How to Earn Passive Income by Creating Squidoo Lenses

Squidoo is the world’s most popular site for people who want to build a page about their passions. I’ve tried it early this year by creating a few lenses (lens is just like a post in a blog). I just used a few minutes to create those lenses. When I checked my account after 3 months, it had made a total of US$1.71. Not an impressive figure right? Imagine that every lens you created generate US$1 per month for you. If you work hard by creating 200 lenses per annum. By the 5th years onwards, you will be getting US$1000/month without doing anything. That’s really passive! But this is only based on my conservative assumption. Since the ranking of my best lens is over 2000, this means there are 2000 lenses that got better traffic or unique views than my best lens. If you can do better than me, I am sure that it is pretty easy to hit the US$1000/month passive income without having to take any risk or capital investment.

Squidoo is getting more and more visitors each day. Unlike writing your own blog, you need to update it almost every day. You also had to be a quite web savvy internet geek to be able to run your own blog well. But with Squidoo, all you need to do is to write good content about the things you are passionate about. At the meantime, there are thousands other lens master who create content and this make Squidoo updated with lots of useful information daily. I can see that the traffic is growing and it will be great to have your lenses follow the running money train.

At the point of writing this post, Squidoo currently host a total of 160,289 lenses and created $36,120.58 total income all given to charity during their beta test run.

To get started, you can create a lens before registering an account now. Before you go to Squidoo, you might want to bookmark this page so that you can come back for reference later.

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I am getting serious now to create some great lenses. After some research, here is what I find:

The Secrets of Building an Appealing Lens

Write interesting profile about yourself:

• Use a funny or interesting photo to grab attention
• Tell briefly about your passion and expertise then steer them towards your lenses
• Only the first 150 characters show up on your lenses. Use them wisely.

Research the best name for your lenses

• the name of the lens should tell clearly what the lens is all about
• include terms and keywords that people search a lot in your lens’ title.
• use this keyword services to find the best keywords search with the least competition:Keyword services for professional search engine optimization
• check the keyword search from Keyword Suggestions for Overture – SEO Tools Most likely the search trend would be the same within lenses search of Squidoo.
• check the hottest search term for the latest trend from Google Trends so that you can build a lens according to the hottest news or search at that moment.
• if you want to save the hassle of checking on the top searches, you can use the most popular inquiry of all time: create the lenses name with “how to”, “the secret of”, “top 10 methods” etc. These are normally the most appealing title name.
• use a name that sounds catchy rather than generic.

Tag your lens

• tag is a word or phrase that best describes your lens. The basic idea is to add tags that your lens would be useful for someone who search on of the words or phrases.
• tag shows up at the most visible place, normally at the side bar. The most popular tag appears in bigger font. Refer this “Squidoo” Tags Page
• 
• every tag page links back to your lens. So you get extra ways and pages for people to locate you.
• when people viewing other lens that has the same tag as your lens, they will directed to your lens through the tag page.
• tag pages rank high on Google search.
• Beware that Primary Tag in Squidoo is not a regular tag. So please add the primary tag as a regular tag when you create your lens.
• use phrases as tags too. Don’t worry that if it is a long phrases. There a millions of searches every day. So when people type the exact phrase of your tag, your lens will appear at the top of the search result.
• try to use all the limited 40 tags available. It doesn’t cost you a penny.
• refer Google’s suggestion. When you type a search term into Google search box, it shows other phrases commonly searched by other people. Use that as your tag too.

Hook Introduction

• introduction should be brief and informative
• contains keywords/search terms for Google.
• insert appealing and interesting image if possible

Write the best content

• content is king!
• give people what they want
• share your enthusiasm and knowledge without holding back
• write in short paragraph and point forms
• use interesting and pretty graphics, image, photos.
• write entertaining stuff
• provide a great service for your readers. Imagine you are looking for some information through Google search box. But after you type your search terms, million of results turn up. Being a good lens master will help you to organize all the relevant information and categorized them in an understandable manner. When you read a lens, you know where to find more information, where the products is sold, where to find the related blogs, which sites offer the best information etc. A great lens is a great bridge between searcher and the search result.

Include links

• Give readers the best information they are seeking for. If there are better sites or information that discuss deeply about certain subject in our lens, give them the link.
• When people love reading your lens, they trust where you are pointing to. So use the link carefully. Research the link destination before you lead your readers there.

Check spelling and grammar

• write your content in Microsoft Word for better grammar and spelling check
• if you use Firefox, you can install a dictionary add-on for spell check. Go to “tool” —> “Add-on” and search for “dictionary”.

Include a Guestbook

• let people say their thoughts
• you will get constructive and valuable suggestions

The Secrets of Marketing your Lens

• join the discussion at SquidU forum. Add a link to your lens in your signature. Get active in conversation and people will notice your great works.
• put links to your lens in your blog, your email signature, your mobile phone text messages
• add your lens to social bookmarking sites: de.licio.us, StumbleUpon, Netscape, Reddit,Digg, etc.
• add your lens to Squidoo groups that fit your topic
• submit your best lens to be listed at Lens of the Day
• read SquidU’s Tricks of the Trade forum for suggestions.
• comment at other’s blog post or lenses to get notice. Make sure you write constructive and informative comments. If not, it will be like spamming others.
• participate in web forums regarding your lens topic
• update your lens content with the resent or better information.
• vote for the good lens you read, and sign the guestbook
• Add the lens you like into our lensroll. It works like a blogroll if you are also a blogger you will know 🙂

Wish you all the best on creating passive income. Join Squidoo now. You got nothing to lose.

More Reference
GreekGeek’s Squidoo Tips
Tagging Tricks
SquidooCool.com
Best SquidU Tips

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