Squidoo Part 2: Why is Squidoo Useful to Readers?

In my last blog I talked about what Squidoo offers its lensmasters (writers). But writers have just wasted their time if no one reads what they’ve written. It’s true that Lensmasters read each other’s work and critique and rate it frequently. So if you create a quality lens, someone is sure to read it. But what can those outside the Squidoo Community get out of it? Why should they bother to visit the site?

Search Squidoo first.

First, it’s a great place to get organized information. Most people who are looking for information on the Internet usually try Google first. If people want to buy books or gardening supplies, they may have their favorite places in town or on the Internet to search. Me? I go to Squidoo. Why? Because lensmasters on Squidoo do a great job of presenting not only organized information, usually with related pictures, but also links to other sources they have already checked on their subjects that they recommend. Instead of being presented with hundreds of links to a subject of interest, the most prominent of which are often there because they paid to be at the top,  if you search on Squidoo, you will often find just what you want.

A Squidoo lensmaster writes about his or her topic of interest. – maybe a hobby, a product review, a personal experience, a trip, or how to do something.  Let’s say you want information on covered bridges. Google brings up over one million links, ten of which are on the first page. Most of these first ones are sponsored links and most are by state departments of tourism.  I tried to paste the results here, but it just didn’t format correctly. You can try the search yourself.

Used by permission of Mary Beth Granger

Now I will search at Squidoo. Although Squidoo also returns a few irrelevant results, there are a lot that are relevant. Let’s look at one of them: Visiting a Covered Bridge. (This will open in a new window so you can jump right back here.) The focus of this lens is one particular covered bridge at Sandy Creek Covered Bridge State Historic Site. You will learn about the history of this bridge and the history of covered bridges in general and why they were covered. You will view original photographs of the bridge from every possible view, as well as the inside the bridge. If you want to buy a gift for someone who collects covered bridge related items, you will also see some that are available and where to get them. There will also be links to blog posts on covered bridges. If you return to the search page, you will also find links to lenses on Covered Bridges in New Hampshire and Oregon Historical Bridges. Each of these is written by someone different and so each offers a unique perspective. All have information of the history and location of the bridges and some great photographs.

Used by permission of Mary Beth Granger

Suppose you’d rather see lighthouses. So far I’m on page five of the search on Squidoo and have not found one irrelevant link. Many focus on a particular lighthouse or the lighthouses of one particular state or country. Some focus on haunted lighthouses. Some are for those who want a lighthouse-related gift. One of my favorites is Light House Through the Palms about the Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse in Pompano Beach, Florida just north of Fort Lauderdale. You will find so much about lighthouses on Squidoo that you probably could forget Google altogether.

Suppose you need a recipe. We have a lot of good cooks on Squidoo, and you are likely to find several recipes for anything you’d like to make.  How about Christmas Cookies? My search at Squidoo located several pages and I could find enough results on the first page to keep me baking the rest of my life. But I moved past page one just to see what else was there and I found this lens on Christmas Cookie Exchange Tips.  If you need to host or participate in a cookie exchange, you won’t need to look anywhere else for ideas.

Used by permission of Sandy M

Need to plan a party? Search Squidoo. One of my Squidoo friends has a lens featuring great products to help you celebrate Halloween: Happy Zazzle Halloween! Need help with a Birthday Party? Just search Squidoo for “birthday  party.” I’m sure Squidoo will have ideas for all your other celebrations, too. Lenses teach you how to cook a turkey, make decorations, whatever you need to help you entertain.

I’m not saying you can find a lens about absolutely everything on Squidoo, but you can sure find a lot. Get information about books and authors, celebrities, historical events, music styles and artists, you name it. If you are an educator in a home or school, you can get great lesson plans and unit study ideas. The nice thing about searching at Squidoo is that each search result gives you the introduction so that you know whether you want to click or not. Google’s results normally only give you a line or two and then you can’t always find what you were looking for when you click. That’s why I search Squidoo first.

I have gone into detail about the advantages of searching for information on Squidoo. But Squidoo is also a great shopping aid. Most lensmasters will offer links to items you can buy that are related to the subject of their lenses. In some cases they have designed these items at Zazzle or Café Press. In others they recommend products they have used themselves, be it a cookie sheet, a book, or whatever else they may be writing about.  So if you are trying to find something to buy a collector, search for a lens on the subject of the collection (cats, owls, lighthouses, pens – whatever)and you will probably get some good ideas and maybe even a link to buy just the right thing.

So Squidoo can benefit you ever if you don’t belong to the site. You can use it as a search engine. You can use it to shop. And if you are like me, you can use it to open new areas of interest. Most lensmasters have featured links at the ends of their pages, and I hardly read a lens that doesn’t tempt me to go read another one on something  totally different – maybe something I never knew existed. Remember: Try Squidoo first. Click that link and I’ll bet you will find something interesting to read before you even do a search.

Squidoo: Part 1

What is Squidoo all about?

This is the first of two blogs on Squidoo, a writing community I joined in April. I had no idea how involved I would become when I joined, nor did I realize how it would meet  the needs that arose right after I joined. I didn’t know what to write about for my first lens, so I walked around my neighborhood in Paso Robles, California and took pictures of what the neighbors were doing in their front yards and in the park on that first nice spring day of the year. I guess I wanted to showcase my neighborhood because I found it interesting if one took a close look. That resulted in this lens: http://www.squidoo.com/PasoRoblesSpringDay .

Squidoo is a neighborhood of “squids.” They write lenses that allow readers to see their unique perspective on a subject. New members of the community are “fresh squids.” When a member has written 50 quality lenses he or she can apply to be a Giant Squid. Giant Squids get special perks. I’m hoping to be one by next April at the latest.

When you picture writing, you may be thinking of books, newspapers, or magazines. Many squids do some writing for those kinds of publications. But on Squidoo their writing can take the form of a multimedia presentation, a photo essay, or whatever they want it to be. They build lenses with modules, and these modules each have special jobs. Some are for showcasing videos or pictures. Some are for text with pictures. Some bring a Google map in. Others automatically bring in news or blogs with your search terms that change daily or at intervals you specify. The modules make it easy for even those who do not know any html to use a lot of features that would not appear in a text file alone.

Some Squidoo members are very talented at using html code and these can add more color, style, borders, etc to their modules to make them even more attractive. But they don’t keep all these talents to themselves. They share their secrets with the rest of the community in special lenses that teach others how to do what they have done. So as time goes on, you will be able to add more and more features to your own lenses so they will better express what you want to do with them. You will soon begin to see each lens you write as a masterpiece you are building. When it is finished, you can still keep making changes easily after publication as you learn even more tricks or find added information on your subject.

So if you join Squidoo, you have many different ways to express what you want to say. Joining is very easy. Just think of a topic you’d like to write about and think of a title that sums it up. Then follow this link: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/BarbRad and go through the easy steps to becoming a lensmaster. You will be asked to supply a URL (web address) for your article, and that’s the only thing you can’t change. I normally use the title in small case, with the words joined by hyphens. You can later go back and change your title or key words. If you need help after that, all kinds of help is available from others on the site.

So what did Squidoo do for me? Right after I joined, we had a termite infestation. I was able to channel some of my frustration into http://www.squidoo.com/TermiteFight . Then, after a heat wave in late April, I decided the weatherman was wrong about the last frost date and went ahead and planted my tomatoes on a 90 degree day. That resulted in this lens, which I hoped would help prevent others from making that same mistake: http://www.squidoo.com/frostbittentomatoes . Two weeks later my daughter died. There’s nothing like writing to help with grief work, and so writing http://www.squidoo.com/Suicide_child helped me to bring things into perspective and deal with my emotions. During April and May I had no trouble at all thinking of topics – they just walked into my life and demanded expression.

One thing I neglected to mention is that you can make money on Squidoo. If you get a lot of traffic you can make some money from ad words on your pages. Some people have been successful in selling through various affiliate programs they belong to. Many simply use the programs Squidoo partners in. Squidoo has an affiliate relationship with Amazon and eBay and provides special modules where you can pick items to sell that go with your lens topics. If people buy, they split the commission with you. You won’t get rich quick and you have to work hard to make this pay for you, but some people who do work hard are making decent money.

For me the best part of Squidoo is the people I’m meeting, the help I get from the community, and the chance to express myself on anything that interests me, and know that what I write will find at least a few readers. Some of what I’ve written has found lots of readers, and some say what I’ve written has helped them. These are readers I never would have found on my own. Squidoo is my favorite writing community.