Earn Passive Income from Squidoo

Earn Passive Income from Squidoo

First of all, we should get you through the steps for signing up for an

account:

1. Go to www.squidoo.com

2. Click on the big orange button saying “Join for free!” or at the link at

the top, saying “JOIN US”.

3. You can sign up almost with one click by using Facebook or Twitter, or

you can add your email address, choose a user name (no spaces) and a

password and click “Sign up!”.

4. There is no step 4. You are now ready to start your first lens.

Action Steps:

1. Join Squidoo.

2. Create a nice cup of tea and get ready for the following step.

Find Your Money-Making Topic

This method is simple.

But don't let that fool you. Five of my top ten lenses have been created

using this simple technique.

First, you take a look around your house, or even your desk. Look for

anything, really. Or go to the kitchen. Or your bathroom.

You're looking for a seed word. One word. Two can also work.

Examples:

• Tea

• Olive oil

• Candles

• Hanukkah

• Toys

• Coffee

• Soap

• Orange juice

I think you get the idea. Simple is better.

And now to pick your topic:

1. Go to www.amazon.com

2. Type in your seed word in their search field and make a space.

3. Now watch the list of items, Amazon shows you. You will probably see

a lot of two word items. You should aim at three or four words in your

key phrase (your topic), because this will make it easier for your lens to

perform well. So if you don't see any items consisting of three-four

words, you have to continue to the next step.

4. Find a two-word item that looks interesting. Select them, and type a

space after the two words. Amazon will now show you more items,

consisting of three or more words. Pick one of these.

Let me give you an example:

I went to Amazon, and I saw Christmas ornaments, and one looked like a

ball, so I typed “ball” in the search field.

Amazon showed me this list of possibilities:

I thought “ball pits for toddlers” looked interesting, but I could also have

chosen to take “ball chair”, for instance, and add a space after that to see

what comes up.

As you can see, there are plenty of three or four word products.

How to Pick Your Topic

You have now found a product that you can buy on Amazon, and for

which there are searches. But not all topics will do.

If you use the basic Squick formula, you are not going to write a lot. So

you should put yourself in your potential reader's shoes. What is going on in

her head?

If she's looking for an expensive product, do you think she will want to

read a little or a lot about it before taking a decision?

If you said: “a lot”, you'll be right. Before making a major investment,

normal people will do a lot of research and see what people are writing or

saying about their possible choices.

On the other hand, if a person stumbles upon a thing for $20, will he be

tempted to buy, if the setting is right, even with only a few words used

about the product? Oh, yes, he will. If the product is good.

So you're going to check for the following criteria when you've found an

interesting three-four word topic:

• Is the price low? (max $150-200)

• Are there at least 5 available products?

• Do at least 5 available products have 4 stars or more?

• Is the Squidoo lens name available? (I'll show you what I mean in a

moment.)

For my example, I'll check the “ball pits for toddlers”:

• Price: Perfect. Some cost $17, others $40, and I saw one to $180.

• Number of available products: Plenty. Amazon shows 205.

• 4 Stars or more: Yes, several. More than 5.

• As for the available Squidoo lens name, we will see about that in the

next chapter.

Action Steps:

1. Find 10 seed words and write them down.

2. Go to Amazon, and find at least one good topic.

Make Your Lens

You will find that creating lenses is fun and addictive. You earn points and

trophies, when you're interacting on Squidoo.

Okay, with your newly found topic at hand, you should now be ready to

create your first lens (or 124th if you've already used Squidoo for a while).

This is how you do:

1. Log into your Squidoo account.

2. Click on “Create a Lens!” in the right hand menu, or use the “START A

LENS” button at the top.

3. Write your three-four word topic in the field “My page is about”, and

click on “Continue”.

4. Leave the title with the same words you just used, and take a look at

the lens URL. If it shows your topic with hyphens between the words

and nothing else, it's perfect. If there's an added number 2, it's okay. If

the number is higher than 2, I think you should pick another topic.

Because this means that you already have competition.

5. Pick a topic for you lens on the scroll down list. If possible, pick two

subtopics, also. These will pop up when you've chosen your topic.

6. Write only G rated material, which means no nudeness, no blood...

Content which is safe for all ages and eyeballs. Click on “Continue”.

7. If you already have ideas about other tags (words that people should

be able to find your lens with), you can write them here. Or you can

just skip this step for later. But you have to type in the word you see to

the left, and then click “Continue” again.

8. The first time, you create a lens, you have to decide what to do with all

the nice money, you're going to make. You can donate it to charity or

keep it for yourself. Choose “Donate” and then whom to donate to, or

click “I just want cash”, if that's the purpose with your lenses. If that is

your option, you need to give Squidoo your PayPal email, and then

click “Continue”.

9. That's it! Your first lens is created, but very empty. Let's give it some

quick content.

Action Steps:

1. Create your lens by going through the above mentioned three or four

steps (only four, if this is your first lens).

Preparing Your Squidoo Lens

If this is your first Squidoo lens ever, I invite you to take a look at the

video you can find in the top area of your new lens. And then, let's get

started with step 1.

You can, of course, do this in any order you want. I chose this order,

because it made me able to spit out lenses faster than a one year-old eating

mashed potatoes.

I make sure the modules are in place, before I start adding content.

First I'll show you which modules I use for these Squick lenses. Next I'll

show you where you can find them and add them. Third, I'll show you how

you can add them so that they are easier to find the next time. And finally,

I'll show you how you put the modules in the “right” order.

Use the Following Squidoo Modules

Introduction

Amazon

Google News

eBay

YouTube

Duel Debate

Amazon Voting (plexo)

Guest Book

Lens Love Widget

How to Add Squidoo Modules Make Faves

You already have selected modules on your right hand menu, but there

are more than these, and you'll have to dig up some of them.

Click on the link “Browse all modules”.

Type the name of the modules, you need in the search field, and click

“Go”. You need to search for the following (one at a time):

Google News

YouTube

Amazon Voting (plexo)

Lens Love Widget

Let's take them one at time with a twist: You're going to add them to

favorites, too.

1. Type “Google news” in the search field, and click “Go”.

2. Click on the result (Google News) to add it.

3. Type “YouTube” in the search field, and click “Go”, and click on that

module as well.

4. Continue through the list, until you have all five new modules added

and can see them on the right hand side.

5. Click on “+Faves”.

6. And then add checkmarks to the five new modules to the left, and click

“UPDATE FAVES”.

7. Finally, click “Done Adding”.

Next time, you're going to create a lens, you can simply click on

“Favorites” in the “Add modules (building blocks)” area.

We need to add a couple of modules from the “Popular” area, too. Add

eBay and Duel Debate by clicking on the green plus next to them.

Finally, click on “Add”.

Sorting the Modules

First, you should delete the text module, because we are not going to use

it for this Squick method. Add a checkmark in the field, and hit “Apply”.

Next, drag around the modules to the right order. You should end up

seeing this (except for the Twitter Search module, which has since retired),

and then click on “Apply”:

If you're having trouble seeing the text in the picture, you can look further

up. I've mentioned the modules in the right order earlier in this chapter.

Optional: Pick a Theme

You might want your lens to look in a certain way, and Squidoo makes it

possible for you to pick a theme. You can see an example, before you

choose.

Some themes will be locked for you, until you reach a higher level. And

you level up by creating lenses, “liking” other lenses, doing quizzes and by

performing a lot of other activities.

When you have chosen a theme, you keep it by clicking on “Apply”.

Action Steps:

1. Add the modules you need.

2. Make the new modules “Faves”.

3. Sort your modules in the right order.

4. Pick a theme.

P.S. You can play around with modules and order later. The modules I've

chosen are easy and fast to use, and the order in which I show them looks

good (a mixture of text and pictures).

Add Content to Your Lens

Now to the fun part. We're going to add content (text, pictures,

interaction and a video) to our lens. And it will neither be difficult nor take

time.

Ready?

Edit Your Lens Title

We take it from the top, and if you've followed this guide, your lens title

will now contain three or four words, written in lower case.

Click on “Edit Title”, and correct it so your headline is written the correct

way, for example:

ball pits for toddlers → Ball Pits for Toddlers

The first letter of all words in the title and subtitles should be capitalized,

except for the following words: a, an, and, for, from, in, of, or, the, to. The

first and last word of the title and subtitle should always be capitalized.

Select the headline and copy it, and click on “Save”.

The Introduction Area

Click on “Edit” to add content to the introduction area. We need to make

changes on all three tabs.

The Intro Text

Paste the title of the lens into the area “Lens Intro Title”. You can change

it if you like, but if you really want to save time and words, you can just go

with the same title.

You should write at least 100 words in your intro text. If you don't want to

write it yourself, you can outsource it on iWriter, where you get 150 words

for $1.25. But the text here should be really simple. And very personal.

Add your personal feelings or experiences in this text. Take a look at the

product pictures on Amazon to get inspired. Or read about it. Or read

people's comments about it. Or watch videos...

This is what I wrote (and it took me no time). 101 words – bingo:

I remember when my children were toddlers... They loved going to Ikea or

McDonalds with me, because those places had playgrounds with ball pits

where they could have fun, while we were shopping or talking over a meal.

Today, you can make it even better and easier for yourself and your kids.

You can get ball pits for toddlers, and fill them up with balls that they can

play around in for hours of fun.

The prices are low. They run from below twenty to a couple of hundreds

for a real nice playground. Your child is going to love this.

If possible, you should add your topic inside the text, like I've done it here

by mentioning “ball pits for toddlers” in the text.

The Intro Picture

You need a nice picture to your introduction, and the easiest way of

getting it is by saving it from Amazon.

If possible, go for square pictures, and only use Amazon's pictures, not

customer’s.

So go back to Amazon and search for your chosen words. Choose one the

products, and open it up in a separate tab.

Right click on the picture of the product, and save it to your computer. I

have a folder named “Squidoo” and inside that I create sub-folders to my

lenses. This one is called “ball_pits_for_toddlers”. And I save the intro image

to that folder.

Don't use the name Amazon has for the image file. Rename it to fit your

lens title, e.g. ball-pits-for-toddlers.jpg in my case.

Inside your introduction area, you are now ready to add a picture, so click

on the button “Browse” and find it on your hard desk.

Then click on “Upload Photo”.

You're almost done. But you have to add a small piece of text to the end

of the “Lens description”, namely a photo credits text.

I add: “Image: KEYWORD available at Amazon”, where KEYWORD in this

case is “ball pits for toddlers”. (When you're more advanced, you can add

your own affiliate link to this text.)

Then click “Save”.

Table of Contents and Related Lenses

A table of content is a good tool for your guests to get an overview of

your lens. It's also a great way for search engines to figure out what it's

about. So you should add one, and it's easy.

Once again, click on “Edit” in the introduction area, and take the second

tab this time, the one called “Table of Contents”.

Click “On”, and choose how you want it to look. I normally keep it at

“Plain List”.

Now click on the tab “Related Lenses”, and make sure it's turned “On”.

When you have more lenses yourself, you can add your own related lenses.

Right now, it will take other people's lenses and show them.

Finally, click on “Save”.

This was the hardest part. The rest of the lens will take very short time to

make.

Add Content to the New Amazon Module

Every time you're going to add content to a module, you have to click on

the “Edit” button related to that module. So I will not mention it again.

1. Change the title of the Amazon module from “Great Stuff on Amazon”

to something like KEYWORD on Amazon, where “KEYWORD” should be

your chosen lens title. In my case, it's “Ball Pits for Toddlers on

Amazon”.

2. Choose “Let Me Pick”, and go back to Amazon, and choose five of the

products you've found.

3. Open each of the five products in new tabs in your browser.

4. Copy the URL from each product to the area that says “Enter links or

Amazon ASINs” (when you get more experienced, you can pick the

ASINs alone).

5. Click “ADD ITEMS” - very important! If you forget this, you have to add

the URLs again.

6. After you've added your items, you can click on “Save”.

Add Content to Your Google News Module

This couldn't be much easier.

Instead of “Google News”, write something like “KEYWORD in the News” -

or “KEYWORD Around the World” or “News about KEYWORD”.

Enter your lens title in the area that says “Enter your search term”.

Choose 3 posts to display, and go for Headline and abstract. Daily updates

are fine.

If Squidoo doesn't find any news, you can change your search time

slightly. Try things like “ball pits”, “ball pit for toddler” or other variations of

your keyword.

Getting Content in Your eBay Module

This time, you let eBay decide, because these auctions change all the

time. So you'll not have much writing to do here.

Change the title of the module to something like “KEYWORD on eBay”.

Choose “Let eBay pick”, and enter your keywords in the area labeled

“Enter your search keywords”.

Change “Max number of items to show” to 5, and Save.

- 34 -

Here again, like for the Google News module, if you don't get any results,

you have to change the search term slightly.

Find a Video and Add It to Your YouTube Module

Go to YouTube and find a video about your product. Sometimes, you have

to dig a bit to find something useful, because you don't want to promote

your competitor's sites.

When you've found a video, copy the address and insert it into the

YouTube module. You have to choose “Let Me Pick” first. Type a fitting title

to your video.

Finally, click on “Save”.

Obs! As a subscriber to my mailing-list, you'll get a tip about how to use

something better than YouTube for these videos.

Populating Your Duel Debate Module

A duel debate is a place where your readers can take a stand. You can

make it funny or serious, as you see fit.

You have to ask a question related to your lens and ask people to choose

sides. It could be “yes/no”, “black/white” or anything else.

You have to make at least the following 7 changes to this module:

1. Write a title. (And maybe a subtitle.)

2. Write a question.

3. Type in your first option.

4. Enter your second option.

5. Choose “Anyone who visits my lens”.

6. Choose “Ask me first”.

7. And “Strip all HTML out of blurbs” should be “Yes”.

Save this module.

Adding Content to the Amazon Voting (Plexo) Module

You can let Amazon do most of the work here and ask your visitors to

vote on the products they prefer.

Change the title to something along the lines of “Vote for your favorite

KEYWORD”.

Choose “Let Amazon pick”, and enter your keywords in the search terms.

Click “Save”.

Your Guestbook

Invite your visitors to leave a message here. You can either ask them a

question about your lens, your topic, or just ask them to leave a message.

Make the following changes:

Anyone who visits your lens should be allowed to comment.

Choose “Ask me first” to avoid spam.

Choose the number of blurbs you want to allow to be shown. I have 10.

Choose “Yes” to strip HTML out of blurbs to avoid spam.

Edit Your Lens Love Widget

In this area, you just need to ask your visitors to add some love to your

lens by clicking “Like”.

The Final Touch

Okay, you need to add some more tags to your lens, and now that you

have populated it with content, it should be easier.

Choose some of the words you've noticed have been used about your

product on Amazon or eBay. Or use variations, like singular/plural etc.

You find and edit the tags in the lower right corner of your Squidoo

dashboard.

When you have at least five tags, you can click on “Save”.

If you have Erica Stone's “Squid Pro Quo”, you might want to use her

brilliant method to populate these fields instead.

You're done! Click on “Publish”, and admire your new lens.

Action Steps:

1. Create the skeleton of your lens, by setting up the modules.

2. Write at least 100 words for the intro module, and add them.

3. Save a picture from Amazon, and upload it to your intro module.

4. Use your keyword (e.g. ball pits for toddlers) to populate many of the

modules automatically, and find five Amazon products and a YouTube

video yourself to those modules.

5. Add at least 4 more tags.

6. Publish your lens.

Send Traffic to Your Lens

Okay, the best lens in the world is worth nothing if nobody sees it. So

we're going to send some traffic to your lens.

You might get traffic automatically without doing anything, because your

lens will be part of a society, but there's a few things you can do quickly that

will bring you more traffic and better rankings.

Use Social Sites

If you visit your published lens, you can see buttons for sharing on

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. Use them to share your lens

with.

Other Lenses

Visit other lenses, and click Like at those you like, and add your comments

to the guest books. Interact with other webmasters on Squidoo, and many

will come and check your work.

Ping Your Lens

Use a service like Ping-o-Matic (http://pingomatic.com) or Pingler

(http://pingler.com) to Ping your lens to show important services that it's

live.

Bookmark Your Lens

You can also bookmark your lens to for example:

www.bookmark4you.com and http://delicious.com and a service like

http://stumbleupon.com

You have to join the three bookmarking services (it's free).

If you're having problems figuring out how to add your lenses to

StumbleUpon, then watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=XkFQVTbGcz4

Or you can install their toolbar in your browser and click “I like it!” and

then add details about your lens.

Action Steps:

1. Share your lens on social sites.

2. Visit other lenses and interact with the webmasters.

3. Ping and bookmark your lens.

Short and to the Point: Squick

Here you have the whole system explained in very few words:

1. Go to www.amazon.com

2. Type in a seed keyword to search for, and make a space after.

3. Repeat, if you only find products with two words in the results. Then

type those two words and make a space after.

4. Find products among the results with three or four words.

5. Check if there are at least five products, and if at least five products

have 4 stars, and if they cost less than $200.

6. Make a new lens, using the three or four words from Amazon. If the

address is taken, and you see a number bigger than “2” at the end of

the suggested URL, start all over and find a new product from Amazon.

7. Use the following modules in this order:

Introduction

Amazon

Google News

eBay

YouTube

Duel Debate

Amazon Voting (plexo)

Guest book

Lens Love Widget

8. Use the same title to the intro module, and add at least 100 words to

it.

9. Save a picture from Amazon under the same file name as the keyword

(e.g. ball-pits-for-toddlers.jpg)

10. Upload this picture to the intro module.

11. Add a table of contents and related lenses.

12. Pick 5 products from Amazon, and post their URLs in the Amazon

module.

13. Use your keyword to populate the Google News module, and

choose to show 3 news posts with daily updates.

14. Use your keyword to let eBay show you 5 products.

15. Find a related video on YouTube and post the URL to that

module.

16. Make up a funny or interesting question to the Duel Debate

module.

17. Let Amazon pick 5 products by using your keyword to the

Amazon Voting module.

18. Ask for a message in the Guest Book module.

19. Ask for lens love in the Lens Love Widget.

20. Add at least 4 more tags.

21. Publish your lens.

Advanced: My Keyword Research Tweak

If you want to do some keyword research, which MIGHT help your lens to

rank faster, you can use my keyword research tweak.

It's simple and fast. F&F – Fast & Furious.

You need the Google keyword tool for it and a simple browser.

Step 1: Use the Google Keyword Tool

Search for “keyword tool” on Google, and chose the top one, which

should be Google's own keyword tool.

Type in the three or four word keyphrase (KEYWORD) you found on

Amazon.

Change the settings to:

• Location: United States.

• Languages: English.

• Match Types: Exact.

If you're not logged in, you should type the two CAPTCHA words in the

field.

Then click on “Search”.

Your keyword should get at least 50 local monthly exact searches.

I only now checked my keyword (ball pits for toddlers) and it has 320

exact local searches at this point.

Check the Competition

There are plenty of ways to check the competition for a keyword. The

method I use is quick, and works most of the time. If you prefer to use other

methods, please go ahead and do so.

This is my Fast & Furious (F&F) competition check.

I go to Google.com and I type in the following, where KEYWORD is the

keyword or keyphrase I want to check. In my case story here, it would be

“ball pits for toddlers”.

intitle:"KEYWORD" inurl:"KEYWORD”

Your result should be less than 100.

Mine was 33, and a funny thing: One of Erica Stone's lenses is #1 right

now.

If you get less than 100 results, you should go for it. If you get more, then

check the results of your Google keyword tool search and see if there are

better keywords there.

OBS! You'll get more precise results if you change your Google search

settings to show 100 results instead of 10.

If you only have 10 results per page, then check how many pages Google

is returning. Sometimes you'll be told that there are 1,900 results, but when

you check the bottom of the page, it only shows 4 pages of results. Click on

the last one to see how many real results Google have found.

Action Steps:

1. Find a three or four word product on Amazon.

2. Test it in the Google Keyword tool. There should be more than 50 local

(US) exact monthly searches.

3. Test the competition. There should be less than 100 results using my

Fast & Furious (F&F) keyword formula.

4. Go back to step 2, and find another keyword, if there are too many

results.

Advanced: Combine with Squid Pro Quo

Erica Stone has developed a brilliant method to find lens topics and build

lenses fast.

Very often, these lenses rank very well and do very well money-wize, too.

But once in a while, you'll spend time creating a lens that never really

makes it.

I created a lens about “Manuka Honey Hand Cream” using her method,

but the lens never got traffic, or “likes”, and very shortly after it went under

the 400,000 lens rank mark and went into “Work-in-Progress” mode.

This means that I've wasted a couple of hours creating the lens, and that

it no longer shows up in Google searches or anything.

If I'd come up with this Squick method earlier, I could have saved almost

two hours.

If you want to combine Squid Pro Quo with Squid, this is how you can do:

1. Find your lens topic by using Erica Stone's keyword research method,

and check the competition using her system.

2. Populate the lens using my Squick system to add content fast.

3. Test the popularity of the lens. If it's good (better lens rank than

300,000), spend some time on it to edit or add content following Erica

Stone's Squid Pro Quo way.

Action Steps:

1. Create a new lens using SPQ to find the topic, and Squick to add

content.

5 Day Action Plan

If you have 15 minutes per day, five days a week, this is the optimal way

of making money fast.

• Day 1: Create a Squick lens, and ping, social bookmark, etc.

• Day 2: Create a Squick lens, and ping, social bookmark, etc.

• Day 3: Create a Squick lens, and ping, social bookmark, etc.

• Day 4: Create a Squick lens, and ping, social bookmark, etc.

• Day 5: Revise lenses. Add content to the best performing lens.

You can add content in several ways:

• Add a new Amazon module, and pick 5 more products.

• Use Erica Stone's Squid Pro Quo method to add content.

• Add other modules that you haven't used before, like the Amazon

Search module.

Action Steps:

1. Go through at least one 5-day cycle.

2. Start a new 5-day cycle.

Conclusion

Can you improve your lenses further?

Yes, absolutely.

One tip I would like to add is that if you

can join the Amazon associate program,

you can add direct affiliate links to your

products inside the text on your lens.

This works really well!

You can also re-invest. Add more text. If you've made money with your

lenses already, you can spend some of this money on iWriter to get more

text on your lens, if you don't want to write yourself.

You can experiment. Find out which lens modules work for you. Maybe

you just find them fun. Maybe they'll add to the interaction on your lens.