How to Jazz Up Your Squidoo Lens

In yesterday's post I mentioned noticing techniques other lensmasters use that you might want to use in your own lenses, things such as creative uses of photos or different colors and fonts. To do these things, it takes some basic knowledge of HTML and how to use that code within the restrictions of Squidoo's modules.

While there are numerous excellent lenses on Squidoo that discuss HTML and explain how to use it, I found a new lens today that I think is outstanding. This lens covers just about everything you can probably think of that you might want to do to customize modules on your own lenses. And if it isn't on there yet, check again in a few days because lensmaster Music-Resource probably will have added it.

So, when you're ready to add some jazz, check out this How To Lens on Squidoo.

Squidoo Lens of the Year - Here's Why You Should Vote

It's time to vote for the best Squidoo lens of 2007. Squidoo's angel squad nominated a total of 11 lenses which represent the best lenses of Squidoo. As a member of Squidoo's community, you have the honor of helping choose the winner.

So, why should you take the time to look at eleven lenses and cast your vote? Here are my top three reasons.

1. Personality. No two of the eleven nominee lenses looks the same. Their topics and styles are as individual as their lensmasters, which is a good thing. Study these lenses and learn how you can insert your own personality into your own lenses by "doing your own thing" and choosing topics that you love.
2. Meat. You've heard it said before and you're going to hear it again: Content is king. The way to get visitors to your lenses is to provide good, original, meaty content. These lenses have it. Some are longer than others, but each is filled to its own brim with great information. Study these top lenses to learn what good content looks like.
3. Technique. As you judge the content and quality of each lens, keep an eye out for a technique that the lensmaster used that you might not be familiar with. Look at how photos are used. Notice that some of these lenses are in the two-column un-maxed format, which might be effective for some of your lenses. Notice how some use color or special fonts. While you never want to outright copy another lens, you can always borrow a technique for one of your own.

So, those are just three ways you can learn from these top-rated lensmasters, and you'll find more ways to learn on the Lens of the Year lens itself, so don't overlook the suggestions you'll find there.

Voting is open until the end of the month. And the nominees are . . . here.

Wish I Would Have Said That

Everyone asks it: What's the difference between a Squidoo lens and a blog?

AMK asked it on this SquidU forum post and Loyalis answered it ever so eloquently:

"A lens is a signpost, a blog is a journey, and a website is a destination."

Wish I would have said that.

Hey, Who Grabbed My Plexo?

Squidoo limits the number of Amazon items per module to just five. Sometimes that just isn't enough. There is a way around it, though. If you want to show more than five Amazon products in a row at a time, consider using the Amazon Plexo module. (We'll get to the grabbing part in a minute.)

What's a Plexo module? It's a Squidoo invention that allows visitors to your lens to choose a favorite from a list that you created and vote it up (or down, if you allow it), thus adding a nice interactive function to your lenses. Plexos come in several Squidoo flavors including the Amazon Plexo, link list Plexos, text list Plexos, Flickr photo and YouTube Plexos, and even a guestbook Plexo where readers can "vote up" their favorite comments on your lenses.

Plexos are designed such that other Squidoo lensmasters can even "grab" your Plexo (it's okay, it doesn't hurt) and plop it into their own lenses or sites. At the bottom of this lens you'll find a Plexo created by lensmaster giddygabby, one that worked well for my lens but that I didn't have to re-create. Notice that giddgabby's name is there as the author, so traffic to my lens drives traffic to hers.

So, back to the Amazon Plexo. There's no limit (as far as I know) to the number of items you can include in a Plexo. So, if there are more than five Amazon items that you really, really want to include in a lens, then choose the Amazon Plexo and list away. Personally, I wouldn't get too carried away and make the list so long that your readers lose interest, but in many instances having the larger number just works better and even looks better on a lens than having multiple plain Amazon modules in a row. For example, on my Shirley Temple lens it really made sense to list all of her movie DVD's in a row and even allow others to add to it, vote up their favorite, or even grab the list for their own use, so that's what I did and I think it looks great. (Go take a look. I'll be right here.) So, what do you think?

If all this Plexo stuff still doesn't make sense, here's Squidoo's official explanation of Plexo for your learning pleasure. Do you use Plexo modules? Leave us a comment and tell us where, why, and how.

I Have Fans! W00t!

Squidoo's latest update is all about having fun and interacting with other Squidoo lensmasters. Part of that fun is that every lensmaster now has a fan club. Fan clubs are to lensmasters what favorites are to lenses. You could always "favorite" a lens, and now you can "favorite" a lensmaster by joining his or her fan club. When I looked at my lensmaster page today, by golly I had an entourage of fans! See it? Cool! I have fans! [blush]

So, what can I do for these fans? I can send a Squidcast when I update a lens and my fans, as well as anyone who chose my lens as a favorite, will receive my Squidcast message, which will show up on their Favorites page. (You can access your Favorites page from the tab on your dashboard.) Are there other reasons to send a Squidcast? Well, one of my fans [blush] has thought of at least 50. Check out her lens for ideas.

Want to join my fan club? Sign up on my lensmaster page. Leave me a comment here with your lensmaster name and I'll join yours.

Not a lensmaster? There's no reason to wait any longer. Join Squidoo and start having fun - and making money - now!

Do You Want to Go to Jail?

I didn't think so. You could, though, if you lie to the IRS. "But I didn't know I had to pay income taxes on my Squidoo income!" Sorry, jailbird. Ignorance of the 50,000-page tax code is no excuse.

Okay, we’ve established that you prefer a wardrobe of something other than black and white stripes every day, so what should you do to be sure you don’t violate tax law? How do you know if your online business is a business and not just a hobby? How do you find out what online income you are required to report to the IRS? What tax forms do you use? Are there any legal “loopholes” you can use to keep from paying out all your hard-earned profits to the IRS? Aacckkkk! Too many questions! You want answers, right?

I’ve found the answers for you in this brand new, hot-off-the e-press book called eBiz Tax Tips: How to Minimize Your Taxes and Maximize Your Profits. In this book and its accompanying audio and visual presentations you will learn:

• How to turn personal expenses into deductible business expenses
• How to save hundreds to thousands in taxes each year by choosing the right business structure for your business
• The key strategies to keep the IRS from reclassifying your business as a hobby
• How to take full advantage of the home office deduction
• How to maximize the business deductions you are entitled to
• How to pay your kids $5,350 tax-free, every year
  And much more...

While the eBiz Tax Tips package was put together primarily with eBay sellers in mind, the vast majority of everything in the package applies to your Squidoo or other online income as well. In fact, there is an excellent chance that you will save far more than the price of the package in the amount of taxes you pay this year alone.

The eBiz Tax Tips package: $97 (and tax deductible). Staying out of jail: Priceless.

Go. Read all about this excellent product now.

How to Find the Best Keywords for Your Squidoo Lens

You know how important the primary tag (keyword) is for your Squidoo lens, but how about the other 40 tags that Squidoo allows? How do you decide which are the best tags to use there? While it might be better to build a lens around keywords, if you didn't do that to start with, what's the best way to find the best keywords for your existing lens?

I found a nifty tool provided by Google called the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. While you can enter keywords or phrases in the tool and Google will provide you with a nice list of related keyword synonyms and their search frequency, you can also provide the tool with the address of your website (or Squidoo lens) and Google will analyze it and give you a list of the most relevant keywords based on its content. I tried the URL approach with several of my lenses this morning and found a few words that I had underestimated as being important. You can be sure that I've fine-tuned my tag lists and I'm looking forward to seeing if they improve my lens traffic from the search engines.

While you certainly don't want to exclude long-tail search phrases, the Google Keyword Tool is great for finding important single words and short phrases. It's very quick and easy to use and, what's more, it's free so there's no reason not to give it a try. If you do, leave a comment and let me know what you think about it. I'd appreciate the feedback.

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