Using Amazon Tracking IDs

As you know I am busy changing over some of my links from Amazon modules to my associate links as I do more I also find that there are some products which I'm promoting on both Squidoo and Hubpages so it's time to  introduce a new Amazon Tracking ID.

People have asked me in the past how do you know whether your sales have come from Squidoo or Hubpages and I've been able to make an educated guess because my lenses and hubs are all very targeted - the shopping sprees that have occurred leave me unsure as to which a/c they've come from - hence my next move - adding a new Amazon tracking ID.

I had been told it was easy to do and it really was, here's how you can do it -

When you visit your associates account page you need to click on Manage your tracking ids.   Once you've done this you'll see a list of all of your tracking ids that you have (this includes a-stores if you have them) along with a button that says Add tracking id - click this button and add what you'd like to use as your tracking id and click search.   If no one else has that tracking id then you're all good to go!

How easy was that?   Now I'm thinking that this would also be a great tool if you wanted to compare different niches within your Squidoo a/c - you can have up to 100 different tracking ids.

I always felt that the stats provided when a sale was made through Amazon or eBay was one of the advantages to using the Squidoo modules - just knowing exactly what lens made a sale is really helpful.   I have one product in particular that I have featured on two lenses - to me it really belongs on one of these lenses and on the other lens it made a good filler (because it's related), but as I got more information I would've been tempted to get rid of it.    Guess which lens sales the most!

In all honesty I won't be adding several different tracking ids to my different Squidoo lenses, but it certainly would have an advantage that is worth considering.

Well I must carry on with changing over my amazon modules and if you're in the process of doing the same let me give you another gentle reminder - do them slowly so as not to spook Google!   I am only changing one module per day on a lens that has a good ranking in Google and so far it's working really well.

Legofun - Working On A Niche Account

Today we're having a break from doing lens dissertions and we're looking at my second account which is a niche account focusing on Lego.   I'm trying to take note of everything I do so that you can follow along from the beginning of a new account to what I hope will become a very successful account - we live in hope anyways!

I was so excited when I logged in yesterday because I got my first sale on my Legofun account!   Now my main account still has three figures showing on the dash and yet I’m doing a happy dance over a mere 29 cents, but I know that you’ll understand.   Since starting this second account I haven’t really had a chance to do much in the way of marketing and promoting so I wasn’t expecting to get a sale so soon.

The sale was on my Lego City Police Sets lens, this was my second lens ever created and was ‘born’ on 20^th December 2010.   Considering how little I have done with this lens I think that it’s pretty cool to have had a sale in less than a month.   (See below for what sold.)

Now, however it is time to start promoting this account and as I was going to start at the top that will be the Lego City Police Sets lens, so what am I going to do?

First I’m going to take a look at the lens and see if it needs anything changed and to refresh my mind as to the lens itself.   Next I have to look at Google and I’m number 8 for Lego City police sets, the ones above are all big players like Lego’s own shop, Amazon, K Mart etc.   Being on the front page does explain why I’m getting regular traffic though.  

According to the Google keyword tool I am well optimized for legos city police which gets 22,200 monthly views, I’ve had 213 visits since I published (just under a month ago) – obviously I need to get to the number 1 spot!

First up I lensrolled my Lego City Police Sets to all of my other Lego lenses.

Next I submitted the lens to – lensroll.com, squidom.com, isle of squid, lensmasters.slinkset, squidpoint, squidirectory.

With each of these submissions I entered the ‘description’ into the Google SERPs tool that we’ve discussed previously to make sure that I had some keywords in them.   That’s all I had time for yesterday, but that alone has seen an increase in Google this morning as I find myself at #5.  

I think the fact that I wasn’t able to jump on and add all of my backlinks straight away might be working in my favor.    Google has some pretty complicated algorithms and gets suspicious if you try and add backlinks too quickly, maybe leaving the backlinking for a few weeks before starting was a good idea??