Squidoo – Show Off Your Expertise

Everyone’s an expert, at least that’s what Squidoo believes. The Squidoo platform allows anyone to publish a one-page website within minutes. The sites may be rich in content such as photos, videos, RSS feeds, and more and creating a Squidoo page is extremely simple. Squidoo makes it easy by giving you options for groups of modules depending on whether you want to promote yourself, share something or do your own thing. Just create a title, add keywords, and add content.

It may seem that you have to learn a whole new language to operate on Squidoo, but it’s easier than it appears. The page that you create is called a lens, the parts of a lens are called modules and the page creator (you) is called a lensmaster. You can add and reorder modules easily until you achieve the look you want. As well as adding written content, you can add lists of links and RSS feeds to give your lens fresh content. With a single click Squidoo will display a preview and let you give it a rating (from suitable for all to adults only) before publishing. Once your lens is written and published, it’s easy to promote it via online bookmarking services and by connecting with other Squidoo members.

Practical Uses

• Create an online portfolio page including your blog feed and links to your latest work to show to prospective clients
• Share your specialist expertise on perennial gardening with novice gardeners
• Recommend your favorite website marketing resources to new site owners

Insider Tips

• You can make money with Squidoo by adding modules from Amazon, Cafepress, Ebay and others (earnings are automatically credited to your account)
• Join groups to give your lenses more visibility
• If you have created a really great lens, enter it for the “Lens of the Day” competition (winning entries will be featured on the site’s home page)
• To make your pages more attractive, use subheadings for each module and add photos where possible

What We Liked

• It takes just a few minutes to create and publish a lens with Squidoo
• This is one of the quickest ways to create a single, attractive web page
• Lenses have high visibility within search engine results

What We Didn’t Like

• Small issue but it would be nice to be able to reorder the modules in collapsed view from the editing page instead of handling through a different page altogether

Alternatives

• Hubpages – http://hubpages.com
• Weebly – http://www.weebly.com/
• Uber – http://www.uber.com/
• Knol – http://knol.google.com/k/knol

Company Info

• Launched: October 2005
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Irvington, NY
• Founded by: Seth Godin
• Website: http://squidoo.com

Costs

• Free (ad supported)

Rating

• 4 out of 5 (great)