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ChouDoufu Gets Fresh with Food and Niche Topics

This week, stay-at-home-dad and SquidU Forum regular Chou Doufu shares the secrets of how he creates lenses and what about lensmastery really matters.

Squidoo: What compelled you to try Squidoo?

ChouDoufu: I quit my job to become a full-time dad and husband. I went from working 80-90 hours a week to not working at all (between diaper changes that is). I had a number of ideas floating about that I thought other people would find helpful and I finally had time to write them down. But as I was on a fixed income, I didn't want to spend money hosting a large number of unrelated Web pages. At the same time, I didn't want to bother making the effort if no one would find and benefit from my work.

I looked into some wiki farms and various other Web services. I decided to go with Squidoo because it is easy to use, it has a thriving and growing community of users (who by the way, are a friendly, helpful, and fun group of folks), and it is search-engine friendly. Also, it doesn't hurt that you can make some coin for your efforts.

Squidoo: Your lenses cover many very unique topics. How do you decide what to create lenses on?

ChouDoufu: Initially my lenses were born of frustration. Many of my lenses are a record of how I solved a problem for which there isn't an easily-discovered, comprehensive resource. Squidoo provides great tools for putting together instructions, bookmarks, and product recommendations that can save people hours--even days--of frustration. Two examples are: (1) my lens on applying for Taiwanese residency through marriage and (2) my lens on how to synchronize your cell phone with Google.

Soon, however, I started to focus more on sharing my hobbies and interests. I enjoy introducing people to something they may not have tried before. My lens on Taiwanese Hotpot is an example. I also like to provide a fresh viewpoint on what might seem like an overdone topic. My Taiwan Tea lens, for example, takes a more casual and irreverent approach to the gongfu method of preparing tea.

Any topic or problem that I've spent a lot of time researching is a potential lens.

Squidoo: Of the lenses you have, which of these are "spin offs" of previously existing websites? How has your traffic or income been positively affected on theses sites with the addition of Squidoo lenses?

ChouDoufu: All of my lenses are on topics I'd never create a Web site for. Squidoo provides a forum for me to write about very specific topics that I would not otherwise publish. That said, I'm beginning to incorporate Squidoo into my on-line marketing for some small-business owners I'm helping out. One in particular has no Web presence whatsoever. For him, Squidoo is the starting point—the hub around which I will build a Web site, blog, and eBay/Amazon/Café Press store fronts. Squidoo is a great way to introduce yourself, you products, your services, and your knowledge to a large audience.

Moreover, Squidoo makes it easy for visitors to purchase a variety of products without needing to jump around various Web sites. It alleviates the need to spend a lot of money and time setting up and maintaining everything on your own Web site. It's a goldmine for small businesses with limited (or no) advertising budgets.

Squidoo: What's your single favorite thing about Squidoo?

ChouDoufu: The logo. I think it would make a great tattoo.

(My other "single favorite" thing about Squidoo is the ability to quickly set up a site that aggregates a large number of resources that people will actually find in Internet searches.)

Squidoo: What one piece of advice would you give to prospective lens masters?

ChouDoufu: Mind your business and the rankings will follow or won't matter. Too many lensmasters monitor their lens's rankings and visitor counts like a day trader watches stock valuations. Rankings can fluctuate wildly and as the number of lenses continues to increase, it is becoming more difficult to stay on top. Eventually, only the most faddish and timely lenses can hope to break into the top 100 (or top 1000, for that matter). Timing your lenses to dovetail with new fads will be as difficult as timing the market. But a quality lens with a regular stream of visitors, who interact with and purchase items from it, can still do quite well, even without an ego-gratifying ranking.

Learn more about Taiwanese Hot Pot, GooSync, and Squidoo inspired words with ChouDoufu: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/choudoufu/