Arr... This Be The Captain! Thanks for Stopping by to check out my piratey bag of Squidoo Tricks! If you are new here, you might want to get free updates and squidoo tricks delivered straight to you via RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
On to Day two of the Ebay Squidoo Challenge and I’m starting to pick up a little steam.
For my second lens in the contest I chose to do a product based lens, specifically Rubik’s Cubes and Variants.
Good tips from this lens:
- Less can be more - Notice how I use fewer than the standard 3 listings in the ebay modules. This cuts down on choice but really cleans the look up. In situations like this where I’m featuring different kinds of similar products I’ve found I get better CTRs with this method.
- Use the Description Area of Ebay Modules - Since google will not index the actual auctions pulled in the module any information you can give to the spiders to tell them more about what’s going on helps a ton. Plus, it looks better.
- Picture Poll - I don’t use these very often but this was a perfect situation for it. Instead of a guestbook module I chose to use a poll with images. How did I do it? some simple HTML code with the <image> tag. I have a lens on HTML for Images, and I’m sure there’s a bunch more that describe the process even better (if you know one, post it in the comments!).
- Have fun - Since I am a huge nerd at heart, I love topics like this. It makes it easier to make the lens when you like the topic.
- Don’t be afraid of competition - I didn’t even look to see if there were other Rubik’s Cube lenses on squidoo when I made the lens. After I hit publish, it appears there are a few other lenses on it. That’s fine, more places for my link to hang out in discovery tools :). The more coverage there is on topics like Rubik’s cubes, the more that squidoo can build its reputation as a reliable place to go to find good information. And that’s better for everyone.
Comments or thoughts?
The Rubik’s Cube Lens can be found here.
If you are feeling really excitable you can even go to the main contest page and vote for the Captain in the plexo!
As many of you have probably heard, Squidoo is sponsoring a contest for eBay users masterminded by Giant Squid and Powerseller Katiyana. The Challenge? Build 10 lenses in 10 days from June 4 - June 17th about eBay. There are of course, lots of fabulous prizes and exposure up for grabs including an eBay Live spotlight by Seth Godin, Lens of the Day, and an iPod to the winner.
Are you not an eBay powerseller? Don’t be discouraged! If you’ve ever bought or sold anything on eBay you are eligible to attempt the Challenge. Not an eBay member yet? Sign Up, look around and start creating lenses based on your first eBay experiences!
This is a fantastic opportunity to show users how to build high quality lenses reasonably quickly. I’ve decided that I’m going to participate in the challenge as well. Not only am I going to make the 10 lenses, I’m going to break down each lens every day and talk about the little things I do to help lenses get more traffic and succeed.
Hopefully this way I can give you folks some good tips to use with other eBay lenses or with your own affiliate programs.
You aren’t going to want to miss a single one of these so make sure and subscribe to my RSS feed (e-mail is available as well) here or by clicking the huge orange button at the top of the blog.
The Captain has decided that he is going to make a special offer to everyone that participates and completes the 10 day challenge.
Are you working on becoming a Giant Squid? Would you like to? Want some help getting there?
- Follow along in the ten day challenge by building your own lenses each day.
- Leave a comment here to say you are following along (and on each post each day with a link to your new lens if you wish).
- I will personally mentor each lensmaster who completes the 10 day challenge for the next ten days, helping them to build 10 more ultra high quality lenses (that can make piles of $$ as well!).
Prediction
I bet there are less than 10 people that will take me up on this offer and be able to complete the initial 10 ebay lenses. However, for those that make it and what to learn exactly what it is I do, I’ll show you some extra sneaky tricks I’ve used to go from $300 a month from Squidoo to $2,000 a month since January :).
Oh yea, and each person that makes it through building all 20 lenses over the next 20 days, I will write a personal letter of recommendation on your behalf to HQ to get you Giant Squid status.
Who’s in?
For the first time today, one of my lenses has made me over $1,000 in a month. Not all of my lenses, one. This is a huge milestone for me and I’m super duper excited about it!
It’s taken me almost a year of steady lensbuilding ( 11 months to the day to be exact ) to get to this point and I have to say, things are looking like they are only going to snowball from here. Last month I began to have my first few $100 days from just revenue generated from squidoo. This was hugely exciting and began to show what really happens once you reach that ‘critical mass’ of lenses.
Now I’ve earned $1,000 in a 30 day period from a single lens. That is also very very cool.
Will the earnings from this lens carry on forever? I doubt it.
Will I be able to use the lessons I’ve learned from this lens and the nearly 400 others I’ve built to continue to build lenses that make money? You betcha.
The best advice I have? Learn, Innovate, and be stubborn. Keep working at your ‘Squidoo skills’ and it will pay off for you.
Of course, I created a lens about my $1,000 / month Squidoo lens and what it took to get there that tells a little bit of the story if you would like to check it out.
What’s my next goal? Earning $1,000 a day with squidoo.
Plus, I just had to try the ‘grab a plexo’ feature since I’d never used it before so here goes:
Feel free to ask questions, but for obvious reasons I probably won’t answer ‘what lens is it?’ and other similar questions but I’d be more than happy to answer more general ones.
