Changing Lens Titles and Introductions

There has been a lot of discussion lately about whether it is a good or bad idea to change the title and introduction of your lens. I thought that I would weigh in on that discussion with my own findings, and how I have handled changes.

One of the lenses that I have changed the most is The Nile River - History and Facts, although it is not the only one. I have changed several lenses with pretty much the same results. If the changes I have made have been based on what keywords people were typing in and finding my lens, or based on getting the actual title closer to the URL, the lenses have benefited with a surge of traffic and targeted traffic. For The Nile River - History and Facts
, the changes have caused a positive increase in traffic moving the lens up the lensrank ladder as well. This lens is currently getting about 200 visitors per week. It continues to go up in traffic, so we will see where it will be in a few months.

If the changes have been because I wanted to just change something or try a new keyword, in most cases there has been no real change. So changing your titles and introduction do not negatively affect your lenses in most cases. It is true that if you have a lens that is already doing very well, and you change your title, you may affect how Google is sending people to it right now, so keep that in mind if you want to change your title. However, in most cases, the lenses that needed title and introduction changes are the ones that aren't doing as well as they should and need adjustments. So don't be afraid to make those changes. Move that lens that is only getting 20 visits a week to a lens that is getting 200 or 2000 visits a week instead, and converting more of those visits to sales.

If you haven't yet joined the new Squidlog.net site, definitely worth doing. It is free and for all Squidoo lensmasters. (http://squidlog.net) If you joined Squidlog.com, your Squidlog.net profile is just waiting for you to fill out. What are you waiting for?

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Affiliate Selling--Deciding Who to Sell For

If you asked most people why they were writing on Squidoo, the answer would be that they were there to make money. The frustration with this is that most people do not really understand HOW to make money with Squidoo. Nor do they understand that time is a large factor, and consistent work, and adaptability is necessary to succeed in the everchanging market of internet selling.

The people who do succeed, do so because of numerous hours spend improving their lenses, and more hours learning how to improve their lenses. So let me say point blank that if you think you can start on Squidoo today, and earn enough to live on in your first couple of months, think again. However, if you are trying to lay a foundation to earn money online, then you have the right perspective. Don't give up your day job yet, but you may be able to a few years down the road.

Squidoo offers 4 ways to make money by being part of the Squidoo community. If you never want to join any kind of affiliate program you can make money on Squidoo. From lens ranking, Amazon, Ebay, and Cafepress modules. There is no magic formula. You have to figure out how to get people to visit your lens, and buy stuff from your lens to earn any money from those modules or lens ranking. But the people who earn the most on Squidoo, do not rely on only those ways to earn money.

The top earners become affiliate sellers themselves through third party websites.

One of the lessons that you need to learn if you are going to earn money online is that business online is always changing due to laws, and circumstances. These changes can affect your income and you need to diversify yourself enough to take changes in income from one source from time to time. My recommendation is that once you find a lucrative source of income for yourself online and start to develop it, begin to search for another. This behavior will pay off when a company folds, a new law comes out that encourages affiliate sellers to stop selling through people from your part of the world, or a company changes its payout policies.

So once you decide to become an affiliate seller, how do you choose who to sell for?

Here is what I recommend that you ask:

1. Can someone from your part of the world become an affiliate for that company?
2. Does it cost anything?
3. How easy is their website to work with?
4. What is their reputation?
5. What kind of companies do they work with?
6. Is their technology compatible with yours?
7. Is their payment strategy realistic?
8. How long does a person have to place an order after they click on your referral link in order for you to get credit for the sale?

You will find that people that you know have their favorite affiliate companies and for various reasons. I do as well. Right now my two favorite companies are Shareasale and Commission Junction. Both these companies deal with multiple potential partners that I can work with, and they have been the most successful for me so far. I do work with other companies and try new ones from time to time, but if you are new, these are great companies to start with.
Picture above is from Squidconomy - The Economics of Squidoo, a great lens in helping to understand Squidoo payouts.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

New Guestbook on Squidoo

Whew! Have you all been keeping up with the superhero flash speed of Squidoo's engineering team? They have been producing like crazy in the last several weeks, and today they issued another wonderful development, a brand new Guestbook 9000! Well, that's what Megan Casey is calling it, and who am I to argue.

Here is what our guestbooks on all of our lenses can do now: (from Megan's blog post)

• An option for Squidoo lensmaster-only commenting (with inline login). Not new, but improved.
• Commenting login via Twitter and FacebookConnect. Even if your readers aren’t logged in Squidoo lensmasters, they can still comment easily in your Guestbook module, with credibility and non-anonymity, via Twitter and Facebook connect.
• Threaded comments and improved design.
• An option for readers to follow new Guestbook comments by email. Have you ever commented on a really great lens, or in an especially heated or interesting Guestbook, and wished you could easily know when someone replied there? Now you can, if you choose to follow a Guestbook by email. You can easily unsubscribe from the module when you’ve had enough. (NB: The person who owns the Guestbook and the lens can choose to approve comments first, so no bad comments get emailed to those following).
• An option for a reader to Tweet, Facebook or email his comment. This means if you get people talking on your lens, and if they in turn share their comments outward, you get new, relevant people visiting your lens and joining the conversation.

For more information on this development, and how to use it, read the rest of the post by Megan here.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Hubpages Success

It has been a while since I posted here, and I apologize for that. As you can imagine, I have been extremely busy with my store starting to get ready for the holidays and also working on a very large commissioned project.

In the meantime, however, I have not been idle online. I can report wholehearted success on my Hubpages experiment. I have been extremely happy with the success I have found on Hubpages creating focused articles. I have been working with articles mostly focused towards increasing my Adsense revenue, and have hit my very first payout. You can read about it in this Hubpages blog post. But what I wanted to let everyone know is that now started, my Adsense income is increasing exponentially. Every day my average daily income on Adsense goes up significantly and I expect my second payout in no more than two months, maybe one.
Hubpages has had another benefit which is helping me understand keywords and SEO even better than I did before. If you are not already on this site, I recommend that you write 10 to 15 hubs to get a better feel for how to write a focused article. You can really tell how you do by the Adsense ads that get placed on your article. If they are not related, then your article is not focused enough. (You do have to give Adsense a few hours to scan the article properly).

Another thing that has happened recently, is that I have joined the Fresh Wonders network on Ning which is a combination of the Fresh Squids and the WiWon Team both run by lensmaster a_Willow. Willow joined Squidoo about the same time I did and we became Giant Squids at the same time. She has taken her time on Squidoo, and become a very successful mentor for new squids, and for squids trying to become Giant. I am thrilled to become part of this network, and invite you to apply if you are serious about Squidoo.

You do have to apply, not everyone can get in. To find out more about this terrific network, read this lens Fresh Squids Moving to Ning!.

I will be posting weekly blog posts there that are a little more geared to newer lensmasters than the blog posts here.

My last note is to make sure that everyone is aware of the Squidoo Charity Cookoff. Squidoo is giving away money during November to charities that are on their charity list. You can help by creating a charity recipe lens. Here is my contribution: Thanksgiving Menu Ideas: Pumpkin Spice Biscotti. I urge you to join in and make a lens. You are welcome to post a link to your charity lens for the Squidoo Charity Cookoff in the comments to this post.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Reader Feedback

I have compiled a list of making money online references which I would love some feedback on. The best feedback would be reader book reviews on the following books or any other books that you think I should add to the list.

Here is a link to the current list:
Making Money Online References

Who would like to volunteer to review one or more of them?

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Choosing Your Tags

I wrote recently on the Needs to be Edited link on your Squidoo dashboard. This post is what I have been doing recently when I update the lenses that need to be edited.

I am choosing to edit or update 2 to 5 lenses a day to spread them out a little more. In the past, I updated a large number at a time, but didn't do it as thoroughly as I should so things got missed. So this time around, I am creating a system to update my lenses.

First, I am taking the advice of lensmaster Spirituality and changing my tags. Spirituality writes all about this in her Squidtop post, so I won't repeat what she says, I will just tell you what I am doing.

My goal is to change the tags in the sidebar of each lens so that the lenses show up on the first tag page for that tag when someone searches on Squidoo. Using the SquidUtils color system as a guide, I am looking for tags that have about 10 other lenses. That is a very pale green or almost white color on the SquidUtils system. If you don't know what I mean by SquidUtils, here is a link to the information on the addon.

The Squidoo search pages for each tag are now accessible to Google and other search engines so if your lens is on the front page of that particular tag, chances are good that you will get more traffic from the tag alone.


Secondly, I am checking the lens body for invalid links. I have noticed that a lot of my Cafe Press items are gone because of the recent Cafe Press changes. So those are replaced or deleted.

Thirdly, if I haven't done so recently, I am checking the keyword research for my introduction module and my headings. If I can, I am increasing the density or improving the keywords. In a few cases, I needed to rewrite the introduction module because the lens was one of my first.

Fourth, I am replacing Feed My Search modules with Google Blog modules or adding the Google Blog module to each lens. The Google Blog Search module is evergreen which is explained in Captain Squid's blog post here.

My last step is to make sure that I have an About Me module on the bottom of the lens to give people one more chance to click on my featured lenses.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Updates and Upgrades

Today was the first time that I got to see the upgraded workshop on Squidoo. It will take a little getting used to, but it is definitely easier to see and seems to work faster for me. The obsession with brighter colors is not my preference, but I am sure that there is some scientific data behind the choices.

If you use the lens workshop addon from SquidUtils, you will have to update that as well.

The introduction module is the first peek of a "What You See is What You Get" or WYSISYG style editing program. It works differently than the rest of the modules right now. Other than getting used to the changes, what do you all think of it?

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.