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.

The A - Z of Squidooing

The alphabet has been on my mind for the last couple of days, in fact it's been ever since I heard of an A-Z Blogging Challenge.   I've signed up two of my other blogs to it - Unique and Funky Gifts & All Eighties, All The Time.   It looks like  a lot of fun, but I couldn't think how I would keep this lens about Squidoo tips and still manage to write 26 blog posts - one for each letter of the alphabet.

I have, however, taken a break from updating lenses to produce Lou16's A-Z on Squidoo in an attempt to get my mind in shape!   On that note I thought I would devote this blog post to the A-Z of Squidooing (let's see if we can make it through the alphabet shall we?)

A is for Anecdote - adding your own anecdotes, experiences and stories to your lenses are a great way to make them stand out from the crowd.

B is for Blogging and Backlinks - we all know how important backlinks to our lenses are and one of the easiest ways to get a backlink is to blog about them and how did you like the combination of 2 bs for the price of one?

C is for Commitment - if you want to succeed at Squidoo you can't expect to become a millionaire overnight, you need to commit to creating at least 50 great lenses (in my opinion) and if you want to create an income you need to do the 'boring bits' too because as much fun as Squidooing is if you want an income you need to treat it as a job!

D is for Determination - sometimes you can follow all the advice and your lens still doesn't do well, what separates successful Squids from others often comes down to determination.   We've all had lenses that didn't do as we would have liked, but we've picked ourselves up and kept going.

E is for Excitement - Squidoo has lots of exciting moments to strive for whether it's receiving that first sale, getting a lens into the top tier, getting a lens into the top 100, receiving a purple star or getting a LOTD (I'm still waiting for this one myself).   The great thing about this excitement is that fellow lensmasters will also share it with you when you use up your bragging rights and there's not many online communities that do that :)

F is for Featured Lenses - this is one of my favorite modules and I think it's fantastic for interlinking your lenses or adding other peoples.   Could you imagine setting up a lensography without this module - it would take forever!

G is for Google - whether we love Google or hate Google the fact is that if we want to get a lot of traffic to our lens we need to get it ranked in Google and finding it on the front page is another chance to revisit the letter E again - Excitement!

H is for Hubpages - okay I know Squidoo is often seen as a competitor to hubpages, but a number of people actually participate on both sites and as much as I love Squidoo I do believe that you shouldn't keep all of your eggs in one basket.   Hubpages are a great alternative.

I is for Interlinking.   If you haven't read my Interlinking Your Lenses lens yet, then open it up in another tag and read it after you've finished this post.   I cannot stress how important interlinking is with helping your lenses to do better.

J is for Joker - no I'm not playing cards, I'm talking about having a laugh!   Some days (especially if you're busy updating lenses all day) Squidoo can become a bit of a chore and that's when you need to have a bit of a laugh to brighten up your day.   Squidoo is home to a lot of funny people - if you're a RocketMom then the Chatterbox group certainly knows how to lighten the mood, one of my favorite places to visit is a blog by a fellow lensmaster called Laugh Quotes - this is a great place to relieve any tension.

K is for - Keep Calm


Buy This Allposters.com

This poster just says it all.........let's face it in any avenue we venture up (including Squidoo) we can find ourselves struggling with a range of feelings that aren't very useful to us.

L is for Lensographies - these are fantastic for interlinking your lenses and I would be totally lost without my gazillions of lensographies.   If you don't have one yet then you need to read Why Should You Have A Lensography.   Now I have so many lensographies I need a lensography to keep them all in - don't believe me?   Then check this out Lensography of Lensographies, despite this there is another type of lensography that I came across recently......I don't even know if the lensmaster thinks of it as a lensography, but it's a great idea - Where in the World - this is actually a fun geography quiz, but if you look even more closely each quiz points you to a lens, it's a fantastic idea that's worth considering for your own lensographies.

M is for Making Money or just Money!   Sure Squidoo is fun, but the reason a lot of people are reading this blog is because they want to learn how to make money with it.   I believe that the best lens on making money on Squido is my one (but then I am biased) and I've recently updated it so here's the link again - How to Earn Money on Squidoo.

N is for Niche - as I've talked about again and again (or so it seems) the key to earning money on Squidoo is niches.

O is for Organization - not always my strong point, but the people who are successful are the ones who are organized and I've always found that if I have a to do list then I achieve so much more than if I don't.

P is for Professional - if you want to make Squidooing your income then you need to think of it as a career and don't let people dismiss you for anything less than a professional.   It's also important to present yourself in a good light online (just like you would if you worked in an office), so if someone asks for help in Squidu then help them politely - being treated nicely is something that gets remembered and I can still remember the people who helped me out in the beginning and I will often tweet their lenses or promote them when I can.

Q is for Quiz - the Squidoo Quiz lenses are a lot of fun, but if you want to make money out of them you'll need to add content as well - I used my Quiz lens as an opportunity to create backlinks to some of my hubs.

R is for Rinse and Repeat - basically once you've found a formula on Squidoo that works for you just keep doing it.

S is for Squidu - Squidoo's help desk and Squidoo's forum.   There is so much information there and so many lensmasters willing to help that it's well worth sifting through whether you want to add your 10 cents to the discussions is entirely up to you.

T is for Top 10s, if you are ever short of an idea for a lens try and think of a top 10 as they're always great ideas - top 10 coffee flavors, top 10 places to visit in your state, top 10 favorite movies the list just keeps growing.

U is for Unique - write unique content and use the word unique as well - in Kimberley's morning coffee (on Squidu) she mentioned a while ago that unique was a surprising keyword find, so there's another idea for a few lenses - unique wedding locations, unique holiday activities.............I hope you're taking notes :)

V is for Very Addictive, this is your warning (if it's not too late already) Squidoo can become extremely addictive and can end up ruling your life.

W is for Web Profile - don't just stick with Squidoo, find other forums to join or other sites and develop your own web profile - tweet, facebook, blog - whatever suits your personality, just create your web profile.....and then link it back to your lenses.

X is for the X Factor - some lenses just have this X factor and work, they're often lenses that you didn't expect to take off quite as well and whatever you do you can't replicate the results with similar lenses.   Don't stress, just enjoy the ride.

Y is for You - your lenses are all unique because they're written by you.   You are also the only one who can make Squidoo work for you which means that you're the one you need to pat on the back when you do a good job.

Z is for Zazzle - Zazzle is a great affiliate partner to use with Squidoo, just make sure that you use the text module to sell products on because Squidoo's Zazzle module doesn't pay you a referral.   Zazzle's referral rate is 15% which is not to be sneezed at.

Wow!   I can't believe I've managed to write and A - Z, I hope you've enjoyed it.

Using Squidoo Directories for Backlinks

While organic backlinks are by far the best ones to get, don't dismiss the role that squidoo directories can play. There's always a lot of discussion online about the importance of backlinks. What's good and what's not and I am by no means an expert. I see a backlink as a recommendation, imagine you're sat at a table with a couple of your friends and there are also a couple of their friends present who you don't know as well. The topic turns to where you can buy the best Indian, out of all the recommendations you're going to allocate value to them. One of your friends has similar tastebuds to you so you take her recommendation more highly than the people who you don't know as well. Google also allocates it's own value to bakclinks, but unfortunately we don't know what Google bases it's values on.

The way I look at it, even if I didn't know the other people at the table very well if they ALL recommended the same place chances are I'm going to try it out - why wouldn't Google act the same way?

After using the interlinking lenses tricks that we've discussed previously, squidoo directories are probably one of the easiest ways to build backlinks. I've used various squidoo directories on and off and when I look at some of my older lenses I wonder why I wasn't more consistant with my practises!

This week I've been checking out the squidoo directoris to see what ones are still working. A couple of the directories aren't taking submissions at the moment, but all of the one's here are working fine as of posting -

Lensroll
Squidom
Isle of Squid
Squidup
Squidooenc.corank
Squidlog
Slinkset
Squidpoint
Squidirectory

My Experiment on Squidoo Directories

I have a lens that spent the 1st couple of weeks of this month in tier 1 before dropping into tier 2 (it has been a pretty consisten tier 2 lens for a while now). Most of it's traffic is referred with very little coming from Google. When I searched Google I found out why - it was at #53! I added the lens to 2 of the directories mentioned and the following day it was at #24. Two days after submission it's moved back into tier 1.....will the monthly average be enough? I added the lens to all bar 1 of these directories and it's now at #23 in google. It's also moved further into the top tier which I think is due to visits from members of the squidoo community that are involved in the squidoo directory and who have given the lens a thumbs up.

My conclusion - spend a few minutes adding your lenses to these squidoo directories. I'm waiting to see where this lens ranks for it's main keyword in a couple of weeks when the backlinks have had time to percolate and I'm expecting good things :)

So, do you use the squidoo directories?