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The New Lens Workshop: A Review

A whole new Lens Workshop went live today, so if you log in to any of your lenses you’ll see the new 2.0 version ready to wow you.

It’s shiny, bubbly-looking, and clean.

The best thing for you to do is check it out! Go now and edit a lens. It’ll be a nice surprise.

A couple of people have asked me what I think of it, so I thought I would post a proper review instead of just a couple of thoughts.

Here are some good things:

Good things!1. The first thing you’ll notice is that the whole workshop design now closely matches the final published version of your lens (the colours, the width, the style) so you can see what your lens will look like published before you hit publish. Marvellous!

2. You can now add modules from the sidebar. This is GREAT for a whole number of reasons. You can add, say, 3 of this module and 4 of that module, then hit apply. The page refreshes and there are your modules waiting for you. A sideaffect of this is that the Featured Lenses module has finally seen the light of day! For so long it was hidden away under ‘F’ in the A-Z module search, which was a terrible shame. (It’s one of my favourite modules.)

3. You can now reorder a whole bunch of modules in the sidebar by dragging the titles up and down. This is great for organising your lens, but still not even approaching the ease at which you can shift ‘capsules’ around on hubpages. Ajax ajax ajax! Once you’ve reordered your modules you will need to click Apply, then the page will refresh showing you your changes. You can also use this to mass-delete modules you don’t need, which is nice.

4. If you are a Giant Squid you will be able to insert your Lens Templates into your lenses right from the sidebar. This is incredible. Lensmaking just got even faster for Giants. Everyone should be a Giant Squid, even you.

 

And here are some bad things:

Bad Things!1. The big black strip along the top of the page. It takes up so much room and isn’t really necessary. If you are an Amazon Associate you will be reminded of the new Associates bar when you are surfing amazon. But this Lens Workshop one is far too big and filled with things that you really don’t need on the screen the entire time you are making your lens. I hope this gets shrunk.

2. The Up and Down arrows are gone from the modules. Because all module reordering is now done from either the sidebar or the Add Modules screen, the arrows have vanished. I find this a real pain for just moving one module above another. You have to go all the way back to the top and move the little sidebar title instead of pushing the module itself. I guess this is something to get used to, but at it seems like more work a lot of the time.

3. You can’t collapse a module anymore. This is a real shame, because it was really useful to finish a module then just get it out of the way by collapsing it (clicking on the module title so the content of the module doesn’t show). I wish this was brought back.

4. The biggest button on the whole screen does not need to be ‘Publish’. This is more of a critisism of the big fat black strip at the top, but I thought I would mention it :p

5. The last thing I hope gets changed is the fact that changes you make to module titles is no reflected in the sidebar ‘reorder modules’ panel. This takes away any benefit the sidebar reordering brought with it because you will still need to reload the page to update the sidebar before you can reorder, THEN you will have to click apply to save the changes and refresh the page. So you might as well just go to the old Add Modules screen, reorder, then come back again. Biggest pain ever.

And that’s my review!

Positives and negatives, and hopes for the future :)

What do YOU think?
Do you love the new workshop?
Do you hate it?

What’s missing?

Lewis :)

P.S. Thanks for all the hard work, Squidoo HQ!

December 18th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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Rule Number 1: Get Blogging!

I’ve written about the importance of blogging before, and like in any good friendship I feel like I can talk about the same topics again and again.

So here it is.

Blog About Your Topic and Your Lenses!

If you are making Lenses on Squidoo to earn yourself any kind of money, you need a blog too. If only to blog about every new lens you make.

I have put together a few lenses lately to push you to get started if you haven’t already.

They are:

Set up a blog. Make it your christmas gift to yourself. All you need is to invest some time. It will pay off.

Lewis :)

December 10th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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Why You NEED To Be a Giant Squid – without fail!

A Giant Squid is a Lensmaster who Squidoo is in love with. The minimum requirement to become a Giant Squid is 50 really great lenses.

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.

November 12th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 7 comments | Continued
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AT LAST! Opt In Forms On Your Lenses!

Squidoo opt in formsIf I had a dollar every time an internet marketer asked me if they can put an opt in form on their lens… I would have, well, a lot of dollars.

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 www.SquidooTricks.com

Lewis :)

P.S. you can see an example at www.squidoo.com/opt

November 8th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 15 comments | Continued
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If you love Squidoo…

If you love Squidoo, then you’ll probably love these sites too!

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!

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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.

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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 :)

October 16th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 8 comments | Continued
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FINALLY: Why Squidoo Tags Are Useless

Finally! My post about Squidoo Tags is ready. There has been a LOT going on in my life since I wrote that last post, but bit by bit I’ve been chipping away at this beast.

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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

October 12th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 35 comments | Continued
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Tags. Are. Useless.

There.

I said it!

Next, I shall explain why..

September 10th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 11 comments | Continued
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New: Categories!

Exciting times.

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

September 9th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 5 comments | Continued
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New Module: Be a Super Charity Squid!

Squidoo has just uploaded a new module.

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 :)

September 8th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 1 comment | Continued
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Being Telepathically Topical

The Giant Squid blog points us to a very interesting lens. It was lens of the day a few days ago too.

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!

September 5th, 2008 | MrLewisSmile | 2 comments | Continued
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