6 Simple Steps to Complete a Squidoo Christmas Cash Lens

Thank you for your generous tutorials. It is very informational and its free.Thanks a million.I am an struggling squidooer.Have not had any success yet.I had one of my lense reviewed by you and you gave me an example keyword.I made a lense on that keyword and boom, made my first sale ever.Ever did i made one before. Today I made another 3 sale.But here is my question..I received messages from squidoo that says I made I sale but I do not see the sale I made. When is it posted if I made a sale today 12/10/10?
Again I want to express my great appreciation for y the lense reviewed.(http://www.squidoo.com/best-gift-ideas-for-a-nurse)

I've read a lot (A LOT) of IM info in the past few months, and I must say that the "mommies" seem to explain things best.

Thanks!

Thank you . I'm going to that section.

the first place to start is always with keyword research. I've been going over building niche blogs for the last couple weeks and this month will be on content creation. So check the articles page and look under the heading "build a niche blog" that should give you some direction and get you up to speed.

Hi Jackie,
I'm thankful for all your advice. Just as I was going to start concentrating on Squidoo this happened. My service provider is blocked by Squidoo. It says due to some automatic Squidoo creation this happened .So now I want to turn to making WP blogs instead of wailing, till the problem is sorted by my SP and Squidoo.

Any idea how to start content. I mean first give a small introduction of the product I sell ?

Any advice on how to start to make my Amazon and affiliate WP blog?
Also, what is keywordluv?
Bye and take care.

Thanks Jackie

Magriet,

congrats. That is fantastic news. While things may slow down a little, you may be surprised. If you've targeted products by their global search volume you have chosen products that people are looking for all year. You should still make sales through out the year. I called it Christmas Cash to get people started, but it's a very valid method that should keep sales coming in all year long.

Hi Jackie, My lenses are doing more or less OK! For the little work I could put on on them they are actually doing fantastic. Just one more thing about Amazon. I do not know how it is possible to track your clicks on Amazon.

Why I ask is I get a lot of book sales and would like to know where they come from as it would then be easy to increase the sales.

I have Amazon links all over the place and have no idea where they come from. Even though it is little money, if I know where they come from I may be able to increase them without too much work.

You will never know how much these tutorials meant to me. I have had an Amazon account for more than a year and only once I started with the Christmas lenses did I make enough sales that I will actually be getting a payment. Last year's few Christmas sales are still all lying there!!!!

I know it is going to slow down now, but I'm sure if I keep on building lenses and WP blogs on these methods it will start to grow more permanently and for the first time in 2 years I'm seeing light and for me it is very important as we are almost at the point of squatting on the street!!!

So, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Magriet

to tell you the truth Barbara ~ I don't know. I added it to some ~ but I have not seen squidoo take any steps to add any type of disclosure statements to the money modules so I'm not really sure.

I think if you stick to giving information, like on the product lenses and not reviewing or recommending you probably don't need one, but it sure couldn't hurt.

I noticed that at the bottom of your lens you added a disclaimer that you make money on links. Is that necessary?

Hi Neat,

Now is the perfect time to get started. :) You can quickly get ranked if you build links and get some traffic before your lens starts the inevitable bounce around.
Also ~ this method will continue to work all year round since people buy stuff all year ~ they just get a little wackadoo about it at Christmas. :)

Welcome aboard. oh ~ also there's an "articles" page link at the top of the page, that will walk you through the process and link to all the related blog posts. :)

Hi Jackie

I have just downloaded your Squidoo Xmas Cash. Is it too late to do this now? How long does it take for a lens to get ranked?

I don't want to go to all this effort, and find out I'v missed the boat lol.

Regards
Neat

Just wanted to tell everyone that I made my 2nd sale today on the Christmas Cash BluePrint. It is all coming together, sales are slower than I thought they would be, but since we are focusing on Christmas gifts, maybe people aren't doing their shopping yet. I am encouraged.

Carole

Hi Andy ~

Congratulations first off on getting your pages to ranked on the first page of Google.

My question to you would be can you tell me what your search volume was for the keywords you are ranking for? Generally when you're getting to the first page of Google and not getting traffic it's due to not having enough search volume.

It's a generally accepted rule that the 1st position in Google will get about 40% of the estimated search volume ~ it drops off from there for each spot below #1 you are. That's why I encourage people to look for high search volume keywords ~ over 1000. That way even if you are #5 there's still some search traffic left for you.

If you'd like me to take a look at your lenses personally I can ~ you're welcome to get a lens review and I'll see what I can see. :)

Hi Jackie,

First I want to point out that I enjoy reading all the new information you send out regarding IM and in particular your Christmas Blueprint.

I'm still working on the blueprint and have made up 8 Squidoo lenses and a few webpages on other sites also. I have written articles for all and have done a ton of promotion for the webpages including bookmarking, RSS feeding, etc....

Most of my pages are in the first 3 pages of Google and a couple are at the top of page one!

This is all good.......so why am I not getting any sales?!
Why is my traffic low?

Any ideas?.......Does the Blueprint really work?

Andy

Hi Jamie,

You want to use the global search count ~ it is an average of all the searches over the past year. The other is the previous month. You want a good look at the overall searches for a year ~

If you go to the top of the column and hover your mouse over it will tell you what that column is all about ~ that helped me get clear when I started using it again ~ and feel free to ask more questions as they come up.

Hi Jackie,

I have a question for you on keyword research with Micro Niche Finder.
When doing keyword research are you looking at local search count or global search count of over 1000? This keyword research gets confusing for me.

Thanks for your help,

Jamie

Hi Sue ~ please tell me which "rss thing" you're confused on. Submitting to RSS directories? Using the RSS module? If you let me know what's confusing you I'll try to help clear it up. :)

Thanks again Jackie, for all the great info. I am stuck on the RSS thing. Not sure what is meant by what, sounds confusing? That's it! I'm confused on that part of the recipe.

log in to your account. go to the lens you can't get to and hit the publish button again. Make sure you've got the right url.

use a different article directory to publish your lens where they accept links of over 5 words, (you can google article directory list or something similar) and/or use a shorter variation of your keyword as your anchor text.

Hi Jackie
I have 2 problems I hope you can help me with.
I did a Squidoo lens on 22 Oct and clicked 'publish'.
But when I try to get to it by putting the URL into Google I just keep getting the Squidoo page with the red square saying "Hey You ,,,,". I actually did 2 lens on the same day. The other one works fine. What can I do about this?
Second. I just did an article for EZA and it said my URL exceeded the maximum 5 words (and it does). Any suggestions, please?
Thanks for your continued help.
RUSSELL

Jackie, thanks for this well presented plan of action. Definitely helps everyone keep what they're doing in perspective and stay focused!

I see people who are reporting "no sales" and while it may be rough not making any money yet, keep in mind people don't have to buy the particular product your Squidoo lens is advertising. If they've gone through your links to Amazon and buy anything else within 24 hrs, you'll receive a referral fee for those items. With Christmas approaching, that can still mean big money just by directing people to Amazon!

Good luck to all and Happy holidays!

Hey Jackie,
Great summary. I have a total of 9 lenses up and running now based on your Christmas Cash Blueprint and I basically follow the following:
1. Research Amazon and find product/keyword with search volume and low competition
2.Create lens as per your recommendations
3.Blog post on my own Christmas Blog
4. 3 blog posts on the free ad posts
5.Social bookmark (not the same sites every time)
6.Create other backlinks(I have used all sorts of different ones)
7.Ping Lens once green check marked and ranked by by Squidoo
8.Submitt RSS Feeds (I have basically submitted my Squidoo Lens Master RSS feed to about 15 or so RSS sites, I agree that it is great that you only have to do this once no matter how many lenses you create)
9. Wait to see what happens while starting all over again

I have been working on this for about 3 1/2 weeks now I think and here is where I am at in a nutshell:
4 lenses still not indexed by Google
1 lens is on page 1-#6, EZ article on page 1-#5, feed blog ad on page 1-#8
1 lens is on page 1-#4, feed blog ad on page1-#5
1 lens is on page 3-#5
1 lens is indexed but nowhere to be found, free ad blog on page 4-#10
1 lens is indexed but nowhere to be found, and no other links are found yet.

In general not getting much traffic but at least some traffic has come in and no sales as of yet but as you can see you just need to keep to your plan and things will start to happen.

Chad

Hi Les,

YIKES!! Don't let this blog thing get that much in the way!! It's just one tool to build links. Where are you having trouble and maybe I can help. If you go to the ironman gravity 4000 inversion table lens you'll see my Christmas blog right down there at the bottom, in the RSS module ~ feel free to take a gander ~ just don't steal my niches. ;)

Jackie

Thank you again for your timely help. Also congratulations on you sale on your Ironman Inversion Table example, awesome. I'm stuck in the build a blog stage for 2 weeks now, and would like to ask if we could see the blog example for the Ironman Inversion Table example pointing back to the Squidoo page. I'm trying hard but am a slow learner. Thank you again for everything.
Les

@Christi If you are selling christmas music ~ might be fun. Otherwise I think it would be a distraction. Also the musical widget directly from amazon won't work on Squidoo because of the language it is in. Squidoo does have an mp3 widget I believe. At one point it wasn't working very well, but I haven't tried it lately.

The ad blogs ~ you don't get any email from them. :) You just provide them content to put their adsense ads on. It's the same thing as putting a post on your own blog, it is just that someone else owns the blog. :)

Amber ~ I probably wouldn't share your lenses ~ other than to use the name/url in the comment field to get a decent backlink.

Jackie

Yep, another great article. I see I left a lot of good information on the table with my first lens, which I am trying not to repeat with this one.

Have a couple of "off the wall" questions, though. I saw on Amazon that they offer a musical widget--what do you think of putting something like that (with instrumental Christmas music?) on the lenses? CAN it be done (I'm assuming it would be similar to their product code and they stream the music from their server, or some such)?

Also, all those "ad blogs" -- will you be getting huge loads of emails from their sites? What do you recommend to keep the traffic that way down?

Thanks for lots of help and a simpler method that most of the "gurus."

Regards, Chris

Thank you again for your straight forward and very practical advice. I'd really love to hear any and all success stories for those using the "Christmas Cash Lens" techniques.

Can we post our favorite "Christmas Cash Lens" here? I'm always interested in seeing what other people are doing.

I have a couple of Christmas Lens that are getting good traffic, however no sells yet.

Best of luck to all.

Thanks again for another great article. Every time I start feeling a little overwhelmed with what I'm doing and wonder if I'm going in the right direction, you post something that sets me straight and gives me confidence.

Thanks!
Kelly