How to Cope With the Latest Squidoo Changes

Squidoo caught us all unawares with their 7th birthday surprise last weekend when they rolled out their new responsive scripts. While I think this will be great in the long run, the timing was really off which is why so many people were in an uproar over it.

I must admit when I first looked at a couple of my lenses I just wanted to cry and not because of excess CSS by the way - one of the initial issues I had was a link list being really wonky and that was all on Squidoo as I had done nothing to it.

I changed image credits on 3 lenses and decided to sleep on it. I like to align the credit under the image and when they changed the images from one side to another these credits were now in the middle of my text! The next day I looked and I'm so glad I only touched 3 because the images had been moved back to where they were - in the words of Homer DOH!

 I waited until Monday (Aussie time) before doing anything more on my accounts and I'm glad I did as a number of the kinks worked themselves out and my lenses didn't look as bad as I was expecting.

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel by telling you how you can fix up any issues you have with your lenses as the wonderful Greekgeek has already come to the rescue with her very own cheat sheet. If you don't subscribe to her blog then I've got the link for you right here -

Greekgeeks Cheat Sheet for Dealing with Squidoo's New Layout

As far as December's early pay went it certainly took the sting out of the weekend's fracas and was my third highest ever and my affiliate payments are also reaching new levels so I'm one happy camper heading into Christmas.

I hope you are making lots of sales and one important tip is to keep checking your links to make sure the products are still available.   I have one lens that I'm checking every few days and things are still running out on me!!

Another Christmas tip for me is not to forget to start thinking about the New Year so that you can try and keep your earning momentum going and not experience too big a drop in earnings after the Christmas sales clear so that's things like Valentine's Day, Easter, St Patrick's Day and other winter related lenses ie What's the Best Snow Blower or Cool Looking Boots That DO Keep Your Feet Warm etc.

Zazzle & Squidoo - A Match Made in Heaven

Are you using Zazzle products on your Squidoo lens?   If not you're missing out on an opportunity to make some extra money and I think we'd all like some of that :D

There are lots of different places that we can promote on our lenses to get extra money and at different times of the year different affiliates really seem to stand out to me, however Zazzle is great for consistent referrals which is why I think it's a great program for everyone to use.

Head on over and join Zazzle now and then visit this lens to learn How to Make Money on Zazzle Through Referrals.   I've put as much information as I could think of on this lens and I think you'll find it very valuable.

Now I'll admit some of my Zazzle income is from sales as I have a number of Zazzle stores, but the referral income used to be my main source of Zazzle income and is still going up so even if you have no artistic bone in your body Zazzle is worth joining.

Another cool thing about Zazzle is that they have square shaped stickers and square shaped posters which you can use for your introduction image as long as you have a clickable link underneath the image.   I use this code on my lens - 

<p style="width: 250px; float: left; clear: left;"><b> HERE PLACE THE A HREF LINK TO ZAZZLE </b></p>

This lines the text up underneath the image if you place it between your first and second paragraphs in the introduction text.

I've used some square Zazzle images on a few of my lenses to see how they go and although none of them have made the front page of Squidoo :( they have all shown sales of the items pictured so I'm really happy about that.

Now a quick note to apologize for not posting very regularly any more - personally a lot of different things have been happening in my life and Squidoo-wise ....... well I have felt a little disconnected from HQ for a while. 

Initially I couldn't log in to the official forum since they shut down Squidu and since the log in issue has been fixed I've looked in on occasion and even added a few comments, but it just doesn't feel like a good fit for me right now.   If you need advice from some long term lensmasters who will treat you with respect you might be interested in an alternative forum that I visit every day - http://squidu.yuku.com/ 

I'm not suggesting that you choose one forum over the other I'm just showing you an alternative so that you can see which is the best fit for you.   The best forum I ever found for Squidoo (Rocketmoms) no longer exists, but it just felt like home for the time it was around and I found I learned a lot from it which is why I think it's important for everyone to find the forum that feels right to them - no one can tell you which is best because we all learn differently.

I will try and start posting more regularly again as we head towards 2013 as long as the world doesn't really end on Dec 21st that is!