Manage Your Expectations!

Many of you are excited about the potential of Squidoo and are hoping to make some money from your effort and see an increase in traffic to your stores, websites etc. Don't be discouraged, when there is just a trickle at the beginning.

Managing your expectations, is key to coping with the extra work, while seeing relatively minimal results. Squidoo, has been proven to generate increased traffic to eBay Stores, Blogs and Websites but it isn't an avalanche of traffic.

When I first started using Squidoo, to drive traffic to my blogs, visitors just trickled in from my lenses, maybe once or twice a week. Now, three months later, I get multiple visitors a day from my lenses. Your traffic will follow much the same pattern.

If you set small manageable goals for your Squidoo results, it will help you get through the early days of little traffic and small payouts from Squidoo. As Squidoo grows, so will the traffic to the site and so will your potential customer base. Online marketing is a marathon not a sprint. Those sellers who give up too quickly, will not reap the rewards from all of their hard work.

Some reasonable goals would be:

• Earn enough each month from Squidoo to pay your monthly store subscription or upgrade to the next level.
• Earn enough through Squidoo to help pay for Christmas presents for the family.
• Earn enough through Squidoo to pay for an occasional round of golf (my personal favorite)
• Generate enough traffic from Squidoo to increase sales by 10% in a month.
  

I don't sell product any longer, so I pay more attention to the Squidoo payouts then many of you might. When I received my first payout amount of $1.50, I was very excited. Sure, it was barely enough money to pay for a cup of coffee, but it was equal to the amount of money I made from my blog, the first month I started blogging and it was more than what I expected. When it came to the second month's payout, I was once again surprised, because it was 3 times what I had earned the previous month -- I could now buy 3 cup's of coffee or lunch at Del Taco.

I'm sure you get my point. If you manage your expectations you will be in for a pleasant surprise each month. I've spoken to many professional bloggers and have been told the same thing over and over again. It takes up to 18 months of hard work before you see any measurable income from blogging but only an additional 6 months before it becomes a great living. One caveat, you have to keep refining and improving your product (content).

When it comes to Squidoo, or any other marketing tool, instant success rarely happens but if you stay the course and continue to enhance and improve your content, there is actually gold at the end of the Rainbow.

One of your fellow Squidzens is conducting a poll of Squidoo lensmasters called How Much Money Are You Making With Squidoo? in case your curious where your earnings stack-up.

I am confident, if you continue to create more lenses (I recommend a lens for ever major product line) and you work on fine tuning your lenses, it is possible that you will begin seeing measurable results by the 4th quarter of this year. Don't lose heart!