Alternatives to Deleting a Lens

If you have a large collection of lenses, you probably have at least a few that aren’t doing much for you. They rarely get traffic, never earn money, never seem to rise in lensrank. Or maybe you have one of those lenses you made on a whim, and now you just aren’t interested in keeping up with it anymore.

So what do you do? Delete it? Unless it’s a throwaway WIP lens, I wouldn’t recommend it, especially if you put a lot of effort into it. That would be a waste indeed, especially when you have other options.

Here are some other things you could do instead:

Improve the lens. If it’s skimpy on content, flesh it out. Add some news, add a YouTube module, add some pictures, add some interactive features. If you make it shine, you’ll probably see a lensrank improvement.

Promote it. If it’s mostly suffering from a lack of traffic, you could work on getting more backlinks to it.

Make some related lenses. That might sound counterintuitive, but a series of related lenses will sometimes share traffic and help give each other a boost. However, you might not want to do this for a lens that covers an unpopular or esoteric topic.

Keep it. Unless you’re embarrassed to have your name associated with the lens, it might not be a bad idea to just hang onto it. It’s not like it’s going to hurt your Squidoo account, and it might even pull in a few extra cents for you.

Give it away. If you know someone already has lenses that are similar to your “deadweight” lens, odds are they’ll be pleased to take it off your hands… especially if it only needs a little polishing up. If you don’t know anyone who might want it, offer it up for grabs at SquidU.

Sell it. I know of a few lensmasters who successfully sold off lenses they no longer needed or wanted. You can try selling your lens at the SquidU marketplace, or you can list it on Sell My Lens. You could also try putting it up for sale at forums that allow listings like that, such as SitePoint.

Posted in Lens development | No Comments »

The Best Way to Display YouTube Videos on Your Squidoo Lens

Adding YouTube videos to your lens can help jazz it up. Although many people might associate YouTube with mindless entertainment, not all videos can be lumped into that category. There are many instructive videos, too. For instance, if you have a lens about biscuits, you can almost certainly find a YouTube video that shows you how to make your own homemade biscuits. And of course, don’t rule out the idea of adding entertaining videos to your more silly or lighthearted lenses.

There are two ways to display YouTube videos on your lens. You could display one large video in your YouTube module, or you could display a bunch of little ones. Which option is best?

Answer: A single video is almost always better than a bunch of little videos.

When you display a bunch of videos in one module, it ends up looking busy and cluttered. That’s not easy on the eyeballs. It’s hard to tell them apart and decide which one is worth watching. As if that wasn’t bad enough, people will have to go straight to YouTube before they can watch a video. It’s not like you get commissions or kudos from YouTube, so this is a traffic leak you don’t need.

That’s why it’s better to display just one video. People won’t have to leave your lens just to watch it, and it will be big enough to appreciate. It also doesn’t look so busy or confusing. Finally, it’s just better to pick out a few stellar videos to display on your lens rather than just tossing in a mess of videos that are mediocre or only loosely related to your topic.

Speaking of which, you should ALWAYS pick out the videos yourself. Don’t rely on Squidoo to make these decisions for you. Only your eyes can judge whether a video is good enough and relevant enough for your lens.

If you really want to make sure your visitors don’t stray to YouTube’s site, here’s another quick tip: Turn off the link to comments in the YouTube module. You can do this by clicking on the Display Options tab and unchecking the option that says “Video details (runtime, views, link to comments).”

So let me just sum up those YouTube video tips:

• Display one video per YouTube module. Looks nicer, cleaner, and doesn’t send visitors away to YouTube when they decide to watch a video.
• Handpick the videos yourself and watch them first. This can save you a lot of embarrassment.
• Turn off the link to comments in the Display Options tab. Not necessary, but it does turn off one more traffic leak.

Tags: youtube

Posted in Lens development | 1 Comment »

Squidoo Guestbook Hints and Tips

Almost all Squidoo lenses have a guestbook. It’s pretty much expected. It’s an easy way for other lensmasters to leave a quick comment and tell you how much they enjoyed your lens. It’s a great way to get feedback from your visitors, because not everyone is going to want to contact you directly. Besides, it’s mutually beneficial: They’re hoping you’ll click on their name and check out their lenses, too.

Unfortunately, not everyone uses guestbook modules to their best advantage. Here are some tips to help you avoid the most common mistakes and make your guestbooks even better:

Rename your guestbook. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read a great lens, only to have the experience marred by the sight of a guestbook entitled “New Guestbook.” It might seem like a minor detail, but it matters. People notice these things. It’s like admiring a pretty woman with a nice hairstyle, wearing a beautiful dress–then you look down and discover she’s wearing ugly, dirty shoes. Don’t make the same mistake with your lens.

Put the guestbook at the bottom. Some lensmasters put a guestbook module in the middle of their lens because they want to use it as a discussion board for a specific subject, but most of the time it looks like the lensmaster was too lazy to rearrange the modules. Putting the guestbook at the end of the lens is a standard practice. In fact, many lensmasters will assume they’ve reached the end of the lens once they see the guestbook and won’t scroll down any further. Always put your guestbook module at the end of your lens. It’s OK to list a few extras after the guestbook, such as some extra Amazon modules, but make sure they’re nonessential.

Ask for feedback and ratings. If star ratings from your visitors are important to you, you can use the guestbook as an opportunity to remind them to scroll back up and rate your lens. Many lensmasters forget to rate lenses, so it’s a good place for a gentle reminder.

Invite people to promote their lenses. This might seem like a bad idea, since many lensmasters will do this anyway. But if you want to give people an incentive to leave a comment, you could announce that it’s fine to include a link to a lens that’s related to yours. This could be interpreted as an invitation for spam, though, so you might want to mention that you’ll delete comments that promote irrelevant lenses.

Add a guestbook image. This isn’t necessary, and in fact most lensmasters don’t do this, but it looks pretty cool. You can create a nice-looking image in Photoshop or GIMP, then upload it to a free image hosting site like Photobucket. Once you have it uploaded, you can display it in your guestbook by adding a bit of HTML: <img src=”http://hosted.image.url.example” alt=”Sign the Guestbook” /> - Just be sure to replace the stuff between the quotes with the actual URL of your image.

Decide on your guestbook settings. A new guestbook is set to automatically approve new comments from other lensmasters. However, it will block comments from non-Squidoo members. Be sure to look over these settings and decide what you want. If you’re worried about spam, you might want to set the guestbook to ask you first before approving comments. Or you might want to encourage more participation by allowing anyone to sign.

Tags: guestbook, modules

Posted in Lens development | 6 Comments »

How to Get a Lens to the Top 100 List

Making a lens that’s so good that it launches itself into the Top 100 list is a quest for many lensmasters. Unfortunately there’s a lot of competition, which means it’s not easy to get a lens ranked up there. It takes a fair amount of time, work, and sometimes a grand stroke of luck. I have well over 100 lenses, but only three of them have reached the Top 100 list so far. Here, have a look:

How to Prevent Lost Luggage was the first lens I ever made that ended up in the Top 100 list. Even though it’s one of my better lenses, the main reason it did so well was because it was made Lens of the Day. It got heaps of traffic and even some backlinks over the next several days, which pumped up its lensrank. It washed out of the Top 100 list after exactly two weeks.

Oh Rubber Ducky! is my most successful lens. It was just a silly thing I started around the 1st of January. Apart from submitting it to the SquidU forum for a critique, I didn’t go out of my way to promote it. However, I kept going back to tweak it, add new content, etc. Then to my surprise, it started getting traffic from Google. It continued rising in the ranks until it was in the Top 100 list in April. It took about four months for it to get there, but now it’s still bobbing along quite happily.

Common Newbie Squidoo Mistakes is my second-most successful lens. It got a little a help, though. A few months ago, it started showing up randomly on the Squidoo homepage. Nobody told me; I only found out about it after I started noticing an unusual spike in traffic. This lens was made in January, but it didn’t hit the Top 100 list until this month.

Luggage, duckies, and Squidoo. What do they all have in common? Well, for one thing, these are some of my better lenses in terms of content and effort. They had some help, certainly, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I hadn’t lavished as much attention on them as I did.

The lesson here is to make the best lenses possible and keep making them even better. Focus on topics that you love to write about. Eventually, people are going to start taking notice. When that happens, it’s only a matter of time before some of your lenses start becoming contenders for the Top 100 List.

So how about you? Have you ever had a lens reach the Top 100 List? How long did it take, and what made it so successful?

Posted in Lens development | No Comments »

Avoid Looking Like a “Squidoo Spammer” on Social Networking Sites

A few days ago I posted a tip on my SquidTop blog about the importance of protecting your online reputation. I wanted to touch on that again and go into a little more depth here.

Getting traffic and creating backlinks to lenses is a big priority for many lensmasters. So, we’re always on the lookout for ways to promote our lenses. That’s probably why most of us start joining social networks like Twitter, or social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon. These are potential sources of traffic and backlinks.

The problem is that it’s all too easy to look like a spammer and get yourself booted, or at least chewed out by other people who use these sites. If you join a social network and mostly post a bunch of links to your own lenses, blogs, and web sites, you’re not going to be very popular. Most communities will see that and think, “Spam!”

In some cases, they’ll see enough of this to start associating Squidoo and similar sites with spam. They might even go on a witch hunt and single out every single person who dares to post a Squidoo URL, something that happened at Wis.dm not too long ago. So not only are a few people condemned for their actions, it ends up affecting every other lensmaster who might have had an interest in joining that community.

Part of the problem is that many people simply don’t understand the nuances and rules of etiquette for social networking sites. It’s important to realize that just about every community has its own rules, some of which aren’t always spelled out but are intuitively understood by its members.

Here are some basic tips to help you avoid trouble when you join social networking sites:

• Read the rules. It’s a good idea to find out what is and isn’t allowed. Once you know the official rules, you’re not likely to break one by accident. You can also find out if posting Squidoo URLs is allowed. (Some sites have banned them.)
• Observe the community. Before you dive straight in, try to get a feel for how people interact with each other. What’s the overall tone of the place? It’s especially good if you can find examples of behavior that the members condemn. Established members will sometimes jump all over somebody who breaks the rules, resulting in heated discussions. (Extra tip: If the atmosphere is really negative and nasty, you might want to reconsider joining!)
• Become part of the community. Don’t start off by promoting your own stuff. Instead, post links of general interest and join a few discussions. Just take it slow and ease your way in. Once you become an accepted and contributing member of the community, people won’t likely object if you post an occasional link to one of your Squidoo lenses, especially if it answers a question or adds to a discussion.

There some social sites where self-promotion is generally accepted and encouraged. However, they tend to be the exception, and even they have certain ground rules you need to know. By learning the rules and getting to know the community, you should be able to avoid a lot of problems.

Tags: digg, social networking sites, spam, stumbleupon, twitter, wis.dm

Posted in Lens promotion | No Comments »

Are Squidoo eBooks a Scam?

There are a few eBooks and programs out there that claim they’ll teach you everything you need to know about Squidoo. For the most part, these eBooks cost money–sometimes nearly $50.

Sounds like a rip, right? After all, Squidoo itself is a free service, and it’s not like it’s hard to use. Plus, lots of Squidoo users have already made helpful lenses and free resources that teach people how to build great Squidoo lenses. Why on earth would you spend any kind of money to learn about Squidoo?

The short answer: To save time.

If you’re already a great Squidoo lensmaster, or if you’re in love with Squidoo and enjoy the process of learning as you go, then you don’t need any of those Squidoo eBooks. Just about all the information you can find in an eBook can be learned for free, if you have the time and willingness to look.

But there’s another group of people who can benefit from Squidoo eBooks. These are people who are completely new to Squidoo and want to build good lenses as quickly as possible. Rather than hunt and peck for nuggets of wisdom, they want all the information organized and clearly spelled out in one place. They might be small business owners who economize their time, or they might be people who are confused by new technology and need a roadmap to help them out. That’s what eBooks are for.

One of the downsides to eBooks is that unlike real paper books, you can’t peek and browse through them before you buy it. You pretty much have to rely on an advertisement to tell you exactly what you’ll learn from the eBook and how you’ll benefit. You should usually be able to get a refund if you decide the eBook is crap, but that’s a hassle most of us don’t want to deal with.

Before you buy a Squidoo eBook, I suggest learning something about the author. Is the author known to the Squidoo community? Does the author have lots of good lenses? People who are active on Squidoo and are at least somewhat involved in the community are not likely to write and sell a rotten Squidoo eBook. Not only are they “walking the walk,” they have a reputation to worry about. For example, I have no qualms about Masterpiece Lenscrafting on Squidoo, because it was written by Margaret Schaut; she’s a well-known lensmaster who made one of the best lenses on Squidoo.

So, no, Squidoo eBooks are definitely not scams or rip-offs (though perhaps a few are). They can in fact be a great asset to the people who need them. But if you’re already a successful lensmaster, or if you enjoy the learning process, then you don’t really need one.

Edit - Lensmaster JigsawForte just made a debate lens about Squidoo eBooks. Do eBooks about Squidoo have their place, or is the whole idea insane? Join the debate!

Tags: ebooks, scams

Posted in Lens development | 5 Comments »

How Much Does Lensrank Matter?

Lensrank is the number that determines your lens’ overall rank within the Squidoo network. The lower that number is, the better. Having a lens in the Top 100 list is the Holy Grail of many lensmasters. Others are fighting to stay on that list! (Me included.)

But does lensrank really matter?

It matters if you want to earn money from Squidoo. The higher ranking lenses earn more Squidoo revenue than the lower ranking ones. There are different lensrank levels or “tiers” that determine how much a lens earns. According to Captain Squid’s Squidconomy lens, the tier payment levels look like this:

Tier 1 : $8.32 (Lensrank approx. below 2,000)
Tier 2: $1.42 (Lensrank approx. between 2,000 and 10,000)
Tier 3: $0.07 (Lensrank approx. between 10,000 and 50,000)

So, having a bunch of lenses in the top 2,000 list is ideal. If you have, say, 10 lenses in the top 2,000, you can expect to get at least over $80 on payday–probably more if you have a bunch of tier 2 and tier 3 lenses.

Many lensmasters are very concerned about lensrank, and they fight to keep their lenses ranking as high as possible. The reasons for that are pretty obvious: They want a bigger payment from Squidoo, or they’re doing it as a personal challenge, or they see it as a reflection of quality and how we’ll they’re doing in general.

Other lensmasters are rather indifferent to lensrank. There are several reasons why someone wouldn’t care that much about lensrank:

• They don’t yet understand lensrank. Lensrank? What’s that? What’s it got to do with anything?
• They hate the sight of numbers. Just don’t want to deal with it at all.
• They’re just having fun. Any money they get from Squidoo is a bonus.
• They have better ways of earning money. If you’re getting a substantial amount of money through affiliate links, then Squidoo revenue is small potatoes.
• They’re confident that lensrank will take care of itself. They focus on making the best lenses possible and let the rest of the pieces fall where they may.

So does lensrank really matter? To that, I would have to say that it all depends on what you want.

Tags: lensrank

Posted in Squidoo earnings | 1 Comment »

Are You Using SquidTop?

I recently started a blog on Captain Squid’s new SquidTop site. Considering that I already have this Squidoo-related blog, that might seem a bit redundant. But there is a method to my madness! Even if you already have a blog or website of your own, I would still recommend getting a blog started on SquidTop. Here’s why:

Create more backlinks. The more links you have pointing to your lenses, the better. Unlike other free blogging networks like WordPress.com, you don’t have to worry about getting your blog shut down just because you added links to your Squidoo lenses. It’s another way to promote your lenses and give them extra backlinks, which makes them more attractive to search engines.

Promote your lenses. Some lensmasters create multiple SquidTop blogs to promote different kinds of lenses or activities. SusanVillasLewis, for example, has a SquidTop blog that she uses to announce new stuff on her Sesame Street lenses.

Promote yourself. Heck, unless you’re an evil spammer or something, it never hurts to expand your online presence. Some people join many different social networks and have dozens of blogs or websites for partly that reason.

Start a Squidoo diary. I originally started creating Squidoo diary lenses to track my progress and keep myself motivated. (It really works, surprisingly enough.) Unfortunately, maintaining a Squidoo diary was getting awkward. Lenses simply weren’t designed for diary-like uses. Blogs are perfect for that sort of thing, though. I suppose I could have used this blog as my diary, but it’s meant to be a useful resource for other lensmasters, NOT a vehicle for promoting my lenses or activities. So I decided to make a more personal Squidoo diary on SquidTop.

Networking. Although you can connect with other lensmasters by leaving comments on their lens guestbooks or chatting it up at SquidU, SquidTop already feels like a community. Signing a guestbook is usually one-way communication. Socializing in a forum is a little like taking turns to stand on a podium and address an audience. SquidTop is like some kind convention where you can set up a booth, wander around, bump into different people, and strike up conversations. Because of the way it’s set up, it’s easier to banter with other squid-types.

OK, now that I’ve rambled on about the positives, are there any negatives about SquidTop? Well, here are a few off the top of my head.

Lack of control. Sure, you can upload an avatar and do things to spruce up your SquidTop blog, but you won’t have anywhere near the control that you would with a blog you own 100%. You’ll mostly have to rely on your sparkling personality to make your SquidTop blog stand out.

Slightly confusing. If you’re not used to using WordPress, you might find the dashboard rather disorienting. Even if you’re already familiar with WordPress, things are set up a little differently than you might expect. For example, tags and categories seem to be interchangeable. Also, you can’t upload images even though it looks you should be able to. Little things like that.

Timesink. Starting and maintaining a blog on any network like SquidTop won’t cost a thing except for your time, something you may or may not be able to spare. It’s not like you’ll get in trouble if you don’t keep it fresh, but it won’t help much either if you let it go stale.

Overall, I like SquidTop quite a bit!

Tags: blogging, squidtop

Posted in Lens promotion | 6 Comments »

AllPosters - Another Source for Free Pictures

This tip actually comes from lensmaster enslavedbyfaeries. She discovered a way to get free, high quality images for your Squidoo lenses and get paid for them.

There’s this website called AllPosters.com that has loads of different posters for sale. Posters of what? Just about anything you could think of–flowers, animals, people, movie stars, architecture, vintage photography, and more.

This spacey picture I’m displaying in this post right now is an example of one of their posters. I can use it freely. But here’s where it gets really cool: If someone clicks on it and decides they’d like to buy a poster of this very image, I get a commission from the sale. But even if I never get a commission, I still benefit by prettying up my websites or Squidoo lenses with professional pictures.

If you want to learn more about AllPosters affiliate program, check out enslavedbyfaeries’ lens: How to Find and Add Free Pictures to Websites and Squidoo Lenses.

Tags: allposters, pictures

Posted in Lens development | 3 Comments »

What’s Good for the Goose Isn’t Always Good for the Gander

If you glance at the SquidU forums much, you’ll often find someone asking questions like whether building one lens a day is a reasonable goal, or how often you should update your lenses, or how concerned you should be about lensrank. Usually there are a lot of responses. What’s interesting is that there often many different answers to the same question.

Some lensmasters pay close attention to lensrank and despair if too many lenses fall below a certain rank. Other lensmasters ignore lensrank completely. Many fall somewhere between the two extremes.

Some lensmasters are busily creating as many back-links to their lenses as they can. Other lensmasters are less concerned about whether there are any links pointing to their lenses.

Some lensmasters set goals for themselves: They decide how many lenses they’ll build each week or how many lenses they’ll update each day. Other lensmasters will simply make a lens or add new content to an existing lens when the inspiration strikes.

With so many different philosophies on lens building, how do you know who’s right?

That’s a trick question. For the most part, none of them are wrong. As long as a lensmaster is doing what works for them, their philosophy is the correct one… for them. That doesn’t mean their strategy will work for someone else. What works splendidly for one lensmaster might be terrible for you. If you’re a square peg, you won’t fit in a round hole meant for someone else.

It’s a good idea to study other lensmasters and see what they’re doing. You might discover ideas you like, and it will help give shape to your own philosophy. But instead of copying someone else’s strategies or goals, it’s best to simply look for inspiration and come up with your own model for success.

Tags: goals, strategies

Posted in Lens development | 2 Comments »