writing for squidoo

3 Lessons Learned from a 6 Weeks of Promoting eBooks on Squidoo

Hop on over to eBook Marketing Journal and you’ll notice that I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to decipher Squidoo. Okay, not really decipher. More like make it bow down and do my ebook sales bidding. (Enter maniacal mad scientist laughter.)

Squidoo is a user generated content site, which is just a fancy Web 2.0 way of saying, ‘a place to submit your articles.’ However unlike a traditional article directory like EzineArticles.com, Squidoo allows you to include text, video, link lists, Amazon modules, and a whole host of other graphical elements to make your ‘lens’ (lens = article in Squidoo-speak) attractive.

Squidoo had always been that “Hmmmm, maybe…” kind of thing lingering in the back of my mind. But truthfully it always seemed a little cartoony for my tastes, with the little character mascots and all. (This probably sounds a wee bit hypocritical, considering I display a somewhat silly sense of humor on this blog.)

Instead I opted to hobnob at HubPages, Squidoo’s rival cousin. Back in 2010 I started building a little HubPages empire (using a variety of profiles). Thanks to the HubPages revenue share program, I make a little cash from my hubs every single day. Not a fortune, but way more than I ever did with Google AdSense.

Why I ended up jumping the HubPages ship

Although HubPages has been good to me, they can be quite funny (‘ha, ha’ in a bad way) about selling ebooks.

They don’t mind if you’re promoting ebooks on Amazon, but you can’t do Clickbank products. They can even be kinda fickle about PDFs you sell on your own site.

Squidoo, on the other hand, is more lenient about ebook sales – within reason.

According to their terms of service, they don’t mind if you publish a lens on a topic you’re interested in or have experience with, even if it promotes a specific product. What they don’t want are purely promotional lenses that don’t offer any educational value to the reader. And they also have a ban on certain topics like get your ex back kind of stuff.

This may not suit everybody, but it works for me as I have experience in the topics I write about, and I definitely don’t want my ex back.

I started publishing on Squidoo back in March, and now I wish I hadn’t waited so long.

Why Squidoo is kind of a big deal

Several years ago I believe Squidoo had some issues with good, ole’ Uncle Google. Maybe this was during the Google slap era, I don’t remember. (One day when we’re all old and frail, we’ll be reminiscing about stuff like, “Do you remember the great Google Slap of 2010?”) Well that spat between Squidoo and Google is a distant memory.

Squidoo lenses indeed get ranked very nicely in Google. Whilst not all of my lenses have received the red carpet treatment, a few of them are sitting comfortably in the SERPs.

I just wrote lens #14 last Friday – (101 Nonfiction Writing Prompts) – and it currently has first page rank for several key terms. It achieved those positions in less than 48 hours. (See my eBook Marketing Journal blog for the exact keywords I’m ranking for.)

When I had only 12 lenses under my belt, I was averaging about 6-10 ebook sales a week solely from Squidoo traffic. And this was from some insanely low click thru rates.

For example, 36 people might’ve visited my Squidoo lenses. Five people would click thru from those lenses to this website. Out of those five visitors, two people might order an ebook. (That’s the Impulse Buyer Magnet magic!!!)

There’s a lot to be garnered by writing on Squidoo, but before you start here are some interesting pointers I picked up:

1) Squidoo is a topic testing heaven.

From an authors perspective, Squidoo is very cool for testing a variety of topics in your niche. I have several ebook related lenses up and running, but only a handful generate the bulk of my traffic.

Those productive lenses have helped me better understand what I should be writing about, and I’ve adjusted my strategy accordingly.

Sure you can post a survey on your site and ask people what they want, but nothing beats actual traffic stats. Especially when you have the benefit of a site that generates a huge amount of traffic on its own.

2) Write multiple lenses on one topic if you want to see those sales.

The more I write about ebooks on Squidoo, the more I’m looked upon as an expert on the topic, and the more consistent my sales are.

Last week I got an order from a lady who had commented on one of my first few lenses back in early April. She came back and liked (similar to a Facebook like) almost every new lens I put up. She emailed saying that she finally decided to order because of all the lenses I had published.

And I quote… “If your paid info is as good as the free articles you have on Squidoo, I wanted to see it.”

3) Publish at least 3-4 lenses at the same time to start dominating a category.

When you go to publish a lens on a Squidoo you have to choose a category. You also have the option of selecting a sub-category and a sub, sub-category.

If your lens is getting traffic (which I tell you how to do at eBook Marketing Journal), Squidoo will showcase it on your designated category page.

For instance, my 101 Nonfiction Writing Prompts lens is currently featured in the Latest Additions column of the Books, Poetry & Writing category page.

One week I published three lenses, all within the same category. Those three lenses all ended up on that Books, Poetry & Writing page. When they dropped off of that page (you’re only up a week or so in the main category), they landed on the Publishing Tips sub-category page and the Self-Publishing sub, sub-category page.

At one time I had six lenses in the sub and sub, sub categories. This is where I saw the most traffic volume.

With 6-7 lenses up and running you can almost take over a niche in less than a week, depending on how busy the categories are. Obviously some categories are going to be a lot busier than others.

What Squidoo ISN’T for

I know I mentioned this yesterday, but I don’t delve in the whole spun article thing on Squidoo.

I use Squidoo as a source of traffic. Sure it’s a backlink, but I don’t really care about the whole backlink debate.

My priority is sales. At the end of the day I count dollars, not how many backlinks I’ve gotten. If the dollars aren’t where they’re supposed to be, I look at my traffic and the conversion rate.

That’s what matters to me, so I try to do things that match my overall strategy. I can’t see this working out favorably if all you’re doing is spinning a bunch of really generic PLR articles. I think readers are getting tired mish-moshed content. Google certainly is.

Take all of this into account as you embark on your Squidoo adventure.

And good luck!

Double Down on eBooks

When I started this blog back in February 2011, I had every intention of filling my coffers through a combination of ebook and affiliate sales, as well as freelance writing income. That’s how it is when you first start off, all starry eyed and bushy tailed… hopped up on Rockstar Energy Drinks and Trader Joe’s banana chips and whatnot.

I did manage to maintain that model for a year.

Well actually, let me clarify something. I’ve been doing the Amazon affiliate thing long before I started writing and selling ebooks. So that part of the master plan was already on cruise control by the time I launched this blog.

Unfortunately that one stream of income was almost sucked up by the Google Penguin. Uuugh… it pains me to talk about it, though the extent of my damage could’ve been a lot worse! I had several #1 listings in Google drop to #6’s-10’s.

True, I didn’t lose much of the first page advantage. But I did lose that coveted first place position for a lot of my keywords.

I ain’t gonna lie… my profits took a proper beat down. (Cue the “woe-is-me” violin music in the background.)

I don’t care if your targeted keyword gets 300 searches a month, when you’re in the #1 position, you get a lot affiliate sales love. Especially when you multiply a #1 position across several dozen stinky little keywords nobody else seemed to love.

Here’s what sunk my battleship…

Lack of updates.

The pages that booted me from my ivory tower had all been frequently updated. I knew this because I keep track of what’s going on around me in the search engine results.

My pages – though well written and of more-than-adequate word count – were about two years old.

Google gave me my props for a long time and I got comfortable with my meaty checks. In hindsight I’m surprised I didn’t lose my first page advantage altogether.

Lucky for me I had set up that affiliate revenue stream early on in my career, because even though it got sliced with the Google Ginsu knife, it did allow me the flexibility to set up a pretty solid ebook business. And while I wasn’t updating my affiliate sites, I was working overtime to make sure the ebook business was growing by leaps and bounds.

Diversifying horizontally saved me

Instead of planting seeds into several different niches (affiliate sales, freelance writing and ebook sales), I’d actually been taking the horizontal route and focused solely on growing my ebook sales.

In my last post (back in March) I mentioned that I was working on several new ebooks. I actually wrote six new titles between that last post and the end of April.

Four of them are already up on Amazon. Two were written under a pen name that I won’t be disclosing.

And the other two (which I just put up Wednesday and Thursday last week) are:

1,699 Nonfiction Writing Prompts

How to Write Blog Posts that Sell eBooks

I’ll be putting these two up on the Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and this blog (as PDFs) within the week. Then I have the last two ebooks going up on Amazon within the next 10 days.

It’s harder to get that stinger out of your butt than it is to avoid the thing doing the stinging

When my affiliate site rankings dropped, it was like being in a hot shower and suddenly having the water turn lukewarm. It wasn’t enough for me to completely jump out, but it put me on alert that the water might soon be going cold.

As much as I love the traffic I get from Google (across the board, they are my #1 traffic source), I don’t want to end up as one of those site owners who loses their entire income because they’ve been drop kicked by Google.

The WRONG time to worry about Google is when that rank dropping boot is already wedged in your hind parts. As we’re seeing, rank is not guaranteed no matter how sparkly and shiny your site is. There are a lot of very sad site owners who will attest to that.

I knew the smartest thing I could do was to diversify more of my ebooks to sites that already had a sizable audience. This way if I ever got a major thrashing from Google, my business wouldn’t be killed off altogether.

This is what I refer to as horizontal diversification. And you’re gonna see me doing a whole lot more of it in the upcoming months.

In that respect, I’ve done quite a bit more content marketing away from this blog.

For example, I added 13 articles to Squidoo.

And Squidoo ain’t so bad ya’ll!

I won’t go into a long drawn out story about Squidoo, because I’ve fully documented my journey from March till today, at eBookMarketingJournal.com.

But I will say this… Squidoo represents just one of the sites that pushed me from my friggin #1 spots on the affiliate sales level.

That’s because you’re seriously encouraged to update your articles at Squidoo. I actually thought it was kinda silly at first, but a lot of those frequently updated articles are now in the #1 position where I once was. Nothing is “silly” anymore!

And FYI, I don’t use Squidoo for backlinks. I’ve been using my articles there to generate ebook sales, and yes, it does work.

Part of the reason is because Squidoo generates a lot of traffic on their own. Only a few of my articles there have gotten ranked well in Google. But all of my articles still get traffic – much of which comes from Squidoos internal search engine.

The less I have to rely on Google, the better for my peace of mind.

As I’m quickly discovering, this requires a lot writing.

Not that spun article bullshit that a lot of internet marketers love to indulge in. I’m talking about articles that make are genuinely helpful and make perfect sense.

The better my articles, the better my profits. That’s all I need to know.

What should you be doing?

The problem I have with affiliate sites (after this whole Google Penguin business) is that they’re basically dependent on bringing in traffic, much of it being traffic from Google.

Whereas if you have some ebooks on your blog and some on Amazon and some on Barnes and Noble and some on iTunes and some on Smashwords, you’re not dependent on one site and you’re not totally dependent on Google.

I’d rather take a little bit longer to keep cranking out ebooks, knowing each one will sell in multiple locations, rather than creating one site and betting my entire livelihood on it.

Google has an uncanny way of making you get philosophical about your income. (Fast, might I add.)