Saturday, November 14, 2009

Win a free squidoo lens

Brand Awareness We all have heard the term right! But how do you make your brand name more known? These are the days that social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are growing huge. If your brand is not on these sites, you are loosing valuable visitors and followers for your brand.
My brand is SquidBuilders.com and I am branching out to these social sites just like I am telling you to do! My latest is a new Twitter Account for SquidBuilders.com  I will be twittering about specials and discounted offers for my lens building service!

I am going to offer a Free Basic Squidoo lens to one of my followers after I hit my 100th follower.
Details:
After i get the 100th follower on twitter, I will pick one follower at random and build one custom built squidoo lens on the topic of your choice.

Twitter Follow Squidbuilders.com

Visit Squidbuilders.com

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Do You Zazzle?

Do you ever think of using Zazzle.com when you are adding products to your lenses? You don't have to have products yourself. You can find Zazzle products from any gallery that fits the theme of your lens.
Zazzle.com is free to sign up. They pay up to 15% royalty on referral links. Squidoo has a Zazzle module, but it sometimes can give mixed results. Plus the module shows 3, 6 or 9 products, and I like to be specific with just one product that I really like and think fits the theme of the lens.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

What can Squidoo do for you?

 How to you get visitors to your brand new website?
So you just put up your brand new website! It looks nice, got some cool or pretty banners, you have all your products showcased just the way you want them. Best sellers up front! Big grand opening! Watching your traffic stats all day, waiting, waiting. Hey what gives... why doesn't anyone like my website?
Ah yes! You got it, you have to advertise. That's where Squidoo comes in. You can build a lens around your topic and link to your website, your blog, your facebook, twitter account, even use your videos from youtube.com
A Squidoo lens, if built right, can rank very well in the search engines for your keyphrase and keywords. They can get listed fast with just a little promotion and start driving visitors right to the front door of your website!

Check this out... My Squidoo lens about a hashbrown casserole recipe that we love around my house is ranked at #4 on Google for Hashbrown Casserole Recipe

Not to bad! I got one better...
My Squash Casserole Recipe lens is ranked #3 for the search term Squash Casserole Recipe.

I can go on and on showing you where I rank in Squidoo. Or, I could help you get yourself ranked there to! I am rebuilding lenses and building new lenses for clients right now! If you have some stale lenses sitting in your account, check out my webspage @ SquidBuilders.com and I will be glad to re work those lenses for you!

Friday, September 11, 2009

Got a Todays Best Award!

Today I was checking Zazzle and happened to look at the Todays Best page and about choked when I noticed  my Rock n Roll Skull Postage Stamp being featured! Wow and it is sitting in a brand new gallery too called Back Stage T-shirts and Gifts for rock n roll music lovers!
The tip I want to share here is that if you keep adding designs and starting new shops with new themes, you keep growing! You get awards and then that product rises in the market place. So far today I have 5 votes on a brand new postage stamp at Zazzle. Maybe it will make a sale soon!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Whats your 3 word keyphrase?

Squidoo Lens Help and Tips
The very first thing I think of before I begin any squidoo lens is "What will my 3 word keyphrase be?". When you build a lens, you need to focus on your chosen 3 word keyphrase. a 2 word keyphrase or a 4 word keyphrase are ok too, but 3 word keyphrase is optimal!
Then you approach your 3 word keyphrase every way possible. "3 word keyphrase" Videos, "3 word keyphrase" images, "3 word keyphrase" how to, "3 word keyphrase" ingredients(for recipe lenses), "3 word keyphrase" directions, and so forth! If you have chosen the right 3 word keyphrase, then you might just get lucky and nail that #1 spot on google for your "3 word keyphrase". Then the traffic Gods might shine down on your lens and send you many visitors!
There are many keyword tools sites to help you make a decision about what "3 word keyphrase" to use!
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Search Based Keyword Tool

Those are two good ones to try out.

So next lens you start to build, ask yourself what your "3 word keyphrase" is going to be. Can you guess what my "3 word keyphrase" is for this post? Leave a comment and tell me what it is!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Get ready for the Holidays!

It won't be long until the Christmas shoppers start getting out their shopping lists! Are you gonna have your Squidoo lens ready for them? The time is right now to be making those brand new Christmas lenses. Whether it's a Best Christmas Presents for Dad lens, or Car Toys for Guys Christmas lens, you need to get it built, or update your lenses from last year if you have any. Christmas on Squidoo can bring tons of related traffic to your lenses all looking for the exact products you are showcasing. So don't wait until it is too late.... Build some shopping lenses, focus on one particular product and keyword the heck out it! Then go promote it to your favorite social networks, or suggest it to friends to pass along. Just get it noticed!

Monday, August 31, 2009

Healthy Lifestyle Alternatives

Living a healthy lifestyle s not that complicated. Just buy the right foods, prepare them the right way, exercise often, get plenty of outdoors time. If you are one of those people that just needs the right information to get started living a healthy life style, then check out this squidoo lens...

Healthy Lifestyle Alternatives


Michelle will teach you about the superfoods you should include in your diet. Foods like Blueberries. tomatoes, and green tea. Michelle also teaches you a simple breathing exercise that can help reduce stress.

There is a great Blueberry Buzz Smoothie Recipe featured that you will love!

Friday, August 28, 2009

Squidoo Lens Tip of the Week!

I bet you wonder sometimes about what you can do to freshen up your lens. You know, google and yahoo search engines loves fresh content. So if you can give your lenses fresh content about once a week, your gonna rank a lot better on the search results for your search terms.
So, what are you gonna add to a lens that is already pretty full? Well, go back and look at your lens. Did you fill in the description area for those youtube videos? How about on the Amazon spotlight module? Do you fill in all your sub titles for each module? If you have any areas for text you haven't used yet, then there is your chance for some fresh content.
It doesn't have to be much! Just a sentence, maybe a paragraph of text will be enough to give the search engines some fresh content!

More fresh content ideas!

  • Add a new youtube video
  • Change out an amazon product
  • Add an eBay product
  • Add a link list module
  • Add a Featured Lens module
  • Add a Featured Lensmaster Module
  • Add a Blackbox Module
  • Add Bold tags to your main keywords
  • Add title tags to your links
  • Add alt tags to your images
The main thing is, just make some changes. Changes of any kind and a fresh publish can help your visitors stats change over night!
A good example of this is my State Quarters Collectors Lens. This lens is one of my favorites, because I love to collect the state quarters. I have several state quarter coin folders full right now! With this lens, I had somehow managed to kill all traffic to it earlier in the year. But I added the lens to my weekly edit list and it has slowly came back to life! After several weeks of edits, it has finally got some visitors again!

So add a label to your dashboard. Label it weekly edits, then add your best lenses to that label. Keep them with fresh content, then come back here and comment with your results!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Endangered Animal Species


When the Critters in a Jam company contacted me about building their website a squidoo lens, I was very excited to get started. You see Critters in a Jam is a very unique gift idea for animal lovers.

Here is how Critters in a Jam describes their product...


We take a plush toy animal, currently listed on The Endangered Species List, and place it into a plastic replica of a typical jelly jar. The animal is slightly larger than the jar, causing the animal to be "squashed" into the jar giving the appearance of being a
"CRITTER IN A JAM".

What these are is a stuffed animal that is on the endangered animal species list is stuffed inside a Jam jar. The label gives information about each endangered animal. The coolest part is each time Critters in Jam gets a sale, they give $1.00 to the National Wildlife Federation to help support endangered animals.

Purple Star for CrueFest 2009 Lens

I had the privileged of getting an email from Squidoo today telling me they have awarded my CrueFest 2009 Motley Crue lens a purple star award! Squidoo officials hand out purple stars on a randow basis to lensmasters who have built an exceptional squidoo lens. Well somehow one of those squidoo official peoples wandered onto my Motley Crue Cruefest 2009 lens and decided it was good enough to be awarded a purple star!
Oh it feels good to have another purple star! This one makes my 4th purple star awarded to my lenses.
The others are...
Bruce Lee The Little Dragon
1968 Chevy Camaro
2010 Chevy Camaro

If you are interested, I can build a high quality squidoo lens as well as any of these purple star lenses for you and your website, or blog! If you need to get better visitors to your website, then you should visit mine first! Check out SquidBuilders.com and let me help you!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Stun Guns, Mace, Pepper Spray and Squidoo

What does Stun Guns, Policeman's Mace, Pepper Spray Defense and Squidoo all have in common? They are all the newest topics of lenses I have created this week! Chuck from safetyenforcement.com wanted to get the word out about all the Self Defense Products he has for sale. So he has been hooked up with some great looking squidoo lenses now!

Don't become a victim! Protect yourself now!

Self Defense Products for Women

Featured on Frontpage of Cafepress.com

Today it was pretty cool to hear from a friend of mine that one of my truck driver t-shirts designs was being featured on the frontpage of Cafepress.com! This design features a grungy floral scroll background with an Eagle, The Route 66 roadsign, and an 18 wheeler. A great looking t-shirt or gift for any one who drives trucks for a living!
Truck Driving T-shirts

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Time for Halloween Lenses

Many of you know to be ahead of holidays by at least two months when you build your squidoo lenses. So that means you need to be thinking about making Halloween Squidoo lenses right now! I have resurrected my KISS Halloween Costumes lens up from the dead! Dusted it off, added some new products and am starting to promote the lens now. People will be shopping for Halloween Costumes by the beginning of October, so you need to be ready.
I also built a dear friend of mine a Squidoo lens about Wizard of Oz Halloween Costumes.

For new Squidoo lensmasters who may not be aware of the squidoo template for halloween squidoo lenses, take a peak at Squidboo!

Make your lenses now, or dig out your halloween lenses from last year and freshen them up with new products and add more keywords. Halloween can be a big time on Squidoo for selling products off of your lenses. But your gonna need the visitors first! So go ahead, get them ready for Halloween now!

Space Shuttles and Space Station

The other day, a friend and me was chatting about the NASA Space Program. We were talking about the Space Shuttles and their role in building the International Space Station. We were trying to find out certain information about the space program. I decided to search Squidoo to see what my fellow lensmasters had built about the topic. I was pretty shocked to see so few lenses on the subject.
So you know what my first thought was.... that's right, time to get building! So without further ado... I would like to present to you... a lens about the

The International Space Station got it's first nuts and bolts in 1998. Over 11 years later, the International Space Station has become a floating truck stop in space for astronauts from many countries. All taking a part in the construction of this massive International Space Station

and a lens about.....

The Space Shuttle Enterprise never saw orbital space flight as it was originally built to do. Instead NASA used the Space Shuttle Enterprise for many test throughout the years. The Space Shuttle Enterprise was finally retired and turned over to the Smithsonian Institution in 1985, where it became a museum exhibit! Space Shuttle Enterprise

Friday, August 14, 2009

Keep the squidoo lens fresh!

My blog here is a perfect example of letting your content get stale! I haven't posted a new blog here since May 10th! Google has came and goon several times and walked away unhappy because the google bots didn't find anything new to chew on.
So my Squidoo Help Topic will be Freshness!

Ok so you built that squidoo lens about 2 months ago, you haven't edited since the first time you published it, and now your wondering why google hasnt shown it any love and send you thousands of visitors, right?
It's because you havent done any more work on it! Google loves fresh content! Relevent fresh content is even better! So go ahead, open up your favorite lens in edit mode and let's make some changes, or add some new content.

There is always more you can include on your squidoo lens.
Did you add a link list module? Having links for your visitor to click on will help your lens rank better. Each time a visitor clicks a link you have on your lens, it counts as a click out. How about adding another Video Module? I'm sure your visitors will love to see another video on your topic. The main thing is, add some more content. Make the content relevent to your topic. So the next time google stops by to rank your site, you have some fresh content for the google bot to chew on!

Fast Fact about Squidoo Lens:
Did you know the google bot will come by more often if you make regular updates to your squidoo lens!

Now if I could just practice what I am preaching with my blog here, I would get all kinds of traffic!

As always, if you need any help, I am at our service!
http://www.squidbuilders.com
Thanks
ThomasC

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Spread out your income resources

Squidoo is a great resource to earn a little money. But lets face it, not too many lensmasters are making a full time income just yet. You have to think outside the box! Plus you have to work outside of Squidoo! I use different sites for writing content and publishing articles.
One site I ventured into late last year is Bukisa. It is a article writing site that lets you publish articles and you earn a little income from ads, just about like Squidoo. But there isn't a ton of modules there, you just write an article! They do allow backlinking to your squidoo lenses as well! What I like to do is write up an article on the same topic as some of my lenses and link to them!
So far I have only written 3 articles there. The first one I wrote back in November and forgot all about it! Went back and checked on it the other day and it had earned 1.05
I know, that isn't a lot at all, but imagine if you had 20-30 articles earning even one dollar a month! You could be getting another 20-30 bucks a month! Hey that is enough to cover a water bill or maybe even a phone bill!
Check out my articles...
Arkansas Hillbilly What is a Hillbilly?
Bruce Lee wins a Purple Star!
Tips on making great homemade biscuits

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Cash Cow and Cash Flow!

My newest client is promoting a system that allows you to develop a Cash Flow System.Plug into the system and reap the benefits! Join a team of marketing professionals who will help you make some serious money thru their Turn Key opportunity! Want to make a 6 figure income? Check out these lenses and plug into their Cash Cow System! While you are checking out Mike's brand spanking new lenses, leave him a message and say hello!

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Funny Fishing T-shirts

Today I wrapped up my latest lens! I have built a lens for Funny Fishing T-shirts! This zazzle gallery is home to some of the funniest fishing t-shirts on the internet! If you want a good laugh during your next fishing trip, you should check out these funny fishing t-shirts! If you are needing to earn some money from affliate products or your own products on zazzle or cafepress, then check out Squidbuilders.com!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Cafepress Makes terrible decision

Most of my lens building customers have been Cafepress shop owners! With the email we all received today, I know all of you are feeling the same pain I feel. For those of you who aren't aware... Cafepress.com is making changes! Big changes, the type of changes that effects a lot of people. They are re branding. Changing algorithms and going with a flat price for products throughout their marketplace.
What does that mean for cafepress shop keepers? They will be giving us only 10% for any sales made through the marketplace. If you want to set your prices higher on your own shop, you can do that, but you compete against your own design in the cafepress marketplace!
The cafepress forums are on fire right now with some very upset shop owners. I am included! Thank God I have the freedom of Speech on my own blog here.
Zazzle is going to over take Cafepress with this move! You can bet on that! So how are your zazzle shops? Do you have them polished up? How about your squidoo lenses?
I tell you what, this deal sucks for us, but if you need a squidoo lens to promote your Zazzle gallery, then consider this my CAFEPRESS SUCKS sale.. Tell me you want a Zazzle lens because cafepress sucks, and I will give it to you for half off the regular package price! Sorry, I can't go any lower on my basic price though, those suckers are just to much work to do that cheap! So this deal is for a 50 or 100.00 lens! Contact me.... thomasc@squidbuilders.com

Friday, April 17, 2009

Squidoo Awards Bruce Lee a Purple Star!

There is huge news running around Squidoo today! Some Squidoo folks are seeing purple! Purple Stars that is! Squidoo has finally released the long anticipated purple stars! I was one of the very lucky few to be awarded a purple star! Squidoo awarded my lens of the day winner Bruce Lee lens! Go ahead and look! Check out that cool looking purple star! Click on the star to learn more about purple stars! This Bruce Lee lens was one of my very first lenses that I created. So of course, I have done some major editing to it! It is probably the most in depth Bruce Lee single page on the internet!
Blog post continues after this product break!!
(product break!)
If you happen to be a Bruce Lee fan, you might appreciate this...



Blog post continues...
Purple Stars is a perk for the Giants club at Squidoo. If you are a Giant, you can submit your lenses to Squidoo to be considered for a Purple Star. Only 6 a week will be awarded.!

I wasn't the only Squidoo lensmaster to be awarded a purple star! Many of the big heavy hitters at Squidoo got a purple star! That is because the Top 100 club got first crack at the purple stars!

Here are the lenses that got a Purple Star!

Best Tres Leches Coconut Macaroons

Blankets for Soldiers and Veterans

Blended Matcha

Bruce Lee - The Little Dragon

Dolphin Swim in the Florida Keys

Falling In Love…..

Fantasy and Animal Sculpture by Noadi’s Art

Kindle Wireless Reading Device from Amazon

Make Your Own Fairy Wings

Mount St. Helens

My Ten Favorite National Parks

Planning a US Road Trip: The Southern Route

Save The Children Organization | International Charity Alliance | Compassion

Squidconomy - The Economics of Squidoo

Stuffed Cabbage

Tangerine - Spring’s Hottest Color

Top 10 Best Green Gift Ideas 2009

Would You Trade Your Daughter for a Cow?

Zazzle 101

(if I link to all these squidoo pages, blogger would shut me down! So go to squidoo.com and paste the title to the lens and you will find the lens!)

Friday, April 10, 2009

First page of google!


A long time ago I decided to share my version of Southern Hashbrown Casserole recipe with the rest of the world! My hashbrown lens has always produced decent traffic and has been a top tier lens since the first week I published it! The lens always had around 400-500 visits a week. Which I felt was very good!
I have edited this lens maybe 100 times since my first publish. Always making sure that there was some fresh text and keywords for google to chew on on it's next visit! After my most recent edit, something magic happened! The next day, the lens had an extra 50 or so visits, then the day after that it had an extra 100 visits, and it has just kept going from there! Today the traffic stands at 1,298 visits for the last 7 days!
When a squidoo lens jumps like that, you usually start wondering what happened and start to investigate! So I check the stats to see where the traffic is coming from, yep google is sending me some great traffic! The biggest search term used is hashbrown casserole! So I type that into google.com and sure enough, there sits my hashbrown casserole lens at number 4!
Well number 4 is great, but I can not stand to see those 3 sites ahead of me! So off I go to make some fresh edits to my hashbrown casserole lens!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Why wait for lensrank to update!

As I am sitting here today waiting for Squidoo to update the lensrank for the day, I got to thinking, why wait for Squidoo to run it's update, so I bolted on over and pick an out of date lens and got busy on it! I will now consider that a bonus update! I could have sat here and waited while doing nothing, but it only makes since to go ahead and get some more editing done! Adding more keywords or anything to pull in a little more traffic from google and get those visits or sales!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Why do I need a Squidoo lens?

I know you have either heard of Squidoo, visited a squidoo lens, or something! You wouldn't be reading my blog if you hadnt right! You are probably asking yourself, Do I need a Squidoo lens? The answer to that question is YES! If you have any type of product to sell, or if you run a website, or you just want to make some money to help pay the bills.
A Squidoo lens is a useful way to get direct links right back to your products, but not just a link, with Squidoo, you can have images of your products, plus add tons of useful modules to bring in extra content from around the internet related to your topic!
One recent client knows very well the power of Squidoo and having his products cataloged on Squidoo! CrazyDogTshirts.com has nearly his entire product catalog on Squidoo now! He has purchased several lenses for each of his categories in his store! Each of his lenses are narrowed down to a specific category like Movie T-shirts, St. Patricks Day T-shirts, and even Chuck Norris T-shirts!
So if you are asking yourself, do I need a Squidoo lens, think about CrazyDogTshirts.com! He has his whole inventory on Squidoo and getting some pretty darn good traffic and sales from it!
Come on by SquidBuilders.com and check out my packages! The basic price starts at only 25.00 and you can easily earn your 25.00 dollars back from Squidoo lensrank! So what do you have to lose? You know your webstore or your wallet could use the extra sales!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Keep it fresh!

Part of the trick to a successful squidoo lens is freshness! Search engines come visit your site often, and they want to find some new content each time they come! If you look at the date of my last post here on my blog, you will notice I haven't updated my blog for awhile! That's why I am here today, adding text, adding meat for the search engine to chew on! This text might not contain much keywords, or really not much to say, but google at least has something to chew on and when it leaves my blog, it will be a little more satisfied than if I gave it nothing to chew on!
So if you have a lens that hasn't been updated for awhile, give it something for google to chew on, anything! It would be a lot better if you concentrate on adding good content with rich keywords though!
So don't let those squidoo lenses go to long with adding at least a paragraph or more of good text!

If any of the readers here are interested in classic hotrods and muscle cars, come see my other blog!

My latest series of lenses have been about Playboy models and Playmates of the Year!
Get a taste of my Playmate series then check out my Girls Next Door series!

Friday, February 6, 2009

Co Brand your Guestbook

The Guestbook Module! What is it? What does it do? Am I using it right? The guestbook module is loaded into every squidoo lens by default. Some people edit the title and that's it, some people edit the title and move the module to the bottom. But what I want to tell you about, is how to make full use out of the guestbook module. I'm talking about a Co-Branded Guestbook module. One that you can get multible use out of. Make yourself a coded guestbook module that you can apply to all of your lenses. Add a banner that links back to your store, add links that help promote your squidoo lens. Put a link to contact you in there.
When you get this jazzed up guestbook module coded, save the code in a text document that way you can use it on all of your lenses!
Check out one of my squidoo lenses to see my custom guestbook module! 2010 Chevy Camaro

Thursday, February 5, 2009

No visits in 7 days

The squidoo stats shows you how many visits you have had for the last 7 days. If you have a lens that has had 0 visits for the last week, then something isn't right on that lens. It is time to go back and take a big look at the intro text and title, the main title for the lens, and your 3 word key phrase. Are you targeting a key phrase that has to much competition? Try to narrow your key phrase down more. When you write out the introduction module text, use your key phrase at least three times. Here is a good example... 2010 Ford Mustang Also, use your 3 word keyphrase in the titles of several of your modules, and use it in the text of those modules.
You want to add fresh content to your lenses at least on a monthly basis. More often than that if possible.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Keyword Updates

Squidoo lenses need regular updates to provide fresh content to the search engines so they continue to rank your page well. When you do your lens update, add your 3 word keyphrase to new areas within your lenses. Add it as text in modules, or as a subtitle in a couple of your module. Then publish your lens and ping it. Doing this once a week should get your lens ranked well and make it continue to get good results in traffic.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

3 word phrase

If you think of a 3 word phrase for your lens, and repeat that 3 word phrase as many times as you can, in each module title and subtitle, repeat it as text in the lens several times, you will rank good for that phrase.

Welcome to my blog

I plan to give my customers tips about how to make their Squidoo lenses perform better. I can build them, start your promotions, and turn the lens over to you, but they are going to need some TLC along the way to keep them fresh with content and to keep the lensrank doing well.
A lens that isn't updated will slowly sink to the bottom of Squidoo hell. You will not get any views and the time spent to create the lens (plus any money spent to create the lens) will be a waste. Lenses need fresh content at least once a month, but even more often if possible.
I won't be promoting this blog very much. It will just be a place for my customers to read some useful tips for the lenses that I build for them!