THE Work At Home Guide

Hopefully, you have a number of Squidoo lenses up and running. It costs nothing to join, they host your content so you don’t need a hosting account to profit, they have powerful, built-in networking features and they even pay you commissions on all revenue generated from your pages (called lenses).

BUT… are you taking advantage of these powerful, built-in networking tools? Here’s three things you should start doing at Squidoo immediately.

If you’re not sure exactly what Squidoo is, you can click on over and take a look around if you like. It is pretty self explanatory on setting up a lens but I will create another post soon going into greater details how to create a nice stream of income just from Squidoo but for now, I’m going to cover some basic networking for those of you who already have your lenses.

If you can’t wait for the next post and want to learn more about Squidoo NOW… have a look at “The Secret Cash Machine on Squidoo” which covers everything from the basics to advanced techniques.

The First Thing You Should Be Doing

Leaving comments on other lenses.  I know that one seems like a no brainer but hopefully I can try to clarify a bit. How about, leaving comments on other lenses that actually get approved?

Let me explain.

When posting comments to other lenses, many people have their comments set to only show after being approved. You want to increase your likelyhood that your comment makes the cut.

Take a look at the other comments that are displayed. Do they have clickable links? Are they a simple “liked your lens, check mine out at ____” or did they appear to be thoughtful and relevant to the lens, mentioning specific things from the lens and addressing the person by their name.

If the other comments don’t have clickable links, then you want to write a comment in a more genuine way to better your chances of getting it seen. The important thing about this is that while you won’t be getting a link directly back to your lens, your profile will still receive a link and others may want to click through seeking links as well. This is why it’s important to make the best use of your profiles real estate but that is another subject I’ll cover later.

If you do see clickable links in the other comments, feel free to include yours. If you see comments with multiple clickable links, do the same.

Often, you may be “fooled” when you see comments with no clickable links only to find out that it is set to auto approve. You will know when after submitting your comment, you get a message that says “Your comment will appear shortly“, refresh the page and there it is.

Usually, I will go ahead at that point and write a second post saying something like..

“Oops, I almost forgot! If you get a chance can you stop by my “Your Lens Title” and let me know what you thing? Thanks!”

The Second Thing You Should Be Doing

Add them to your favorites. This puts your profile image on the side of their lens. While this won’t bring you a flood of traffic, it will bring other Squidooers looking for sites to leave comments on to yours. They see you there and know that you are actively promoting your lens and are probably building some traffic up and want to be included which also helps to boost your rankings.

This is especially powerful when the person does not have a guest book on their lens. Even better when they are ranking high for your keyword search or high in the category rankings. This gives you a way to give a link to yourself without having to post a comment. How many times have you went to a lens to post a comment, saw there was no comment form and just left?

The Third Thing You Should Be Doing

Join their fan clubs. This is yet another way to give a link back to yourself while letting others know that you are actively networking so they’ll want to visit your lenses. Once you start building these links back to your profile (again, utilize your profile landing page to your fullest advantage), you will see people joining your fan club, doing the same thing you are.

Did you know that having people join your fan club is almost like building a mailing list? With Squidoo’s “Squidcast” feature, you can instantly send a message out to all your fans at one time. This is a great way to jump start a new lens.

“Hey, I’ve just created a new lens and would appreciate it if you could take a moment to drop by and check it out. I’m interested in any feedback you have and be sure to leave a link back to your lens when leaving your comment! Thanks!

Remember, these are people that joined your fan club to get links back to their profiles. I know, you thought they just loved your lens that much that they wanted to become fans. lol. Ok, maybe some of them did! Either way, they will want to hear about your new lenses so they can come get some back links.

One the flip side, if you are joining fan clubs, you could also receive notification when others launch new lenses. Be sure and pop right over to rank them, leave a comment and add their new lense to your favorites.

There you have it!

Three things you should be doing starting TODAY!

1. Leaving comments that get displayed
2. Adding lenses to your favorites
3. Joining fan clubs & Squidcasting your own fans

Squidoo is becoming such a money tree! If you want to get a running start on learning how to really make money using it, you really should take a look at “The Secret Cash Machine on Squidoo“.

Otherwise, stay tuned for more in later posts.

Take care,
Gail