I tried out the Squidoo site a few times in 2008 and found it unfathomable at first. About a year later in 2009, I gave it another whirl and found it fun. Mostly I figured out how to plug-in the different frameworks they provided to host your content. It went rather quickly after that as I added Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, Amazon books plus my own photos and writing.
The site sure gave a lot of options so you ended up with an interesting website which they called a lens. The site ranked them and gave statistics on the number of visitors.
The first topics I tried on the site were a tribute to my sister who had died, a page about a lake resort in Kansas, a page about my 85-year-old mother publishing her childhood memoir, and one with some genealogy information about my dad’s family. Pleased with those, I wrote about how to self-publish a book using Blurb and one about writing childhood memories for the Our Echo website.
If you have something that you want to promote, like a book, Squidoo gave you lots of options. Hey, it was also free to get your info posted on the web.
I got hooked on creating Squidoo lenses on all sorts of topics relating to my life and interests. Then I realized that one could actually make money from high-traffic topics and from selling things on the pages. Over the next 5 years, I created over 600 lenses there. Some I gave away to help newbies get started.
It was fun and profitable. Over the years, I made a grand total of $37,000 from my pages, met lots of interesting people who visited my pages and grew close to other writers. I appreciate having the opportunity to share what I knew.
Unfortunately, the site changed direction and the last year and a half wasn’t fun at all. The rules kept changing so the writers scrambled to rework their pages to meet guidelines that shifted weekly. It became drudgery and the earnings dwindled as well. Finally the end came, and the site sold out to Hubpages.
Writers who remember the glory days of Squidoo with the good earnings, the networking and the open creativity have had a tough time adjusting to a new site. I learned a lot during my time at Squidoo and now must recreate myself and my content elsewhere.
Virginia Allain 