Should You Buy Squidoo Lenses?
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When I first decided to get off the fence and actually start making lenses on Squidoo, I went there and looked around, and sat, and thought, and made lists of the million things I could make lenses about, and then.. I did nothing. I just didn’t know where to start. I knew making a lens wouldn’t be difficult, I am pretty good with the HTML and have been blogging and doing various other types of writing online for quite a few years now, but I just didn’t know what I wanted to do first. Then I found someone who was offering a whole bunch of lenses for sale. She had a bunch of lenses, all in niches that I was interested in, and I could buy them all for a pretty reasonable price. There really wasn’t much there in the way of actual original content on most of them, but they were started, they were established with decent rank and some backlinks, so I decided to buy them. Once I got them, and was able to get in there and play around and actually see how the lenses go together, I was kinda regretting my decision, because most of them were pretty barebones, and I realized that the stuff that was there I could have done myself pretty easily. But, at the time I didn’t know, and the more I think about it, the more I think I made the right decision, because it got me off the fence and made me start doing something. I did probably pay a little more than I should have for them, but not so much that I feel I got ripped off.
Two of them, actually, were pretty fleshed out, and 1 of those is making me sales. The time I saved in being able to just jump in with a few well-done lenses and a group of niche lenses all tied together and backlinked with some rank was worth what I paid. Could I have done it myself if I wanted to put the time and effort in? yeah, sure..easily..but buying them all put together, interlinked, and established with backlinks in place was a lot easier.
So, I guess the issue is, are the lenses you’re purchasing worth what you’re paying for the amount of work that went in to them…or the amount of time you’d be saving by not having to do it from scratch? How much effort and time would you have to put in to be able to get them to the point they are at on your own? Do they have backlinks and a decent lens rank? are they getting traffic? are they already making sales? Is the url well thought out and targeted to the keywords you’re aiming for?
A few days ago, for example, I just happened to be in the SquidU Forums and someone was selling a few lenses, and the price was definitely right. One of them caught my fancy, it fit with some of my other lenses I already owned, and it had a bunch of likes and some backlinks already. Having built a couple very similar lenses myself, I know what kind of time likely went in to gathering the information and setting it up, so I know I more than got my money’s worth for it! Time is money, after all, and creating a quality lens can take a whole day..maybe even a few days depending on the topic. If you can spend $4 or $5 ..or even $10..to get a good, quality, well-done lens by someone experienced in making them and already getting traffic and backlinked, it’s well worth scooping it up.
I have, on the other hand, seen some people who are selling lenses for $30, $40..even $100! Unless a lens is already ranking at or near #1 in Google, has decent traffic, backlinks, and is already bringing in steady sales, I would never pay that much for a lens. Whatever they did, you can do the same thing on your own with a little effort. To be fair, making lenses is time-consuming, and you are buying something with the potential to make you money in the future, so I’m not saying that they didn’t put the time and effort into the lens to make charging that kind of money reasonable, I’m just saying that you can do it yourself if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, so why pay that kind of money without some reasonable expectation and proof that you’ll likely earn that money back.
If you’re not sure if you should buy one, you can check the estimated value of the lens by entering the lens url in the SquidUtils valuation estimator.
Bottom line: If you can do it yourself and do it for free, that’s usually the best thing to do. But if you can buy an established lens/lenses, the price is right, and they fit with your areas of interest and with other lenses you either already own or are planning to build, go ahead and buy them. You can always resell them in the future if you decide to change your focus or just change your mind.
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