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  I'll admit that I still have a few Halloween lenses that are scary-out-of-date and need some freshening up.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.

Is It Too Late to Make a Halloween Lens?

No!  It's never too late to make a Halloween lens.  This visit graph proves it.

This is from one of my costume lenses.  The first October it didn't do a lot (just a little "melted witch" puddle on the graph) but the next two, look at those nice high "witch hat" peaks!  I'm looking forward to the next one, which is trending upwards now (end of September) and hopefully will peak nice and high by the end of October.

Lesson:  Think long-term with seasonal lenses.  And watch for witch hats on your visits graph.  Visits begat sales, the most fun part of the Halloween shopping season!

Creating Happy Endings

There's been a lot of debate over the past few months about making personal Squidoo lenses that include storytelling.  Some believe that their readers don't want to be bothered with anything "personal," so they balk at the whole idea, preferring to stick with just the facts, ma'am.

While every lens doesn't have to be about you, it's important that lenses include a story of some kind.  Our objective should be to engage our readers so that they will want to read all the way to the end. 

As usual, Seth Godin says it best about storytelling, in the next to last sentence in this piece (well, in the whole piece).

Do your lenses tell stories?  Are your readers engaged all the way through?  Sounds like creating happy endings is a goal every lensmaster should strive for.

Where to Find Answers to Your Squidoo Questions

I haven't been posting to this blog as often as I should, but that doesn't mean I'm not writing about how to Squidoo. 

Most of my writing these days is done for RocketSquids, the members-only "boot camp" on Squidoo that's designed for new lensmasters who want the inside track on how to make great lenses.  If you're new to Squidoo and want to get on the fast track to Giant Squid, then RocketSquids is the place to be.  You can read more and sign up at this link. 

I also contribute to the official Squidoo blog, SquidooHQ, with occasional tips posts and frequent interviews with up-and-coming new Squid talent.  If you haven't checked out HQ lately, you might be surprised at all the helpful resources that are offered there.  What's more, everything is free.  There's no reason for anyone ever to pay to learn how to succeed on Squidoo. Between RocketSquids and the Squidoo Learning Center, and of course the official forum, it's easy to find answers.

It didn't take long after I signed on to Squidoo over six years ago for the teacher in me to rise to the surface, offering help to other lensmasters through posts on this blog and more private messages than I can count.  I'm just thrilled to be able to help in an official capacity now. 

I love to answer Squidoo questions and offer help wherever it's needed.  So if you're stuck or just want a second opinion on a lens, feel free to let me know.  I'm still around.

New Lens Formats Option on Squidoo

I've recently learned to believe it, and now the new "Lens Formats" option on Squidoo cements my belief.  Simple really does work best.  At least these days.

It all started with Twitter and learning to say something meaningful in 140 characters.  A challenge for wordy ol' me, but I loved it.  Don't judge me by my old, dictionary-sized Squidoo lenses.  I'm already sold on this new format and it isn't even "live" yet!

Gives new meaning to KISS (Keep it Simple, Squids!).

Love it!

Google Likes Me Again!

I haven't talked about it anywhere but at home (my poor sweetie has been so patient with me), but I've been struggling for months to get Google to like a particular lens of mine.

Today, it does!

Traffic overall to my lenses is up after a long summer lull, but I'm the most thrilled with this one particular lens that was only getting referral traffic, mostly from inside Squidoo.  For months!  Okay, for more than a year.  This evening I was perusing stats overall and noticed that today's traffic on that lens was up, so I looked at specifics and was pleasantly surprised to see some Google hits.

Yay! Finally!

Hopefully the drought has been broken and things will continue to look up for that lens as well as the rest of them.  Yours, too!  Happy day!

Seasonal versus Evergreen Lenses

Really, there's no competition between seasonal and evergreen lenses.  Every lensmaster needs to have both.

My evergreen lenses are the meat and potatoes of my Squidoo business while the seasonal lenses add spikes of interest at various times around the calendar.  This is the week every year that my How to Make a Cow Costume lens peaks (thanks to a certain restaurant's annual Dress Like a Cow promotion).  The interesting thing is that the cow costume lens then continues to get traffic through the fall and all the way to Christmas  I'm thinking state fairs followed by Halloween of course and then nativity plays at churches.  For whatever other reasons people like to dress like cows, I am certainly grateful.

It's good to introduce an evergreen component to a seasonal lens.  Of course Christmas or Valentine gift lenses should be easily adaptable to birthday and other year-round gift-giving occasions.  And it should be easy for costume lenses to be adapted to a dress-up play for kids topic, or for a gypsy costume lens being made to appeal to belly dancers or fans of the Bohemian style, both of which are popular all year. 

Just as we enjoy an unseasonably warm day in February or a break from the heat in August, that touch of evergreen in a seasonal lens can send us surprise sales now and then.  But why not work a bit to make a seasonal lens perform all year long.  A good investment of time?  I think so.

Do you have any secrets to making seasonal lenses perform as evergreen?  I'd love to read your comments.

One Best Tip

Someone asked me today for one tip for building a successful lens.

I gave him this one:  Own your topic.

Then I gave him a bonus tip:  Proofread! Then do it again.

Success may be subjective, but objective misspellings and silly errors stand out and can make us look very unprofessional. Owning our topic allows room for forgiveness for some of those silly errors that all of us make from time to time. 

Squidoo Conference Call

A number of lensmasters (20 or so) were invited to participate in a conference call today to ask questions about current events on Squidoo.  Bonnie and Seth hosted and the group had the treat of putting voices with names of more than a dozen lensmasters over the 40-minute call as questions were asked and answered.

Here's a recording of the call so you can listen in.

The questions were great and the answers were candid and complete.  One quote that I took away from the 40-minute session was from Seth as he discussed the value of adding a personal story to a lens: "Value is created when someone is persuaded."  (You'll find that at 35:15 on the recording.)

Thanks to everyone who participated and especially to Seth and Bonnie for taking time out of their day to host the call.  If you weren't there but wish you would have been, 40 minutes spent listening to the recording will be time well spent.

Now Is the Time To Build (Lenses)

I really liked this post that Bonnie wrote for SquidooHQ a couple of days ago.  She makes an important point about the fact that things change.  They do!

And if there's anything in this world we can count on for change, it's all things internet-related.

I've been hanging onto old Squidoo lenses, or maybe I should say lenses with old topics.  I "archive" them, explaining that this page was created during the 2008 election process (for instance) and is here for historical reference.  That, I've come to decide, is so bogus!  There's nothing on most of these old lenses that anyone wants to read or wouldn't find elsewhere if they did want some historical information.  There are other lenses, too, that I just don't care about anymore.  (There, I said it.)  They're baggage, dragging me down when I notice them there on my dashboard whispering, pleading, "Let me go!"

It's time to delete some of those oldies-that-were-formerly-goodies, cut the cord, say "sayonara" and move on.

Yes, it's a bit like "empty nest syndrome" - my lens-kids leaving home makes me sad - but the good news is that I can keep making new lens-babies on current topics that people actually care about.  And "people," in this case, includes me.  No more maintenance, no regrets.  Those babies are going bye-bye!

New, updated, useful, original content.  That's the part of the internet equation that stays the same.  Time to build it!

Image property Susan52

Putting Myself On The Line

Is this a perfect Squidoo lens?

What do you think?  Visit the link and chime in.

I can take it.

About Me (You, too.)

Now that the "About Me" and "My Lenses" modules have been retired, here's another way to help your readers learn more about you.

In the custom bio box on the top right of the lens, add a "call to action" at the end of the custom bio you write for each lens.  Simply ask readers to "Click on my picture to learn more about me and see what else I've been writing about."

That's how I'm going to start updating my custom bio boxes.

I like this idea.  Should have thought about it before!