Growing a Green Niche
Monday, June 29th, 2009If you’ve seen the Green Living Top 100 lately, you’ll notice it’s been dominated by a few radical recyclers. This didn’t happen by accident. In fact, some of our greenest lensmasters have built their reputation not only on their ability to share the best renewable ideas, but also their ability to develop colorful, exciting, engaging lenses that are attracting the attention of reusers far and wide.
We asked two of the most prolific lensmasters for this niche, TheGreenerMe and a_willow, “What does it take to build a green lens?”
Squidoo: How did you pick your top Green Living lens topics?
TheGreenerMe: I chose the topics because I was curious to find answers to questions that I had of my own. I was asking myself questions like “What do you do with this?,” “How can you recycle this?,” “How can we prevent this from being thrown away?” I wasn’t sure if the lenses would be popular, but I knew they’d be useful.
a_willow: Well, since I started, I’ve published 20 green lenses and have 6 more in WIP. It wasn’t really intended. Inspiration came from looking for solutions to reduce amount of trash we make in our house. And then I stumbled upon the great book Extraordinary Uses For Ordinary Things containing so many tips for both reusing great number of household items and to diverse its purpose. And I thought, “Wow, have to share this!” Squidoo is perfect for sharing this kind of stuff! The second relevant thing for me was the fact that my husband is a teacher and he’s always looking for ideas for art class projects with his kids. With recession on our doorstep and less money in our pockets, the idea of compiling craft projects from reused items was born, and my creative project niche is the final result. For now, I’ve launched seven lenses connected to crafts for holidays and I’m planning to make six more to have all the major holidays covered.
Squidoo: How did you decide what readers should know about each topic?
a_willow: Since these are all lenses with tips and tricks (how to reuse lenses) and links for projects (creative project lenses) this decision wasn’t really hard - recipe is simple: ‘The more, the merrier!’. So I add to these lenses everything I can find or think of. I wasn’t thinking: ‘No, this is stupid! I’ll drop it!’. For all I know, what looks unusable to me, could be a problem solution or brilliant idea for someone else!
TheGreenerMe: I thought about what I was throwing away in my personal life and knew everyone else must be throwing these things away as well, so I knew readers would identify with the items in the lens. I’ve been able to cut my trash in 1/2 by following the guidelines and tips presented in the lenses.
Squidoo: Green living is obviously important to you! Your passion is obvious by the quality of your lens. How is passion for a topic related to making a great lens?
TheGreenerMe: Passion has been behind my best lenses! If I weren’t passionate about my topics, the lenses would’ve been cold and impersonal. I wasn’t trying to pass off a bunch of Clickbank ebooks, I was genuinely trying to pass along information to anyone that was willing to listen. I genuinely look forward to getting that information out there, and I think that makes a big difference.
a_willow: I don’t think it has so much to do with my passion for green living. More it has to do with desire to help others by sharing things that might be of help to environment but also money savers. For building part and why I’m good at it, my thoughts are: I was raised to do everything the best I could and push my limits each step of the way. So, passion is less relevant than discipline, willingness and persistence. People who only have passion burn out too fast too often! They don’t have ability to bring things to conclusion.
Squidoo: No matter what lensmasters are interested in, they have the potential to make superstar lenses. What are three quick tips you have for lensmasters?
a_willow: First would be: Never give up! What ever you do, if you hit the wall, look for a hole to crawl through. Every problem has a solution and sometimes you need to step back and things will be much clearer.
Second is: Never ever don’t be afraid to ask for help! Neither me or anyone else can help you if you don’t say what bugs you!
Third: Learn to create lenses which are outstanding and they will motivate others to do promotion for you!
TheGreenerMe: 1. Choose a niche that you know something about and continue to write. It may not be your first lens or first twenty lenses that are successful, but your 50th or 60th lens. By the time you have your first superstar lens, you’ll have a large back catalog of work for your readers to check out. If you have the material for them to read on the same niche, chances are you’ll get some readers interested in those similar topics. When you’ve found something that works, build on the success of that topic and make more lenses on that specific topic.
2. I always link lenses together with the Featured Lenses module. This seems to matter the most in terms of promotion. If you can tell readers why those lenses are similar and why they should visit them, you will encourage people to visit even more (right inside the featured lens module).
3. Pick topics that no one else is writing about, or at least do it in such an original way that isn’t presented anywhere else. Then, learn as much as you can about that topic. “Make money online” and those types of topics are so commonplace that they won’t really create a long lasting following behind you that’s going to be worth your time, and you probably won’t enjoy writing about it either.
There you have it!
Sharing the message about recycling may not be your thing, but you can use these tips to develop any niche. Using Squidoo to promote your passion not only helps the world stay green, it can help you generate some green, for your wallet or charity. Where else can you get paid for talking about toilet paper tubes!
Happy lensmaking!
~Kimberly Dawn Wells
YOUR Community & Charity Organizer
