I was quite surprised when I got to the Top 100 for most profitable lenses to find one of my own lenses (I’d forgotten I’d started any) featured in the list.
Not only was I featured – but I had the most profitable lens in the whole of Squidoo!!!! It’s a lens I made about the Nikon D200 DSLR camera. I literally threw it together just to test how easy it was to make a lens.
I also found quickly that I was the 9th highest rated Squidoo lens master in their Top 100 Lens Masters list.
Ok – I’ll be honest – I was a little excited by this, partly because I had a #1 in front of something I’d made, but also because I remembered that Squidoo share earnings with their Lens Masters.
Of course I immediately logged into my account (took me a little while to remember my password) to find out how many tens of thousands of dollars I should be expecting to be sent to me.
First I stopped by their FAQ pages to find out how much of what ever I’d earned I should expect to be sent and found that the split is 50/50 – but unfortunately as they are still in Beta they are not paying anyone anything. Doh! Having said that, any money left after their overheads goes to charity so I’m not too disappointed.
But how much has the most profitable Lens in Squidoo earned since it was created just over 2 months ago???
I logged into my account – and found my total.
$10.21
Ok. So I was a little shocked by the smallness of that figure. Not because I’d really expect a page to earn thousands – especially a page as simple as that. But because that’s the highest earning lens on Squidoo. I’d have honestly thought there’d be at least a few that would earn more.
Once I got over my initial surprise I began to think about it a little more with a bit more balance. Here are a few random thoughts:
- $10.21 over two months for one page isn’t bad really. Just yesterday I was writing how some people say an average blog post can earn $10 per year! This is better return than that – even if the income is split 50/50 with Squidoo.
- Squidoo is still a new entity. My Nikon D200 lens hasn’t even got a page rank yet (none of Squidoo has). It’s only been 2 months and things should grow.
- 1 lens earning $10.21 over 2 months isn’t much, but what if I’d taken the time to develop 100 lenses? What if I’d made 1000? Of course we can’t just multiply the number of lenses by $10.21 because that lens is obviously more profitable than anyone elses – but the earnings would surely be more (even though I have 5 lenses and this is the only one to make anything so far). I would critique a blog with one post by telling the blogger to add more content – it would be unfair to judge Squidoo based upon my 5 lenses.
I’m still unsure about Squidoo. My initial concerns over it’s poor SEO tactics still remain (although they’ve made a few changes including removing the word ‘Lenses’ from the lens title tags as I suggested) and I do see a bit of spammy stuff going on there, but overall I guess I have to say based on my own experience that the jury is still out somewhat.
What have your experiences been with Squidoo?
