Squidoo paid for my daughters wedding dress

Squidoo makes it easy to build lenses. My goodness you just figure out what you want to write about, type in the title, select some categories, tags, hit a button and you are well on your way to buidling lenses.

I didn't want my pages to be just so-so. I wanted them to stand out and be noticed! I think in the beggining I actually put too much content into my lenses. They were so long and full of information that it would take hours just to discover everything on them. I learned that people seemed to enjoy them more if I broke down the content into smaller categories and made several lenses about them.

I had to learn all the Secrets of Squidoo from other lensmasters here. I would look through all of their content, see something I liked and learn how they did that be building friendships, asking questions and reading the Squidu forum.

HTML...I had no clue what that was when I came to Squidoo, I struggled a lot with it at first...I had all kinds of weird things happen to my web pages. Thank goodness for all those helpful people in the forum that would critique my lenses for me. You don't know how much I truly learned from all of you that took the time to help me become a better lensmaster.

Squidoo has a way of putting these little helpful messages up on your dashboard to encourage you too! Things like "Hey, way to go, now build another"! LOL, well maybe not quite those words but they have an awesome team that have built this incredible website that is helpful, easy to use and is like a "Squidoo website building Pusher". They are like your own cheerleading section on your dashboard. You always feel like they are right there encouraging you and cheering you on.

Go TEAM!

I remember my first earnings at Squidoo. Now I can tell you it was under $3.00 and it took me three months to see that much!

How that ornery husband laughed at my excitement over my "less than three dollar profit". No, it wasn't much at first but I thought, hey what if I had 50 lenses built. (By the way you can be a "Big Squid" if you have fifty great lenses built, which was another spur in my side to keep me building websites.)

I had made this money just by someone being interested in what I had to share. For me it was quite an accomplishment. I didn't have to sell anything. But hey, what if I did sell some things too. You actually earn money by people buying things off an ebay or amazon module on any of your websites.

But honestly the money was not what kept me building websites. It was...

What inspired me to stay at Squidoo and continue to build websites?

Yes, the cheerleading by the Squidoo team, the community and the comments left by the people who visit my lenses fueled my fire.

But it was also the inspiration of things to write about that kept hitting me.

I love to take photographs whenever we travel, (after learning about copyright laws I use most of my own photographs and artwork or pictures on my lenses. )

I kept thinking all the time about things I love and how I wanted to write about them and share them with the world.

I wrote about Geocaching, places where I had traveled, things I saw that I thought others would enjoy looking at, animals I loved, people that were special to me. I found inspiration in affiliate marketing too. When I found an items or group of items that I thought were beautiful I wanted to share them with others. I created pages about dolls, about famous people, about books that I loved.

Inspiration is everywhere for me. It is in a book, a movie, it is outside in my own backyard. It is in my camera lens when I ride as a passenger in our car. It is outside when I go for a walk on my favorite greenbelt. it is in the food I love and the places I travel too.

Inspiration is in my heart, which to me is where it should be. You can be inspired by others, but truly great lenses come from your heart.

I have built many types of lenses. Some that were not built by true inspiration from my heart may do better than those that are very special to me, they may get more visitors to them because of the interest of others in the content there, but the lenses that are truly my favorites are the ones that were inspired, that I felt strongly about.

Looking back, those Giant Squids, those in the 100 Club and those sweet Angels that bless our lenses giving them a little boost in the rankings of Squidoo were all people who I looked up too, admired, listened to what they had to share with me.

I watched them, learning from them, and aspired to be like them. I actually still do learn from others, even those that are new to Squidoo. I found that I loved helping people too. I find great pleasure in visiting the lenses of others, reading their stories. I have learned so much about the world through the websites of others here at Squidoo.

Honestly you can travel the world, research anything you want all here at Squidoo. There are millions of lenses and thousands of lensmasters writing interesting content.

Each milestone for me, meant so much!

When I started at Squidoo, it wasn't about the money and honestly it isn't about the money now. But when you find that you have made enough in one month to pay a bill, or give your children money for something that they need, you soon realize just how special it is to have your "own money" to choose to do what you want with.

For me, my "Squidoo Paycheck" is extra. My husband and I make a good living, but we are middle class (For you that aren't in the middle class you should know that means, you can support yourself but don't have a lot of extra money to spend). We feel very blessed to have the careers that we have and to be able to pay our bills and have a good credit rating.

I have used my Squidoo money to pay our bills, cover our checkbook when we have extra expenditures some months, help my children pay their bills, buy Birthday and Christmas presents.

I had two months at Squidoo that were my highest months yet. I made over two hundred dollars two months in a row. I was able to take five hundred dollars of just Squidoo money with me when I went shopping with my daughter for her wedding dress two weeks ago.

Now let me tell you, there are very few truly special moments in a mothers life that stand out among others of times spent with their children that can bring tears to her eyes just thinking of them.

Katie's fiance, Russell, proposed to her on Valentines day. Now Russell has been in her life for almost five years. So this moment was one we were worried my never happen. When they came in and I saw my daughter beaming with a huge smile and her eyes sparkling with emotion. Russell behind her looking very happy too. She said, look what Russell gave me for Valentines day, and showed me her left hand with an engagement ring on it, I still get misty eyed thinking about their happiness and ours for them.

Sharing that very special day with my beautiful daughter trying on those gorgeous wedding dresses, that she makes look so fine was such a special moment for me. She tried on the first dress, and it was a beautiful mermaid type of dress, that clung to her curves and gave her that "Marilyn Monroe" type of figure. It was beautiful in front, but the back didn't fit as well. They would bring her out and put her up on this little pedestal and she would look in the mirror, looking so pretty.

The second dress they brought out was the one you see in the photo above, just absolutely gorgeous from behind. My gosh she looked so beautiful in that, I could see her walking up the aisle. I choked back a few tears on that one too, but the front of the dress was not as beautiful as the first.

The third and last dress she tried on was absolutely beautiful on her, she made that dress look gorgeous. It fit her perfectly too! The front was beautiful, the back, the crystals and design of the dress was so perfect. She took one look at me, with her eyes shining so bright with happiness and the tears started flowing for both of us. (They are now too, just telling you about it!)

It felt so good to be able to actually pay for this very special dress for my daughter with the money I had earned here at Squidoo, I just had to share this with all of you! Just look at her smile, she is so happy!

THANK YOU SQUIDOO!

I plan to use each months paycheck from now until my daughters wedding day to go out and buy things for my daughters wedding. We have had so much fun looking for ideas together to plan her special day.

You know watching my daughter get married is actually on my Bucket list too!