50 REALLY GREAT lenses. Original ideas, beautifully executed, that you are proud to put your name to.

Once you get to 50+ great lenses you can submit your name to Squidoo HQ by emailing them at giants@squidoo.com.

The Single Biggest Reason You Need To Be A Giant Squid:

The Lens Templates.

As a Giant Squid you get to have your own Lens Templates. Which means when you are creating a lens you can choose which pre-set palette of modules you want to add to your new lens. I have a template for amazon product review lenses, one of just 20 text modules for content-heavy lenses, one with my favourite mixture of modules, etc etc, you get the idea.

You have no idea how much time this saves! You get the inspiration to start a new lens, and usually spend about 5 - 10 mins beating the modules in to position before you even put ‘pen to paper’.

Advice: Become a Giant Squid on Squidoo, become a giant squid on squidoo, become a giant squid on squidoo!!

It will seriously speed up your ability to make great lenses, which means more time to spend:

a. with your family
b. making more lenses
c. making more lenses
d. making more lenses

Lewis
P.S.

Here are some things Megan says will help you become a Giant Squid. She has put a load more info up at www.squidoo.com/giantsquids

* Make lenses about things that interest you.
* Write good introductions.
* Have intro photos.
* Upload a photo of yourself (or your avatar) while you’re at it.
* Try out a bunch of different modules.
* Replace the default module titles, like “New Guestbook.”
* UUU - Unique, useful, updated content rocks!
* Don’t copy. Don’t cut and paste. Don’t plagiarize.
* Keep an eye out for style. Junky lenses send readers running.
* Stop by the SquidU forum and get feedback. Ask politely.
* Stay relevant on your lens.
* G-rated or R-rated, please.
* You’re an author: act like one. Don’t publish half-baked lenses.
* Watch for typos.
* Be kind to fellow lensmasters and your readers.
* Don’t spam.
* Sure, sell stuff; but don’t sound like a snakeoil salesman when you do.
* Invite readers to participate. Or not.
* Recommend things you know.
* Explain your topic to new readers.
* Experiment with “front doors” like SquidWho and SquidSports and SquidBoo and SquidFlix, but don’t ONLY make those lenses. (It’s often easy to pump those out without adding much “you” to them).
* Own a niche and make lots of lenses in it. But don’t repeat yourself on the same topic. 40 lenses that say the exact same thing aren’t kosher.
* Diversify.
* Link to and feature other people’s lenses. It feels good to give back.
* Be passionate. Be you.
* Be honest and straightforward and creative.

It is probably the most requested Squidoo feature from internet marketers. They want to use their lenses to build mailing lists.

Ever since Squidoo blocked the i-frame code we have been unable to get this working on lenses.

Until now.

You can now put a live opt in form on your Squidoo lenses!

Not an image of the opt in form like like normal, and not a link to your opt in page.

An actual opt in form live in a module on your lens.

I put it all into a guide to take you through step by step, so you can’t fail at it.

You can read more and download it at SquidooTricks.com

Lewis

Tiffany, my partner at BuildMyLens.com, wrote an article yesterday that gave a nice little roundup of a few sites built on the same idea as Squidoo.

Give them a go if you haven’t, comment on your experience if you have!

************

HubPages - This website gives users a chance to show what they know for free. You can create single Hub Pages where you feature yourself and your knowledge. For marketers, a Hub Page is a good way to build your brand. But be careful - they’re persnickety about how many links you use and where they lead.

Google Knol - A knol is an article about a specific subject. Google Knol is a place where, like Squidoo, you can share information with others by creating and posting your own knols. Google Knol gives you a way to share, connect with other experts, be more visible, brand yourself and grow. Like Squidoo, they’re relaxed on your marketing efforts!

Weebly - Weebly is a cool website that allows you to build your own web page for free. It offers some nice, user-friendly features that make it easy to create a professional looking site that will give you increased visibility and a place to link your Hub Pages, Squidoo lenses and Knols to as well as other domains.

Finding websites like Squidoo that give you free resources for getting your name and face out there is like finding money in an old coat pocket - what a bonus! Take advantage of all of these resources and grow your brand through the peer-to-peer social networking media outlets on the World Wide Web.

************

Tiffany and I have a lens building service at BuildMyLens.com, and a Knol building service at BuildMyKnol.com. Check us out.

And the more sites like Squidoo you use to target your keywords and phrases the more success you will have.

So go dive right in…

Lewis

So here goes

Why Squidoo Tags Are Useless

Things change. Goal posts move. And it is our job to keep up with the moves and revaluate what is working and what is not, what brings results and what does not, and what is worth our time and what is not.

Tags used to be marvellous traffic pullers. You could add a bunch of tags to our lenses and Google would discover your lens twice as fast. You could plug into an already ranked network of pages to push your lens into the Google Limelight.

Your lens would get some pagerank leaking over from the high ranking tags pages (high quality by association), and it was the quickest way to get other pages in the Squidoo eco-system to link to you.

In short, it was the lazy way to short term lens success! And there was nothing wrong with the lazy way. Squidoo built it in to the system, and it worked fantastically.

But now it doesn’t. Like I said. Goal posts move.

So, we need new ways to replace what tags previously did for us. Here is why tags are now useless.

***************

1. Google does not see tags pages anymore.

Squidoo had thousands upon thousands of tags pages ranked in Google. We created them, Google found them. The tags pages connected every single lens to every other lens on the site. Like a giant sitemap, but more specific. Your lens about ‘transformers talking action figures’ would be linked to my lens about the very same thing, just because we both tagged our lenses with the same thing. The entire site was connected. Google recognized this and we got a nice helping hand in the rankings.

But now, Squidoo blocks Google from seeing the tags pages.

Squidoo has added a line to it’s Robots.txt file telling Google not to look at any pages that begin with http://www.squidoo.com/tags. Which of course, all tags pages do. So Google faithfully ignores all tags pages. Which means the links in the sidebar of your lens linking your lens to all the tags pages are ignored. Squidoo is effectively saying “Nothing to see here Google! Move along!”

You can see the robots.txt file by going to http://www.squidoo.com/robots.txt

***************

2. Squidoo tags WILL affect how your lens does in Squidoo search results.

You know that little search box in the sidebar of a lens? That’s the Squidoo Search box.

One reason you may think tags are still worth your time is because how you tag your lens will affect how well your lens ranks in Squidoo’s own Search Results.

I am convinced that the only people searching Squidoo using the Squidoo search box are lensmasters. Why? Because who would search Squidoo using it?! You search Google, or Yahoo, or wherever you came from to find Squidoo in the first place.

I honestly don’t think the casual surfer who arrives on a Squidoo lens who doesn’t find what they’re looking for will choose to search the rest of Squidoo instead of just hit ‘back’ from the lens and continue searching Google or Yahoo.

Squidoo HQ must have the stats for these ideas, and they make changes to Squidoo.com based on statistical evidence, so I may be wrong about this.

I really can’t see the casual surfer, who isn’t a lensmaster and who doesn’t participate in other content-publishing communities like HubPages or Gather, searching Squidoo just for the fun of it.

***************

3. Some people have claimed in the comments here that Google still indexes tags pages and that they’ve seen recently indexed tags pages.

Here is a google search results page for all Squidoo tags pages Google has indexed:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=site%3Asquidoo.com%2Ftags%2F&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

A total of 11.

And these are only still being shown because they have yet to drop from the index. It doesn’t give any weight to any tags pages. Squidoo’s Robots.txt ‘disallows’ google from counting them. So any others Google find and records don’t count for anything.

***************

4. The Discovery Tool

The tags you choose will determine which lenses show up in the Discovery tool on your lens. Likewise your tags will determine which lenses your lens will appear on.

The Discovery Tool is a noticeable blue box underneath your introduction containing links to 5 related lenses. You are allowed to choose up to 3 of those lenses.

Some people love the Discovery Tool, other people don’t. I don’t. So I disable it on all of my lenses.

Squidoo implemented the Discovery Tool because they value some lenses more than other lenses. This is right of them to do, of course, because a huge amount of lenses are rubbish. So Squidoo needs a way to get people from rubbish lenses to the good lenses.

But here’s the problem.

If someone arrives at one of my lenses I want them to keep reading. If they like the lens they will read. They will skip over the Discovery Tool and keep reading, they won’t bother with it.

If they land on one of Squidoo’s many rubbish lenses they aren’t likely to think ‘Hey. Let’s explore more rubbish pages like this’. They will just click BACK.

The Discovery Tool is great for linking all lenses together, but I will only start using it if it’s pushed into the sidebar instead of the most ridiculous place Squidoo HQ could find - directly under the introduction!

***************

I still add a good Primary Tag to my lenses and maybe about 5 other relevent tags in case things change in future, but long gone are the days of spending time to perform proper keyword research beyond what I do to make a lens to begin with.

As I said at the start of this post, there are things you can do to replace the effectiveness of the tags pages.

These include:

1. Start a group! Squidoo dissolved the usefulness of groups a while ago when they stopped featuring them in places (like your Lensmaster Profile), but Google still notices group pages and will give weight to lenses featured on your Group Homepage.

2. Bookmark your lenses on sites like digg.com and delicious.com. It’s easy and quick.

3. Build lenses that are related to each other. This gives you a much greater advantage than when compared with someone who builds just one lens on a particular topic. Joe does this brilliantly. Check out his lenses here.

4. Link your related lenses together. Use the Lensroll feature. Use the secret ‘Featured Lenses’ module. Use a Link Plexo module and embed it onto your lenses. Use text links throughout your text. Make a Recommended Resource module and link away!

5. Do more keyword research before you start building your lens. Choose what keywords and phrases you want to rank for, then go after them with relevent text and links and titles.

There are more. Always more. Let’s hear them in the comments.

Now share your thoughts!

Lewis

www.squidoocool.com

I said it!

Next, I shall explain why..

Squidoo has just created 10 new categories for us to play with.

They have added a couple that probably could/should have been added from the beginning (like Home & Garden!) and they added a couple that are more of an experiment than anything else (like Duel and the potentially-troublesome Work at Home).

Here is the list of new categories:

* Books
* About me
* Humor
* Home & Garden
* Religion & Spirituality
* Work at Home
* Green Living
* Pop Culture & Celebs
* Squidoo How To
* Duels

Books is interesting, because squidoo lensmasters sell a LOT of books (a LOT!).

Also, the fact that ‘Squidoo How To’ needs it’s own category is a nice testament to the whole bunch of great people helping others on squidoo.

And Green Living - that should draw a lot of traffic.

Thanks Squidoo!

I’m still hoping for a Christmas category (which would make the lens itself go all Christmassy and tinsel covered), and a few people are still hoping for a History category, but we can dream on

Lewis

Check it out. Edit one of your charity lenses, click Add Modules, and add the new Donations module.

A lot of work has gone into this module, you can tell. Every charity is represented well, with logos and write-ups.

What It Does And How It Does It:

The module opens and looks just like a normal Text module. But instead of a box for you to upload an image there is a drop down menu full of all Squidoo-Supported charities!

So you pick your favorite charity from the list, and save the module as normal. Give it a title first though.

And VOILA! You will see a very good looking module all about your favorite charity with a big fat Donate button. Your visitor can enter their chosen amount and click Donate and they will be taken straight to Paypal where they can send the cash!

Good for Lensrank too maybe?

In the same way your lensrank is boosted when someone makes a purchase on your lens, it is quite possible that the new donation module is factored in to the lensrank calculations too. This is just a guess. But I see no reason why Squidoo would not reward the lens the money got sent from. Donations from your lens are certainly tracked.

So. Show off your donation modules!

I just added one to my lens about the super-cool charity Kiva. you can see it about half way down above the guestbook module. Check it out here: www.squidoo.com/mykiva

Lewis

www.squidoo.com/sarah-palin

I don’t agree with what Sarah Palin says (her big speech was written by Bush’s speech writer!), but I’m not writing this to talk about politics.

I’m writing this because the lens was telepathically topical.

It was made BEFORE Sarah Palin got the nomination for the VP. And as a result, it was already ranking well in google. Number 9 I think. Then when her name hit every media stand in America, people searched for her. To find out who she is, and what she means.

And the lens got 33,000+ visitors in one single day….

Wow!

It’s currently at lensrank 2 and has had almost 90,000 visitors this past week.

The lens was made by Susan Lewis, and she is one smart cookie.
She said to me that she decided to make the lens because she thought Palin had potential. Wow. ‘A complete shot in the dark’ she said.

Making lenses AHEAD of time is a clever move.

What could YOU make a lens about that will make it big at some point in the future?

Here are some of my ideas:

• Lenses about products that don’t yet exist (Apple Touch Tablet anyone?)

• Lenses about movies that aren’t out yet, or are still being made (imdb.com has ALL listings of these!)

• Lenses based on terms like “Madonna’s New Album”, or “Paris Hilton’s latest scandal”.

Anything really..

Instead of thinking about what people are searching for today, maybe make a lens or 3 about what people might be searching for tomorrow.

It may make you 33,000-visitors-a-day happier

Nice work Susan.

Lewis

P.S. What’s the highest number of visitors YOU have ever gotten in a single day to one of your lenses?

I have no idea myself, because I don’t look at the stats like that. But I guess it’s no more than one thousand on a single lens. Probably not that high. There cheers for Susan!

How’s it going?

We’ve all had a few days now living with the new lensmaster profiles. How do you like them?

Personally, I LOVe them! We have more control than ever before over what people see when they click on our username, and we even get the whole left sidebar to ourselves. To list links to wherever we like.

If you are a weird person and you haven’t seen the changes yet, you can see my profile here: www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mrlewissmile

Looks tasty, don’t you think?

To edit your left sidebar and to add your feautured lenses (which show above your big list of lenses) then head for the Profile button at the top after you log in.

Then… go wild!

Link to your websites, your blogs, your twitter page, EVERYTHING. You can really use your profile page to pull everything together.

Here’s the big question - what do you think is MISSING from the new profile pages?

I would quite like to see a ‘Groups I run’ section in the right sidebar maybe. And also maybe something to do with the introduction image for each lens. But then, that would get CRAZY as you get 50+ lenses.

What do you think? What’s missing? Anything?

Maybe ’sidebar modules’!

Lewis

P.S. If you have lenses related to earning money or growing a business online, you may want to link to buildmylens.com in your sidebar… because… We have an affiliate program there now paying a VERY high commission! And we do some great work for our customers there. Check it out at buildmylens.com/affiliates

We have earned thousands and thousands of dollars doing something we enjoy for people who appreciate it. Does it get much better?

Actually, yes

We have been fortunate enough to not really have to promote the service ourselves. We have MANY people who have confidence in what we’re doing who do our promotion for us. They recommend us, and they don’t get paid a dime for doing so.

So we have decided to start rewarding everyone who sends customers our way.

We have launched the BuildMyLens Affiliate Program!

You can see more here: www.buildmylens.com/affiliates

You can now claim 15% of OUR money, just by linking to BuildMyLens.com on your blog, lens, knol, website, etc.

If you post an affiliate link to BuildMyLens.com somewhere, we will pay you 15% of any orders that occur as a result. As much as $119 per sale. NOT small change at all!

The great news about this is that as BuildMyLens.com is a SERVICE and not a GUIDEBOOK it sells like crazy - to people who don’t care HOW it’s done… they just want it done! Busy people who are happy to pay the higher price to get someone who really knows what they’re doing.

We have put together a ton of banners and tools to help you promote BuildMyLens, and even a free 10 page mini-ebook you can give away with your links inside.

You can join the affiliate program here: www.buildmylens.com/affiliates

So if you have any lenses about blogging, making money online, promoting your business on the internet, internet marketing, then a banner or link to BuildMyLens.com could give you one heck of a chunk of cash each month!

If you want to refresh your memory about what the whole BuildMyLens package includes, head to BuildMyLens.com and do some revision.

You’ll be impressed, and we’ll be happy to pay you for it

Lewis

The Answer Deck is designed to help the people who need answers meet up with the people giving the answers. With the answer deck, all of the help lenses that have been built on Squidoo are compiled in one convenient place for you. At last!

The Answer Deck doesn’t contain help lenses from just anyone though.  Only Giant Squids, who have the experience and performance under their belts, are allowed to list their lenses for the world to see.  This is good because it means you’re not getting misinformation.

http://www.squidoo.com/theanswerdeck/hq
What else can you find in The Answer Deck?  Well, there are two free e-books there to help you master lens crafting.  These two free e-books were written by the Squidoo staff including its founder, Seth Godin.

The first e-book is called Calamari: the Official Squidoo How-To.  It walks you through lens making from conception to publication and beyond. The second e-book is called The Joy of Squidoo: the Official Recipe Guide.  This e-book deals more with what your target audience is looking for.
It would be wise for you to make a visit to The Answer Deck today, tomorrow, and in the future - to stay in tune with what other lensmasters are doing and learn some clever tricks of the trade!

Now I just have to figure out how to subscribe to all new lenses added to the Answer Deck. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Lewis

The things he makes are always easy to understand, simple to use, and really really cool.

And one of his latest creations is a nice little image you can put on your blog/lens/website that will display how many people are in your Squidoo fan club.

Here is mine:

If I get one more fan today… the image will automatically update!

To get your own little squidlet image just head to squidutils.com/export.php

And don’t forget to check out thefluffanutta’s blog at squidutils.com/blog.

Lewis

If you have been reading this blog for a while you will know of my past few posts about the power of blogging.

And I had a whole bunch of people email me asking for help setting up their blogs. So, I did something about it!

I have just launched a new blog service, with an absolute TON piled in.

Your blog posts will bookmark themselves, post themselves to twitter, ping themselves, and even TRANSLATE themselves. Plus a ton more stuff.

To read more, check out www.YourNicheBlog.com

Lewis

Your Squidoo account is getting more integrated with other social networking sites!

Now, on your profile is a space to enter your Twitter.com username and password. And you save it in Squidoo just like you save your name and bio. Then, the next time you publish a lens you will see a little link in the green flashing box that pops up (the one that tells you that your lens has been published), and if you click the link  Squidoo will automatically post an update about your lens for you onyour Twitter profile!

This is good, but could turn bad if you OVER-use it.

Being a user is different to being an abuser.

I would like it if there was more of this kind of cross-promotion  between Squidoo and other social networking sites. Isn’t it about time Squidoo made an Official Squidoo Facebook App? Why not, Squidoo? Hire someone full time to do all this stuff. We dare you!

So how do you set your Twitter thingy up?

Step 1. Go to your Profile here: http://www.squidoo.com/member/profile

Step 2. Scroll to the bottom and look for ‘Social Application Settings’.

Step 3. Fill in your Twitter info.

Step 4. You’re good to go! Now just publish your latest lens, or update an older one, and look for the link in the normal flashing green box at the top of the page.

Do you think this kind of thing is good for Squidoo? It should bring in more visitors as your twitter friends check out the links, but do you think it could be harmful at all?

Lewis

Question: Are you a member of HubPages?

You will surely by now have heard of HubPages.

Surely.

If not, get on over to JoinHubPages.com and sign up! HubPages is a site very much like Squidoo. But with enough differences to be able to tell they are not trying to be or copy Squidoo. There are as many differences as there are similarities, and this will be a short guide of what you need to know to get your first hub off the ground.

If you are a Squidoo fanatic, you may not like HubPages. Like a football team. You support Squidoo, and HubPages is a rival. BUT. You are on Squidoo to get visitors, fans, and money. And HubPages can help with each of those things. The big orange Squido doesn’t mind if you play in another playground, so don’t feel bad..

So…

Lenses and Hubs…

So. A page on Squidoo is called a lens. And a page on HubPages is called a hub. Simple.

Modules and Capsules…

A module on Squidoo…. is called a capsule on HubPages.

There aren’t as many capsules on HubPages as there modules on Squidoo, but enough to make a good page. They could REALLY do with making more, but I guess they will at some point.

AdSense…

The Google Ads on Squidoo lenses belong to Squidoo. And then that money is divided up a few different ways. They first cover expenses, then split the money between almost all lenses, based on lensrank.

The Google Ads on HubPages belong to you 60% of the time, and HubPages HQ 40% of the time. Basically. It then gets a bit more complex with referring people to hubs, etc. But I’m coming onto that…

Referrals…

If you refer someone to Squidoo (meaning they sign up because of you) you will get $5 when that person earns their first $15. As an bonus, that person will also receive an extra $5 just like you. This is ok, but HubPages offers a WAY more lucrative option!

If you refer someone to HubPages, you will get 10% of all the Google ads displayed on all their hubs… until the end of time! Amazing! The 10% that you get is taken out of the HubPages 40% ad share (so your referral is not worse off because of this 10%). So let’s say you put your link on your blog or website or lens or hub, someone joined because of you and made 100 hubs. And let’s say those 100 hubs were visited 10 times each a week. (I’m just making up numbers here.) That would be 1000 page loads. And YOUR Google Ads would be displayed in front of 100 of those visitors. So if you sign up a few people, it could turn into something very significant indeed. There is slightly more to it than that, such as how you can refer a visitor to ANY hub and get 10% of the ads there too, but nothing to worry about if you’re just getting started.

That’s all for now. I’m going to go and eat a yummy cookie.

If you haven’t joined HubPages yet, head to www.JoinHubPages.com and get your first hub off the ground!

Lewis

P.S. Make a GOOD hub. Contribute. Don’t just go there to sell stuff. If your hubs are TOO promotional, they will get disabled.

Well I found a site recently called FoxyTunes.com.  It’s basically a search engine all about music. So you’re at FoxyTunes, you type in a band name or a song or album or whatever, and it creates a page for you pulling in the song videos from youtube, pictures of the band from flickr, lyrics of the songs from yahoo, their official site and myspace page, an intro from Wikipedia, and the band’s albums from Amazon. And some other useful stuff too.

It’s really pretty cool.

Here is an example:  http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/paris_hilton

You could easily create a lens about your favourite bands or artists, and use this FoxyTunes tool to fill in the rest of the modules. Because you’re able to see everything at a glance. Your lens will be mostly useless though unless you write some of your own thoughts on it too. What YOU think of the band, and why you like their music.

Havesome fun and

Lewis

So here we go….

Wordpress For Dummies

Wordpress is a platform. A big whole pile of code that, when all put together, forms a blog. Wordpress is NOT a website. It is a platform. So if you want to start a wordpress blog you have 2 choices.

#1. Go to wordpress.com, and they will host that big pile of code for you.

#2. Go to wordpress.org and download that big pile of code, install it on your own web host, and run the blog yourself.

So what’s the advantage of #1? 

You don’t need to be paying for a web host each month.
You don’t need to worry about any wordpress updates (updates to that big pile of code).

And what’s the advantage of #2?

You don’t have to abide by the wordpress.com Terms of Service, which prohibits ‘commercial’ blogs.
You can add javascript to the sidebars (including google adsense), and have the ability to customise the look and feel of each theme.
You can install any theme that has been made for the wordpress platform, whereas wordpress.com has a limited number of themes (although enough to get started).
You can install plugins, which make your blog to different things - from post to twitter automatically, to optimising the blog for search engines.

If you have never had a blog before and you don’t have your own web hosting package (to host your own website, etc), I would recommend going with Wordpress.com for now.

But don’t forget to do regular ‘exports’ of your blog. This creates a complete backup, posts, comments, tags, categories, the lot, for you to upload to another wordpress blog. So if at a later date you decide to move to a wordpress.org self-hosted blog, it will be fairly pain-free and seamless.

Hope this helps!

Lewis

If you didn’t get in but wanted to you can stay updated by subscribing to this blog or just keeping one eye on the updates here You’ll find out when/if it’s open again for more testers.

*******************************************

Hello All You Fine And Lovely People!

I am working on something right now with Tiffany Dow that should get you lots more links to your lenses, more visitors, more reach, more fans, and ultimately more money…

SO. Who wants to test it out?

I need 25 people who will get in on this for free.

It’s not ready QUITE yet… so it won’t be an instant ‘here ya go’ thing. I want to get everything perfectly in place first. Kind of like tidying up before friends come round.

So if you want in post a comment! Comments will be easier to keep track of, but emails welcome too.

Have fun!

Lewis

“Blogging and lenses go together like Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too…

So do YOU have a blog for your lenses?”

******************************
FIRSTLY, WHY WOULD YOU WANT A BLOG?
******************************

Blogs are fun. Blogs are free. Blogs are fabulous. And blogs are FINDABLE!

It is extremely difficult now to do a search at Google and NOT find a blog in the first 30 results. Go ahead. Try. Even a lot of websites that don’t LOOK like blogs are blogs.

Your updates on your blog can be subscribed to, your updates can be fed onto your lenses in the RSS module, your updates can get automatically sent to Google and other search engines (telling them they have to come and take a look at your new content), and your updates are easy to do. FAR easier than updating a standard website, and probably quicker to post new stuff to than a lens.

So now that I’ve made my case for blogs….

******************************
HOW DO YOU GET YOUR OWN BLOG?
******************************

You could pay for a service like typepad(.com), you could get a free blog from blogspot(.com), or a free blog from wordpress(.com), or pay for a blog/site through squarespace(.com), or install a version of wordpress on your own server/hosting with your own domain name. If you are looking to start a blog there are literally thousands upon thousands of websites who will fight to get you to sign up with them - free or otherwise.
******************************
SO WHO SHOULD YOU GO WITH?
******************************
Without making decisions for you - I’ll tell you a story.

When I went to Sri Lanka for a few months (2 years ago to the day!) I had a blog I created at blogspot.com. It works well, and is now owned by Google. Then the next blog I created was this one - squidoocool.com - and I hosted it at wordpress.com. It is free to start a blog at wordpress.com, and the blog started ranking quite high in Google search results.

But because I wanted to use squidoocool.com instead of squidoocool.wordpress.com, and because I wanted to be able to further customise the layout and theme and plugins etc I decided to host the wordpress blog on my own hosting I have at HostGator (which I use for hosting my other websites).

HostGator comes with a nifty tool called Fantastico which installs certain scripts for you, including the wordpress software! So you can have your own version of the wordpress software running on your server (instead of wordpress.com) to run your blog. Unlike with wordpress.com, you are hosting all the files and posts and backups yourself. It comes with PLENTY of advantages.

So SquidooCool.com is now hosted on my own webhosting, nothing to do with wordpress.com (apart from the fact that the software in the background running the blog is the same).

I am VERY pleased with SquidooCool.com running on my own webhosting, and most of the time when I do a new post here… Google has found it and ranked it in search results within 2 hours. Hosting the blog myself allows me to add and edit themes, add plugins, add javascript and ads, etc. All stuff you can’t do with regular wordpress.com.

So here’s what I would recommend:

1. Get setup with wordpress.com to learn how everything works and to get blogging as soon as possible. You don’t need to pay them for any of the extras. Just get setup with a blog there. You can even have www.YOURSquidooUsername.wordpress.com

2. Start blogging about your lenses!

3. Put links in the ’sidebar widgets’ (under ‘Design’ or ‘Presentation’) to your websites, lensmaster profile, and to your best lenses.

4. Every time you create a new lens, write a blog post about it. Google will find the blog post, and find the lens, quicker. Because you now have two tools working for you - Lenses and Blog Posts!

So here are some useful links for you:

www.blogspot.com
www.wordpress.com
www.hostgator.com (if you want to host your blog yourself)
www.namecheap.com (if you want your own .com domain name for about $9 a year)
www.yournicheblog.com (the blog building service I started since writing this post!)

Happy Blogging!

I will post more about setting up your own hosting and domain name soon.

Lewis

P.S. Since writing this I started a Blog Building Service at www.YourNicheBlog.com. It is VERY popular. Why not join in the fun?