The New Squidoo Dashboard – Love It or Hate It?

Me personally, I kinda like it! They’re trying to give us more flexibility in managing our lenses, which is good when you like to have task lists and you have a ton of lenses like I do spread out across multiple accounts.

When you log into your lensmaster account, you’ll see is your daily digest. It’s a quick snapshot of your lens health – what’s thriving, what’s sinking. It’ll tell you how many lenses you have and what their visitor count totals were.

On the left sidebar, you’ll see certain lens lists – you can click to see what needs editing, what lenses are earning the most co-op money (or the least), and you can click through on the label lists.

See now, you can attach labels to your lenses. I love this feature! So I might have a label that says, “IM lenses” for all my Internet marketing lenses or “Charity lenses” for my missing children’s lenses, and so on. I’ve been waiting for this and SquidStaff delivered (as always). Lenses can be labeled with more than one label, by the way.

The second tab at the top of the page brings you back to more of what you’re used to – the list of all of your lenses, complete with the rank, ratings, earnings, etc.

Then you can click on the stats tab to see stats (but why not just click through from you’re my Lenses list)?

“My comments” is where comments go before you approve them if you have your guestbook set up that way. And like My Groups, My Profile, and My Favorites – they’re all the same as they used to be for the most part.

The big changes I see (that I like) are the daily digest and ability to label and categorize your lenses to help you better manage them.

So go test it out – it’s a great way to stay on top of your lens management!
Tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 31st, 2008 with no comments.
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Let’s Do a Module Breakdown… The Write/Text Module

Squidoo’s always changing things up module-wise. But let’s talk about each module and see how I feel you can maximize your use of them when it comes to marketing and making money online.

The Write/Text module is of course, a staple for every lens (or it oughta be). You have one built into your lens in the form of an introduction module, but you need to add more (I never add less than 2 more along with other modules before I publish).

Here’s an example of a Text/Write module:

If you’re only going to use the single, built in image option, then keep your module short - like the one above. If it goes any longer, upload an image to your server and use HTML code to insert a left-aligned image halfway down the content. You’ll notice in the above image, I’ve included the standard photo option, but I also have bolded text and hyperlinked text (to a ClickBank product). I used basic HTML code to do that as well.

What else can you do with a Text/Write module?

You can use the space to hyperlink an image of your opt in box to your landing or squeeze page. I do this on my lens at Information Entrepreneur. We used to be able to have iFrame in there to actually capture the name and email addresses, but it doesn’t work like that anymore.

Here are the codes you can use in your Text/Write modules (make sure you change the brackets [] to arrows <> in all of these examples):

To hyperlink text to a website: [a href="http://www.yourdomain.com" target="_blank"]Text you want hyperlinked[/a]

To hyperlink an image (like an opt in box): [a href="http://www.yourdomain.com"][img src="http://www.URLofImage.JPG" alt="keyword" align="right" hspace="5" /][/a] - Now on this one, the alt tag can be whatever keyword the image represents (or the niche). You can change the alignment to left if you want it on the left side of the Text module. And you can play with the hspace until it’s as big or small as you want it - this is the space between the picture and the text that wraps around it.

Other codes you need to know: [b]bold[/] or [i]italics[/] or [u]underline[/u]

Take time making your text module attractive and not so monotonous. Break it up with links, images, and fonts that keep the flow of reading moving.

Enjoy!
Tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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2 New Lenses for Sale!

I got bogged down in projects and didn’t flip anymore lenses until today.

I read this huge article in our local paper about gas savings and then started doing some research and found that it gets an enormous number of searches each month! Then I go into the Warrior Forum and see marketers talking about it being the next big niche (and this is why there are so many products sprouting up on ClickBank for it now).

So I made two lenses to sell for $100 a pop:

1.) http://www.squidoo.com/gasmileagedevice - That last link on the
page promotes that product on ClickBank that’s doing amazingly well!

2.) http://www.squidoo.com/waystosaveongas - The first link is for
that same CB product.

I’m also considering creating an eBook of my own for this niche - especially since gas prices are going nowhere but up!
tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 27th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Lens Flipping and Uncategorized.

Two Links You Need to Check Out:

Big things on the horizon!

First, Lewis Smile and I launched a new blog for social marketing here: http://www.hubpagespro.com/blog/ so go check that out and see what you’ll learn.

Second, you’ve gotta see THIS: http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=245958

This is something new and WOWable. I can’t take credit - I just did the writing. Lewis is the brains behind the beast.
Tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 20th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Article marketing and Uncategorized.

What’s a Feeder Lens?

Sometimes I talk about feeder lenses when making your Squidoo account shine. But some people don’t understand what this means, so I thought I’d share my inner mind map.

Whenever I decide on a niche to tap on Squidoo, I start with a broad topic. Like weddings. We’ll use that as an example. You’ll begin by brainstorming a list of various wedding sub-topics. So what could go into here?

Wedding flowers
Wedding dresses
Wedding favors
Wedding destinations

You get the picture. After I have my list of sub-topics, I break those down even more. Let’s use “Wedding destinations” as our break-down sample:

Island weddings
Backyard weddings
Wedding chapels
Hawaiian weddings, and so on…

Keep breaking each one down until you have a good outline of every topic that will help you dominate your niche. The list directly above that starts with Island weddings will be your feeder lenses that feel into the Wedding Destinations lens. The list that starts with Wedding flowers will feed into the lens about weddings in general.

All of your feeder lenses cross-promote one another. It creates a web of good information for you to provide to your viewers. Be as comprehensive as possible and with every broken down topic, get narrow and specific so that it will help you rank well in the search engines.

You can do this with any niche. Make sure you use keyword tools like WordTracker to help you think of things other people have thought of that you didn’t!
Tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 18th, 2008 with no comments.
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Do You Realize How Many Co-Brands Squidoo Now Has?

Okay, I haven’t kept up lately as much as I should have because Squidoo’s spinning out in all directions. I was ghostwriting a Squidoo course for my soon-to-be competitor (funny, isn’t it?) and I had to include a lesson on Squidoo co-brands and the list wouldn’t end! A simple 5-page lesson grew into a monster 10-page lesson.

Here are the current co-brands you may want to check out:

SquidoWho - Great for branding your name or staking claim to a guru’s name so you can be an affiliate.

SquidVids - Perfect for you viral video marketers.

MonkeyBrain - Hey we did a contest on this one! Host debates (create a viral buzz) using this co-brand.

SquidBoo - a co-brand dear to my heart. My little Infant Baby Snail lens has earned me a lot of money all through the year, go figure - who’s buying costumes all through the year?

Ever - Another co-brand we had a contest about! Ever is where you pick a superlative, tack on a keyword and you’re off! Like Best.Marketer.Ever.com

InkCity - Only good if you’re zeroing in on that hot tattoo niche.

SquidLit - Great for promoting books. Here’s a good strategy - host a poor review of a competitor who has a tangible book to promote your eBook - but only if their book really IS poor, mind you. OR, give a regular review, but also promote your own eBook (or someone else’s as an affiliate) alongside theirs.

SquidKnol - I heard through the Grapevine that this is a spoof for Google Knol, but who knows. Could have great potential if they ever decided to go through with it - it would be a place to build your expertise.

SquidBids - for all you eBay marketers

SquidFlix - for movies

SquidZippers - for realtors, insurance agents, and anyone who wants to “be the mayor of their zip code online.”

PhotoPhights - Host Flickr Fights, but make sure your images are tagged so you attract your prospects to your lens!

People Who Matter - Not sure how this is different from SquidWho, except for the fact it doesn’t look as good.

CafePress on Squidoo - Again, not sure why they have their own co-brand. Just make a lens with CafePress on it and you’re good to go!

eBayers on Squidoo - Another one - why have this when you have SquidBids?

Anyway, pick and choose among what you need. Some I love and some I think are irrelevant.
Tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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Social Networking Becoming Hotter Than Porn!

That’s right. The increasing number of web users are tuning into various niche-relevant social networks instead of using Google to tap into dirty pages on the ‘net.

But there’s a little catch.

While social networking site traffic is on the rise, a portion of those members are using the social networks for the sexual purposes or online match-making (not the same thing, but you know what I mean).

The good news is, social networks are being harnessed by everyone – from celebrities to politicians, from the ‘tween to the Baby Boomer. Even anti-social people are creating social networks about how much they hate social networking!

There’s a Delete Your MySpace Account network, an Enemybook (anti-friends) site, and more. You can even rent a friend from FakeYourSpace.com if you’re hard up to build a list of contacts in the web 2.0 arena.

Monks are using YouTube to recruit other monks.

Musicians are finding backup singers on social networks.

If you’re not on or creating a social network, you’re out of the loop.

Right now I use Ning for my Building an eBook Empire community (it’s closed to buyers only, sorry).

I use Squidoo for social marketing and as my soapbox for issues I find important.

I use Hub Pages for the same thing.

Which social networks do you see pulling you in or do you wish they had?

Tiff

Written by tiffadmin on May 12th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Web 2.0 in General.