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.