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Squidoo

Some Squidoo Tutorials: Navigation Aids

Apr 10th, 2009
by Ellen.
No comments yet

Since my lenses tend to be looooong, I tend to develop various strategies to help folks navigate them. I like little inset tables of contents, “shortcuts” that jump to relevant parts of the page, or navigator bars.

So I was working on a Fancy Tables of Contents tutorial collecting my various ways of creating tables of contents, indexes, and the like. And I’m STILL working on it! *laugh* I can always make a small project huge. Then I have to find ways to shorten it.

Along the way — partly because people are making a big push to update or build Lensographies — I wound up spinning off one module onto its own page. So at least THAT tutorial is finished:

Build a Better Featured Lens Module

It lets you do three things a regular Featured Lens Module can’t:

  • Feature more than 5 lenses in the same list.
  • Feature lenses in a fixed order.
  • Write a blurb before and after the featured lenses without getting cut off in mid-sentence (doncha hate that?)

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for somebody to find the Easter Egg on my Amazing Nessie Photo, where I am offering $5 to the first person who proves (without any doubt whatsoever) that it’s fake. Whoever does so is going to get a chuckle, hopefully.

Because a fool and her money are soon parted, and I am actually trying to teach a lesson with that lens, I will give an enormous clue:

PHOTOSHOP SEES MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE… :D

Dog Medicine Side Effects: A Plug for a Good Lens

Apr 10th, 2009
by Ellen.
No comments yet

Flowergardener is one of many, many great Lensmasters.

About a month ago she reported a bizarre case of webpage traffic hijacking. Someone’s managed to divert a TON of traffic from one of her lenses to a spam webpage. Their page has NOTHING to do with her topic. I can’t understand how they did it, and I’m not going to give them an atom of link juice by identifying the site, but the spam page is still up and is still diverting traffic.

I think this is dirty and rotten and low. So, what little I can do is point links back where they belong:

Dog Medicine Side Effects

I’m a cat person, as should be obvious, but I approve of any lens that helps pet owners look after the health of their dogs, cats, or animal companions.

Benefits of Non-Commission-Earning Modules

Apr 7th, 2009
by Ellen.
5 comments

Some Squidoo modules are built-in affiliate marketing, supplementing Squidoo ad payouts with sales commissions.

For example, Amazon modules send us “royalties” if a visitor makes a purchase through them. We get a commission for any purchase the visitor makes after clicking on that link! (Tip: if you regularly make 7 or more Amazon sales a month, it’s time to get your own Amazon Associates ID. Captain Loyalis explains why.)

Other Squidoo modules, like Zazzle, don’t earn a commission, but members of those online e-commerce sites can can use the appropriate module to show off their products and stores.

What’s in it for the rest of us? Should we, as one member in SquidU said he was doing, rip out non-commercial-earning modules?

There’s four or five reasons why the answer is “Not necessarily!”

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The Squidoo Dashboard: What Lens Stats Tell Us

Apr 6th, 2009
by Ellen.
2 comments

Welcome back to the third and final segment of my “Lensrank secrets” study. In Part I we squeezed the Squidoo FAQ for every scrap of information it could tell us about lensrank. In Part II, we tackled the Squidoo Dashboard stats, on the theory that most of those factor into lensrank (the FAQ showed that many do). Whether or not they are all lensrank factors, they certainly give us a lot of clues about how to improve and promote our Squidoo lenses.

Now I’m going to finish up with an in-depth look at the “individual lens stats” part of the Squidoo Dashboard.

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Lensrank Secrets Right Under Your Nose

Apr 5th, 2009
by Ellen.
6 comments

In my last post I dissected the Squidoo FAQ to squeeze out every bit of official information about lensrank.

There’s another possible source of official lensrank information right under our noses: the Squidoo Dashboard. I submit, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that Squidoo is not expending great gobs of computing and hosting power calculating and storing lens stats for our sole benefit. Most of these stats measure factors alluded to in the FAQ. I suspect that most if not all of our Squidoo Dashboard stats are lensrank factors. We don’t know which carry the most weight, and the lensrank algorithm changes from time to time, but dashboard stats tell us a lot about what Squidoo, at least, thinks is important for an effective webpage.

So let’s dig deeper and see what the Squidoo Dashboard has to tell us.

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Squidoo Lensrank: The Shiny Bumper

Apr 4th, 2009
by Ellen.
3 comments

Tier chasing or lensrank chasing is a bit like a dog chasing cars — there are better moving targets to focus one’s energies on, and why does it matter?! But that car bumper is very shiny.”

—Greekgeek, in SimeyC’s SquidU thread “Lensrank Buzz”

Lensrank has been a frequent topic of discussion in SquidU lately — more than usual, I mean.

I feel ambivalent about lensrank. I’ve seen a lot of internet communities in which post count, forum ranks, join date or some other arbitrary system gets used to gauge a member’s worth.

Except that lensrank measures something more meaningful than mere post count. It’s an attempt to gauge lens worth, so that low-content lenses get pushed to the back row and exceptional lenses get to shine. That’s a necessary quality control loop on a site where anyone is allowed to submit content. Lensrank also yields benefits worth chasing. The highest-ranked lenses get extra search engine and visitor exposure on Squidoo’s multiple “Top 100” lists. Squidoo’s search box, almost the only way to navigate the site, returns results by lensrank.

Finally, of course, lensrank determines payout. Even though I want to keep Squidoo as a fun hobby, I can’t help fiddling with my lenses just below a payout tier cutoff! I track my Squidoo lensrank and payout stats each month. Yes, the bumper is shiny.

So let us examine this shiny bumper. Just what is lensrank based on, and… more importantly for you folks, I’m sure… how do I keep 10-20  of my lenses in the Top 2000?

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