Hello hello hello..! Fun post today. Blog your socks off.

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

So do YOU have a blog for your lenses?”

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FIRSTLY, WHY WOULD YOU WANT A BLOG?
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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….

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HOW DO YOU GET YOUR OWN BLOG?
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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.
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SO WHO SHOULD YOU GO WITH?
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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?

Just a quick note about a quick and easy new module.

TWITTER!

I posted about Twitter here not long ago, about how to set up an automatic Twitter blog that auto-posts when you update your lenses.

Well now you can feed any twitter account onto any lens with the new Twitter Module. Click Add Modules, then A-Z, the T.

It WAS possible to get tweets onto a lens before, using the RSS module, but this is a lot neater when you look at the module output.

Really quite a nice little module.

So go add one to your About Me lens, and take a look at it!

Lewis

P.S. Nice work Squidoo HQ!  Keep the new modules coming!

Hey,

Have you been to Twitter.com lately?

There really is a ton happening over there. And Google is paying lots of attention too.

So with that in mind, here is an easy way for you to take advantage of the traffic Twitter is getting, and maybe send some of those people to your lens or blog. And once you’ve set it up, it continues to do it’s thing… day after day… automatically.

OK. You ready?

Good.

So… quick! What does this post show you how to do?

Once you’ve followed these instructions, you’ll know how to create a twitter account that will automatically create a new post (or ‘tweet’ as they call them) every time you update or republish your lens. And the post will say something like ‘I just updated my lens! Check it out’. And then there will be a link to your lens.

So, follow these instructions, and get yours working within 10 minutes:

1. Go to twitter.com and create an account. When you choose a username, see if you can get the same username as your Squidoo lens URL. So if your lens is squidoo.com/ilovesquidoo, then you might want to register your twitter username to be twitter.com/ilovesquidoo.

2. Once you’re logged in to twitter, go to http://twitter.com/account/settings and add your URL (link to your lens) and Bio. Then click Save.
3. Next, click Picture at the top of the white box. And upload a cool looking image that relates to your lens. You could even use the one from your lens intro. Save that.

4. Now, click Design at the top of the white box. From there you can add a background image if you want. Or customise the colours of your twitter page. (if you want to find how to do those code colours things, search google for Hex Colors).

5. Now head to TwitterFeed.com and sign up there too. Or you can log in with your yahoo ID. But however you do it, get an account there and log in.

6. Once you’re logged in, go to twitterfeed.com/feed

7. Click Create New Twitterfeed

8. Put your twitter username and password in the first 2 boxes, and your Lens RSS Feed into the next box (see below if you’re stuck here)

9. Fill in the rest of the boxes, click Create, and you’re done!

What is your Lens RSS Feed?

Your lens RSS feed is this:

http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lens/URL

But you must replace URL with your lens URL.

So if your lens is squidoo.com/ilovesquidoo, then your lens RSS feed would be this:

http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lens/ilovesquidoo

And that’s all there is to it

You can add as many of your lenses as you like to feed into your twitter account, or you can create as many twitter accounts as you like.

You can see this in action here: www.twitter.com/squidoocool

Enjoy!

Lewis

P.S. you can then go and start ‘following’ a bunch of people, to get some extra exposure to your twitter page.

Before I set up a lens just for this (and start a campaign for more money-maker modules), cast your votes!

What money-maker module do YOU want Squidoo HQ to develop next?

An eBay UK module?

How about converting the Indeed Jobs module into a pay per click module (just like the indeed jobs affiliate program would allow!)

How about an Amazon FR module?

I vote for an AUDIBLE.com module! We sell books from our lenses, audiobooks sell very very well, and audiobooks pay very very well. AND, audible has customisable RSS feeds available, which can be used to fill our lenses with the right stuff. So why not?? (It’s through commission junction too – just like our ebay modules.)

So… what do YOU vote for? What money maker module would you love to see created?

Lewis

Here is the short of it:

1. There is a site called Bumpzee.com

2. It is a directory for RSS feeds

3. Your lens has an RSS feed

4. So you can add your lens to Bumpzee

5. Bumpzee ranks high in Google!

And it ranks very quickly. So head to Bumpzee (I’m there as mrlewissmile if you want to add me as a friend or whatever) and stick your favourite lenses on there. And watch Google for your bumpzee page showing up. And in most cases it will. Rather quickly too.

You don’t need to write any extra content, no extra work, just submitting your link and filling in tags for the link.

Check it out.

Got good results with bumpzee? Post a comment with your superhero-success story!

Lewis