Feeling like a Nobody on Squidoo?

Announcing a new lens that will help you become a Squidoo Somebody in Six Easy Lessons!

Check it out! (Let me know what you think.)


P.S. Learn Squidoo quickly with this free audio.

I Heart TOC!

It's true. I am smitten. Squidoo has gone and done it again. They've created another new module and I am totally in love!

Who would have thought a table of contents module could mean so much? Well, if you've ever made a TOC for a lens, you know that it takes a long time to copy all those module links from a lens then format and paste them into a text module to create a TOC of your own. That, my sea creature-loving friend, is now a task from the past.

I just added a table of contents to my Recipes for Real People lens - and I did it in about a minute using the new table of contents module that the stupendous Squidoo staff set up and introduced this week to make lensmasters' lives a whole lot easier. You'll find the module with the widgets, or look under "T" on the "search" tab of the module picker. Add it to your lens layout, move it to the top, give it a nice name (not "New Table of Contents") and you'll be good to go. Invisible, orange-tentacled, one-eyed elves generate the links for you.

You won't need a TOC on every lens, but when you do add one make sure your modules have compelling titles in order to entice your visitors to click on through and jump right down to exactly what they're looking for.

I'm telling you, Squidoo just keeps getting better and better. (Be still my heart.)

UPDATE: The TOC module is now available in the basic package of module links, on the first page of the module picker. Easy as pie!

Have You Visited Your Squidlings Lately?

I'm talking about your little Squidoo offspring, your lenses. Have you seen them lately? Better hurry and take a look. They've changed!

If your lenses are "maxed" (and most of yours probably are) then you're going to see them in a new format starting yesterday. The squid staff has changed the maxed layout with a completely new, up-to-date, pretty cool template. Two columns instead of three. Lots less orange and lots more black. And, I think, a more professional look.

There's far more to this story (including the fact that there are actually five new layouts, depending on who's looking at your lens) and you really need to read Megan's announcement on the SquidU forum to get the background and details. Then, read all the lensmasters' questions that follow, some of which are probably questions you have, and the answers.

What do you think? Like the new look? Hate it? Leave a comment and let's talk about it.

Squidooing by the Calendar

Easter comes early this year (March 23rd) and people are starting to realize it - and they're starting to look online to find out how to make Easter bonnets. Ask me how I know.

Glad you asked! A week ago I made this new lens about Easter bonnets. That was Saturday. The lens started getting search engine hits on Tuesday, mostly from Google. It seems people want to know how to make Easter bonnets, they want to know the words to the "In Your Easter Bonnet" song, and they want to see pictures of Easter bonnets. I'm happy to oblige.

The lens has had 106 visits, lensrank has increased every day, and it's in the top 100 of its category. Clickouts, unfortunately, are mostly on the Flickr pictures (no money to be made there), but there have been other clickouts and, hopefully, as more people begin to realize that Easter is coming up fast, the lens will generate some sales. Too bad I don't have an ebook about how to make an Easter bonnet. That would have been a sure-fire thing.

Why am I telling you this? Just to remind you to think ahead to holidays, events, and special occasions then make Squidoo lenses and include the information people are going to be looking for. It's okay if the topic is something seasonal; save the lens and update it for next year, using what you've learned this year to improve the lens.

So, pull out the calendar, put on your thinking cap, and make a lens!

Controversy on Squidoo

Feeling confrontational? Like a good debate? Think paper’s better than plastic? Just want to pick a fight? Then head on over to Squidoo’s latest love child, Hey, MonkeyBrain!

It’ll take less than five minutes for you to set up a lens with the MonkeyBrain template, which includes a bold red and black layout with a built-in duel module where you and your contributors can debate opinions on any issue you’re passionate about. Post a blurb on the module and you’ll be given the opportunity to alert others via e-mail about the debate. What a great way to spread the word and get people talking.

So, what say you? Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader? Smoking or no smoking? Boxers or briefs?

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.

P.S. Enjoy our Squidoo tips? Why not subscribe?

The Importance of the Primary Tag

The Primary Tag is the first tag you get to define when creating your new lens, and it is an often misunderstood and very under utilised by many Lensmasters. Admittedly, it doesn't seem do a whole lot, but there are some important points to note:

- In some lens formats (e.g. Ever.com and SquidWho) the primary tag appears at the very top of the page, next to "Explore more:".

- Most lenses (maxxed) have a box in the side bar titles "Explore more...", containing links to the Category and Primary Tag of the lens, plus all the groups it belongs too.

- Another feature of the sidebar (which is not always present) is the tag list, which is usually headed by the Primary Tag (on un-maxxed lenses), and then the first 5 regular tags (in alphabetical order). The remaining tags are hidden, and search engines may ignore these ones.

- Every appearance of the Primary Tag on your lens adds weight to that key phrase on your lens.

In addition, I am working on a new project that will make these Primary Tags even more important! So, you need to make sure that your these tags are as optimal as possible.

Here are some tips:

1. Your Primary Tag wants to be the most important key phrase that you can think of. For example, if your lens is about a person or a product, stick to just their name.

2. Keep your tag to just 2 or 3 words, where possible. One word is not always specific enough (unless the subject is a strong brand like Pepsi), and more than 3 words can sometimes be too specific. Of course, it does depend on your subject matter.

3. Don't simply repeat your Lens title again (even though this is the default when building a lens). Your title should include as many keywords as you can sensibly fit (no keyword stuffing!), while your Primary Tag is about your key phrase.

4. Format your Primary Tag nicely - keep it Capitalised, spelt correctly (!) and don't include any special characters or quotes ("). Use spaces between words, not dashes or underscores.

5. Make sure you repeat your Primary Tag as a regular tag too. The tags appear as the Meta Keywords at the top of the page, and you don't want your key phrase to be missing from it.

6. Pick a Primary Tag which is popular, i.e. people will be likely to be searching for it and other lenses are might also have the same Primary Tag.

Here are some examples: Doctor Who :: Discworld :: Digital Camera Accessories :: Smart Phones

Bad examples: The Whole Lens Title Again :: Kee Frase Spelt Wong :: lowercasewithnospaces :: "Phrase in Quotes"

I hope that people remember these tips - I need to go and change a lot of my own Primary Tags having just looked at a few of them. And remember - I'm developing a project that'll bring these tags in to their own...

(This post was written by thefluffanutta, lensmaker extraordinaire and all-around great guy, and was originally published on SquidU.com, Squidoo's forum and lensmaster lounge. It's great advice, typical of thefluffanutta who is more than generous in sharing great advice as well as his creation, SQUIDUtils.com, Advanced Tools and Utilities for Expert Lensmasters, with the masses. Thank you, thefluffanutta, for permission to republish.)

From Squidoo Nobody to Squidoo Somebody in 2 Easy Steps

While looking for lensmasters to invite to join my 2008 group this morning, I was surprised how many Squidoo nobodies I found. What made these lensmasters nobodies? Two things, each with an easy solution. Read on.

1. You're a Squidoo nobody if you don't have a Squidoo bio. It's simple enough to set up a default bio on your profile or from any of your lenses, so there's no excuse for active lensmasters to publish a lens with the default, "This is my bio. I'll edit it later." No, no, no. Take a minute and edit it now. Take credit for your work. Establish some credibility for yourself as you begin to establish your reputation within the Squidoo community. You can update your default bio any time or provide a more lens-specific bio for any single lens as you prefer. Including a picture is highly recommended, but even an interesting avatar is better than the default orange mugshot of nobody. It's no fun to be a nobody, so to become a Squidoo somebody start with a brief bio and add a picture, something that other lensmasters will recognize at a glance as they get to know you and your lenses on Squidoo.

2. You may be a Squidoo nobody if you don't allow other lensmasters to contact you. Who knows when someone will take an interest in one of your lenses and want to send you a personal comment. Maybe your long-lost, wealthy great-uncle will recognize you as the family member he's been trying to contact. Maybe someone will like your work well enough to offer you the propo$ition you've been waiting for. If you need to enable your "allow contact" option, go to the "My Profile" tab on your dashboard. You'll find the option with the e-mail preferences. While you're there, be sure you're signed up to receive the daily and weekly newsletters from Squidoo, which will help you keep up with the other Squidoo somebodies and their lenses.

Stop being a nobody. Go update your bio and your contact information right now. Somebody important may be trying to get in touch with you, so don't let a potential great opportunity slip away.

Tell Them What You're Going to Tell Them

Do you use the introduction module correctly when you make a Squidoo lens?

If you're not sure, consider this method. When designing your lens, take the approach of, "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them." This works well in a training environment or for public speakers, and it works well for a Squidoo lens, too.

Use your introduction module as, indeed, an actual introduction to what the lens is about, whether you're presenting information or selling a specific product. Entice your readers with a hint of what's to come. Grab their interest right away or they may not read beyond that first module.

The body of the lens, then, consists of the "meat" of the topic. Present your topic or product and include supporting documentation, polls, Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, related books from Amazon.com and anything else that expounds on the main topic.

Then, summarize the topic toward the end, possibly by reiterating the high points or even by using the guestbook module to ask for input from your readers; i.e., "What do you think about this?"

By telling your readers what to expect, then delivering on the promise and sealing it all with a good summary, you'll be able to hold their attention all the way to the end of the lens. That's the type of lens that keeps readers coming back to you for more.

(Need some examples? This lens and this one are two that generally follow the "Tell them what you're going to tell them" model.)