1. eBay’s reporting is still slow.
2. when eBay (or my generator or whatever) asks for your ‘Campaign ID’ , that is the 10-digit number of the campaign, not the name of the campaign that you gave it.
3. Currently, you HAVE to add some kind of tracking or the RSS feed won’t work. That’s not my doing, that’s straight from eBay.

4. The minimum payout for the eBay program is only $5, which is probably a smart move by eBay since it will probably draw a lot of smaller sellers to them.
5. EPN payouts to paypal do not have any fees associated with them.

I’m still working on some new tricks and such, but let me know how the new feed generator is working for you!

For the month of April, all the links for both Commission Junction and eBay will be live. All the links you have switched over to the new ebay program will earn an extra 5%! At the end of the month, your CJ links all walk the plank.

I’m working on modifying my current Ebay RSS Feed Generator. I will have it fully updated to the new eBay RSS feeds hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Ebay has now included the ability to add SID codes to RSS feeds which is a huge step forward. Due to this development, I’m considering releasing my feed generator as just an easier and faster way to generate eBay Links.

Go apply for the new program at ebaypartnernetwork.com

If I release the feed generator for free would people use it?

-The Captain

It pulls all the info from the page and you just have to click submit.

Note: Make sure and click on the second tab of the submission window and ‘mark your tag as public’. This makes the link public and indexable by the search engines.

I’ve seen backlinks from Jumptags appear in both Google and Yahoo, so they both index the bookmarks and rather quickly at that.

Every one of your tags will include your lens on the related tag page. The Primary tag also is included on tag pages but only if it is also a normal tag. (I know, confusing and weird. Just repeat your Primary Tag once in the main tags, it will save you lots of heartache).

Without getting too terribly deep into linking and link quality and link density and all those other SEO terms, this is why tagging is important:

Tags allow you to use them as your ‘lensroll’ so to speak while allowing you to keep your lensroll open for whatever Squidoo fills it with.

Oh yea, one more thing. Lensroll slots are filled by searching for lenses with the same Primary Tags.

�Here’s an example:

First page of Tag Results for Tom Petty:

Ok, you can see that I have 8 of the top 10 lenses with the tag Tom Petty (Well…more like 16 of the top 20 ). Now, what does this do for my lensrolls on my lenses? Creates dynamic, topical, useful and relevant links… to more of my content.

Here’s the lensroll from a random Tom Petty lens of mine. I did not manually choose the lensroll (that would take away my evergreen content!). Instead I just let Squidoo pick what to fill the lensroll and the lens footer slots with.

Guess how many of those 7 lenses are mine?

Yep, all of them.

And because of the lensrolls (among other things) they have as much dynamic content as possible to keep the big G interested.

I expect there may be some questions about this so feel free to drop a line or stop by the Squidoo chat room after 6pm CST or so and I should be around.

As I was trying to submit a site to Yahoo’s Site Manager yesterday, I was instead redirected to a new Yahoo Bookmarking site at beta.bookmarks.yahoo.com.

Interested as always in a new bookmarking site, I thought I’d check it out. It turns out that Yahoo bookmarks has been around for some time, but in beta for the last year..

I installed the bookmarklet and hopped over to a few quick sites. The bookmarklet was very fast and I was able to bookmark and tag a page in probably under 8 seconds. (like bull-riding but backwards)

The interface as a whole has a lot of Ajax and seems to run a lot faster than del.icio.us

Why does it look like it’s hardly being used?

Is this a stealth Beta of some kind? They just released Yahoo Buzz yesterday, how many more products are up their sleeve ?

Why not remodel your existing Del.icio.us franchise instead of starting over with a new bookmarking platform?

What are your first impressions of Yahoo! Bookmarks?

Does anyone know why the exposure of this site is so small? Or have I been living in a cave or something?

Feeds are limited to 5 results – The full tool offers 50+ results (basically unlimited)

2 of the 5 results are ‘Sponsored’ – 2 of the 5 results for the free trial contain my PID. This means that clicks on those links will result in commissions for me. Clicks on the other 3 links are commissions for you. Over time, this averages out to 40% of the results, which is still less than the 50% that Squidoo takes. The full version has Zero ‘Sponsored’ links.

That’s it! Besides that, the tool works exactly the same, and can still make you more money with your eBay modules than you are currently making.

Give the Free Ebay Affiliate Feed Generator a try and let me know what you think!

-Cap

How it works -

Very similar to eBay, you can place listings for sale, offer Squidoo related services via Classifieds, or buy lenses from other lensmasters. Fixed Price, Buy it Now, and different auction lengths are all supported.

I’ve also got Paypal integration and Google Checkout should be coming soon.

Listing Lenses on the auction house is 100% free. There are some fees for Classifieds and listing Upgrades (bold, featured, etc.) as well as a 2% final value fee (which is less than a third of what eBay charges last I checked..).

I’m planning on starting an Adwords campaign to drive traffic to the site, so get your lenses up quick!

Special for Captain Squid Readers -

If you haven’t signed up for my Newsletter yet, go over to Sell My Lens and sign up from there. I’ll deposit $5 in fee credit in your account to play around with.

If you already HAVE signed up for my email, contact me and let me know your login to Sell My Lens. I’ll give you $5 for free also!

Questions? Let me know. Also let me know what you think of the site design.

-The Captain

I’m proud to present the first Captain Squid E-Book : The Lens Publishing Checklist !

What is it?

The Lens Publishing Checklist is a 12 Step ( with a bonus 13th step for some lenses) program. Don’t need a 12 step program you say? You need this one!

The theory behind this checklist is to help you Squidooers turn out the highest quality lenses that are fully optimized and that are recognized lightning fast by the search engines. In about 15 minutes, you can optimize your lens to get picked up by the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) within a few days.

I’ve been testing it out over the last month or so and have seen some pretty excellent results.

Alright you Pirate you, how much does it cost?

Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. I’m offering it to you guys 100% free. Simply enter your e-mail address into the form to receive your Super Secret Link to the Lens Publishing Checklist.

About the e-mail thing

I’m planning on offering some even sneakier tricks and training through an e-mail newsletter to those interested. As per the pirate code, The Captain does not abuse your e-mail address in any way. In fact, if you want to un-subscribe at any time, feel free! If a Pirate’s life is not for you, I understand.

Wow, Captain This E-book is awesome! Can I resell/repackage it?

Nope, sorry. The Captain retains the copyright on the Lens Publishing Checklist. It is meant to be and I intend for it to always be a free resource for Lensmasters. Feel free to give it to all of your friends, point others to this page to get their own copy, or delete it. If myself or any others of my Roving Band find you trying to sell the Lens Publishing Checklist unpleasant piratey things could happen to you.

Get the Lens Publishing Checklist:

Feel free to leave your comments/critiques/criticisms below:

-The Captain

Combining multiple tools in one place is something the Captain is a big fan of, and I must admit, Fluff has done an admirable job doing just that.

Now, when you click ‘edit‘ on any one of your lenses from the ‘Advanced Lensmaster Dashboard‘ you are taken to a screen that has your lens framed in and a menu of great options on the left hand side:

Full Lens Info: This will return pre-formatted HTML code for your lens as well as BBC code for use in forum signatures. Your lens name, category, update time, URL, and description are all posted, allowing you to see how your lens is displayed at a glance.

Lens Maintenance: You can now edit, Publish, and view your lens from one place without losing the Squid Utils navigation.

Lens Statistics: Check up on your traffic, royalties, and other stats for each lens from here.

Lens Promotion: This is super useful, allowing you to do many things to promote your lens very quickly. This includes the Add This bookmarking tool, Lensroll.com submission, Isle of Squid Squidoo Link Directory Submission, as well as a Ping feature to notify all the major crawlers that you’ve got new content.

Search Engines: With a few quick clicks, you can double check to see that your lens is indexed in the major search engines. Extremely useful!

If you haven’t stopped by Squid Utils to check out the new management tools, you probably should. There is maximum piratey goodness for minimum price (currently free).

-The Captain

So, in the interest of spreading the word about all the great lenses everyone is making, we have created the Captain’s Roving Band.

We have created core groups on four social networking sites: Twitter, Wis.Dm, Propeller, and Stumble Upon. These groups will be used to promote our lenses and other awesome things we find around the net that’s promotion worthy.

What you have to do: Get an account at each network and become friends with our Founding Members (see below). Boom! You instantly have a group of friends to get started with on each network.

What makes this work: whenever you make a lens, now you just submit it to a few places instead of spreading it around the internet in a bunch of places without any force behind it. when you submit your lens to the sites in the Roving Band, check your profile and see what the rest of the band has submitted lately as well. More focused promotion = more traffic = more general piratey awesomeness.

The Caveat: The Roving Band helps those that help it… Arrrrgghh. If ye don’t want to help, ye walk the plank..

The Band’s Ports of Call:

Wis.dm

Ask a question where the answer can be found on your lens. Similar to Yahoo Answers but with better networking and do follow links. See the Sneaky Wis.Dm Trick for full details.

Note: Make sure that you ‘thumbs up’ your favorite questions, that’s how we get questions pushed to the front page!

Roving Band Members

Captainsquid
Dougeby
TheFluffanutta
Deb13
gypsypirate
katiyana
captainkalamazo0
djnuttal
webnh
LadyRaine
janallbright
capybara
steveffeo
AKdude

Propeller

Similar to Digg, but with more general submission categories. I think it is a little less ’serious’ and fit’s the Squidoo personality a bit better

Roving Band Members
Loyalis
GypsyPirate
Dougeby
Flowergardener
TheFluffanutta
jeffwend
djnuttal
webnh
PaladinGames
allbright
EverythingMouse
AKdude

Twitter

Leave very short messages or ‘twits’. Just be careful you aren’t posting bunches and bunches of messages a day so you become your own ‘twit’ .

Roving Band Members

Loyalis
thefluffanutta
mrlewissmile
dougeby
spud
MargaretSchaut
dciniowa
katiyana
bcnola
djnuttal
webnh
PaladinGames

Stumble Upon

What good Squidoo Pirate doesn’t like Stumbling around the back alleyways of the internet? None, I say!

Roving Band Members

Loyalis
GypsyPirate
thefluffanutta
zachsg
dougeby
GodsDaughter
katiyana
earthsolution
infowarehouse
djnuttal
sitbyme
PaladinGames
trevorme
americannj
clouda9
EverythingMouse
gallito89
AKdude

After signing up, just add the Roving Band as friends and begin your happy Pirating! make sure and announce your usernames here so you can make your Roving Membership Official!

Arrr…Me smell blood in them there social bookmarking waters…

-The Captain