Stepping into Squidoo

I have spent a considerable amount of time the last three days creating and working on my first two Squidoo pages.
My first, The Write Guide is a top ten list of writers' guides and handbooks, and the second, well your reading it.

It didn't take very long to create the lenses, just a few minutes to define the subject, title it, choose a domain name and tags. However, once you create your lens expect to spend a good bit of time writing some initial content, an introduction, your author bio, personalizing any sales widgets you want to add (Amazon books, CafeePress merchandise, etc.) and uploading photos.

Overall the past few days have been pretty entertaining, writing about topics I enjoy, reading about the potential for my lenses, learning about Squidoo's widgets and software.

I already have ideas for a ton of other lenses, and already plan to create one about myself to promote my online portfolio, my Linkedin profile, other lenses, etc.

The only down side is the amount of time I am spending on Squidoo. It seems it really is as highly addictive as they say, and I find myself getting eye strain at times (which is strange and concerning for a freelance journalist and editor who makes a living from the keyboard). But I expect once I learn about Squidoo and get my lenses running it will take a lot less time to maintain them.

With any luck it won't be wasted time and I am on the road to Squidoo fame and riches.

As a general rule, web 2.0 traffic is gained through participation. So with this in mind I spent the last week joining, surfing, reading and linking.

With only two Squidoo lenses so far, this one and The Write Guide, my main priority was to promote The Write Guide.

I began by visiting and commenting on similar Squidoo lenses and joining related Squidoo groups. After joining only two related groups, making a handful of comments on pages related to The Write Guide and writing a few comments on SquidU, I did have some initial success. A handful of fellow Squidoo users visited my site, gave me a star rating (now at four stars - not bad for a lens with only a portion of its content up) and favourited both the lens and me. This small burst of traffic was very short lived however.

For my Squidoo page to be considered a success it needs much more than a handful of visitors that generate fleeting traffic. So next I ventured out onto the World Wide Web and visited a bushel of writing blogs, forums and chats, leaving comments and links all along the way for several days. I also updated my online portfolio to feature links to both of my Squidoo lenses, and made plenty of comments and links to my portfolio as well.

I am sad to say that all of this effort was largely in vain. For a substantial amount of work I generated only a few hits on my portfolio and one or two on The Write Guide. Of course it was fairly fun work, visiting sites, reading content and chatting about topics I enjoy, but in the end I have to wonder if my time could have been better used.

Looks like this Squidoo thing is going to be harder than I thought.

During the next week or so I will focus on building the content on my existing lenses and creating new lenses. It is my hope that having a bunch of sites with quality content will help my future efforts to draw in traffic.

Wish me luck!