Updating Lenses

How was your weekend? I seemed to be quite busy and yet still didn’t get everything done! We decided to get up and go to a Sunday market that we haven’t been to since I held a market stall there with my friend (we were making jewelry before Christmas 2008). Well it’s probably been the first time that we haven’t watched the news in a couple of days – there was a king tide due that morning and with a bit of a storm (thanks to Olga who was further up the coast) the sea was up onto the road in places and the market was closed! I did take my camera, but hubby was reluctant to stop until the rain stopped so I only got a couple of snaps :(

The most exciting part of the weekend occurred on the Saturday night however, my dd had been playing at the next door neighbors when she came running up our steps calling out something…..it turned out there was a baby koala in the tree outside of our houses. I took heaps of snaps – a couple of them are in my Zazzle store. We had to call the Wildlife Rescue team though because there was no sign of his/her mother. S/he was remarkably calm though merrily chomping her way through the ‘wrong’ leaves off of the ‘wrong’ tree. I don’t know if s/he was going through a rebellious stage or they’ve had to adapt their diet because of the change in habitat.

Now back to Squidoo. How often do you update lenses? There has been a discussion on Squidu about which lens was the oldest to be updated and mine has been a while, although not nearly as bad as if the question had been asked a month ago.

Now I don’t really know how often you should update them because when I update some it seems to give them a new lease of life, however others can tick along with nice traffic and only get updated a few times a year! During January, however, I was making a concerted effort to work my way through my lenses, just updating the tags and anything that was glaringly obvious. I was about a week into it when I realized that a number of my discovery tools were empty! There must’ve been a bug at some stage so I started checking those too.

When I do something little like that I also have a notebook and write down the lenses that need major work done – I do it that way so that I can keep working through my lenses and leave those until I can schedule enough time. The last time I totally revamped a lens it took me all day (and that was after I had made lots of notes in longhand as well and knew what I was planning). It was worth it however and I’m much happier promoting it.

The last week I’ve been spending a lot more time on Zazzle and Hubpages than on Squidoo because I’m trying to diversify my online income streams. I am working on a big project however which involves t-shirts. I have published a couple and have one in WIP, but I haven’t promoted them yet. I sometimes have an idea for a lens and I realize that I really need to break it up – once I’ve decided on how to break it up I work on the off-shoot lenses first – publish them, but don’t do any promotion until the whole thing is finished.

I promise I’ll reveal all later on this week, it’s just been really busy with pretty mundane ‘real life’ things getting in the way.

Do You Comment?

If you’ve been active on Squidoo this week you’re probably aware that there is a problem with the guestbook module not ‘always’ allowing you to leave a comment. This raises an interesting question that I want you to think about – do you always leave a comment on a lens that you look at?

There’s no right or wrong answer, but I thought I’d talk about what I used to do and what I do now. I always love getting comments, it’s all very well seeing your visitor numbers go up, but getting a comment makes you realize that people actually did visit your lens and it’s not just numbers on your stats screen. When I first started on Squidoo everytime I got a comment I would look at that person and visit one of their lenses to leave a comment and a rating. Invariably the person would visit another of my lenses and we’d go backwards and forwards.

I found that this commenting was taking up far too much of my time (trust me, I procrastinate quite enough without something else doing it for me!!). Why was it taking up so much of my time? I would try and think of something original, so that people would realize that I had actually read their lens and it would take me forever. Then I would also sometimes realize that I had nothing interesting to add to the comments so would end up just putting ‘great lens’ or something similar (this is after wasting my time trying to think of something!).

What do I do now? Well I still visit people who leave me comments and I read a lens of theirs and rate it, sometimes leaving comments sometimes not. Basically I’ve given myself permission to just rate and leave if I want to. These days I’ll often read several of a lensmaster’s lenses because I don’t waste time trying to think of what to write on just one. I leave ‘karma’ to take care of getting visits as opposed to a comment circle with the same people. I’ve found time to ‘discover’ lenses that I probably wouldn’t have got to if I hadn’t adopted this approach.

Now don’t get me wrong I do still leave an odd ‘great lens’ and this is especially if the person has made a comment somewhere that they weren’t sure about something or if I’ve visited a number of their lenses without commenting. Now that Google is indexing the guestbooks I’m trying to add comments that contain keywords to help the lensmaster rank better in Google……having said that sometimes I just start writing because the lens has stirred up something in me and I don’t care about the keywords :)

I’d be interested to know what everyone else thinks and how often you’d visit and rate a lens compared to how often you leave a comment.

Whilst we’re on the subject of visiting lenses I believe that if you want to succeed on Squidoo you do need to visit lenses on a regular basis. I spend some time 5 days a week just reading lenses – I’ve often found I’ve forgotten to rate because I’ve followed their links and have got totally absorbed, but now I open the links in separate windows so that I can still rate the original!

Seeing how other people have used modules is a great idea – I didn’t know that you could put a picture inside a Blackbox module until I saw it on someone else’s lens.

Anyway I’m busy chasing my tail today, I’ve added another tie to Zazzle and my tie lens and I’m busy trying to get another couple of lenses completed. I’ve just realized that it’s actually going to turn into at least another 3 possibly more because otherwise it will be too big! I’ll keep you posted once I get it sorted and give you a run down as to what I did. It’s Friday here in Australia so have a great weekend wherever you are in the world.

My Extra Long Weekend and HIMYM Tee Update

Well I had a fantastic long weekend, but I didn’t quite manage to stay away from Squidoo :) I decided to leave the How I Met Your Mother Tees well alone and instead I worked on a few other things. I published a St Patrick’s Day Tees (which I linked to HIMYM tees……I know that’s not leaving it alone, but…), St Patrick’s Day Aprons for last week’s Rocketmoms assignment and my very first Zazzle lens. The Zazzle lens – Men’s Designer Ties by Lou is a first for me and today I’ll have to post it on the Zazzle group to get their feedback.

This morning I searched on Google for How I Met Your Mother tees really not expecting to find it and we’re back on the front page at number 7 – woo hoo! Unfortunately the traffic has slowed down to a mere trickle, not that it was that fast to start with! My plan is to leave all the HIMYM related lenses this week and see how they percolate by themselves before revisiting them with the rest of my ideas. Sometimes I find that leaving them alone can work wonders for a fairly new lens and they can take on their own identity. Keeping an eye on the traffic searches that lead people there can help you determine how you should develop the lens.

Well I’ve already published my thoughts for the day I just wanted to give you an update as well so until (hopefully) tomorrow I’ll leave you to your own Squidooing.

Remember The Internet is Global

Now I know I’ve said that you need to make your lenses very narrow and focused if you want to make sales, but you also need to think globally. I’ll give you an example – Halloween. Now if you want to do a costume lens for Halloween – do you put Halloween in the title, url and market it just at Halloween? I’ll put my hand up that I did for one of my lenses, but that was horror movie costumes. The answer I’m hoping to hear is no.

People wear costumes at other times of the year besides Halloween so you need to think in the terms of a costume lens, not just a Halloween lens. If you want to pull Halloween in then that is fine as long as you don’t mind changing the text after Halloween so that you can still attract other markets.

When I was growing up in the UK we didn’t really celebrate Halloween, we did all dress up on New Years Eve however. I remember helping my parents with their costumes and then as I became an older teen I was able to go out with my friends in fancy dress around the pubs and club.

I moved to New Zealand when I was 19 and they used to dress up in fancy dress on Christmas Eve. Fast forward to now and the last few years have seen many of my friends turn 40 and quite a number of them have had fancy dress parties to celebrate.

My Lady Gaga Costume lens uses the word costume and talks about dressing up for a party or a night out clubbing and it’s still making sales, in fact I’ve made a sale today – are your ‘Halloween costume’ lenses continuing to make sales in January?? It is because of the traffic and sales that the lens remains in the top tier.

The internet is global.

There are other things to think about when you think of how global the internet is such as seasons. Now I’ll admit the majority of my sales seem to come from the US and Canada, but the traffic still comes from around the world. When it’s winter in the northern hemisphere it will be summer in the southern hemisphere so if you have a summer cocktail lens or a top ten salads to take to a bbq lens then you need to make sure they are still being promoted during the Northern winter.

Back to school lenses should also be prepared to be polished and promoted for schools elsewhere. Australia and New Zealand school terms start at the end of January, beginning of February not in September, so if you market your lens correctly you could have two bites of the cherry.

Even Christmas lenses can have two chances at being popular……confused? A very popular thing ‘down under’ is the Christmas in July. This was originally pushed by emigrants who couldn’t ‘handle’ a full Christmas lunch in the middle of an Australian summer day and so they decided to celebrate in July! The tree and decorations were up at the last one I attended, small gifts were passed out (you just brought one small gift each, there was a price cap) and we ate the full Christmas turkey dinner and drank far too much!!! So if you have a Christmas lens that focuses on the food, drink or decorations of Christmas then get it out and promote it for the Christmas in July ‘season’ as well!

Hopefully that’s some food for thought, if you’re wondering whether any of your lenses might be able to do double duty then just google Australian holidays, New Zealand holidays, South African holidays…..the list is endless and you might be surprised at the results.

How I Met Your Mother Tees – Part 6

On a side note, this blog may be a bit erratic over the next few days as we’re having an extra long family weekend.

Now HIMYM tees isn’t looking too good in Google, but I’ve added an Ebay module today so that we can get a few more tees on there. I did find a great affiliate program which sold HIMYM tees, but they turned me down (it happens, but it’s sooooo annoying). I’ve also tried to design some at Zazzle, but they’ve pulled 3 of them already :/ (What Up is apparently someone’s intellectual property?!?)

After adding the Ebay module I also added another featured lens (see next paragraph) and pinged my lens through squidutils.

I did write another lens which was really just something that popped into my head and I wrote it really quickly as a piece of satire. Barney Stinson for President. It’s basically me going off on a tangent which has often paid dividends for me. I saw a photo of Neil Patrick Harris in a bow tie and the thought what if Barney ran for President just popped into my head. I got one person to look at it and they laughed so hopefully more people will share the humor.

Humor lenses often don’t make any money, but if the right person finds it there’s a chance it could go viral and maybe they’ll click through to one of the other links as well. I’ve even made a tee to add to it and as it’s my idea no one can claim intellectual property on that tee!!!

Happy squidooing until next time.

Sometimes it’s Good to Leave Squidooland!

I took my daughter out today and after the donut decorating (school holiday activity) we wandered around the mall killing time before our movie started. Just browsing at what was first and foremost in the stores was really good and gave me two different ideas for Squidoo lenses. The only problem now is finding time to do these!

I’m guilty of being tied to the computer like a clingy child is to their mother, unless Dexter’s on that is :) Sometimes it’s when you’ve had a day or even (dare I say it) a weekend away you can get your best ideas and inspiration. It’s also a great way to get photos.

I carry my digital camera everywhere with me now (since we brought this new one just before Christmas anyway) because I was sick of seeing awesome things and not having a camera handy. I just click away and if the photo’s no good I can delete it.

It means that I have a lot of photos ready to go onto Squidoo whenever I get around to writing particular lenses, but could they be earning in the mean time? I remember my Nan always telling my not to put all my eggs in one basket so I’ve been uploading a few of my photos to Zazzle. Today I sold my first actual product (I’ve only got referrals until now) which was a birthday card that featured a photo of a white pony I took while out on a Sunday drive with my family.

Will you be stepping away from the computer this weekend?

How I Met Your Mother Tees – Part 5

Okay so as well as my two lenses I have written an article on Bukisa which is about why Barney Stinson wears a suit and this is linked back to my Barney lens. It’s not directly to do with the HIMYM tee lens, but it is part of the same genre which can be linked together and give me more of an authority on the subject. I have also done a hub on hubpages about The Bro Code and in this hub I have included a text link to the HIMYM tees lens and a link to the Barney lens.

Google seems to be playing games as it listed my HIMYM tee lens on the 1st page again last night (Aussie time) and this morning it had disappeared again!! Both the Xomba link and the Shetoldme are ranked in the top 10 and 20 respectively and I’m receiving traffic so that’s good.

I need to promote both my hub and article the same way as I did the lens and I want to look at tags for my two lenses.

When you add tags to your lenses be sure to include your lensmaster name as one of the tags, I only learnt this trick recently but it’s a really handy one to have in your repertoire. Why? It’ll increase your chances of having your own lenses showing for example I have countless cocktail lenses so if I use the tags cocktails and lou16 the chances are that it’ll be my lenses that populate the featured lenses.

I’m not saying that I don’t want to share other lensmaster’s lenses, but I’d like to have as much control as possible over which ones I highlight where I can. This can be achieved by the featured lens module or by a plexo (set for you to approve).

Anyway I’m off out to go donut decorating with my dd so I’ll sign off until later.