First Christmas Sales!

Just had the first sales this fall on my cashmere robe and slippers lens.

Let the holiday shopping season begin! Yay!!

5 Keyword Tips You Can Use

Many thanks to the folks at Zazzle for spending some time recently on their blog talking about SEO and keyword information.  The tips that apply to setting up Zazzle products for sale apply to your Squidoo lenses, too, and to just about anyplace else you write online.

Their recent 5 Keyword Tips to Boost Traffic post even includes a demonstration of how to use the new Google Adwords Keyword Planner.  If you're still mourning the loss of the old keyword tool, get over it and learn to use the new one.  It's actually not a bad tool at all and easy to use once you've been shown how.

If you're looking for an in-depth SEO course this isn't it, but the 5 keyword tips in the post linked above are good ones, easy to understand for beginners and excellent reminders for anyone.

Nice job, Elizabeth at Zazzle!

Halloween Shoppers Haunting Squidoo!

But wait, that's a good thing!

Has your Halloween lens traffic picked up lately? Mine has and, I'm happy to report, so have Halloween sales. But I'm looking forward to more!

I was just glancing at the calendar, counting the number of shopping days, specifically weekends, before Halloween.  The timing actually favors last-minute shoppers this year, which means that it favors online sellers, too.  Amazon Prime allows for procrastinating people to order on the weekend of the 26th and still receive their costumes and other goodies a day or two before Halloween.  That's a good thing for those of us who feature last-minute Halloween ideas and easy trick-or-treat costume solutions. 

Savvy shoppers won't wait until the last minute, though, and the savviest of the savvy will be making their choices and placing their orders this weekend and next.  I'll admit that I still have a few Halloween lenses that are scary-out-of-date and need some freshening up.  How about you? 

Will you be updating your Halloween lenses over the next few days, too?  Or are you already set for shoppers?  If so, consider adding a lens designed specifically for last-minute Halloween shoppers.  It could pay off in scary-good sales this year!

Image courtesy Squidoo.com

Who Else Needs to Improve Their Persuasive Writing Skills?

Have you ever wondered how you can make more sales from your Squidoo lenses? I've been thinking about that a lot lately. So when I saw the email last week from Alice Seba of Contentrix about her Persuasive Writing class, it occurred to me that improving my persuasive skills just might be the solution I've been looking for.

I've followed Alice online for years and I know that she really knows her stuff. And at just $27 for a multi-session live webinar course with tons of valuable handouts included, who could pass that up? Well, today was the first session and I've come to this conclusion: Alice should charge more for her classes. :) Seriously, 90+ minutes for just the first session, plus all the handouts, plus live critiques of several students' websites, I've gotten my money's worth already - and we have four more live training sessions to go!

Since I love to share valuable information with fellow lensmasters and other writers, I figured I'd better start getting the word out about this class, called Persuasive Writing and Getting Your Audience to Do What You Want.

It's okay that you missed the first session - not everyone can attend live, so Alice recorded it and it's already available, along with her notes, the chat transcript, and more, in the class's membership area. The rest of the sessions will be recorded, too, and the price of admission includes lifetime access.

Did I mention that all this will set you back just 27 bucks and that Alice is still taking students?

With the holiday shopping season coming up fast plus the new, easy-to-use product review lens format on Squidoo, this is the perfect time to fine-tune your persuasive writing skills. And of course you can use the skills you learn on your own website or blog and everywhere else you write, too.

So, who's going to join me in the next session? Read all about it and sign up right here.