Have you ever thought about writing a few jewelry making tutorials but don't have (or want) a blog? Or maybe you have a blog...but not much of an audience? Do you want to share your tutorials for free rather than selling them and still have the opportunity to earn some income for your efforts? Then Squidoo could be a terrific option for you.
As most of you know, I use Squidoo as my primary publishing platform for my jewelry making (and other) articles and tutorials. It's free, provides easy-to-use content templates, and has one of the best management and support teams of any company I know. It also has a huge audience (389,222 unique visitors and 598,943 page views globally and 229,046 unique visitors and 331,994 page views in the US only as of today, according to Quantcast) that you could never hope to reach through your own blog.
Squidoo also does a lot to help promote the articles (called "lenses") written by its members ("lensmasters"), not only on the site but also in social media and through its magazines. So Crafty is Squidoo's popular magazine dedicated to crafts (jewelry making is categorized as a craft on Squidoo), and managing editor Stephanie Mangino does a fabulous job of curating terrific projects from Squidoo writers as well as from blogs and other online sources to make the magazine a worthwhile destination for crafting enthusiasts. So if you do a good job with your tutorial, there's a good chance that So Crafty magazine may feature and promote it on social media to give it even more visibility. And since I'm Squidoo's "Bangles, Baubles and Beads" Contributor, if you send me the link to your tutorial I'll check it out and might even feature it!
You can recommend Amazon items that relate to your project tutorials (and also eBay items if you use the default lens format) and earn a small commission if someone makes a purchase directly from one of your lenses. In addition, if your lens becomes popular, it also may qualify for "tier pay", which means that it is eligible for a share of Squidoo's advertising income. (Some types of lenses, such as product reviews, are excluded from tier pay, but they also have a greater chance of converting to sales because they feature detailed reviews of a specific Amazon product.) You can use Squidoo's regular lens format for your tutorial, but the "How To" format has been optimized specifically for projects and will result in a very professional presentation.
Getting started on Squidoo couldn't be easier. Just sign up to become a Squidoo member. Then after you have signed up, go to www.squidoo.com/new/howtoformat and follow the prompts to create your tutorial in the "How To" format (or click the big orange Create a Lens button on your Squidoo dashboard). Stephanie Mangino just made a terrific video on how to write a project tutorial using Squidoo's "How To" lens format that happens to feature my Romantic "Queen of Hearts" Earrings tutorial as the example.
If you have any questions about writing on Squidoo or using the How To lens format, just let me know. I'm looking forward to seeing your new jewelry project tutorials on Squidoo!
