Squidoo is a website founded by Seth Godin (a marketing expert, author and blogger) and is a website designed for any of it's members ("lensmasters") to create a page (known as a "lens") to promote, advise or inform other people on the internet. Squidoo share their revenue with the lensmasters and lensmasters are not only allowed to promote products and services but maybe even encouraged to do so.

I'm an avid "Squidooer" and as well as making a nice income from it (both from affiliate sales and Google Adsense revenue) I use it as a platform to build my online portfolio. After a couple of months on Squidoo I have learnt that it can be utilised into almost anything you want with a little bit of hard work, a little bit of promotion and a lot of dedication.

Squidoo has an almost addictive feel to it; I would compare it to nicotine. You take a little and your entire body wants more, it craves more, it needs more. It becomes an almost essential part of your life. You find yourself logging in 10 times per day to see how many visits you've had to each of your lenses. You find yourself searching key words in Google to see how your lens ranks with the big websites in its field. You find yourself; "Squiddicted".

Luckily, for all writers, you can use this newfound addiction to promote yourself and to get yourself an online persona so that irrelevant of where you go you will be found as your online moniker. Although, I have only been a writer on Helium for a few weeks, I have already found that I am recognised by many from other websites.

So, you're probably thinking; "what can Squidoo do for me as a writer?" Allow me to explain:

Firstly, you must sign up and make a lens. You make a lens using building blocks called modules. A lens can be about anything you want and I personally use them as both affiliate marketing and personal promotion tools.

Secondly, make more than one lens! Why stop at one? It isn't going to help you as much if you only make one but if you make ten or twenty or fifty you can link them together and make an entire network of your interests. People are then more inclined to read your lens and visit another one if they like it rather than just hitting upon your one lens.

Thirdly, use SquidU! SquidU is the Squidoo forum. It is a great place to listen to advice, learn new tricks, share ideas and successes and you can build up a profile of yourself as you interact with other users. If you create a good image in the forum, it's highly likely that the impression you leave there will follow you around the internet.

Penultimately, read other lenses and comment on them. Squidoo is a pool of information and by reading other lenses you can learn incredible amounts. Commenting and rating these lenses is considered the norm and it is usually reciprocated. This then drives more visitors to your lenses and promotes you and your talents.

Finally, stick around! There are many people who use Squidoo, make a couple of lenses and then hope it is enough. It isn't! It never will be. A Squidoo lens is something that must be maintained and nurtured until it is ready to bring out the best in you. It must then be maintained a little more to keep it at that level. Squidoo isn't about publicity stunts; it's about sustainability and the one thing about most of the top 100 lenses is that they have been there a while.

It takes time and effort to promote yourself using Squidoo...I can assure you it is very much worth it.

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