'll have to wait to see if my traffic drops a lot or not. Maybe I'll start getting traffic for valentine's day pipe cleaner crafts!

Revenge TV Show
Date Created: Dec 7, 2011

My favorite TV show this fall is Revenge on ABC. Last night while I was obsessively engrossed in the show, a thought occurred to me that maybe the TV show is popular in Google searches. So I pulled out my handy dandy keyword research tool and plugged in some words and found that yes, people are searching for it. But what really jump started this page was the fact that for some unknown reason, I thought it would be a good idea to see if anyone was talking about the show on Twitter. So I typed in #Revenge in the search bar on Twitter and saw that yes, lots of people were talking about the show.

So I wrote a few paragraphs about why I like the show, and talked about what happened on the episode that night. Then I published it and tweeted it on twitter with the hashtag #Revenge. Right away (I mean within minutes) I had traffic to my page. And I had put an easy poll right under the intro module simply asking "Do you watch Revenge?". And about 1/4 of the people answered the poll.

The lessons I learned about this are that Twitter can be a powerful tool to get the word out about your new Squidoo Lens. This is especially true if you are writing about something happening right now that people are talking about right now. Join in on the conversation.

Another thing I was reminded of with this page is that every thing you do and interest you have can be a potential new Squidoo page. Many of my recent Squidoo pages have been created from something I recently did (like take my kids to the children's museum). And this page was about my interest in a TV show. I plan to continue to write my thoughts about each of the episodes as they air each week. What is your favorite TV Show?

LensRank Update:
Date 12/19/11: LensRank 9,586
I think the LensRank has moved up quickly because I have a couple polls right at the beginning of this Squidoo Lens that most people answer.

Lensrank Update
Feb 2012 Average LensRank: 5,533
Traffic for Feb: 4,472 Visits
This page broke into the tier 2 during the month of February. What has been helping this page is lots of Google searches about his TV show, wondering when the next new episode is on, or wondering what happened in the last episode.

I'm pretty happy that I decided to make this page. It was on a whim while I was watching the show. It just turned out to be popular. I think because it's a new TV show this year, so there wasn't that many other competing websites out on the internet when I made the page, allowing it to get ranked easily.

Moral of the Story: If there is a brand new TV show out that you enjoy watching, start a Squidoo lens about it. And the sooner, the better. Write about what happened in the episodes, and predict what you think will happen.

Upromise Shopping is a rewards program that helps people increase their savings for college by giving cash back rewards into college savings plan 529 accounts for them. I've used this program for years and have personally received more than $2000 in college savings money for free into my kids college savings 529 plan.

But I made this Squidoo page a long time ago, before I knew anything about keyword research tools or even about how Squidoo really worked. This page has never had more than 26 visits in any given month over the last 3 years. Today I made some updates to the page in regards to titles and subtitles. I also changed a few of the tags.

We will see if my changes can help this page at all. Right now it's sitting at 126,392 LensRank. I expect to increase some simply because I updated it. But after that I will see if the LensRank makes any improvements. One thing I wish I could change but I can't is the URL. I would have rather had some other words in the url, but there is no way to change the url after you choose it. So I've updated the titles and subtitles the way I want them and I'll watch the progress.

Progress:
Date 12/12/11
LensRank: 126,392

Date 12/15/11
LensRank: 61,862 (probably just due to it being updated)

Date 1/2/12
LensRank 88,835 Still not where I'd like it to be.

Eco Air Meter for Sale
Date Created: Nov 14, 2011

Here's another vintage collectibles page. Have I mentioned how much I love old things?

Why Does My Dog Eat Poop?
Date Created: 12/12/2011

Yes I really Googled this, after my dog kept getting into the baby's diaper pail and eating dirty diapers. Gross, I know. I googled it and found that other people were asking the same question, and a lot more questions about "Why does my dog.....do this.....or that?". So I made a page about it.

Although the page is technically published and featured, according to Squidoo, I still consider this page a work in progress, as I am still adding in answers to all these questions. I am going to submit this list of questions to local veterinarians to answer, then post their replies, giving them free advertising in the process. Check back for updated answers!

Toy Police Cars
Date Created: Dec 15, 2011

I started this page as a Holiday Gift Guide template as part of a Squidoo Quest that was on my dashboard.

The quest read "Help Santa Squid by creating 3 NEW Gift Guide cobrand lenses before midnight [EST] on December 23, 2011 and he'll repay you with +200 SquidPoints AND award you the 2011 "You're No Scrooge" Trophy Badge on your dashboard."

This is the first of hopefully 3 more gift guide lenses. It's intended as a suggestion for what to buy little boys for Christmas, and a toy police car seems like the perfect gift to me!

Mens Watch Box
Date Created: 12/17/11

I made this new Squidoo page as another Holiday Gift Guide for a quest that involved making three new Holiday Gift Guides using a special holiday cobrand Squidoo page. It was a quest on my dashboard, you can read about it here: Holiday Gift Guide Quest

P.S. We left for Christmas vacation out of state to visit family for a week, and I never made my third lens to finish this quest before the deadline. :(

40th Birthday Cake Ideas & Cupcakes Designs
Date Created: 12/20/11

After seeing that my Birthday Cupcake Ideas was getting a lot of traffic from people specifically looking for 40th birthday cupcake and cake ideas, I decided to make a separate page just featuring pictures of these cakes. Thus this page was born.

Date: 1/2/2012
LensRank: 33,593

Leapfrog Leapster Explorer Case
Date Created: Jan 1, 2012

My son has owned the Leapfrog Leapster Explorer for a year now. In the past year, he's misplaced at least one of the game cartridges that go with it. At $15 per game, you don't want to lose these things, so I've decided he need a case to store his Leapfrog Explorer and keep his games handy all in one location. So I googled "Leapfrog Explorer Case". Then I thought "I bet I'm not the only one looking for a case for this thing, and sure enough, after plugging in my keywords to my keyword research tool, I decided it was a viable topic for a Squidoo page. So here we are. A simple, clean page about one particular item. After I receive the case, I also intend to take more pictures of my own and even a video of it so I can add it to this Squidoo sales page.

I also intend to make pages about some of the specific items that my kids received for Christmas, reviewing them. I could also make individual gift suggestion pages for their ages, along with gifts they received, and my own pictures and videos of them playing with their gifts. I think videos of kids actually using and playing with the toys is a great way to overcome buying objections and help the customer make an appropriate buying decision. They get to see the toy in action, including how big it actually is and how it works. This helps show them whether or not their child will like the toy and its features, and whether it is age appropriate for their gift receipient.

Craft Ideas for Adults
Date Created: Jan 3, 2012

I wanted to make a craft ideas page geared towards adults. After doing some market research to see what kind of websites were already created on the subject, I decided that there was already some GREAT craft pages already on Squidoo. So I thought "Why not do a page that highlights some of the great work already created on Squidoo?" So here's my page. It's a compilation of some of the best craft ideas pages on Squidoo. Specifically, crafts for adults, not kids.

Even though you may think that a page like this would be easier to make, it actually took A LOT longer to make than many of my other pages. First I searched through hundreds of craft pages on Squidoo, looking for ones that I liked and wanted to include. Then I needed to write a short summary of each of the pages to include on my page. I also added Squidoo lenses that had local craft fair information and last but not least included some arts and crafts supplies on my page.

I hope that my fellow Squidoo lensmasters will get some increased traffic from being featured on my page. This is the first page I've made that's like this, but I hope to do some more in the future.

Since there's thousands of craft pages on Squidoo, I'm sure that I missed some really good ones to include, plus new Squidoo pages are being crafted every day, so I also included a link plexo at the bottom where people can submit a great craft lens if they think it should be included. So if you know of a great Squidoo page that features cute crafts for adults, then submit it on my page! Happy Crafting!

Cardboard Play House
Date Created: 1/10/12

My kids got a cool new cardboard indoor playhouse as one of their Christmas gifts from their aunt. After finally setting the playhouse up, I snapped a few pictures of it and also I took a video of my kids having fun playing in it.

I uploaded the video to YouTube, and then I added the video to my Squidoo page by using the YouTube module. Then of course I left a link to where you can buy this exact playhouse on Amazon, along with other links to more variations, shapes, and designs of cardboard playhouses.

This is an example of how you can easily take something you or your kids got for Christmas and turn it into a Squidoo lens. I like adding my own pictures and videos to product sales page like this because it makes it unique. What cool new Christmas items did you or your kids get this year that you can turn into a Squidoo lens? Include your own photos and videos, and write about what you like about the item (and dislike). Honest reviews by customers who actually have and use the product make the best sales pages.