Squidoo: Business Or Hobby?

Giant Squid Open Mike Monday had its debut this past Monday, August 3. Originally, we planned to have the show once a month. Judging from the flow of the show, which stimulated interest from our listeners, we now will have the show every week.

We started out discussing why in heck anyone would want to be a Giant Squid?

Secondly, do we want Squidoo to be a business or a hobby?

Jaguar Julie weighed in by saying that when she first started out on Squidoo, she wasn't sure what she was doing, echoing what is true for most of us. Squidoo Mentors did not exist when Julie began her Squidoo journey, but she created several dozen lenses and did something else for a year.

Kimberly and Megan, who essentially run Squidoo, challenged Julie to be a Giant 100 in the summer of 2007, and that is what she did.

The next discussion evolved to the benefits of becoming a Giant Squid on Squidoo. Squidoo wants to help people who are dedicated to making 50-100 and more quality lenses. And as we have discussed before, there are responsibilities to becoming a Giant Squid. We help the newbies, we read lenses and recommend them to others.

As Giants, we are privy to new features and modules, are eligible to win the coveted purple star for a job well done, which in turn, increases the lens ranking of that lens.

Many of us went to Giant Summer school. and as I write these words, I finished my last assignment and submitted it. Giant squid summer school and Rocket Moms automatically gets your lenses out there for all to see. Plus, we have an opportunity to learn from the lenses created by other Giants.

A new program has just been introduced by Squidoo, and we briefly discussed it. It is called the Internship program, where we invite people to participate in the Squidoo community, and give them a helping hand, over a two month period.

How do we want to approach Squidoo? Jaguar Julie's lenses are showcases for interesting lenses that sell affiliate products. Jaguar Julie has made over 400 lenses. She humbly mentioned others who have made 800 or 1000 lenses. Funny how this works. The process of lens building takes on a creative force of its own, and as per Julie, 400 lenses seems inconsequential.

As we look at Jaguar Julie's lenses, we see that learning CSS and HTML are crucial to creating a lens that sells products.

Here I asked a question about several niches I am considering embracing: Heirloom Garlic, Stinging Nettle, and Holy Basil.

Julie and Chef Keem recommended making lenses that point back to a blog. They did not recommend a website.

We discussed making powerful text links. You make a hyperlink in the lens that points to the blog, and make the hyperlink keyword rich. Also, putting the keyword in the powerful domain of Squidoo automatically makes for a good Google ranking.

Google the "Google Keyword Tool" to start familiarizing yourself with keyword searches. Do your searches in quotation marks.

Once you've chosen your keywords, sprinkle them through the titles, subtitles and in the copy.

Don't forget to also use them in the Bio, which you can individualize to every one of your lenses.

Use famous people to make your point, providing for relevancy, of course. Chef Keem used Paris Hilton in a Squid Log post recently, which blew out the search engine.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.