Squidoo Tip # 18. Manage your time wisely.

I think that one of the toughest parts of a blogger/ affiliate marketer's job is time management, at least that's what I struggle with the most. When you are your own boss, it's easy to get distracted. You may have plenty of new ideas for a new blog post or a Squidoo lens, but you also feel like there is so much to learn about blogging and making money online, so you read one article that leads to another, and, before you know it, an hour or two have gone by, and you still haven't produced the new content that should make you money. Squidoo is an awesome community, and it's a great place to make connections with other bloggers/ lensmasters, but, once again, it's easy to get carried away and spend most of the day commenting on lenses, participating in the forum, etc. Then, of course, there's Twitter, Facebook, Email, social bookmarking sites, and, hey, you can always do some online shopping, since you are already in front of the computer, checking out these must-have items... Anyone else struggle with time management?

When you work for an established company, there are different departments, and these departments set goals and objectives, and most of the employees usually have a pretty good idea what they have to accomplish in the next day, week, or month. They also have someone they have to report to, and someone who makes sure that distractions and web surfing are cut down to a minimum in order to boost productivity. But when you work for yourself, online, your goals and daily tasks may be somewhat undefined, and the absence of productivity control results in lower productivity. So how do you fix this?

My advice would be to come up with a long-term goal - something you see doable and accomplishable.  For example, you want to boost your Squidoo income by 10 percent. Then figure out what it will take to accomplish that goal. If you are already making $200 with say 30 lenses, then maybe you should aim to build 3 to 6 more high quality lenses in order to make $220 per month. If you want to succeed in blogging, it's a good idea to have a direction and a list of daily/ weekly tasks with set limits on how long it should take you to accomplish each task. Some writers use timers - you set a timer for each task, and once the timer goes off, it's time to move on to the next one. The sense of urgency is a good motivation to help you complete the tasks. I often allow myself to make minor compromises, like taking an hour and a half for a task I wanted to complete in an hour. As long as I check off 75% of my To Do list, I consider it a day well spent.

Do you have Time Management ideas you would like to share? I would love to hear what you guys do to stay on track in your online work. As always, have a productive day!

Update July 18, 2013: Just found this article with 3 Top Tips for getting things done, good advice.

Squidoo tip #17. Keep your lenses fresh, but don't overdo it.

How often should I update my Squidoo lenses? Some Squidoo lensmasters put a lot of effort into updating their lenses on a daily basis. They have come up with great techniques on how to update a dozen lenses in minutes. Although I believe it's important to keep your lenses fresh, I also know you can seriously overdo it. Yes, you may pick up some extra traffic on Squidoo from being moved up in the search results, if a reader uses the "Recently Updated" filter. You can also ping all recently updated lenses in Squidutils. But I recently read that Google may view republishing your posts (lenses) without making any big changes as an attempt to cheat the system, and, therefore, penalize the publisher for it. Also, I would advise against any drastic changes to a lens that gets a steady traffic from Google. A small change may cost you some visitors. A good example is my Best Gifts for 2 year old girls lens that was getting a steady 100 to 150 visitors per day until I made a few changes. The daily traffic dropped to under 50 visitors a day. And, since I didn't backup the lens in any way, I haven't been able to revert the revisions I made earlier.
So what's a good rule for keeping lenses fresh without overdoing it? I think that adding new content frequently is extremely important the first few months after you publish your lens. Add new modules, new links, improve your lens, establish your authority on the topic. By frequently, I don't mean every day. Maybe a couple times a week? Then, once you are seeing good traffic, I think it's a good idea to slow down with the updates and only update lenses a couple times a month. The technique seems to be working for me, but you might see different results if you are working with a different niche. Please do tell me what you think. How often do you update your lenses?

Have a productive day on Squidoo! Happy Tuesday :)

Squidoo Tip # 15

Public Domain Image (CCO) from  Pixabay.com

The Squidoo success tip I am sharing today is the best advice I can give new lensmasters who have fewer than 25 lenses. Join RocketSquids! I promise, you won't regret it. The program is designed for new lensmasters who want to learn the basics of Squidoo and get help and advice from experienced lensmasters. Every week, RocketSquids  are given a challenge to create a lens on a certain topic, like "Something I Love". If the lens is submitted by the weekly challenge deadline, it will be featured on RocketSquids bootcamp page. That's when RocketSquid Greeters along with Robin (Community Organizer), Susan (Squidoo Greeter), Kab (RocketSquid Coordinator), and Bonnie (Community organizer and head of the Giant Squid Club) will have an opportunity to visit your lenses and give you suggestions on how to improve them. If you run into any problems or need advice on how to properly credit photos, use HTML in your lenses, or use Squidoo modules, you will be able to ask questions and get answers at RocketSquids forum.

In my opinion, the Bootcamp is the best place to learn "How to Squidoo".  Plus, you get plenty of visits to your lenses, comments, feedback, and you may even get noticed and later featured on Squidoo blog as a new and promising lensmaster with UUU lenses. If you are the type of person who is afraid of commitments due to your overloaded work schedule, no worries. There is no penalty for not turning your lenses in by the deadline. Of course, I wouldn't recommend making it a habit. But if you think you can publish a lens per week at least twice a month, join in!

As always, Happy Squidooing! Please do let me know you stopped by. I will be happy to approve relevant comments with links to quality Squidoo lenses or your blog :)

Squidoo Tip #13. Own Your Topic on Google

When it comes to getting a permanent spot on the 1st page of Google, Expertise is your key to Success. A combination of Squidoo's high PR (Search Engine popularity) and Topic Expertise is a perfect recipe for owning your Topic on Google. What do I mean by "Own Your Topic on Google"? Make your Squidoo Lens the best resource on your topic available online. If you are sharing "best mac & cheese" recipes, make sure that you have the best collection of  mac & cheese recipes available online. It is great to have 50-100 or more lenses on Squidoo, but it is even better to have 25 well-researched lenses that can answer just about any question about the topic. Google likes aged content - webpages that have been around for a while and have been getting content updates on a regular basis. Don't stop adding content to your lens after you publish it. Add relevant information at least a couple times per month, and you have a good shot at getting Google's attention. Learn everything you can about your niche and the topics you choose to cover, and you will be well on your way to making a steady monthly income on Squidoo.

Squidoo Tip #10. Be Social...

Is it possible to make money on Squidoo without being social? Experienced Internet marketers do it all the time. I have seen 1st and 2nd Tier lenses that hadn't been updated in 1-2 years bring in enough Google traffic to keep them at their high-ranking positions. The lensmasters are often busy working on other projects and no longer active in Squidoo community.

But if you are just starting out on Squidoo, I strongly suggest that you do spend some time reading and commenting on other Lensmasters' lenses and participating in Squidoo forum (Squidu). You are guaranteed to meet some great people who will make suggestions on how to improve your lenses, give you advice on how to bring in more traffic, and squidlike some of your Squidoo creations. I believe that traffic and clickouts are the two most important stats when it comes to lens rankings. However, if you are a newbie, Squidoo internal traffic, Squidlikes, and Squidoo Angel blessings can make the difference between Tier 3 and Tier 4 lenses (making a few cents and realising the potential of Squidoo and not making money at all).

There are quite a few Lensmasters that supported me in many ways and gave me advice when I first started out. Tipi, LisaAuch, Darcie, Liz, TeamSTM, AJ, and many other Squidoo Lensmasters supported my lenses by Squidliking, commenting, blessing, bookmarking my lenses, sharing them on Twitter and Facebook, and giving me advice.

If you are a Squidoo newbie and are looking for ways to increase traffic to your lenses, I strongly suggest that you become an active part of Squidoo community. You will get a lot in return.

Squidoo is a waste of time...

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Today I ran into an article about Squidoo being a waste of time. That's exactly how I felt after my first couple months on Squidoo. $0.25 for hours of work seemed unfair and seeing little to no lens traffic was simply depressing. I can totally see how some people can feel that Squidoo is a waste of time. But I also know of several lensmasters that have 15-30 Tier 1 lenses, along with 25-50 Tier 2 lenses, and hundreds of Tier 3 Squidoo lenses. They get $500-$1000+ from Squidoo per month along with affiliate commissions from Ebay, Amazon, Zazzle, LinkShare, ShareASale, Commission Junction, and Clickbank. Squidoo can certainly be a waste of time, but for the lensmasters who have figured  out the "magic formula", Squidoo is a nice source of income.

As of today, I have three lenses in Tier 1, two lenses in Tier 2, two lenses that keep on jumping between Tiers 2 and 3, and ten Tier 3 lenses. If I was to get a paycheck from Squidoo today, I could probably count on around $100 plus a couple dollars in affiliate commissions for my Amazon and Ebay Sales. $100 per month in Squidoo Earnings is certainly better than 25 cents. Would I say it's a good compensation for the time I spend on Squidoo? It will be, if I manage to keep the traffic to my top lenses steady for several months while also building new lenses. Squidoo lenses are also a valuable tool in promoting my Etsy store, so I always remember about the money I save on blog advertising by publishing my own articles.

How do you feel about Squidoo? Are you wasting your time? or do you think that your hard work will pay off in the future? As always, comments are welcome!

Squidoo Tip #4 - Do include YouTube modules in your lenses



Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net  

Why would you want to include YouTube Video Module in a Squidoo lens? Not only will you add great relevant content to your lens and bring more value to your readers, you will also optimize your content for Google. One of the things that Google takes in consideration when figuring out where your lens should be in the Google rankings is how much time your readers spend on your site and whether they click back to Google Search results. By displaying the right YouTube Videos on your lens, you answer the readers questions, keep the reader on your Squidoo page for a couple extra minutes, prove to Google that your content is relevant to the key words, and therefore, your Squidoo lens gets a better ranking in the Search Engine Results. Squidoo is a big authority on Google. So if you use the right key words throughout your content, display YouTube Videos, engage your reader, and provide the information the reader is searching for, you will have good chances of landing on Google's 1st page. As always, please feel free to leave your comments and link to your Squidoo lenses.

Squdoo Tips. Tip # 1 - Pick a niche for your Squidoo lenses.

What is a marketing niche? Why would you want to pick a niche for your Squidoo lenses?
I love writing on a variety of topics. And that's what I initially started out doing on Squidoo - I had a lens about my dog, a lens about Christmas gifts, a lens about a steam mop I use, and so on. My lenses weren't supporting each other and the few views I was accidentally getting here and there didn't result in any additional traffic to the other lenses.

Image: Naito8 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When compared to mass marketing, niche marketing can be described as "targeted to a certain group of people". The best way to make money on Squidoo is to build a lens around a product or one very specific topic that people are searching for. Then build more lenses in the same niche. What would be a good niche? Recipes lenses do really well on Squidoo. Let's take "Casserole Recipes" - you can build lenses "Beef Casserole Recipes", "Chicken Casserole Recipes", "Potato Casserole Recipes", and so on. You can feature your other casserole recipes in Squidoo lens' Sidebar or at the bottom of each lens. You can make one lens that includes links to all the recipes. With recipe lenses, picking a product to promote is not very difficult. But like Seth Godin suggests in one of his books, make sure you have a banana you are selling, and that banana is very obvious. When given too many options, consumers get lost  and end up leaving without making a purchase - and that's the one thing you want to avoid.
So if you are interested in making money on Squidoo, my tip today is to pick a niche for your Squidoo lenses and write, write, and write some more. Connect your lenses to each other and get several lens' views out of every visitor that comes to your Squidoo lens. Looking forward to hearing about your Squidoo experiences. Please feel free to leave me a comment and a backlink to one of your lenses :)