Making Your First Lens

You can start making your first lens by clicking here.

Click Here to Start Making Your First Lens!

But first I suggest you read through the rest of this lens!

Step 1

My lens is about .............................

On the step 1 page Squidoo asks you what your lens is about. For example if you want to make a money-making lens to sell sewing machines you could fill in the blank with Sewing Machines. Click Step 2.

Step 2

What do you want to do with your lens?

This page gives you several options - click the box beside "I just want to do my own thing."

Click Step 3

The Step 3 page starts with Lens Title - as a default the title filled in will be the same as you entered in Step 1, My Lens is About, so in this case it will say Sewing Machines. You can change this if you wish, if not the next box is to pick your url. Be careful with this as this is the only bit of your lens that you cannot change once selected.

The first part of the url will be http://www.squidoo.com and you just need to fill in the second part. For this example I would use the url Sewing-Machines.

Then pick a category. I would choose the Shopping category for this lens, but for example if you were making a lens about cell phones you might use the Computers, Gadgets & Tech category.

Once you have chosen an appropriate category you need to give your lens a rating. This will be G unless you are making adult subject lenses.

Click Step 4

You may find at this point that Squidoo tells you that the url Sewing-Machines is already taken - try again with SewingMachines or Sewing_Machines or Best-Sewing-Machines until you find one that isn't taken.

Step 4 - Tags

The Best Keyword for my Lens is ...........

Squidoo will already have filled in this box with your lens title, in this case Sewing Machines.

Then you need to add 3 more tags (or keywords). For example - Sewing Machine, buy sewing machine, sewing machines review,
You can add more tags later.

Click Done!

That's it your lens is made. It doesn't have any content yet but we will do that now.

The only module your lens has at the moment is the Introduction.

Click Edit. Give your introduction module a title. This can be the same as your lens title and it is probably better for the search engines that you keep them the same - so the title in this case is Sewing Machines.

Write a few lines of text about Sewing Machines.

Click Save - don't forget this step or you will lose what you just wrote.

Then click Edit again to upload a picture. Find a suitable picture of a sewing machine (has to be a .jpeg and less than 1MB) and click upload. Then Save again.

There are a huge number of modules you can use on Squidoo. For this example I will start with an Amazon module.

Click the Add Module box at the top of your lens. The first page that comes up is Basic Modules and Amazon is the top of this list. Click ADD. Then click SAVE.

This will take you back to your lens where you will see the new Amazon module has been added. Click Edit on this module.

First change the title. I will call this Sewing Machines on Amazon.

Click the link that says "Help Me Find Products" this will open up a new window. You will see an empty search box and beside it the box says Books. Click the down arrow beside Books and change it to All Products. Then in the search box type Sewing Machine (or whatever item you want to find) then click Find It!

Amazon will come up with a list of Sewing Machines. Pick 1 and click Add this product. Do this until you have 5. Click Done.

This takes you back to your page where you will see the list of Sewing Machines that you have added. Click Save. See below for what this looks like.

The next module I will add is an eBay module.

Click Add Module. Click Add beside eBay. Click Save.

Click Edit. Change title to Sewing Machines on eBay.

Select "Let eBay Pick". Enter your search keywords eg. Sewing Machine. Leave all the other boxes as they are except max number of items to display change to 5.

Click Save. Look and see if you are happy with the 5 items chosen. For Sewing Machines I am not happy with 2 of the items, 1 is a mini sewing machine and 1 is a toy. So click Edit again and after the search keywords Sewing Machine type -mini -toy click Save again. Do this until you are happy with the 5 items shown.

These items from eBay will automatically change as the original 5 finish but will always comply with your search keywords.

See below for the Sewing Machines on eBay module I created.

You can add as many different modules as you like. In this example I will add 2 more. Another Amazon module this time on Sewing Books and a Guestbook module.

It is always a good idea to add a Guestbook to your lenses.

When you have added some modules and finally your Guestbook you are ready to Publish!

Click Publish!

Don't worry you can always add more modules, change them around and edit them later.

Congratulations you made your first lens!