Ka-Ching! Payday At Squidoo!

Hey, I just got paid! I finally made enough to have received notification that I have received a little somethin'-somethin' in my PayPal account from the good folks at Squidoo. Always remember that it takes 2 months before you receive the money that you make at Squidoo to arrive. The earnings for December get paid out in February, the November earnings are received in January. Here's the latest breakdown of what your lenses would have received:

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

$11.56

$1.82

$0.08

What's all this "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" stuff?

You get paid at Squidoo by how well your lenses rank amongst all Squidoo lenses. The top tier (Tier 1) are all those ranked from 1-2000, the next is those ranked from 2,001-to about 8,000. The last is those ranked about 8,001-to about 60,000. Each one of your lenses that had an average monthly ranking of between 1 and 2,000 for the entire month of December would have garnered you $11.52. Just because you had the fortune to have a lens rank in the top 2k for a day or two in the month of December does not mean you would get $11.52 for that lens. Your lens needs to have been ranked between 1-2000 long enough to ensure an average rank of 1-2000 for the entire month of December. Easier said than done. I have personally had several lenses zip in and out of the top tier a few times, but I finally have one that's been in the top tier all through February (so far) and a few more in the 2nd tier, so I'm thinking maybe when I when I get paid for February (which won't be until around the tenth of April) I'll have something to boast about.

If it's so hard to get ALL my lenses into the top tier, why bother?

Good point. Obviously if I could get all my lenses into the top tier for an entire month (I currently have 128 lenses), that would mean I would get ... drum roll $1,474.56! Not a bad little sum if you can swing it. But that's where it starts getting difficult. There are thousands (hundreds of thousands actually) of lenses. Some really, really good and some really bad ones. All are trying to get their mitts on a ranking in the top tier. I know that I'm lucky to have one or two in the top spots given the ongoing competition and it gets harder and harder to keep your ranking. All my lenses fluctuate (some wildly!) so you need to augment how you can get money out of your lenses.

Okay, if I can't rely on money from rankings, what do I do to make money on Squidoo?

You can make money on Squidoo in a number of ways. There are numerous modules you can add to your lenses that could generate a sale here and there that will add to your total come payday. You can add some affiliate links. But make sure you do it in a tasteful way. Don't be the guy or girl with their lenses plastered with Viagra ads or have lenses made up entirely of links to Amazon. The whole point of Squidoo is to provide useful content. Take a look at the top 100 List of Squidoo Lenses and you will see that there are LOADS of cool lenses that are chock full of great, useful content. They will have lots of backlinks and any ads are relatively discreet. They are well ranked because they are just great sources of information. Do like the successful people do and create original, useful content and you will get better rankings (with Squidoo and the search engines like Google).

"Hey Bradshaw! Put a sock in it!"

Well, I didn't plan on launching into a rant about making quality lenses, but once I get started it is hard for me to shut the heck up. I could've sworn I heard one of my readers yelling at me, so back to the topic...

I got paid! You can too! Just keep reading Squidoo Land and I'll try to help you get at least to where I'm at today and let you know about my plans for getting even better tomorrow.