What’s the Value in Creating a Squidoo Lens?

January 24, 2007 by Ben Yoskovitz 40 Comments

Quite a few of Ron’s buzz challenges are related to Web marketing and promotion, including his challenge to create a Squidoo Lens.

What is Squidoo?

It’s the creation of Seth Godin – a site that allows anyone to create a web page of content. It uses a widget-style interface to let you add text, RSS feeds, Amazon links and a ton of other things.

In Seth Godin’s book, Small Is The New Big, he talks about Squidoo:

Squidoo is an all-purpose platform for user-generated content. It’s designed to make it easy for each member of your fan club to build a page that highlights the best of what you have to offer.

Godin envisions people creating lenses about you, in turn creating a huge, content-rich and viral network of people buzzing about your business. But I suspect most of the time people are creating lenses about themselves, much more like MySpace pages.

So Squidoo is another way of advertising and promoting your business. Fair enough.

You can make money off Squidoo – Google ads are placed on your lens, and there are a couple other ways of doing it as well. Or you can donate the money to charity.

I went ahead and created a Squidoo lens for one of Grasshopper New Media’s podcast shows, The Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show.

Check out the low-carb lifestyle lens.

I’ve included feeds from the podcast and Jimmy Moore’s blog on low-carb living. Sponsors of the podcast show are listed along with links to other Grasshopper New Media content.

Sites like Squidoo are often based heavily on community. Squidoo has groups that you can join (and form) on related subject matters. I’ve just started that process and we’ll see what the results bring.

Here are my thoughts after my brief experimentation with Squidoo:

Building lenses is very slick. They’ve got the technology and interface down pat, and it’s easy to do.
I haven’t been blown away by the content on Squidoo. I looked at a number of the top Squidoo lenses but because they all look so similar the content gets lost. Some of the lenses look like “splogs” (spam blogs designed to make money with AdSense.)
I’ve never seen a Squidoo lens appear highly ranked in a Google search. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a Squidoo lens appear in a Google search. Does that mean Squidoo pages aren’t indexed by Google?
If someone already has a blog, does a Squidoo lens really add a lot of value?

We’ll have to wait and see what happens. I’ll be tracking traffic from our low carb lifestyle Squidoo lens to the Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show podcast. It didn’t take long to put the Squidoo lens together, so even if it brings over 1 new listener, it’ll have been worthwhile…

David Airey

I think what it lacks is customisation over the aesthetics.

You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned how they all look so similar and that you tend to skim info that might be vital.

Likewise, I’ve not yet seen a lens appear in a Google search.
David Airey

I think what it lacks is customisation over the aesthetics.

You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned how they all look so similar and that you tend to skim info that might be vital.

Likewise, I've not yet seen a lens appear in a Google search.
David Airey

Off topic I think you’re having some issues with your subscribe to comments plugin.

I got the following error message after submitting:

/home/benyosko/public_html/instigatorblog/wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments.2.0.4/subscribe-to-comments.php on line 433
David Airey

Off topic I think you're having some issues with your subscribe to comments plugin.

I got the following error message after submitting:

/home/benyosko/public_html/instigatorblog/wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments.2.0.4/subscribe-to-comments.php on line 433
Ben Yoskovitz

David – thanks for your thoughts on Squidoo. We’re in agreement.

As for the subscribe to comments issue – I’ll look at that now. I JUST upgraded to WordPress 2.1 so that might be the problem.
Ben Yoskovitz

David – thanks for your thoughts on Squidoo. We're in agreement.

As for the subscribe to comments issue – I'll look at that now. I JUST upgraded to WordPress 2.1 so that might be the problem.
Ben Yoskovitz

David – subscribe to comments should be fixed, there was an upgraded WP plugin (version 2.1) that I installed.
Ben Yoskovitz

David – subscribe to comments should be fixed, there was an upgraded WP plugin (version 2.1) that I installed.
Renée

Hey Ben,

I’ve been “asked” twice about creating lens for some of my blogs. I took a look and wasn’t impress.

Like you, I felt some lens were very spamy, many were so dated since they first created in 2005. I too ponder over the last two questions you asked, hence I did nothing about it.

I’ll be interested to know your little experiment once you gathered the infomation.

Good luck anyway!
Renée

Hey Ben,

I've been “asked” twice about creating lens for some of my blogs. I took a look and wasn't impress.

Like you, I felt some lens were very spamy, many were so dated since they first created in 2005. I too ponder over the last two questions you asked, hence I did nothing about it.

I'll be interested to know your little experiment once you gathered the infomation.

Good luck anyway!
Buzzoodle Ron

Hi.

Squidoo does not generate tons of traffic, but I have seen them in Google and it does get us steady small traffic.

Also, this is just one example of ways to build inbound links your site and more roads home.

Work.com is a nice one as well.
Buzzoodle Ron

Hi.

Squidoo does not generate tons of traffic, but I have seen them in Google and it does get us steady small traffic.

Also, this is just one example of ways to build inbound links your site and more roads home.

Work.com is a nice one as well.
Buzzoodle Ron

PS: If you search for my name, Ron McDaniel, the squidoo lens is ranked #1 in google and it is full of links back to my various projects. (As an example)
Buzzoodle Ron

PS: If you search for my name, Ron McDaniel, the squidoo lens is ranked #1 in google and it is full of links back to my various projects. (As an example)
David Airey

Interesting Ron.

How long have you had your .com domain registered for?

I’m going to have a stab in the dark and say less than two years. Here’s where you say since 1999.
David Airey

Interesting Ron.

How long have you had your .com domain registered for?

I'm going to have a stab in the dark and say less than two years. Here's where you say since 1999.
Robert Hruzek

I’m glad you chose to be the guinea pig, Ben. I’ve wondered about Squidoo since I first heard about it from Seth. Wasn’t impressed enough then to give it a try, but then at the time I had only been blogging for a few weeks.

I’ll be interested to see if it’s worth the trouble (and to me, anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to set up is a LOT of trouble). Let’s see what it accomplishes before I’ll jump in…

Keep those challenges comin’, Ben!
Robert Hruzek

I'm glad you chose to be the guinea pig, Ben. I've wondered about Squidoo since I first heard about it from Seth. Wasn't impressed enough then to give it a try, but then at the time I had only been blogging for a few weeks.

I'll be interested to see if it's worth the trouble (and to me, anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to set up is a LOT of trouble). Let's see what it accomplishes before I'll jump in…

Keep those challenges comin', Ben!
seth godin

Thanks for the post and the experiment.

First, I want to correct one assumption that’s easy to make but doesn’t match the facts: Squidoo is getting way more than a million visits a month (that’s not an estimate, it’s from Google Analytics) and the biggest chunk is a direct result of google searches.

For example:
dragon tattoo
zlist
laptop bags
smartest orgs

The reason it’s so easy to not notice this is that it’s a really big universe. The long tail kicks in sooner or later, though, and the traffic keeps growing (about 50% a month, month on month).

You also commented on the lack of flexibility in the look of pages. Wikipedia has the same ‘problem’. The reason we didn’t build a world similar to blogs is that most of our visitors come once to a page and then quickly leave, following one of the links. When they arrive, they want to see things in a standard format so they can quickly figure out where they want to go. This is the opposite of the experience most sites want.

Finally, I think your decision (early in the post) to discard what we stated the big win here is (to have lots and lots of your fans build lenses about you) gets to the heart of the issue. If this is a long tail play, building just one lens is quick and fun but not a homerun. But a> why not? and b> multiply by 100 and it gets interesting.

The thing we’re most proud of at Squidoo is that more than 40% of our lensmasters give their royalties to charity and that we’ve built a school in Cambodia, funded a scientist doing research on JDRF and supported more than 40 other worthwhile charities. I figure if we can do that at the same time we direct relevant, interested traffic to sites, it’s worth doing.

thanks again for giving it a shot.
seth godin

Thanks for the post and the experiment.

First, I want to correct one assumption that's easy to make but doesn't match the facts: Squidoo is getting way more than a million visits a month (that's not an estimate, it's from Google Analytics) and the biggest chunk is a direct result of google searches.

For example:
dragon tattoo
zlist
laptop bags
smartest orgs

The reason it's so easy to not notice this is that it's a really big universe. The long tail kicks in sooner or later, though, and the traffic keeps growing (about 50% a month, month on month).

You also commented on the lack of flexibility in the look of pages. Wikipedia has the same 'problem'. The reason we didn't build a world similar to blogs is that most of our visitors come once to a page and then quickly leave, following one of the links. When they arrive, they want to see things in a standard format so they can quickly figure out where they want to go. This is the opposite of the experience most sites want.

Finally, I think your decision (early in the post) to discard what we stated the big win here is (to have lots and lots of your fans build lenses about you) gets to the heart of the issue. If this is a long tail play, building just one lens is quick and fun but not a homerun. But a> why not? and b> multiply by 100 and it gets interesting.

The thing we're most proud of at Squidoo is that more than 40% of our lensmasters give their royalties to charity and that we've built a school in Cambodia, funded a scientist doing research on JDRF and supported more than 40 other worthwhile charities. I figure if we can do that at the same time we direct relevant, interested traffic to sites, it's worth doing.

thanks again for giving it a shot.
Buzzoodle Ron

Thanks Seth.

To answer the earlier question about the ronmcdaniel.com, I just got it a month ago. Someone has been sitting on it since 1999 and did not use it but would not sell it. It just went public and I was happy to snap it up. It will eventually be first, I know.

Very perceptive David.
Buzzoodle Ron

Thanks Seth.

To answer the earlier question about the ronmcdaniel.com, I just got it a month ago. Someone has been sitting on it since 1999 and did not use it but would not sell it. It just went public and I was happy to snap it up. It will eventually be first, I know.

Very perceptive David.
Ben Yoskovitz

Seth – there’s no question the charity aspect of it is great. For that reason alone, it’s worth creating a lens.

We’re donating 100% of profits to charity as well. Actually, I submitted a bug about that – I picked a charity and then wanted to change it but wasn’t able to.

I can definitely see the benefit of getting people to create Squidoo lenses for your product/business/service – but I have to think most people don’t do that. They’d be more likely to blog about you though, wouldn’t they?

I do understand the design choices made, and I can see how people would use a lens to move away and check something else out. I guess since we’re so familiar with blogs now, we expect everything to start to look like a blog…
Ben Yoskovitz

Seth – there's no question the charity aspect of it is great. For that reason alone, it's worth creating a lens.

We're donating 100% of profits to charity as well. Actually, I submitted a bug about that – I picked a charity and then wanted to change it but wasn't able to.

I can definitely see the benefit of getting people to create Squidoo lenses for your product/business/service – but I have to think most people don't do that. They'd be more likely to blog about you though, wouldn't they?

I do understand the design choices made, and I can see how people would use a lens to move away and check something else out. I guess since we're so familiar with blogs now, we expect everything to start to look like a blog…
John Wesley

Good post and I love the ensuing discussion. I made a Squidoo account a while back but haven’t taken the time to make a lens yet. Your experiment may determine if I ever do.
John Wesley

Good post and I love the ensuing discussion. I made a Squidoo account a while back but haven't taken the time to make a lens yet. Your experiment may determine if I ever do.
Char

Ben – I created a lens – just for fun and I can’t say it has done much, but I haven’t really spent too much time on it.

However, two of my non-blog sites are links on other people’s Squidoo Lenses and I will say that I do get traffic from those sources consistently. One of the sites is listed on a lens that must get quite a bit of traffic, because that one source produces 500+ visits per month to my site.
Char

Ben – I created a lens – just for fun and I can't say it has done much, but I haven't really spent too much time on it.

However, two of my non-blog sites are links on other people's Squidoo Lenses and I will say that I do get traffic from those sources consistently. One of the sites is listed on a lens that must get quite a bit of traffic, because that one source produces 500+ visits per month to my site.
Ben Yoskovitz

Char — 500 visitors/month from a Squidoo lens link? Wow!

That would certainly push towards Seth Godin’s vision of Squidoo – others link to your content, promote your business/website/blog, etc. and generate buzz + traffic.

I’d love to hear more success stories!
Ben Yoskovitz

Char — 500 visitors/month from a Squidoo lens link? Wow!

That would certainly push towards Seth Godin's vision of Squidoo – others link to your content, promote your business/website/blog, etc. and generate buzz + traffic.

I'd love to hear more success stories!
Jasman

Initially, I knew nothing about squidoo. Then I bought an ebook on squidoo to educate myself. Later the writer organized a challenge to test out our skills with squidoo. Armed with just the ebook (which I hardly read) I joined the contest. BTW, the ebook contains basic stuff with a few techniques.

Every contestant will build a lens on the theme “affiliate marketing” which I feel is difficult because of the competition for that keyphrase. I said to myself that this is just a friendly chellange and this will help me to learn and understand squidoo much better that is by doing and experiment it myself. The key here is taking action.

There were about 25 contestants (including the write), I think. I started building my first lens on the 5th day of the contest, which I’m already way far behind. I dedicated my time on my lens till the end of the contest, I think it ends today. As of yesterday I managed to be on the top spot and #26 in the Top 100 of overall lens rank. I also rank high in some of the tag pages in squidoo (refer to tag cloud on squidoo homepage) which the PR is between 3-6 and till today my lens is still on the first page.

When I started building my lens, my main focus is to understand squidoo in depth. So I didn’t do much monetization on my lens except putting in a few affiliate links (no sales yet). I’m sure there are ways to do it I I’m still learning. A few contestants reported a few sales either directly from their lenses or their sites where the traffic is from their lens.

I believe if you really spend some time on squidoo I’m sure it can help you in anything you want, i.e. traffic generation, affiliate programs or even selling your services. Just need to plan before you start building a lens.

What I’ve read in many forums on squidoo is they expect traffic will drop on their lenses without doing anything. This the reason why they reported no or little traffic to their lenses. This is a perfect example of “when I’ve built, they’ll come”. I can really explain on how squdii traffic works but I’m sure it does carry weight in generating traffic to your lens.

If I followed the squidoo stats (I don’t know how accurate is this, ask Seth), my unique visitors about 40 a day, without promotion and my lens is about 25 days old. I know the figure is small but if I promote it I’m sure it will skyrocket.

What I’m saying here, squidoo works, and here’s my lens http://www.squidoo.com/affiliatemarketing911

Thanks.

jasman
Jasman

Initially, I knew nothing about squidoo. Then I bought an ebook on squidoo to educate myself. Later the writer organized a challenge to test out our skills with squidoo. Armed with just the ebook (which I hardly read) I joined the contest. BTW, the ebook contains basic stuff with a few techniques.

Every contestant will build a lens on the theme “affiliate marketing” which I feel is difficult because of the competition for that keyphrase. I said to myself that this is just a friendly chellange and this will help me to learn and understand squidoo much better that is by doing and experiment it myself. The key here is taking action.

There were about 25 contestants (including the write), I think. I started building my first lens on the 5th day of the contest, which I'm already way far behind. I dedicated my time on my lens till the end of the contest, I think it ends today. As of yesterday I managed to be on the top spot and #26 in the Top 100 of overall lens rank. I also rank high in some of the tag pages in squidoo (refer to tag cloud on squidoo homepage) which the PR is between 3-6 and till today my lens is still on the first page.

When I started building my lens, my main focus is to understand squidoo in depth. So I didn't do much monetization on my lens except putting in a few affiliate links (no sales yet). I'm sure there are ways to do it I I'm still learning. A few contestants reported a few sales either directly from their lenses or their sites where the traffic is from their lens.

I believe if you really spend some time on squidoo I'm sure it can help you in anything you want, i.e. traffic generation, affiliate programs or even selling your services. Just need to plan before you start building a lens.

What I've read in many forums on squidoo is they expect traffic will drop on their lenses without doing anything. This the reason why they reported no or little traffic to their lenses. This is a perfect example of “when I've built, they'll come”. I can really explain on how squdii traffic works but I'm sure it does carry weight in generating traffic to your lens.

If I followed the squidoo stats (I don't know how accurate is this, ask Seth), my unique visitors about 40 a day, without promotion and my lens is about 25 days old. I know the figure is small but if I promote it I'm sure it will skyrocket.

What I'm saying here, squidoo works, and here's my lens http://www.squidoo.com/affiliatemarketing911

Thanks.

jasman
Ben Yoskovitz

Jasman – thanks for the story. I’m glad Squidoo is working for you and it’s interesting to hear all sides of the story so people can learn more and improve what they’re doing.
Ben Yoskovitz

Jasman – thanks for the story. I'm glad Squidoo is working for you and it's interesting to hear all sides of the story so people can learn more and improve what they're doing.
Jack Lee

I have a very different experience with Squidoo.
My lens here shows some of my results –
http://www.squidoo.com/google_search_ranking/

I will say it takes approx. 2 weeks for this to happen after you created your lens on Squidoo.

In addition, read me squidbook on the total experience with Squidoo –
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo_addict_1/

It is not quite finished. I have a few more chapters to go…
-Jack
Jack Lee

I have a very different experience with Squidoo.
My lens here shows some of my results –
http://www.squidoo.com/google_search_ranking/

I will say it takes approx. 2 weeks for this to happen after you created your lens on Squidoo.

In addition, read me squidbook on the total experience with Squidoo –
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo_addict_1/

It is not quite finished. I have a few more chapters to go…
-Jack
Ben Yoskovitz

Jack – glad to see it’s working for you. How long has it taken you to “master Squidoo” and how much time do you put in daily?
Ben Yoskovitz

Jack – glad to see it's working for you. How long has it taken you to “master Squidoo” and how much time do you put in daily?
Netz Fisher

Hi,

now, over one year after your post, Squidoo is still doing fine. It has a Pagerank of 7 and from time to time there’s a lens at the top position in the search results. 😉

So, it looks like Squidoo is still a great way to drive traffic to websites or blogs. I’ve just started using it and I hope it’s worth the effort.

See you,
Querblogger
Netz Fisher

Hi,

now, over one year after your post, Squidoo is still doing fine. It has a Pagerank of 7 and from time to time there's a lens at the top position in the search results. 😉

So, it looks like Squidoo is still a great way to drive traffic to websites or blogs. I've just started using it and I hope it's worth the effort.

See you,
Querblogger

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