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How To Add A Banner To Your Lens

squidoo-logo.pngHave you seen a lens with a banner in one of the modules?

Although the effectiveness of banner ads has fallen to an all time low (with text links taking the lead), you may have a banner you just REALLY want to display.

Whatever the reason, here is how to insert a banner ad into a Text Module.

1. Add a text module to your lens

2. Paste this code into the box: <p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.go-here-when-you-click.com“><img src=”http://www.banner-location.com/banner.jpg“>
</a></p>

3. Edit the two bits in bold. The first bit is where you want the banner to take someone when they click it, and the second bit if the filename of the banner image itself.

4. Save the module. You’re now done! You should now have a centered banner that links to your chosen page.


(This banner links you to my Lucid Dreaming Lens)

- Lewis :)

June 10th, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 8 comments | Continued
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6. Understanding The Long Tail (and how it helps your lens)

A Long Tail keyword is something that, instead of being a keyword like ‘myspace’, is a keyword like ‘is myspace free to use in china’.

In short, Long Tail means that the majority of your lens visitors likely come from people typing in things that very few people type in compared to the search terms that lots of people type in.

An example day might be this: 150 people who search google for ‘myspace friends’ visit my lens (amazingly, as of this moment, my lens comes up 5th!).

On the same day 200 people might find my lens via different Long Tail keywords, and each one of them might search for a long tail keyword like ‘adding myspace friends faster’, ‘how can i get more myspace friends’, ‘finding a good myspace friend adder’ etc.

The number of visitors arriving at my page via different long tail keywords, it is said, out-number those arriving there by a non-long tail keywords.

Basically, the yellow part of the graph is larger than the green part.

An employee of Amazon explained it in a simple (yet at first mind-bending) way: “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.”

[Go on - read that bit again!]

So how can all this help you make better lenses that get more visitors?

Don’t try too hard to target a word like broadband or myspace or computer.  Or even cheap broadband or myspace friends or best computer.

Just make a high quality lens that will help people.  And be genuine about it.  And if you’re writing about a specific topic, you should get the visitors you want.

It’s all in the Long Tail!

 - Lewis :)

PS.  for more info on giving your lens a helping hand ranking in search engines for chosen Long Tail phrases, check out www.squidoo.com/tricks

June 9th, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 6 comments | Continued
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5. Adding a simple text link (not in a link module)

Adding a link to your lens is as easy as typing the word hello.

Let’s say your sentence was this: “Raymond was a loaf of bread, and he liked to travel round the world”.

Let’s also say you wanted to make the word ‘travel’ a link to your lens about travel, so it would look like this: “Raymond was a loaf of bread, and he liked to travel round the world”.

So what would you paste into your module?

This: Raymond was a loaf of bread, and he liked to <a href=”http://www.squidoo.com/YOURLINK” target=”_blank”>travel</a> round the world.

Whatever you put in between the “> and the </a> will become the clickable bit.

This will allow you to add a link to most modules (except the ebay module), and so you don’t really need the Link Module anymore. This link trick will give you more flexibility!

Also, because of the target=”_blank” bit your visitor will not leave your lens! The link will open in a new window. So your visitor can see the site you’re linking to, AND remain on your lens to continue reading.

- Lewis :)

June 7th, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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4. Making More Amazon Sales

Did you know that if a visitors clicks an amazon item from your lens, then even if the person buys a different item, you still get paid for the sale?

Did you know that if they also buy anything on amazon within about a week, you are STILL paid for the sale?

So what can you do to get more of your lens visitors to click from your lens to amazon.com?

How about these ideas:

  1. List VERY related items, and write personal recommendations for them. If you recommend a book to me and it’s the kind of book I might like to read, I may well end up buying it. Same with your lens visitors. Get Recommending! If you are not recommending the book on your lens to me, I won’t buy it. Add your personality.
  2. When editing the module Display Options, tick Rank and Availability. Rank will show the number of amazon stars an item has, and good items will obviously get more clicks. Availability will show people how soon they can get the item in their hands. If I said I have a book here and I’ll send it to you by this time tomorrow, you’d imagine having it right in front of you this time tomorrow! Same thing with amazon. It makes the little picture of the bookcover seem much more real and their own.
  3. List fewer items in book lists. If I see a lens with an amazon module just listing book after book after book I am being told that the lensmaster doesn’t care about what books are listed, and neither should I. List fewer, and genuinely recommend them. If you give a person too many choices they are less likely to make any decision at all.

- Lewis :)

June 5th, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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3. Zooming In On The Correct eBay Products

A cool tip that not a lot of people know is when you are editing your ebay module you can tell ebay what auctions to list as well as what NOT to list as well as what auctions to list.

You know when you’re editing the ebay module and tick ‘Let Ebay Choose’ to determine what items get added to your lens, and you type in the words you want, like rich dad poor dad book?

If when you save the module you find that it is displaying rich dad poor dad audio books, you can go back in and edit your module and add -audio to your module settings (the words it should search ebay for). When you re-save the module and discover that no auctions with the word audio in are listed.

Basically, if you don’t want a particular word coming up just use a minus sign attached to the word!

Just to clarify, if you want the ebay module to list items with the words vegetarian shoes in the title but not the word red then you would type (exactly like this): vegetarian shoes -red

Cool, eh?

- Lewis :)

www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mrlewissmile
www.builmylens.com

June 2nd, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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2. Making Your List Of Lenses Into An RSS Feed

The RSS module is a wonderful module for publishing fresh content on your lens, but because of a lensmaster called thefluffanutta it can also now be used to display your top lenses, in lensrank order. You know the order you see them on your ‘My Lenses’ screen? Your visitors can now see the links to them on your lens in the RSS module.

If you go to www.squidoo.com/lensmaster-tools you’ll be able to use the tools TheFluffanutta has created. Free, of course.

If you scroll down to find ‘Lensmaster RSS Feed’, put your Squidoo username in the box, select ‘lenses only’ and click ‘Submit’. A page will then open. Now copy what the web address says (for me it says http://www.cryosphere.f2s.com/squidgets/lensmaster/mrlewissmile/lenses.rss).

Now take that link and paste it into your RSS module just like any other RSS feed, and there you have it. Your top lenses will display on your lens and update as your lensrank updates.

Don’t forget to rate the lensmaster-tools lens linked to above. And add it to your favourites so you can find it again.

- Lewis :)

www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mrlewissmile
www.builmylens.com

May 31st, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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1. The First Post: Welcome!

Welcome to SquidooCool.com!

My name is Lewis.

SquidooCool.com has been set up for this reason:

Learning about Squidoo at SquidooCool.com is free.

That doesn’t mean that ebooks don’t have their place.They compile a lot of information, put it in one place, in an understandable order, and in an understandable way. And people are willing to pay for this. And that’s great! Because overwhelmingly more-often-than-not, they are useful to people.

But if you don’t mind getting the info in small chunks as and when I feel like writing it, this blog may be for you.

If you subscribe to this blog using the subscribe link on the right you will be notified of new blog posts. You can also add the blog to your RSS reader.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll join me in the comments!

– Lewis :)

www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mrlewissmile
www.builmylens.com

May 30th, 2007 | MrLewisSmile | 14 comments | Continued
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