Being a Squidoo Dad!

I don't know your situation and I know that whether you are a dad, or even a mom, you have daily stresses such as children who want your attention or having to go out because you need to go grocery shopping or your partner has asked you that you have a certain item of clothing washed. All these things seem pretty mundane however over time it will begin to stress you out so it's important to take time for yourself when you can.

Obviously your partner has been at work all day, probably up at around 7, especially if it's a woman, getting ready and leaving by 8:30 to be at work for 9am. They then work a 7-8 hour day, sometimes more, and then come home to expect a nice warm dinner and everything clean and tidy.

Now that might sound like a rant, but it really isn't. It is in fact fairly typical of a relationship where children are involved.

Two things are likely to happen when your partner comes home; the first is your children will want to immediately swarm the new parent with information making this partner feel a little overwhelmed.

The second thing that's likely the happen is the stay at home partner is going to want to spend some time doing what he, or she, has wanted to do all day but has been unable to do because of looking after the children, which can then cause an argument with the partner as she has been working all day and now feels like she has been abandoned with children who are starting to get tired and cranky!

My name is Scott and I used to live in the UK, however I now live in Canada with my wonderful wife and two kids, Elliot (6) and Allegra (3).

I decided that after working non-stop in the UK for the past 13 years that it was time for a break and I stayed at home with the children. Because of this I decided to see if there was any way that I could help supplement our income with some online work. After doing some searches through Google I finally find a site that talked about Hub Pages.

Now Hub Pages is very similar to Squidoo and lots of people have both accounts on Squidoo and Hub Pages, I know I do, and I started making a few hubs to see how things went. This was OK but Hubs didn't seem overly user friendly but the forums and people were nice so I stuck at it.

During one of those forum searches I came across somebody talking about Squidoo which immediately caught my attention for having such a wacky name. I went to Squidoo.com and found this site. After signing up everything seemed so easy, however Squidoo is quite powerful if you can see past its slightly kid like interface, which works well even if it is kidlike!

I signed up to be a Squidoo member in September 2009 and my first Lens was on best friend tattoos, which probably needs some refreshing right now, but it got a few visitors and it made me happy. Everyone at Squidoo is really friendly and ready to lend a hand if they can. Squidoo also pointed me in the direction of a few other people who I have learned so much from, so I am very grateful for finding Squidoo!

As I mentioned earlier I have two children, a son of 6 and a daughter of 3, and life can be busy at the best of times. My wife leave's for work pretty early so it's up to me to get the kids up and dressed and fed, etc.

Once my son is safely off to school my daughter and I come home and while she plays or watches TV I am busy building lenses or writing articles.

There is obviously some running around to be done so our mornings are not always that cut and dried but it's not far off. So I find a good way to ease stress and also keep the kids amused is to play some music. I'm pretty easy when it comes to music and there's only a few types that I really don't like (classical being one, although there are exceptions!).

It's also important to eat well as it can be easy to spend way too much time sitting in a chair typing and not making much other effort! Every hour or so leave the computer for a bit and spend some time with the kids so they know you still love them!!!

Getting out and walking is also good for stress and I recommend it at least once a day!

So you're a stay at home dad who wants to make some money with Squidoo but you have NO IDEA where to start. Well first you need to pick a subject that interests you, maybe a hobby or something that you know a lot about.

At this stage and with this being your first lens I wouldn't worry too much about keyword research or anything like that, and if you don't know what keyword research is then that's probably a good thing!

Once you have your subject I suggest you take a look at my other Squidoo lens Squidoo Help For Beginners which will give you the building blocks to start building your very first lens as well as setting up your account on Squidoo.

Once your lens is published you can head on over to the Squidoo forums, a link can be found on your dashboard, and have other Squidoo users critique your lens and give you further ideas on how to improve its look or feel.

Unfortunately there is nothing true about getting rich quickly online, unless you bet heavily on stocks or the horses!

Squidoo is an easy platform for normal people like you and me to maybe make some money for ourselves by writing about the things that we like or that interest us.

Of course there are some no nos and you should make sure you read the Squidoo FAQ to find out what IS NOT allowed to be a Squidoo lens.

So have I made any money? At the time of writing this lens, February 2010, I've made a grand total of $9.50. That's OK considering how long I have been a part of Squidoo but I know with time this figure will continue to grow and with that in mind I'm going to put a small table to show how that is progressing!

Combined Total for 2009 = $9.50

January 2010 = $
February 2010 = $
March 2010 = $

Lens promotion is the only way your lens will ever make you any revenue so its a good idea to do at least some of these basic things to get things moving in the right direction.

1. Pinging Your Lens: By visiting SquidUtils.com you can login to your dashboard and ping your lens. This lets search engines and blogs know that your lens has new and exciting content. Its important to do this step as quickly as possible once your lens is complete.

2. Cross Promoting Lenses: If you have lenses that are of a similar topic you can cross promote them by putting a link to each lens on the other. There are a few modules that allow you to do this quickly and easily.

3. Promotion Sites: There are several sites around that allow you to promote your lens directly on their site. Try submiting your lenses to the following sites: www.squidirectory.com, www.lensroll.com, squidup.org and www.articletroll.com.

4. Blogging: Set up a free blog on wordpress or blogger and write about things related to your Squidoo Blog. Make sure that you have a link to your Squidoo page is also necessary!

5. Discovery Tool: Make sure you turn on the Squidoo discovery tool for your lens. By clicking the edit button on your initial module you'll find two other tabs, one of which will give you access to this feature of Squidoo.

If you're totally new to all this Squidoo stuff and feel a bit lost then I have one piece of advice for you.

When starting a lens you need to create yours around a niche. What this means is to find a topic that you are interested in which is maybe not written about already on Squidoo and then create a main lens and several offshoot lenses which focus on a particular part of that topic which you can then link together.

For instance if you are interested in creating a lens about dating then you might create a main dating lens and then have other lenses which focus on the different aspects of dating and maybe other lenses which are related.

Hopefully you get the idea and can begin creating your first lens. Having several lenses on a similar topic will ensure you become and expect on that topic which will also help with cross traffic between you lenses.

Writing about what you like is a good place to start however don't think that this means you shouldn't create lenses outside your niche, if you have the urge to write about something, do it!!