Adventures In Squidoo Land

Is "Squidoo" A Dirty Word?

2008-12-16T18:51:00.002-07:00

I've noticed a somewhat disturbing trend lately. Well, to be honest I'm sure it goes all the way back to the notorious "Squidoo Slap" of 2007, but it seems to be reaching a critical mass in the past few weeks.

IF you know what Squidoo is you fall in to one of 3 categories:

1) The conscientious, honest, and hardworking lensmasters. Mainly, folks who hang out at SquidU, put lots of effort in to making great lenses, who care about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

2) The hard-core SEO/marketers/make money online NOW types. These are the bajillion bloggers and gurus preaching that everyone should make lenses to promote their blogs/websites/pyramid schemes/ponzi schemes/get rich quick schemes/e-books/affiliate programs/ways to make money online scams. Just a quick browse of Google will bring up DOZENS of "guru" sites that promote some pretty low-brow and even downright silly ways to use Squidoo. Everything from spamming guestbooks (and yes, I have to delete at least 10 or more comments from my own lenses every.single.day from these types) to (I'm not making this up) one self-proclaimed expert who preaches that everyone should ONLY make one lens per lensmaster account to make the most money. Seriously?

3) Everyone else on the planet who honestly still (rightly or not) believes that essentially Squidoo is a spam-machine. And that's it. Only recently have I seen Squidoo compared to less-than-kosher places like Yuwie and ASD (the old Ad Cash Daily scam). Now Mixx has banned lenses from being submitted and even my old standby of forum siggies with lens URL's has become suspect. The reigning opinion is not a nice reflection on Squidoo.

Seriously, what the heck? Even an innocent post about the Twitter Charity Drive has been frowned upon on a forum in which I am VERY established on (and rarely do I even mention Squidoo at all there, and not even anything since August). The problem? Not the charity part. Not the Twitter part. It was the fact that the URL for the contest was from Squidoo and they don't appreciate "those types of spam links". Um, what?

I asked questions. I poked around. My findings? Regardless of what your lens is about, the prevailing opinions are that 1) Squidoo "clicks" pay us cash (???) so if we put links in our siggies we're "tricking" folks in to giving us money, 2) Since lenses are "primarily" used for revenue generation, any promotion we do is considered advertising for personal financial gains, 3) that "promoting" for a charity has less-than-savory connotations - that is, the charity makes a few pennies, but we (as lensmasters) make more and therefore only use the charities as a "front" to trick more people in to our evil plans to take over the universe apparently (insert the eyeroll here).

So, my question is this - how in the world do we change the tides of opinion? I actually read a blog post (from a highly respected blog) regarding social bookmarking in general today during my reasearch that stated "if you see a Squidoo link, just skip it - don't give them any votes". I also read a blurb stating "unfortunately, Digg still allows submissions from Squidoo, but we hope that will change in the future".

I have explained Squidoo over and over and over to people. I've been blue in the face, but I must admit, today my spirit has been crushed. Mentioning the word Squidoo in conversation is apparently akin to mentioning Amway. I want to scream.

LOTD and Affiliate Chat

2008-12-08T10:11:00.003-07:00

WOW! My Chanukah for Kids lens got Lens of The Day on Squidoo last week - http://www.squidoo.com/chanukah-toys

That was quite a nice surprise! Even nicer since I only noticed when I checked my e-mail and saw dozens of "You've got comments" notices from Squidoo and thought "Um...wut?". How cool it was that the very first comment that I saw was from my dear pal Willow!

And speaking of friends, I'm even happier about LOTD on this particular lens since a BIG issue I had last year, apart from finding cool *free* stuff for my kiddos to do, was finding a nice selection of Kosher treats and sweets to send off to my wonderful friend Libby in England. Last years selection in the brick-and-mortar stores around here was pretty weak so I was most pleased to find an affiliate partership with AviGlat Kosher Grocers! Shop At AviGlatt.com

Speaking of Sales...

2008-11-19T10:26:00.002-07:00

One of my affiliate network stores is having an INSANE clearance sale right now!

Miss Spider girls shorts and t's outfits in 2T, 4T or 5T for 99 cents!! I put the link and pic at the very bottom of my Miss Spider lens.

Atomic Betty skirt and shirt sets for 99 cents, ToddWorld 10 inch plush toys for 99 cents, and more - 28 inch Atomic Betty cuddle pillows, collapsable character laundry hampers, toys, clothes - everything all crazy-low prices. You can find some great (cheap) stocking stuffers for kids too.

I ordered a giant cuddle pillow , a few outfits for my 2 youngest girls, shirts for my son, nephew, and oldest daughter, and a few "extras" for Christmas!

Click here to start shopping now before they're all gone!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

2008-11-18T13:11:00.003-07:00

US Lensmasters - don't forget about Black Fiday and Cyber Monday sales!! I'm going through today and revamping a few of my lenses that could benefit from the sales crush. Although I didn't have any lenses on Squidoo last year, I was up at 2 AM to take advantage of A LOT of online deals before heading out to shop with my husband at 5 AM (we tag-teamed). Most of the online stores that I shopped with had their best sales on Black Friday and not Cyber Monday. It seems that Friday is for sales and Monday more for people looking for deals that they couldn't find or missed out on Friday. Just my little consumer observation.

Today I've completely re-done my tarts lens. Most of the seller links aren't affiliates, they're just places that I've purchased from or that other people have recommended. So, today I sent out an e-mail to all of the sellers listed on the lens and offered to list their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales for them.

OK, mainly so *I* get advance notice because I need to SHOP too, but also to promote my lens, expose more eyeballs to the affiliate items I have listed, and to just help out some small, independent e-tailers.

AND (kind of off topic) but, if you check out my tarts lens, take a peek at the awesome hand made clay burner I found on Amazon!!! It's so cool - I'm buying one for myself. LOVE IT!!

As you may know, Amazon usually runs some great sales too, so it certainly wouldn't hurt to let your readers know that the Amazon prices are live feeds so they're getting the best deal at the moment.

Meet The Squidlets - How A Six-Year-Old Builds A Lens

2008-11-15T17:25:00.007-07:00

I mention my children so often in nearly everything I publish, so it's about time for some introductions I think!

My middle daughter just turned 6 last week. She and I have been having some fun working on a couple of new lenses which is quite a feat when you can't read very well yet! Her latest is Wubbzy Toys.

We start with my lens template and I go down the list of what's there and she decides what to keep and what to delete. I used another of my lenses to show her what the different Amazon modules look like and she decided what she wanted. After I added in the Amazon Spotlight modules for her, we went to Amazon and I told her the letters to spell "Wubbzy" and she hunted out the letters on the keyboard. Scrolling through to find her favorites was easy, then she just had to learn how to highlight the right codes to cut and paste in to the Amazon modules on the lens.

We used a lot of the Big Picture Text modules and she was able to right-click and save the pictures then hunt for them to load on to the lens. We cut-and-pasted the product descriptions from Amazon since that was the easiest for her to do (and 6-year-olds aren't the best with sentence structure anyway).

We used the same links for Cafe Press as we already had on our main Wubbzy fan page (and after seeing the store over there she decided that the magnets were pretty cool too). She picked out all of the Amazon merchandise to feature and her "favorite" is the one she put right on top. So, any revenue this lens makes she's going to use to buy it - Soapity Suds Wubbzy. Apparently the idea of giving Wubbzy a shampoo wig is just too full of win to pass up!!! She also drew a lovely picture of Wubbzy, Widget, Walden, and Daizy to add to the page but my scanner is on the fritz. We tried to take a photo of it, but that didn't work too well.

With her new skills she helped me spiff up Yo Gabba Gabba Toys (and I know the keychain pic looks a bit wonky, but she INSISTED that it looked beautiful that way), and Charlie and Lola Toys (but she got bored after picking out everything so Mommy had to do most of the formatting). I LOVE the little avatar pic she chose for it, though:

Good Advice

2008-11-13T08:38:00.002-07:00

I read a great blog post from an online pal today. It's definately worth a read for folks just starting out or as a reminder even if you've been plugging away online for a while. Just great, practical, sound advice. It doesn't cost a penny and it works for everyone on any platform - blogs, websites, squidoo, hubpages, you name it.

"This is what every one is looking for, right? The real hidden secrets of online money making industry. I will keep things very simple and straight to the point. If you can get the following simple things right, Nobody in this world can stop you from making money. If somebody tries , you can laugh all the way to the bank."

Read the rest here: Antharjalaya.com

The Adwords Experiment - What Was I Thinking??

2008-11-10T09:44:00.002-07:00

I often find myself reminding my kiddos that yes, sometimes we suffer in order to learn a lesson. Sometimes lessons hurt. Sometimes they just cost you money.

Even though it's only been 4 days so far, I know a bad thing when I see it and am cutting off my Adwords campaign - sort of. I realize that only a few days is not a good indicator of results, but the pricey clicks are just ridiculous. I've adjusted my settings for the maximum bid of 15 cents. Thanks for the "budget maximizing, Google, but no thanks. So far, I've had 7,833 impressions. 169 of those were as "sponsored results" on searches from 10 keyword phrases and 7,644 were on Google partner sites. Out of those impressions I've gotten 12 clicks on 6 of the keyword phrases and 3 clicks from partner websites.

Those 15 clicks cost me $8.30.

I earned zero in sales and only 3 clickouts from my lens.

I certainly wasn't expecting miracles or anything, but those are some pretty pricey clicks I think! I'll let the campaign run with the 15 cent per click max for a few days to see how it goes, but I really don't think I'll see any improvement in performance or click-throughs. I could be wrong, but that $8.30 could have been better spent. How? I'm not sure, but at least the kiddos and I could have had ice cream for that!

Here's a screen shot from yesterday (second row from the bottom is parter website impressions and clicks):

The Adwords Experiment

2008-11-10T09:09:00.004-07:00

I've had an Adsense account for some time now for my various online sites but I never really paid too much attention to how the scheme worked from the other side (the people who paid to have their ads listed via Adwords). Searching on various blog posts and forums for opinion on Squidoo lenses and Adword campaigns came up with surprisingly little so, in the interest of learning, I decided to do a little experimental campaign to familiarize myself with how the process worked and see what the results would be.

For my campaign I chose an already established lens with a fair amount of traffic and one which had already received a few sales. Signing up for an Adwords account was very easy and the step-by-step process was relatively easy to understand. Google has the basics set up pretty well. I went for the basic (free) account which Google calls the "Starter Edition". The first steps were very enlightening - you can search for related "key words" which your page is targeting. Each search brings up a list of closely related search terms in order of how often they're entered in to Google. Each term also carries a starting "bid" for the term - all of the terms I pulled up varied in price from 15 cents to over 6 dollars. Needless to say, I only clicked on terms with the 15 cent bids. It was a pleasant surprise to me to see a lot of "hot" keyword phrases with the low bids. Another benefit was being able to use the search function to zoom in on keywords and tags which were already on my lens and see what related search terms were coming up. I know that there are many services where you can view Google search popularity, but the layout via Adwords was very easy to understand.

The search also allowed me to see which keywords I was using on the lens that needed to be emphasized more - many "throw away" tags that I included actually turned out to be more popular than I had realized. I was also able to get a better understanding of regional language differences - although I only targeted U.S. searches, there is quite a difference in search terminology in different areas (think of the classic difference between soda and pop and coke).

It took me just over an hour to research and choose all of my key search terms and then whittle down my list to 19 2 and 3 word phrases. Adwords recommends that a campaign have under 20 targeted search phrases for maximum effectiveness. I also had to go back and double check that none of my chosen terms violated any of my affiliate agreements and then set my budget. Adwords allows you to set any monthly budget that you wish, but you will get several *warnings* that your campaign won't be effective if you choose an amount less than $50.

Next, I had to enter my credit card information for billing. You can choose to either be charged ahead of time (the entire budget at once) or "pay as you go" with charges made only in increments as clicks are registered.

Writing the Ad copy was challenging for me. The Starter Edition gives you 4 lines of text - A title, 2 lines of 35 character text, and the URL.

The biggest surprise comes when you hit enter and the campaign goes live. Remember the 15 cent keyphrases? Well, those are indeed the "starting bids", however, Google will kindly "maximize" your exposure based upon your budget. Meaning, just because you click on a 15 cent keyword doesn't mean that those keyword clicks will ONLY cost 15 cents (by default). Adwords magnanimously charges you for the "best" ad placement. Meaning, they'll automatically charge you a penny more than the highest bid so far to get your ad the highest possible placement. Some of my 15 cent bids magically turned in to 82 cent ones (eep). If you want to ONLY pay the 15 cents, you need to go in and adjust the settings after the campaign goes live.

I started the campaign on Saturday, November 8th. Tomorrow I'll go over what my results have been and what I've learned so far.

Why Buy? Part 2

2008-11-06T12:39:00.003-07:00

As Loyalis was able to point out in his comment on the last post - buying lenses can also be valuable for building up your own collection of established, ranking lenses. The more "good" lenses you have, of course, the more income you may be able to generate through them. This is a situation that I had completely forgotten about when I wrote the original post. If you can buy lenses which are already receiving search engine traffic, then it may only take a bit of effort to effectively monetize them to your specifics.

Another scenario along the same lines would be "flipping lenses". If you can buy some nice fixer-uppers for a good price then put some work in to them and later re-sell for a profit, that's a great situation too, especially if the bulk of the content is already in place for you.

With increasing the number of lenses in your account (or multiple accounts) you also have an easy way to generate internal links via lensrolling and featured lens modules as well as having more links going to and from your profile.

Relating back to my suggestion of purchasing a lens as a learning experience, buying from another also gives you the chance to see up close and personal how the writer originally had set it up for monitization - what affiliate links are present, how the products are presented, and so forth. "Good traffic", rankings, ratings, and search engine hits didn't really apply to the lens I purchased, as it was brand new.

As a side note - it is kind of cool going in to edit a purchased lens and seeing how someone else has written thier code. Weird in a way though. It felt a little strange at first "touching" someone else's work.

Jeffrey - I know you wrote the lens to sell, and I know I paid your asking price and I own it now, but I still feel a bit guilty for removing the butt-ugly psychodelic Elvis poster. Sorry about that.

Why Would Anyone Want To Buy A Lens?

2008-11-04T10:15:00.008-07:00

The lens marketplace was created for one purpose - to buy and sell pre-made lenses. The most obvious reason to purchase a lens, of course, is if you do not want to build your own. One thing that has always puzzled me in this regard is that the target market for those types of purchasers probably won't be reading the forum in the first place. Ditto for businesses which seek to hire someone to create a Squidoo presence for them.

The most likely purchasers for lenses for sale on the forum are other lensmasters. So, the question which has come up quite often is, why would someone pay for something which they could do themselves?

First Scenario: A new lensmaster, or one with a relatively small catalog of their own, wants to build up their collection quickly. This makes perfect sense, especially if they can come across multiple lenses of high quality (such as CrypticFragment's recent sale of a large number of her work).

Second Scenario: Having the opportunity to acquire a really well made lens created by a skilled lenscrafter, especially if you run across one for sale which would really enhance your existing content.

I also propose a Third Scenario: As a learning experience.

Recently, I've begun building lenses for other people. Not building and selling, but rather, actually building them directly to serve another's interests. As I was working on this new project I had to give a bit of thought to what exactly I would be handing over to someone. What do I need to do to make the process as easy as possible for the new owner? What will they need to do once they take possession?

The only way to answer these questions was to buy one for myself and see exactly what the process involves. It's quite easy to sit back and give lip service or support under the guise of "I'll just transfer it over to you". What exactly does that mean? How does the process work? What type of issues should I be prepared for?

I knew that in order to fully comprehend the situation, I'd need to put myself in their shoes, so I made up my mind to buy a lens. It took a few days for one to come on the market that I was actually interested in owning. I knew that any lens which I purchaed would have to meet certain criteria (based roughly upon how "good" the ones I will be creating for others would be): it had to be from an established lensmaster, it had to be relatively complete, it had to have original content, and it had to be at minimum a 4* effort. Buying something junkie wouldn't really teach me anything. I've written junk before so it's no stretch of the imagination to visualize the work involved in making it presentable.

Fortunately, jeffryv has been creating and selling some very nice lenses lately. He's making them with the sole intent of selling them and the lenses he creates match the criteria I need. I was keeping an eye on his available things for sale for a while and finally one came on the market that sparked me - Elvis. $12 - heck of a deal, and my Dad loved The King so I knew I'd be able to use it well.

What have I learned? Well, first of all - I purchased it "as is" - no conditions, no adjustments, just paid and drove it off the lot. It's been a great learning experience.

1. The avatar and bio had to be customized - I couldn't get the edit to take my default, so I just did a cut and paste from my dashboard profile edit tab.

2. The affiliate links will need to be switched out to my own account (not the Squidoo Amazon ones, though - those make no difference). This is a bit more of a pain than I had anticipated. With Allposters.com it's apparently not as simple as replacing his affiliate code with mine. So, I still need to do those. Kind of a pain. **UPDATE** It actually is pretty easy to switch them out, it just took me a bit of multiple-window searching to figure out how.

3. Personality - certain hallmarks of my own "style" need to be implemented. Jeff had a very SEO optimized title and subtitle, so I just need to make sure that those are a bit friendlier to readers while staying friendly to the search engines.

4. Non-Squidoo hosted images. I need to decide if I want to leave the images hosted under his account or to the upload/download dance to my own Photobucket account.

5. The intro will need to be spiffed up a bit to make it more "me".

6. I LOVE link modules in my lenses (just a personal thing, I guess), so I need to research for some great resources to add.

7. I had to change the guestbook settings to my own preferances - anyone can comment, hold for approval, and strip HTML.

8. I'll still need to do the "regular" promotional stuff inside and outside of Squidoo - lensrolling, joining groups, search engine submissions, etc.

I'm sure a few more little things will come up as I continue to work on it.

Random Musings of a Chaotic Mind

2008-11-03T09:34:00.002-07:00

Life is an adventure. Always has been, always will be...

Good thing I'm an adventurous woman!

I'm hoping to have a rather productive week. So many ideas and thoughts are streaming through the old noggin right now, but I *think* I've got a grip on time management and organization now. LOL. Of course, 2 of my kids getting food poisoning and spending the last 12 hours tossing thier cookies wasn't in my agenda, but there's the adventure part for you.

So, in between many, many extra loads of laundry, I'm hoping to accomplish quite a bit today and for the rest of this week (yes, sometimes self-delusion is a good thing).

1. I've got 2 incomplete articles that I want to finish up for Associated Content. They're easy enough - should take about 15 minutes each to get ready. I'm kind of liking AC, upfront pay is nice. It may not be very much, but it is something "guaranteed" and if I got off my bum and did a few more I could probably get to a point where doing it was a bit more lucrative.

2. I need to discuss some options with Those Greathouse Women about the lens I made for them. I had a brain storm this morning about a few cool things I could add, but it's their company, so I need the OK first (but it will be COOL).

3. Pray that The Fluffanutta doesn't come after me with a pitchfork for cloning his pipes (which are down at the moment, but that's a Yahoo issue).

4. Finish up a few WIP lenses I have that are almost ready to go.

5. Spiff up this blog because right now, it kind of sucks. I need to get a couple of different blogrolls going for Squidoo and Non-squidoo blogs that are awesome and need some pimping.

6. Post on my LiveJournal and Facebook because my friends think I'm dead.

7. Go deal with HubPages. I signed up again (the first time it confused me and I just deleted my account and hubs - this was right around the time I had started with Squidoo, so I really had no idea how to do any of it). Blame Glen and Relache for that one. They convinced me. So, I flipped a coin and signed up through Glen's link. Not that he'll end up making anything from me - lol.

8. Spiff up and start promoting 3 lenses which are published but not quite up to where I want them to be before I start spreading the word.

9. Finish my Blue Bird of Happiness lens and badges for the winners.

10. Work on my groups. Sigh. Again. I'm truly the lamest group master on all of Squidoo.

11. Work on some new lenses for the Activist's Challenges for this month. Eeeep, I'm totally behind on that one (sorry guys).

12. Get my fanny over to Digg and Tagfoot and do some catching up with my shouts and shares.

13. Start contacting the companies who make tarts so I can get a big module going to promote their "After Thanksgiving" sales. That's a big deal in the B&B e-tailer community, so I want to get that going. I might be able to nail a few "exclusive" discount codes for my readers too - that would be awesome!!

14. Since 13 is an unlucky number, and an odd one. And because 14 is 2*7 (7 days in this week of glory), I need one more goal. That way, if I can complete 2 items per day, I'll stay on track. Hmmm.......how about working a bit on Mybloglog communities. Yup. That makes 14. Wish me luck!!

Playing With The Pipes

2008-11-02T19:52:00.002-07:00

I've been messing around with different RSS feeds of my lenses and spent some time this evening exploring the Squidoo Pipes that The Fluffanutta has set up for us (thanks, Fluff!), it took me a few trys to get it the way I wanted to show up here, every time I tried to pull the feed through a button for Blogger, I'd get an empty widget, even with specifying my lensmaster name. I finally cloned the pipe with my own Yahoo name and then it seemed to work just fine (check out the left side). This will show the RSS of my most recently updated lenses - the brand new ones and the ones that I've recently been tinkering around with.

To get your own Views of the Tubes, log in to SquidUtils and go to Lensmaster RSS feeds, and click on one of the 3 lists under "More RSS Feeds". The direct address is: http://pipes.yahoo.com/thefluffanutta/lensmaster_by_date for the feeds from lens updates. It's a lot of fun to play with, and very nice to have access to. The widget isn't the most attractive one I've seen, but it's functional and I like the scrolling feature since more than just 5 lens updates are pulled.

The regular feeds via Squidoo are sometimes a bit too limiting for certain areas. When I only pull my top lenses, then the feed looks stale for days on end. When I pull my Squidcasts, then the same thing happens since I only send casts for major updates or cool news flashes. If I cast more often I think people would get annoyed with me pretty quick.

Finally. At Last.

2008-11-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

Oh, who am I kidding?
I'm finally getting around to starting a blog about my Squid life and let's be honest, I'm just throwing more work on myself. LOL Oh well, that's just me!