Affiliates Tested

I've played around with Squidoo, for a while, the personal page creation site, which comes from marketing guru Seth Godin.

I've read several things about why it's good to create some pages (or 'lenses' in Squidoo speak), including the fact they can help SEO for your page. And I've been running 7 or so lenses for a while.

Setting up a lens is quick and easy, and includes widgets for Ebay, Amazon, Cafepress etc. When you create each page, you also get the option to keep any funds for yourself, or donate them to charity.

Now there are some very popular pages, a popular community and lots of information on Squidoo - and although I haven't seen any self-referential links driving huge benefits to my sites, I can see how it could help.

But for making money?

It's not a way to make money. The people making the most money from the affiliate options, as far as I'm aware, are all donating their funds to charity, and stating that fact on their lens - which seems to increase the funds being raised due to the charitable nature of most people. Even then, they're not receiving huge amounts.

As for individuals who want to keep the loot for themselves? Personally speaking, it's made me nothing. And as a direct comparison, I created a lens which mirrored the content of one of my latest blogs.

The lens and blog are on a really niche subject, and get a similar response of just a handful of people every day. I didn't promote either particularly after set-up, and the reason was that I didn't want my blog earnings to be radically affected by a traffic boost from external promotion. I wanted to try and keep both at similar levels.

End result after a couple of months?

My Squidoo lens: $0.00
My blog: $0.01 from advertising. £0.24 from affiliate orders.

Neither is going to be hugely profitable on their own. Neither cost me anything to set up except time. But at least I could see my blog making enough in aggregate to make me update it once every so often.

I could be wrong about Squidoo, and if someone has had a great experience in making money with it, I'd love to hear more - but having looked around for the 'giants' who have been recognised for the huge number of lenses they've created, I've yet to find one making even a reasonable amount for the time invested.