Getting Busy With Squidoo
“How Do You
Do, Squidoo?”
Get To Know
The Best Of Web 2.0
By Bob The Teacher
A Gift For You From
Luke Parker
http://www.HomeBizFactory.com
/
© 2007 Bob Jenkins and Shylar’s Quest
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or
distributed without direct permission of the author.
SquidooSecrets.com: “How Do You Do, Squidoo?”
Acknowledgements
For Paulie: Thank you for the challenge.
Special thanks to the Bamboo Marketing Mastermind – Scott
Tousignant, Martin Salter, Tim Brocklehurst, Matthew Glanfield,
Glen Hopkins, and Dan Kelly – for all your support and
encouragement throughout the development of this project.
Congratulations!
You now have Giveaway Rights to this
report. Simply join the SquidooSecrets
Apprentice Program for free to receive a
re-branded copy of this report (with your
links to SquidooSecrets), plus download
the interview everybody’s talking about….
Paulie Sabol interviewing Bob Jenkins
about the possibilities of Squidoo.
Join The Squidoo Secrets Apprentice Program
Now Free
www.SquidooSecrets.com
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Table of Contents
Part I: What the heck is Squidoo? ........................................................................... 3
Part II: Why should you listen to Seth Godin?........................................................ 4
Part II: What can you do with Squidoo? ................................................................. 6
Why should you Squidoo? ................................................................................... 6
What’s all this business about “lenses”?.............................................................. 6
Establish Yourself As The Go-To-Master .............................................................7
Affiliate Marketing ............................................................................................... 8
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ..................................................................... 8
List Building ......................................................................................................... 9
Multiple Streams of Income ...............................................................................10
Part IV: Welcome to your new job, lensmaster!..................................................... 11
Part V: Creating your lenses ...................................................................................12
Part VI: Put your lenses on steroids .......................................................................13
Part VII: This is only the beginning… .................................................................... 15
Recommended Resources.......................................................................................16
Free......................................................................................................................16
Not Free, but worth every penny ........................................................................16
More From Bob The Teacher.................................................................................. 17
About the Author ....................................................................................................18
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Part I:
What the heck is Squidoo?
When I see a great idea, I often think to myself, “Why didn’t I
think of that?”
This couldn’t be truer for me than when I look at Squidoo.
In late 2005 Squidoo began its formation under the guidance of
Seth Godin (more about him in a minute). It’s a bold idea – kind of
like using orange as a dominant color on a website!
The basic thing to know about Squidoo is it’s the crossroads of
all branches of what people call Web 2.0.
In short, Web 2.0 is the next generation of internet community
building. It brings the visitors of a website to the same table as the
webmasters of those same sites.
Web 2.0 is all about interactivity, about involvement of you the
reader, with me the creator of the site, and vice versa. In fact, by the
end of a good Web 2.0 website, you may not even recognize who the
creator was in the first place.
That’s entirely by design with Squidoo. With this site (totally
free!), anybody with a pulse and an impulse to create can make their
own webpage (“lens” in SquidooSpeak) for the world to see.
The central idea behind Squidoo in particular is the theme,
“Everyone is an expert.” To launch the site Seth created an ebook
with this title, and it continues to serve at the core of the community.
So let me ask you a very important question…
What are you an expert at?
• Spotting a good deal at the local flea market?
• Teaching a kid how to tie shoes?
• Changing a tire in under 3 minutes?
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• Spotting a preposition at the end of a sentence
(such as the question above)?
Whatever your area of expertise, Seth wants you to write about
it. So he created a co-op where anyone and everyone can show their
expertise to the world.
If you don’t believe you have “expertise” in you, go read his free
(and short) book and be amazed!
Part II:
Why should you listen to Seth Godin?
By now you are probably thinking why should I bother listening
to this Seth Godin guy – he’s obviously just trying to __________
(fill in your lame whine here).
Personally, I can tell you a few things that I have learned about
Seth and why he’s become a role model to me.
Seth writes notes to his readers. He’s published 9 or so books
on marketing, is held in the highest esteem around the marketing
world, and he still takes time to write to people BEFORE they write to
him, then responds back when you write to him.
Who knows – you may get an email from him one of these days
after you’ve made an awesome lens. And I can tell you from
experience it will totally make your day.
But besides the warm and fuzzy reasons, the main reasons you
should listen to Seth are
• he knows what he’s talking about,
• he likes to talk freely a lot,
• what he says matters to the way we are all doing business
(or should be).
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A brief side story…
In early 2006, I had ordered an audiobook called All Marketers
Are Liars because the title sounded really interesting. Like most
things we download, I totally forgot about it. I didn’t even know Seth
was the author of it.
Then in the fall of 2006, I was raking leaves in my Maryland
yard and decided to listen to an audiobook – and there was All
Marketers Are Liars waiting for me.
As I listened to it, mindlessly raking and stuffing black bags full
of deciduous cast-offs, I was continuously thinking wow, who is this
guy – he really knows what he’s talking about. Everything he’s saying
simply makes sense.
When I learned that the person reading the book was Seth
himself I had to laugh. It was at that moment I decided I had to share
Squidoo with the world.
What’s the point of telling you this story?
Seth’s ideas are striking and important. And when you’re
ready for them, they can profoundly change the way you look at what
you are doing in your professional life.
After reading All Marketers Are Liars, I turned to Permission
Marketing. Yet again, through reading what Seth puts out there, I
learned that in a world full of SPAM, privacy policy violations,
telemarketing bonanzas, and second-by-second bombardment of
advertising it’s comforting to know there are marketing philosophers
out there who point to a less cluttered future.
Start reading his blog, and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking
about.
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Part II:
What can you do with Squidoo?
Now that you know a bit more about how Squidoo came to
exist, let’s dig into the meat of the matter.
Why should you Squidoo?
If you are a business owner trying to make your way online,
then you know you are supposed to master the following tactics of
marketing:
• Establishing Yourself As The Expert
• Affiliate Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• List Building
• Multiple Streams of Income
With Squidoo, you get to put all of these into action at the same
time – for free. In fact, you could even be paid for doing it or donate
your revenues to several dozen charities through the site.
What’s all this business about “lenses”?
Each member of Squidoo becomes known as a “lensmaster”,
and as a lensmaster, your job is to create lenses which help visitors
make meaning of the clutter on the web.
If you do a search for example of “best network marketing
companies,” you’ll find over 93 million results. How in the world will
you know which one has the actual answers you are looking for?
Squidoo exists because it’s up to us lensmasters to take the best
of what’s online and help focus our readers’ attention on that. This is
why they are called lenses; you focus the readers’ attention on the
most relevant things they should be looking for.
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You are making sense of the world, and your readers
will thank you for it. And if you act strategically, you can use your
lenses to do great things for you, your business, and the world around
you.
Establish Yourself As The Expert
When you make a lens about something you know a lot about,
you’d be surprised at how fast you can become a recognized expert.
In January 2006, I began representing a direct sales company
called Jerky Direct. Upon the suggestion of my mentor Paulie Sabol, I
began making lenses left and right, and one of them was about
finding the best beef jerky online. This lens would promote this
particular business and develop my expertise in the area. Besides
promoting my own products, I researched online and used my jerky
lens to share the best of what I found.
Soon, I was getting more and more attention to this lens
because, as I found out, over half of the people in the U.S. alone eat
jerky on a regular basis.
With useful content and strategic uses of Squidoo’s modules,
my lens broke into the top 100. Customers were ordering, new
partners were joining my team, and then a reporter from the New
York Times came along, and the rest, as they say is history.
In two months, I became the expert in beef jerky.
It was as shocking to me as it is to you reading this sentence
while shaking your head.
Truth be told, I’m a history teacher with a passion for
education. I never would have thought that I would be cited as an
expert in the New York Times – and certainly never for something as
odd as beef jerky.
But with Squidoo, you never know what you’ll get noticed for.
But if you play your cards right, and act strategically, you can control
what expertise becomes synonymous with your name.
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Of course, I have been called Mr. Jerkins often by my
students, so perhaps it was in the cards for me afterall.
Affiliate Marketing
While you are just getting started with Squidoo, you can use
some of the pre-made modules to promote products from Amazon,
eBay, iTunes, CafePress, etc. These modules are easy to set up, and as
long as you include relevant items to your readers, you should see
revenues increase.
By attracting a loyal following, you can use your lenses to
promote your highest recommendations. This is the key ingredient to
affiliate marketing that many people overlook.
As my friend and affiliate marketing master Matthew Glanfield
would say, you have to build a relationship with your readers or they
will never buy a single thing based on your recommendations. But
once they do trust you, your suggestions are eaten up by your readers,
creating the momentum your business could use right about now.
So as you make lenses about your expertise, be sure to include
recommendations to OPP – other people’s products. Learn how to
incorporate Clickbank, Commission Junction, and individual affiliate
programs into your lenses.
Your bank account may never be the same again!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
I’m astonished at how much money people are paying to get
search engine traffic to naturally flow to their webpages.
Especially now that I know about Squidoo.
Building a lens on Squidoo is kind of like having a team of SEO
experts on your staff without paying them anything.
Have you read an ebook about how to use H-Tags, meta-tags,
long tail, keyword density, etc., to get your results higher?
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Have you figured out all that stuff yet? Me neither.
With Squidoo, we don’t have to. The SquidTeam does the hard
part for you. All you have to do is put good words in the right boxes,
and they take care of all the HTML work to optimize your site.
Do a search for some of the keywords in your industry, and
you’ll likely find a Squidoo lens or two on the front page of the results.
And if you don’t – it’s because you haven’t made those lenses yet.
Squidoo is a SEO dream, and if you learn how to use all the
tools available to you, you can get those coveted front page listings.
Better still, when you make a lens on Squidoo, you immediately
are the author of a PR6 website, and you can link your lens to any
page you wish. Care to guess what sites I recommend you linking to
the most prominently?
List Building
“No matter your niche, people want to buy from people they
know, like and trust.”
Makes sense, right? That bit of wisdom comes from Glen
Hopkins, the best selling author of Lucrative List Building.
With Squidoo on your side, you can develop that relationship
that Glen talks about.
When you have your own list, no matter what your product or
service, you become the focus of that subscribers’ attention. As long
as you deliver quality information and recommendations, they’re
hooked on your every word.
With a good lens on Squidoo, you can get them hooked even
before you have your own product line. Then point them to your opt-
in page, and they’ll join your list.
Or even better, put your opt-in on your lens so they don’t even
have to think about it!
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Multiple Streams of Income
Integrated properly, multiple streams of income can be the
difference between a hobby income and a real business.
Squidoo can be easily used to support this method of business
building.
First, you may not be committed yet to one particular product
or service for your business. You’ll want to find that commitment
quickly if you want to truly succeed.
But until you do, use Squidoo to promote different services, and
see which ones you find yourself and your visitors gravitating
towards.
In other words, you can use Squidoo to test market the
marketplace. After a few weeks, your lensrank should help you
determine which niches are the hungriest for what you have to say.
As you build more and more lenses, you’ll also find which topics
you keep coming back to.
The secret to generating multiple streams of income is finding
the ones that both you and your readers want to pursue. Using a free
service like Squidoo to conduct this research will save you a ton of
time while cutting your budget drastically.
I love the sound of that!
Squidoo is also optimized with several blocks of Adsense. These
are the ads that Google serves to webpages and which generate
income to many webmasters. You don’t have to know a thing about
this topic – the Squidoo Team handles all of that for you. You’ll
probably even notice changes in their Adsense blocks frequently, as
they employ different strategies to make sure those blocks generate as
much revenue for you and the co-op as possible.
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Part IV:
Welcome to your new job, lensmaster!
The cornerstone of Squidoo of course is the lens. As a quick
reminder, recall that Seth’s mission with Squidoo is to create a single
website that visitors around the world can turn to in order to make
sense of the info-glut permeating the web.
In other words – let’s simplify what’s out there.
Your job as the lensmaster is to be concise, relevant, and fresh
with your lenses. If you are able to do all three of these, you’ll find
lenscrafting on Squidoo to be quite rewarding on many levels.
Lenses are the ultimate in mini-sites. Pick your topic, and that’s
the only thing you talk about throughout the entire lens. People want
to find all that they need to know about that topic. They don’t want to
read through random websites – they want immediate gratification
for their search.
As a single-topic, niche focused mini-site, your lens is your
contribution to the Squidoo co-op.
If someone has already taken your topic, don’t fret! There are
no limitations on how many lenses there can be on Squidoo about
bass fishing, Texas Hold’em, or Halloween costumes from famous
movies.
Just set out to be the best expert you can be in your area, and
much of the rest will fall into place.
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Part V:
Creating your lenses
Lenscrafting on Squidoo is very forgiving. If you make a
mistake, it’s easy to fix. And if things change about your topic, editing
is easy to do.
So don’t worry about knowing everything or getting it perfect
the first time.
Just get started – taking action frequently is one of the keys to
success with Squidoo.
You’ll want to know a bit about how Squidoo is set up in order
to take advantage of the different features.
The first thing you need to do is pick a title for your lens. When
you go through the lens wizard, you’ll be asked, “What is your lens
about?” And your answer to this question becomes the title of your
page. Like everything else – you can change this at any time.
You’ll also be asked things like what are the main keywords (or
tags), what would you like to have as the short name of your lens
(which will appear in the URL after www.squidoo.com/).
Finally, you’ll be asked if you would like to donate any of the
revenue from your page to charity.
Once you are ready to edit the actual content of your lens, you’ll
be taken to the “lensmaster workshop”. This is where the magic truly
happens – although I have never seen any actual elves in the
workshop itself.
Squidoo uses “modules” to build your lenses. Several dozen
modules have been pre-designed by the Squidoo team, and it’s your
job to pick those that help you get your message out the best.
Lucky for you, the Squidoo Team has constructed some pre-set
combinations of modules for you, but once you get the hang of things,
you can start from scratch and assemble the right modules quickly.
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The trick is to consider what the purpose will be for
your particular lens, and use the appropriate module for that purpose.
Each lens you make also contains a Bio section for the
lensmaster (that’s you). Take care in writing a short description of
yourself and your services, as this is a section that is looked at by
most visitors.
Again, Squidoo is all about establishing expertise, so you don’t
want to sell yourself short in the biography section. Without
sounding full of yourself, make sure you stand out as someone that
your readers can trust for advice on your topic.
If you don’t believe you should be listened to, nobody else will
either.
After you’ve made your first lens, you’ll look back at the
previous 8 minutes and say, “That was it?”
Amazingly enough, you’ll find the speed of lens creation very
addicting. Channel that feeling throughout your use of Squidoo.
Some lenses will catch hold, others will be magnets. But if you only
build one lens, you’ll likely remain in the dark in Squidoo.
Part VI:
Put your lenses on steroids
Once you’ve put the basics in place for your lens, and you’ve
built a few of them, return to the one you feel the best about.
It’s time to spice things up a bit.
Squidoo’s modules include several Web 2.0-enabled features
that you’ll want to use as soon as possible.
Let me tell you why.
Part of the beauty of Squidoo is a ranking system that lets
visitors know how useful and reliable your information should be. If
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you have a lensrank of #1285, then you’ll be seen as a better
person to turn to than someone who is up at #37403 (#1 is the best).
So you want to get your lensrank as high as possible because
your credibility is at stake. If you’re able to learn the top strategies
for your lenscrafting, you could even break into the top 100.
This elite group has a special showcase on the site, and the
jump in traffic that results is excellent.
Now in order to go from mediocrity to greatness on Squidoo,
you have to learn how to strategically use the Web 2.0 modules that
are available to you.
These are the blocks that visitors love because they can interact
with you. This type of interaction is difficult to employ on your own
websites, but with Squidoo, it’s a breeze.
Without knowing any technical code, you can use the following
modules to spice up your lens:
• YouTube
• Guestbook
• Polls
• RSS Feeds
• Del.icio.us
• Flickr
• Plexo
• and many more.
Each of those modules increases the interactivity of your lenses.
And the more interactive your lenses, the better your results. You’ll
see better search engine results, higher lens ranking, and a stronger
subscriber base if you put these tools to use the right way.
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Part VII:
This is only the beginning…
The preceding pages have served to give you a brief orientation
of what Squidoo has to offer. They are by no means exhaustive of
what Squidoo is all about, and certainly do not include my most
advanced strategies.
To learn more about Squidoo and how to unleash the power of
Web 2.0, listen to the interview with Paulie Sabol and me, where I lay
down a strong foundation for building your lenscrafting empire.
Then be sure to upgrade at SquidooSecrets.com.
With the full Super Kraken
Membership, you’ll have all the
resources you need to quickly
ramp up your Web 2.0 empire on
Squidoo. You’ll learn from two
private consultations I did for
fitness expert Scott Tousignant
(The Fit Bastard) and business
coach David Green (of i5Gold).
In addition, you’ll gain
access to a video walk-through of
the entire site and the modules
that are most appropriate for
expertise branding, affiliate
marketing, list building, and
generating multiple streams of income.
Finally, with the SquidooSecrets.com Mastermind, I’ll share
with you more advanced strategies in a teleseminar and video series
that will keep you up-to-date on best practices I’m personally using
with my own lenses. I’ll also introduce you to the new modules that
the Squidoo Team develops as they are put in place at the site.
The SquidooSecrets.com Mastermind includes an exclusive
members forum to network with other lensmasters and business
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builders – a perfect breeding ground for JV opportunities
and partnerships.
For more information, please visit www.SquidooSecrets.com.
You’ll receive free admission into the SquidooSecrets Apprentice
program, including a one-hour interview with Paulie Sabol and me.
Recommended Resources
The following represents the beginnings of a complete library of
your internet marketing education. Each of the following books or
services has greatly influenced my business, and I can proudly
recommend them.
Free
• Everyone Is An Expert, by Seth Godin
• The 2007 Business Report, by Matthew Glanfield
Not Free, but worth every penny
• The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript, by Mike Filsaime
(Free excerpt, concerning Viral marketing is available here)
(For a monthly hosting service of this software, check here.)
• Lucrative List Building, by Glen Hopkins
• Permission Marketing, by Seth Godin (Audiobook read by
the author)
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More From Bob The Teacher
My Squidoo Lenses – A growing number of lenses on various
topics on Squidoo. As you’ll see, some are more complete than
others, but all can be used to get ideas for your own lens crafting.
www.Squidoo.com
OurBookBusiness.com – Share the pleasure of reading while
building a profitable home business with your own independent
bookstore.
www.OurBookBusiness.com
TeachersInBusiness.com – Discover what it takes to build a
business while pursuing the world’s greatest (but most underpaid)
profession.
www.TeachersInBusiness.com
Hear2Read.com – Read 50 books or more per year by taking
advantage of audiobooks. The best current and classic books are
available for your immediate enjoyment. Includes Member Rewards
Discount and Affiliate Program.
www.Hear2Read.com
The Best Advertising Money Can’t Buy – Learn the best
strategies for using free advertising in your marketing.
www.FreeAdReport.com
DiscoverMiniSites.com – Reveal the secrets to building cash-
magnet, targeted websites for maximum profit. Includes an interview
with Dan Kelly.
www.DiscoverMiniSites.com
DiscoverOnlineVideo – Stop struggling with online video, and
start putting this important marketing channel to work for you.
www.DiscoverOnlineVideo.com
BobTheTeacher.com – Keep up-to-date with my latest strategies
and projects.
www.BobTheTeacher.com
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About the Author
Bob Jenkins teaches freshmen U.S. History and World Religions to seniors at a
public high school in Maryland. He began teaching at the school in 1997 after
graduating from Florida State University with a B.A. in Social Science Education
and History. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2006 with a
Master of Liberal Arts degree.
At the school, Bob coaches the Academic Team, which won the Baltimore
regional championship on the It’s Academic Television show in 1998 and 2006.
He also coaches the boys and girls Tennis teams.
Since 1999, he has owned his own online business, Shylar’s Quest Internet
Services, featuring web hosting and domain registration services. He continues
to design a few long-term clients’ web sites.
In 2004, Bob entered the world of network marketing, where he has found more
appreciation of what he does on a regular basis.
Going forward, Bob is most excited about working with teachers from around the
world as he builds the TeachersInBusiness.com community. Using his
experiences, he helps other teachers stay in the classroom as long as they want to
by showing them how to make a better income online.
His other websites and divisions of his internet business can be found at
www.bobtheteacher.com.
Bob lives with his partner, Joanna, and their two American Bobtail cats, Maynard
and Keenan.
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