Archive for the ‘How to Use Squidoo’ Category

Jonathan Leger posted this post about his recent experience on Squidoo.

One of my list saw the post and wanted my thoughts on it, so I thought I’d post it here.

1.) Jonathan’s golf lens is okay - needs more content, but okay nonetheless. I’m a golfer and a writer and a Squidooer, so trust me on that

2.) I wouldn’t pay for traffic to a Squidoo lens - that defeats the whole purpose of using web 2.0 FREE traffic strategies - especially the untargeted Trafficzap traffic he sent. Why pay for that? I don’t get it I can understand the PPC where you bid on keywords and phrases, but I still wouldn’t do that personally.

3.) He’s right about it not mattering whether or not you rank well on Squidoo (in your category or otherwise). I used to think it did. When I first joined - I thought all that mattered was being #1. Now I know otherwise. I learned that all that matters is how well it does in Google, which is the whole purpose. I gave up worrying about #1 or top 100 a long time ago now.

The thing is, how many real golfers are you going to have within Squidoo itself? The ones who ARE there are people with golf lenses of their own - so why would they click through on your links? You’re the competition.

The key to making a Squidoo lens work is to get it found organically within Google. In fact, I sold 4 golf lenses that I had created to someone because I wasn’t into the niche right now. I was making ClickBank sales, too. I created the lenses and they all had awesome content that was picked up by Google. The people who found my lens were looking for good, valuable free content by conducting a Google search.

When they landed on my lens, they got a taste of at least 3 articles that were helpful. Because they were valuable, and not 150-200 word blurbs like some of the modules on Jonathan’s lens, the reader developed trust with me - and possibly took my recommendations, feeling comfortable enough to click my affiliate links and buy.

Here’s my critique of Jonathan’s golf lens and why it didn’t live up to his expectations:

1.) His introduction is weak. The reader doesn’t care that you like to play golf - they want to know how the lens will help THEM (that’s why they came to “FREE Golfing Tips” - the URL of the lens). In the introduction, he tells them in the second point to go buy a guide to learn more. How about giving them some FREE golfing tips first?

2.) The video is good - but disable the description so that your readers don’t see that competing URL and replace your lens URL with your competition in their browser.

3.) 3rd module - asks for a charity contribution. I’m all for charity, but hey - what about those FREE golf tips I was hoping to see? I might click out by now - so far, all I’ve seen as far as free golf tips is a video from someone else whose URL I can see.

4.) 4th module - talks about his new “pricey” golf clubs. It’s not a FREE golf tip, and in fact, talks about something possibly out of my budget - but okay, it’s golf related.

5.) 5th module - still trying to sell me something from Amazon. (”So you say you have some FREE golf tips on here???”)

6.) 6th module - Funny Golf Quotes. Okay…now I’m getting annoyed if yours is the URL I clicked through to - even if you DID manage to get me from an organic search engine result.

7.) 7th module - more selling to me. No FREE golf tips

8.) 8th module - EUREKA! We hit paydirt - I got a FREE golf tip on not stressing. Oh wait a minute - no such luck - he’s just telling me to watch someone else’s video on it. No free golf tip yet

9.) 9th module - more selling - this time from Callaway.

10.) 10th module - AHA! A real, genuine, FREE golf tip. It ends with a link - but it’s still a tidbit of good information. More, please!!

11.) 11th module - a golf news feed.

12.) 12th module - links to other golf sites

13.) 13th module - guestbook

14.) 14th module - blog feed for other blogs.

Jonathan, your direction is all wrong. Don’t get me wrong - you did 99% better than most people who give Squidoo a shot. It’s a good-looking lens and I know you meant well when you added all of that content - but do you see now how distorted it is? Even if there were 1,000 golfers within Squidoo - your lens doesn’t do what it says it’ll do - provide FREE golf tips. The title even says Great Golf Tips. They’re not. You’re just trying to herd the herd on to something else.

Web 2.0 and socialization is all about being a good peer. Providing useful content.

This critique is in NO way meant to disparage Jonathan or his attempts. I just wanted to clarify because this will help people focus on their own direction for their lenses. Jonathan’s doing great - he just needs some guidance in this area. In fact - look at what we’re doing here: Jonathan posts a blog about his experience, a reader of mine reads his blog and emails me about it. I then post in my blog about a possible solution or reason, and everyone involved can comment on it!

This is web 2.0 at its finest.
tiff

Hi Lensmasters!

I was interviewed about Squidoo this week by Mike Antoni, who has a neat blogging product coming out soon, which I’ll tell you about after I get to review it in full (what I’ve seen so far is great).

He graciously recorded the interview and live Q&A session with his list afterwards and told me I could share it with my own list.

You can download the file here:

http://www.tiffanydow.com/gifts/tiffany.zip

Unzip it and then listen to the audio inside the unzipped file. I hope everyone has a great weekend coming up – I have the mother-in-law flying in (I think she’s great), so I’m hoping my 3 kiddos get well TODAY!

Enjoy!

Tiff
PS - I’ll update later about the Ever Challenge. With the kids sick, it’s been hectic around here.

Hey everyone!

I have been so swamped lately that I’ve had a hard time keeping up with all of the changes, but I wanted to pop in and post about something you may find useful. If you head over to SquidUtils, you’ll find what another lensmaster has created to help us maximize our revenue through Squidoo.

One thing I’m greatly impressed by is the Amazon Feed. If you log into SquidUtils and click on the left sidebar where it says Amazon feeds, you can create image-links for Amazon products with your own Associates ID embedded in them. This is separate from an Amazon module, where you’re splitting the revenue via Squidoo’s co-op.

I like to use a combination of the two - sometimes an Amazon module is much easier than creating a feed. But this way, instead of having to use text links, you can also see the products and the little Buy Now buttons. Through our new Build My Lens service, I just finished my portion of the work on a client’s lens where I used this feature, so if you want to see it in action, go to http://www.squidoo.com/cheaphomegym and scroll down to the dumbbells module.

SquidUtils also has other neat tools you can use. From your dashboard, you can see all of your lenses and groups, edit your lens with the aid of a toolbar, access stats for lenses and groups, get links to your lens in HTML or BBCode, see the PageRank of your lenses, and have access to instant social bookmarking.

You can also create RSS feeds of all of your lenses, so in addition to using the Featured Lens modules if you’re trying to cross-promote your lenses, you can plop an RSS feed near the bottom of your lens that lists every one of your lenses. I’ve done this on one of my lenses, as a test, but now I have over 50, so I forgot which one I used it on. LOL. I will have to revisit them and check them out.

Squidoo just keeps getting better and better, but the great thing is how people like Fluffanutta (I think that’s his username) put together whole sites dedicated to assisting lensmasters with their creation and management. It’s the best community on the ‘net bar none, in my opinion.
Tiff

Want to add audio to your Squidoo lens like I did with my welcome message on Information Entrepreneur?
Watch how I do it and then copy the code I mention below the video…

Here is the code for the FrontPage file (replace the {} with <>:
{object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0″ width=”200″ height=”73″}
{param name=”movie” value=”http://www.tiffanydow.com/Audio/infoentlensswf.swf”}
{param name=”quality” value=”high”}
{embed src=”http://www.tiffanydow.com/Audio/infoentlensswf.swf” quality=”high” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”width=”200″ height=”73″}{/embed}
{/object}

This is the URL to the site that generates the iFrame code for you:
http://www.htmlbasix.com/iframe.shtml

Do you write articles and submit them to Ezine Articles for increased exposure of your hyperlinks? You can take your RSS feed from your author page and put it in a Squidoo lens for extra coverage to your EZA contributions. Watch the video to learn how:

Watch as I show you how to use affiliate links in various modules to make the most profits from your lens.