Posts tagged kiwisoutback
Promoting OP Lenses
Jun 4th
In the spirit of my previous post, I’ve offered the Giants a chance to promote another lensmaster’s work right here at the Showcase.
Giant Squid lensmaster and super photographer CoolFoto wasted no time in sending me two of her favorite OP (Other Peoples) lenses.
Coolfoto suggests you pay a visit to Green Bedroom Accessories by Giant lensmaster mbrownauthor
“I am in the Fashion Colors group so I visit the other group members. That’s how I found Green Bedroom Accessories by mbrownauthor.
Green was my favorite home decorating color for years. Remember the old avacodogreen kitchen appliances?
Green Bedroom Accessories lens includes info about the color like its meaning and Wikipedia definition balanced with modules selling green decorating products. She includes a Twitter follow me at the bottom of the lens. I like the cute green squidoo at the end, too. “
Coolfoto also recommends Capitol Reef National Park by Giant Squid Kiwisoutback.
“Kiwisoutback writes about the Capitol Reef National Park in a way that makes me want to visit it. She found beautiful photos to high light the Park’s unique features. Kiwi uses frames around the Flickr photos for a nice custom touch.
The Things To Do module uniquely links to sections of the Park’s website with more info. The lens is well rounded out with places to stay, weather report, poll, links to CafePress Park design products, links to other Squidoo related lenses, and guest book.”
And I’d like to recommend you pay a visit to Coolfoto’s lensography because besides having good taste in OP lenses she’s created quite a few fine lenses herself!
Would you like to surprise a Giant Squid by promoting their lens here? Send me the link to your favorite OP lens and tell me why you recommend it. I’ll do the rest!
robin (at) squidoo.com
Spotlight on Kiwisoutback Part Two
Mar 3rd
More Giant Sized Squidoo tips from Kiwisoutback, including tips for monetizing your lenses. (continued from yesterday)5. When starting a new lens, how much research do you do? Do you follow any type of plan? Or do you just wing it?
Kiwisoutback: When I start a new lens, I always look to see what the competition is on Google, not just on Squidoo. Doing a little keyword research can save you a lot of time and may just make you reconsider your lens topic, or get more specific. Researching on search engines will tell you whether you need to dig a little deeper into your topic, or if it’s fine just the way it is.
6. What is your best advice for SEO?
Kiwisoutback: Links! If you have no links inward to your lens, your lens may never be found. Think of every possible place you can add a relevant link and try it out. If you have seveal online profiles, try adding the lens to that. Submit your lenses to various social networking sites (the more the better!) if you can. If you have a blog, create a post about the lens, or ask someone you know to blog about the lens. It’s also important not to overdo it with the lens title.
7. What is your best tip for monetizing a lens?
Kiwisoutback: Try to use less banners and more actual products on lenses. Banners don’t tend to a huge moneymaker.
Before creating a lens, you may want to think about a specific product and build the lens around that and how you can fit it in. Adding a random product to a tutorial style lens usually doesn’t yield good results. Really get inside the reader’s head and think of what their wants and needs might be. The more affiliate modules that you include on your lens, the better your chances of selling an item will be. If you’re not comfortable selling products on a strictly informational lens, instead write a new lens based around products and include your personal recommendations.
And here’s the story behind one of Kiwisoutback’s favorites: ”How to Plan a Road Trip“.
My girlfriend and I had always wanted to travel the country and see what this great nation has to offer. You can only read about road trips in books, see photographs, or hear stories so many times before you get an unstoppable itch to travel. Planes weren’t an option. We both really wanted to see up close and personal the famous sites like the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Coast, and ciites like New Orleans.
We didn’t have 3-4 weeks of vacation time available, but we decided to go for it anyway. Being from New England, we had the perfect starting point for the trip: one of the corners of the country, so we don’t have to crisscross back and forth. One by one we decided which sites we wanted to see the most and made the most direct routes from destination to destination. We squished in as many places as possible in 3 1/2 weeks, the most amount of time we could take.
It seems like it lasted just a few hours, but this incredible trip included a trip to Arches National Park, The Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the entire coast of Southern California , and the long days across the middle of the country. We had a blast and we wouldn’t change it for the world.
My girlfriend and I were married in 2005, and decided what better way to honeymoon that to go on another road trip? We didn’t get to see everything we wanted to see since we had only 3 1/2 weeks (you really can’t see everything in this amount of time!). This time, we decided to double it and take 6 weeks! We travelled to some of the same places, but some new ones as well, like Washington State, Key West, the Outer Banks, Yellowstone, and the Redwoods of Northern California. It was the trip of a lifetime, and we discovered a definite new passion: road trips! We were never as relaxed as we were during this vacation. Some people get stressed out with all of the driving, packing and unpacking, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it’s nothing. In fact, we loved it!
This trip provided me with some great tips while on the road that I knew would be valuable for other people planning their own road trips. In fact, the trips have evolved into an entire series of road trip lenses. As long as we’re travelling, we’ll keep making these lenses.
Are you a Giant with a few tips to share? Want to be featured here? Contact me at Robin(at)Squidoo.com.
Spotlight on Kiwisoutback
Mar 2nd
Today we put the spotlight on one of our newest 100 club members, Kiwisoutback.Kiwisoutback was sent a list of questions to choose from and being such a helpful squid has answered every single one of them! I also asked Kiwisoutback to share the story behind their favorite lens and one of their newest lenses. With so many great tips and so much information to share I’ve made this interview a two parter.
1. What is your best Squidoo lens making tip?
Kiwisoutback: Readers on the internet aren’t the same as readers of newspapers — they need lots of pictures to break things up and make it interesting. The more pictures the better! You really can’t have too many. Large blocks of text are just a droan to read through, so if you do have a lot of text, try using a bulleted list or break it up with photos. It’s easy to do by using the flickr and polaroid modules, or your own uploaded photos.
2. What is the very first thing you do AFTER you’ve published a new lens? What is the second thing you do? And why?
Kiwisoutback: The first thing I do when I publish a lens is go back and proofread the entire lens. Sometimes I’ll go the “critique me” section on SquidU to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and to see what the general opinion of the lens is. After proofreading, I’ll think of what else can be added to the lens, or how it can be expanded upon in a follow up lens. If I already have related lenses, I’ll lensroll it right away to those and twitter the lens. For some lenses, I’ll go out and leave the lens in blog comments as the URL when commenting. Submitting to lensroll.com also gives things a good boost.Please share the story behind one of your NEWEST lenses?
3. List 5 things you faithfully do before publishing every new lens.
Kiwisoutback: 1. I always check the module titles before publishing. It’s one of those things that sets apart a good lens from a mediocre one.
2. I tweak the order of the modules so it flows smoothly.
3. When a lens is new especially, I like to use the discovery feature on the introduction module to bring in new readers.
4. Check to see if an interactive module like a duel or poll can be added to the lens to make it more exciting for your readers.
5. The Guestbook module is a must for me. Sometimes people skip right by (especially other lensmasters) if this module isn’t included.
4. What do you think makes a great lens really great? Is it the design style? The amount of pictures? The writing style? Or is it something else?
Kiwisoutback: The greatest lenses usually come from personal experience and expertise. If the lens is built on a topic the lensmaster has no experience with, it’s kind of transparent. Pictures or interesting html/css are a must to make your lens look interesting. A great lens will hold my attention and make me read it from start to finish without being anxious to move along. This can be the writing style, it can be the amazing pictures, it can be an unusual topic, but they all have the same thing in common: the lensmaster is very knowledgable about that particular topic.
This is the story behind one of Kiwisoutback’s newest lenses.
Giant Squid Mentor Kiwisoutback
“Over a year and 126 lenses after joining Squidoo, I’ve decided to offer up my mentoring service to potential Giant Squids. There’s some simple, easy things you can do to your lens to improve the look, flow and SEO of your lens, some of which you can find on this lens. Creating 50 lenses will give you some definite perks, but best of all, you’ll become a much better lensmaster. The tips included here are some of the most valuable basic structural tips that I’ve learned from the lenses I’ve created. Any potential Giant Squid that gets stuck can visit this lens, and if you’re still stuck, contact me and I’ll try and help the best I can (or point you in the right direction)!”
Stop back tomorrow for Part Two of this amazing interview!
Polling for Dollars (and traffic)
Jul 16th
Are you asking your readers the right questions?
Giant lensmaster kiwisoutback has created an extremely imaginative and useful lens to help you get the most out of using Squidoo’s Poll Module. Of course we all know that the poll module is basically used to encourage interaction between reader and lensmaster by asking questions and getting answers but there are a number of different ways that you can ask those questions, in fact, Kiwisoutback has come up with an incredible 48 Ways to Use the Poll Module.
Did you realize that you can use the poll module to increase traffic to your other lenses, promote your lensography, your groups, and even to make money? Yes, I said money. If you are an Amazon affiliate, you can actually use text links in your poll modules to send potential buyers shopping for products that you have quietly recommended.
Visit 48 Ways to Use the Poll Module to learn the rest of this lensmasters terrific interactive poll module secrets and start asking your readers the right questions today!
