Is there really money in making Squidoo lenses?

[3Six]

I've been seeing a lot of talk about on this. There are ebooks on making money from Squidoo and a great deal of SEO chatter about its usefulness.

Is it all it's cracked up to be? And how does it compare with other networks like Hubpages?

I'm not planning on going into it myself as I'm pretty busy but am trying to help a jobless friend with some general guidance. Any tips appreciated.

[tke71709]

Squidoo lenses were hot a few months ago, do people still hype them?

Sorry 3Six, no actual experience here to help you out with.

[DomainMagnate]

I've seen some that make decent money, over $1k/month. But they do require lots of work and promotion, however are easier to rank with some backlinks, than a new site.

[Michelle]

I've tried Squidoo lenses to drive traffic and the results were dismal. I've tried it to gather subscribers, not much good. I've not seen one cent income from the lenses just sitting there with AdSense etc that Squidoo share in. I know people who have purchased ebooks on the subject and supposedly applied the principles but made very little if any money. The traffic from one of my past affiliates from her lens to the sales page had terrible conversion so maybe it's not very targeted traffic either? I couldn't say for sure, just going on what I've seen to date.

Of course there are people making money with it but from what I can tell they dedicate a lot of time to it, ie It's their main activity.

I never really understood the value in propping up someone elses business when you could be adding the content to your own site. It's hard to get a lens to rank so why not just put the effort into your own site that belongs to you not Seth Godin? It's only a few bucks to grab a domain and some hosting. I don't think it's a bad idea to build some lenses for links and some extra traffic but doing a lot of it isn't for me. Perhaps others here have had more success with Squidoo as I've never really taken to it so might not have given it enough love and attention.

You can buy and sell lenses which could be very profitable as it takes little time to set up a lens and I believe some people sell them for $100 to $150.

[Clinton]

I know the hubpages people have a forum and talk to each other a lot. Many of the articles they publish seem to be driven by being part of the community rather than earning money.

These UGC sites have in the past suffered Google "slaps". There are benefits to "controlling" a page on a very frequently indexed, high PR site, but that goes with the risk that you can never completely own that page and suffer the risk of losing it altogether.

I agree with Michelle in that there isn't big money to be made there. I see those UGC sites as being nice to provide a bit of variety in your incoming links but remember that the money site is th eone you own. Keep that in mind at all times. I'm not advocating low quality content for your articles elsewhere but if you do have to choose, keep the best stuff for your own site.

There are people in DP and elsewhere selling lenses. I'm not so sure of the value of those lenses. If they don't have any incoming links - or have incoming links only from the seller's other sites - I don't believe they have any value at all and wouldn't buy them even to provide the IBL mix I mentioned earlier.

[Michelle]

These UGC sites have in the past suffered Google "slaps". There are benefits to "controlling" a page on a very frequently indexed, high PR site, but that goes with the risk that you can never completely own that page and suffer the risk of losing it altogether.

That's an excellent point too Clinton. I recall not that long ago that Squidoo changed the rules on what your lens could be about. They became all sanctimonious about having credit and weight loss lenses and basically deleted them over night.

[3Six]

Thanks everyone, it was as I suspected, nothing's changed to make Squidoo suddenly attrative.

[tvanslooten]

I'm late to the conversation on this one but everything Michelle has talked about is spot on. I jumped on the Squidoo bandwagon when it launched and I spend several days building over 50+ lenses and because they were in the diet pills niche (a niche Squidoo claimed was all scammers) deleted everything I had built overnight!! I learned my lesson about relying on other businesses for my own business and have since wished death on Squidoo (only joking of course - sort of).

The only way to make money on Squidoo is to build and sell lenses but even that's getting over saturated. I would stay clear of Squidoo as a valid way of making "real" money.

Travis