A Few Good Tools for Lensmasters

A brand new lens has just been written by Spirituality about traffic patterns on Squidoo lenses that is well worth every lensmaster's time to take a look. It is a great overview of some typical types of lenses and how their traffic has behaved over time with screen shots of traffic charts.

It really helps you understand how traffic works looking at the long view so that you as an author do not get so caught up with the day to day. The lens is called SEO traffic stats: ranking report for squidoo lenses. She makes a very good point about how backlinks work as well, talking about her links from a well established very busy site and how they have helped drive traffic to her site.

On another topic, I am happy to announce that Redgage has finally gotten their act together and the pages load at a normal rate of speed. I like the site but had no patience or time to deal with the slow load rate. Now Redgage is so much better, so if you have been holding back from using Redgage, sign up now. You can earn money and create backlinks to your pages.
You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

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?

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

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.