What is Squidoo?

First off, what is Squidoo? Squidoo is, according to Wikipedia, "a platform designed to make it easy for anyone, for free, to set up a page on a single topic he or she knows or cares a lot about." It's easily customized, and you can include links back to your eBay store. What's more, you can include your eBay items on your Squidoo page.

Lenses

Your own personal page on Squidoo is called a lens. A lens will be on one topic, and will offer your expertise on a certain subject. Any person that creates a lens is called a lensmaster. By creating your own Squidoo lens, you can offer additional information on your products or services, add links to your favorite sites, feature selected eBay items, and spread the word about your eBay store or business.

You can write lenses on any subject, just make it interesting! The more interesting and unique, the more traffic you could get. You may want to try and pick a subject no one has written about yet on Squidoo, or online for that matter. Find your niche and write away!

Modules

Squidoo is easily customized via the "modules." Modules are the blocks of material that you can add to your lens, usually separated by a page break and large headline. Images can be added easily via HTML tags, direct links, or simply using the "upload image" icon. Besides text and images, you can add YouTube Videos, favorite links lists, links to your eBay items, Amazon items, Google Blog searches, Flickr photos, CafePress store items, interactive polls and much more.  It's a great commodity for sellers.

The Lensmaster Lounge & Groups

In addition to all of this, Squidoo offers Squidoo Groups to connect and group your lenses. Start your own group if you have a unique niche topic, or join an existing group for some added traffic. Squidoo also has an excellent discussion board called the Lensmaster Lounge. This "lounge" is uniquely moderated and free of spam thanks to Squidoo's dedicated staff who monitor and filter the forums. If you have trouble with any topic, would like to find out some Squidoo tricks, or just want to chat, this place is an excellent resource.

Driving Traffic

Outside of Squidoo, you can generate traffic to your lens through email, external website links, posting in forums off Squidoo, posting on your MySpace page, or including a URL on your business card. Tell all of your friends via email and you're sure to get plenty of hits just from that!

Now that you've set up your first lens...start writing some more! Share what you've written in the eBay forums, your MySpace, or through email, including a link. Leave links in every lens to some of your other lenses using the easy link list module, or use some easy HTML. Don't forget to Lensroll your other relevant lenses! This puts a link on your lens to other lenses.

One more tip on increasing traffic to your Squidoo lenses is to the guestbook feature and Links Plexo. These two modules offer feedback from guests, and a list of recommended links that users can add a link to. These are voted upon by users, and you can leave them on any lens that has a Links Plexo. You can even leave a link to your eBay store! The top voted lenses will appear at the top of the list. The guestbook feature will allow you to leave a brief comment, and your bio picture will appear next to your comment and ID. This, too, can increase views to your lens. Interaction is key, and the more you allow your readers to interact with your lens through polls, plexos, and videos, the more likely your lens will remain popular.

Don't forget to link to your URL or eBay store in each of your lenses!

Traffic Reports

After setting up a few lenses, check your eBay Omniture free traffic reports in the manage my store section. Click on the "referring sites" link to generate a report of the sites that have lead users to your eBay store. Squidoo should show up somewhere on your report, and the number of users will be listed next to it. This will show you the results of your work, which lenses are generating the most traffic, and how you can tweek your lenses and tags to attact more attention. You should also check the stats of your individual lenses through the "my dashboard" section of your account. This will tell you how many people have visited your lenses, and where the traffic is coming from. It will also tell you how many people have clicked out of your lenses to other sites. This will provide you with the information you need to track the progress of your lenses, marketing efforts, what you'll need to improve, what's worth the time, what people like, and what they dislike.

Make Money!

Did we forget to mention you can make money just from writing a Squidoo lens? It's simple. When you create your Squidoo account, you will be asked if you want to join their affiliate marketing (by placing links to external sites on your lens page). You would place related products to what you are writing about on your lens, or even your own products from your eBay store, Amazon storefront, CafePress site, or other site. Everytime a user clicks on a product resulting in a purchase, you will earn cash! This is especially great if they purchase one of your items.

So there you have it! The benefits of writing a Squidoo lens are plentiful. They are also a tremendous resource for consumers, offering real information on any number of topics, issues, products, people, places, or events. You can check out our Squidoo pages through the link on our about me page. Signing up for Squidoo couldn't be easier! Use the link provided and you'll get $5 after you receive your first $15.

Thanks for reading!

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