Squidoo Resources for Etsy Sellers

Squidoo and Etsy go together. Really. Whenever a fellow Etsy seller asks me "How do you know that?", the answer is almost always "Squidoo".

Not only is affiliate marketing a great introduction to creating an online presence, but there are so many great resources for bloggers and sellers, written by Squidoo members.

Do you know of a great Squidoo lens that would be useful to Etsy sellers? Share your lens with us!

5 Ways to Boost Lensrank

Now that Squidoo lensrank has been fixed and we’re getting stats for our lenses again, why not take a look at some of the things that help to improve lensrank?

According to “Lensrank Explained - Really” by spirituality, there are 8 main factors that go into the calculations, and determine how high, or low, your lens will stand in the rankings. Some of them are easy to achieve, while others take a lot of work, and even a little luck.

Here are five specific lensrank factors that you can affect on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

1. Star ratings

Most Squids are pretty generous when it comes to giving out stars to deserving lenses. Whenever someone from the Squidoo community stops by one of your masterpieces, chances are, they will let you know what they think of it by rating it from 1-5.

To get visits from logged in Squids, send out a catchy Squidcast.

Many lensmasters really underestimate the power of a good Squidcast. Don’t just blurt out a sentence about your new lens, or a new module you’ve added. If you want visits, you really have to sell it! Describe your lens, tell your fans why they should visit it, and don’t forget to add a hyperlink or two to some of your hottest modules.

To make sure everyone who scrolls through your lens leaves you a star or five, add thefluffanutta’s amazingly wonderful Love This Lens Widget.

2. Visits

The best kind of visit a lens can get is from outside of Squidoo. That means that you’ve written about a topic that people are interested in, or that you’ve been bookmarked, or that someone loves your page so much they know the URL by heart.

There are many, many ways to find the traffic you want, but they all require a little work from you. When promoting a lens, remember to:

Share it - on Twitter, Digg, Tagfoot, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
Link to it - in forum posts, signatures, and profiles.
Blog about it - but beware of sounding spammy!

3. Click Outs

Click outs are important for lensrank. They indicate that visitors are spending time on your lens, reading what you have to say, and visiting other sites that you recommend.

Aside from providing affiliate links, try to find websites or lenses that people reading your lens would be interested in, and link to them. You can use anchor text links, or link lists, or make buttons from pictures that you use on your lens.

Remember to include the code target=“_blank” to open links in a new window. You can also describe your links with this code: title=“Name of Link Destination”

4. Interaction

Like click outs, when visitors click on polls or other interactive modules, it shows that you’re drawing in readers and keeping them glued to your content. Try to add something for your guests to do in each lens, such as a poll module, duel or guestbook.

For several example of how polls can be used, check out “The History of Surveys”.

5. Sales

Depending on what your topic is, sales can be the hardest thing to improve on your lens. Even if you’re getting plenty of traffic, not everyone is going to rush over to eBay to buy what you’re selling.

To help improve your chances of affiliate success, try to recommend products that you have a personal knowledge of. Describe them to your readers, and tell them why you love it so much, and why they’ll love it, too.

In my opinion, with sales modules, less is more. You don’t need to list every single book on your topic ever published in a gigantic Amazon Plexo. One or two great books (with five star customer ratings) in Amazon Spotlight modules tells readers that you’re serious about providing them with the best advice possible.

The sooner you do these things, the better. Take advantage of the new lens boost that lenses receive after being published, and push it even further up the ranks with quality, interactive content and active promotion.

A Warning to Etsy and eBay Sellers

Now that the holidays are over, I've gotten back to writing about my main passion - beading. My first lens of the new year is all about ways to use the very easy and traditional daisy chain stitch. As is my habit, I've been blogging about it where appropriate, and today I stopped in at CrafterZone to share Variety Beading: Daisy Chain.

While browsing the forum, I came across a post about a new US law that demands all products made for children be tested for harmful substances such as lead. Apparently Big Brother's panties got in a twist about last year's product recalls. You may remember that many products from China and elsewhere were pulled from shelves because of high lead and amphetamine content. The solution? Ban all children's products that have not been submitted for intense screening.

The problem of course, is that the law as it is applies to everyone and everything, including products manufactured in the US, and those made by home crafters. The result is that if the law should be passed, no one will be able to sell handmade toys, blankets or clothing at farmers markets or online, unless they pay the fees to have tests performed on each item they make.

If there is any truth to the article, then this is bad news for many Squids, especially those that have made lenses just to help promote their home shops. Under the new law, selling products that have not been individually tested will be an offense that could result in fines and even jail time. You can read about this latest economy drain at Digital Journal. I won't go into the endless number of ways that this law contradicts what is needed for the North American economy at this time. We all know it's just bad karma all around.

If you are a US citizen that will be harmed by this law, you may be able to take part in the lawsuit against it.

Out with the Ebay

Today I put together a new lens, but since I can't join any groups, add lensrolls, or do anything fun with it until it's no longer a Work In Progress, I decided to tidy up some of my other lenses. My Professor Baby series gets the least traffic - only 2 or 3 visits a day. It's a hard topic to promote, since I'm not yet a member on any parenting forums, it's not a very searchable topic, and there aren't that many other lenses about it. At least not that I've found.

I'm always looking for other baby and parenting lenses to add to my 'rolls, but most of them are about selling baby products, and have very little readable content. I did come across a really great lens today, though, called Breastfeeding Guru. It's a very long lens, and most of the product modules are nicely squeezed in between helpful content. It has no spamminess at all!

As I was looking over my Professor Baby Prenatal Calendar lens, I decided it was time to get rid of the sloppy eBay modules once and for all. I've come to find that they are totally useless for providing examples of items related to the lens content. Do a search for digital cameras, and you'll end up with cords and other junk that is most definately not cameras.

I'm sticking with Amazon from now on for my non-beading lenses. I liked Amazon modules better anyway, because you can select the thumbnail view, which places a nice row of 5 products that are centered on the page and take up hardly any room. And they (almost) never expire - a definite bonus if you don't have time to scan every single lens you make, everyday.