How and Where Moving Squidoo Lenses

You might want to move your Squidoo lenses in case their traffic dropped too much and are unsure as to whether traffic will recover one day or another. You may want to move them in case they've been locked and then deleted by HQ. You may want to move your lenses off of Squidoo if they don't meet their policy requirements any more. There are a lot of reasons for you to want to move your lenses out of Squidoo.

However because you're familiar and comfortable with Web 2.0 platforms, you're reluctant doing so and not sure how the moved lenses are going to perform else where.

First thing to do is leaving the lenses that still get a fair share of traffic on Squidoo as they are, don't touch them, they keep making you money on auto-pilot - or they may even see an increase in traffic and sales over time. Well, if only Squidoo gets back in Google's good graces.

Then make sure the lenses that lost traffic aren't seasonal lenses. If they are, leave them on Squidoo till the end of the related holiday, then, depending on their traffic and sales during the shopping season, move them or not.

Another option that you could take into consideration is keeping these lenses on Squidoo using them for traffic driving purpose only to your related website. This is what Squidoo was meant for in the past and there's nothing that prevents you from using the site that way. As long as you play by the rules, of course. You could even set those lenses earnings to go entirely to charities...

• Are you sure that your lenses won't perform better in the (near) future? 
• Were these lenses locked/deleted?
• Sure that you wan tto move them else where?

Then follow the guide on your way to your new endeavours!

Creating a site to host your former Squidoo lenses

Not long ago I created a blog - but you can make a website - to host the lenses I planned to delete from my portfolio. In reality, I built this blog especially for the lenses that didn't fit with my other site's niches. In addition, I publish articles that were never published else where, which adds to the quality of the hosted content.

When thinking about building a website to move your lenses to, you first must select a webhost. Mine is HostMonster. HostMonster provides me with:

• a free domain name for the time I remain a customer, 
• unlimited space, 
• unlimited domains, 
• unlimited email addresses, 
• unlimited transfer, 
• a huge number of different CMS and scripts to build my sites on (forums, ecommerce, drag and drop site builders, etc.) 
• and more. 

It would take a lot of time to list all the benefits I get from HostMonster for only $6.95 per month - if paid for 2 years at once. Even if you pay the host for 1 year, it won't cost you more than $125. It really is a bargain for the service and the advantages.

I also buy my domain names from HostMonster. In the past I tried with GoDaddy but the day I wanted to move the only one domain name I bought from them, I've never been able to do so and had to forfeit the domain. They never sent me the code to make the switch and I was quite angry. Especially since the domain was well ranked.

Anyways, I chose to buy all my domains from HostMonster and, while they're not as cheap as GoDaddy's domain names (only the first year is cheap at GD, though) I also bought a privacy option. I'm really happy with this host and wouldn't want to change for another.

Second task: think about a domain name. There are different options for doing so.

1. Choose a generic domain name if you plan on gathering all your moved lenses on this only one domain and under different categories. These categories can be subdomains or folders.

Example : http://myfullname.com

Subdomain: http://thiscategory.myfullname.com

Folder: http://myfullname.com/myfolder

Opting for a generic domain name will allow you to not having to buy multiple domain names and save you some money on this.

2. Choose a domain name that is related to your niche. If you write on different niches, then buy as many domain names as you have niches.

I don't recommend choosing exact match niches, instead I recommend using broad niche domain names. But if you plan on publishing narrow niches, then you'll have to go to more or less exact match.

Example : 

knitting : http://myknittingdomain.com

knitting socks: http://howtoknitsocks.com

knitting baby socks: http://howtoknitbabysocks.com

and so on.

See you soon for more walkthrough to moving your Squidoo lenses.

Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66