I've made about 12$ from using squidoo.  I haven't gotten my first lens rank payment yet either.  I've been here since mid october.  It does take a few months to get going, but be patient.  Also for next Christmas start on lenses about 2-3 months in advance so you have enough time to get picked up by google.

There are roughly two ways to make money here - and they are independent. The first is lensrank. To get your lenses into tier one they need several hundreds of visitors a week or a over a hundred plus sales through the sales modules.

The other method is affiliate links. For me, this month, I'll have about as much income off squidoo through affiliate links as through lensrank. See my lens about stats for last months stats & squidoo related income: http://www.squidoo.com/seo-traffic-statistics The trick is to make lenses that are in a niche that will get people to buy stuff. This can be advice on how to do something - and then making sure people know what supplies to get to do that. Or it can be a lens devoted to a type of product & then links to places where people can buy those products.

As many people have noted: a lens does not have to be in top tier to get sales. If you have an expensive product, selling only one a month can make you as much as having a lens in top tier would. Or if your lens converts well - you can make money with only a few visitors.

As for traffic: aside from the fact that promotion helps, and blogging, and writing within a niche - it will always remain partly hit and miss. I would never claim, even as an seo mentor with over 23000 visitors to my lenses this week, that I can reliably craft lenses to get traffic. I don't. I make so many lenses, and interlink & promote them so well, that right now there are 26 in top tier. That sounds impressive perhaps. But it's less than 10% of my lenses. Most of my lenses are in third tier and will stay there no matter how well I promote them.

spirituality wrote:

There are roughly two ways to make money here - and they are independent. The first is lensrank. To get your lenses into tier one they need several hundreds of visitors a week or a over a hundred plus sales through the sales modules.

Or get about 80+ visitors a week and a lot of ratings plus visits by Squid Angels for excellent lenses that make people say, "wow!"  The trouble with this technique is that it's heavily dependent on Squidoo users and the kindness of Squid Angels, who can't do all the heavy lifting for you.

Getting people to buy stuff is tricky. I am NOT a marketer, but as a Squidoo user with a very few lenses that get commissions from Amazon modules, here's some thoughts:

(a) personal recommendations help. People are skeptical of commercials; they're looking for honest, problem-solving reviews like, "this is the best thing I've found to do X... I've used it for years..." that show you really do use and recommend a product -- you're not just shilling something to make money on it.  One approach I haven't tried, but it occurs to me might work: look around at the products you REALLY love and use, or your favorite books, see if they are on Amazon, and then write a lens about them. For example, you could write on, "The Five Children's Books I Read to My Kids" with the Amazon Spotlight for each of the five books, and your comments on why you and your kids like the book.

(b) Graphics and presentation are very important. The Amazon Spotlight module is great because it shows a big picture of the item and looks good.

(c) Look for Amazon or other merchant modules products with intriguing-looking ("what the heck is THAT?!")  graphics. For example, my funny signs lens has a Zazzle module featuring funny posters with captions that are slightly too small to read. Lots of visitors click on them! We don't earn commissions from Zazzle, but the clicks help boost the lens' lensrank and keep it in second tier. For another example, I added some cute Egypt-themed toys to an educational lens on ancient Egypt, and discovered that a LOT of visitors click on them. If you like ancient Egypt, apparently, you'll want to take a look at a plushie Anubis toy! My visitors to that lens don't often buy those toys, but they often buy something on Amazon within the next day, and then I get a commission.

That's a slow way of making money though. I get about $130 with 100 lenses.

I recommend reading Potpiegiirl's Blog on how to make money with Squidoo and other programs. She is a work-at-home mom who really does make a living through hard work and online marketing. She's taken her family on vacation and bought her daughter a car with the money she's earned. Most lensmasters don't succeed as well as she does, but she DOES share a ton of tips on how she does it... and those tips make sense.

Last edited by Greekgeek (12/09/2009 2:49 pm)

Kate-Phizackerley wrote:

This lens is about selling books but the technique of how to lay out a lens to get people to click through works for any product.

Kate

BTW you're "develop marketing strategies" link in the first sentence doesn't work. Even after I changed the comma to a full stop.

Lots of great info and suggestions here. Thought I'd bump it up!

Ok so I had two questions kind of in topic with this thread so I didn't want to start a whole new thread on it. 

I was just wondering, I was approved for Adsense with Google in 4 days which made me really happy. So I got the code for my ads but I couldn't put them on my lens. Is it possible to even put Adsense on a lens?

Also, I was wondering if there was any other kind of "paid per click" companies that I could sign up with that works on the lens? Or if it's pretty much just not compatible with Squidoo at all...

newkid19901992 wrote:

Ok so I had two questions kind of in topic with this thread so I didn't want to start a whole new thread on it. 

I was just wondering, I was approved for Adsense with Google in 4 days which made me really happy. So I got the code for my ads but I couldn't put them on my lens. Is it possible to even put Adsense on a lens?

Also, I was wondering if there was any other kind of "paid per click" companies that I could sign up with that works on the lens? Or if it's pretty much just not compatible with Squidoo at all...

All lenses already have AdSense on them unless you've opted out. That's what pays into the big pool o' money we all split every month. So no, you can't put your own AdSense on a lens.

As for another other pay per click deal, it would depend on the kind of code you're trying to put in. Straight links, no problem. Javascript, not possible. (I don't personally participate in those kinds of programs, so no specific recommendations.)