Christmas is Over ~ Now What?!?

December 29, 2009 By Jackie Lee 35 Comments

Christmas is over. Some may be relieved, some may be bummed, and yet others of you, I’m sure, are wondering what the heck happens now?!

Let’s talk about it!

You’ve spent some time (hopefully) over the last few months putting together some product lenses on Squidoo. Your target was Christmas shoppers, so now what are you going to do now that the holiday shopping frenzy is over? Is all that hard work going to go to waste?

Heck no.

I wouldn’t do that to you!! Even though the blueprint is called Christmas cash, and you targeted Christmas shoppers your lenses will continue to work throughout the year.

When doing your keyword research you identified your search volume from the “global search” number. This number is an average of the last 12 months worth of searches. So unless you targeted products specifically related to Christmas itself your lenses will keep making sales (provided you’ve gotten them ranked in the search engines) all year. It may or may not be at the same rate you saw at Christmas, but it should happen.

What about the Christmas references in my lenses?

If you put in content about these being great Christmas gifts you can do one of two things, and both will probably work.

1. You can just leave them. I personally do not go back in and change my lenses. I don’t have the time quite frankly.

2. You can go in and take out the Christmas references, but leave in the gift reference. These things WILL continue to make great gifts whether it’s for Valentine’s day, birthdays, anniversaries etc.

Keep your eye on next Christmas

Even if you started the Christmas cash blueprint the day I published it, that still didn’t give you a lot of time to get your lenses built, indexed and ranking. Now is the time to keep your eye on the prize ~ next Christmas.

This could go one of two ways. Without the pressure of impending Christmas you can relax a little and build lenses without so much pressure.

Or you can say oh, Christmas is a year away and blow off building lenses.

Which are you going to do? Whether you decide to go with another long term strategy, building product lenses is always a wise move. If you build 1 lens a week for the next year you’ll have 52 more lenses in your arsenal, ready and waiting to not only earn you money during the year but ready for Christmas shopping next year.

The longer you can give your lenses to simmer, and build “age” the better.

I suggest you make it a habit to build and promote, at the very least, 1 lens a week for the next year. You can do these lenses in your spare time ~ don’t spend a ton of time on them, build them, do the basics of promotion and then just let them simmer. When I say simmer I mean leave them alone and just let them be. Don’t touch them, don’t mess with them, move on to something else. Just to be clear.

If you can find a way to learn how to let go of the attachment of any given lens being your best seller you will put yourself at a great advantage. It is our attachment to the outcome/production of any one piece of online real estate that leads to disappointment and frustration. When you focus all your effort on one thing and then it doesn’t work it’s very easy to get discouraged. When you get discouraged it’s really easy to quit.

I don’t want you to quit.

When you can let go of your attachment you will find that you just keep building and building. Then instead of disappointed one day you open your account and see 500 hits to a lens and then you check your stats and find a bunch of commissions in your account you feel excited and SURPRISED!! That is a wonderful feeling. It will make you want to build more, just to see what happens, to see which will take off, which will surprise you.

I can almost guarantee working in internet marketing from the framework of looking for surprises is going to keep you going long past watching one site and being disappointed. Please, please, please ~ if you can do one thing this year, learn to let go.

No matter how much time and effort you put into keyword research, writing content, promotion, there are going to be lenses/sites/blogs that just don’t fly. It’s gonna SUCK, but it’s gonna happen. I promise. If you have all your hopes and dreams invested in that one property you are going to be sorely disappointed, and it’s going to be hard to keep taking action with that nasty little voice in the back of your head saying

See I told you this wasn’t going to work. See I told you you wouldn’t be able to do this. See I told you this was too hard, you’re not smart enough, good enough … whatever it is the ugly voice says to you.

Don’t let the ugly voice win. Spread out your hopes and dreams and look for the surprise.

Here’s one of the surprises from my year. I put up one lens. It was just a test lens. I saw a very cool product while I was searching for a way to do something for my family for Christmas. I did a cursory bit of keyword research and found some keywords that had some search volume. Quite frankly I didn’t think they were buying keywords and I didn’t think they would take off.

I did a quick lens ~ really quick ~ 30 minutes. I just put something together that told the story of how I found this thing, what I wanted to do with it, and how it worked. I happened to think it was super cool so I said that too.

I did a couple posts on free ad blogs, and added it to a couple blogs I have. The RSS feed for my lensmaster account had already been submitted. I just left it.

That was about 6 months ago. I didn’t touch it.

A month or two later I realized it was getting a trickle of traffic. I added the keywords people were using to find it to the tags and that’s it.

I forgot all about it. In fact, I forgot the name of the product I was promoting. I only went back to the lens because I wanted to go to the product and use it lol. When I got to the lens I clicked through to the product and checked my stats. I’d been making a few sales. Well that’s cool.

Then this month I checked my stats again, and as of last night I had made over $870 from that one product, one lens.

Do you think I was motivated to get my ass to squidoo and build some more lenses?

YOU BETCHA!

Here’s the thing though ~ while that lens was over there doing it’s thing I’ve been hanging out with you all, I’ve been building niche sites, I’ve been building more lenses ~ and all of (well some of) those endeavors are making money. So not only did I rock it from that lens this month I’ve made some other money as well.

I don’t tell this story to brag or to make you feel bad. I want to really really really get my point across that you have to LET GO of the attachment to your stuff. Do it, promote it, let it go. Check in on it a month later and see what it’s up to. Really. The more obsessive you get about how your stuff is doing I’m convinced the less it’s going to do. If you know/believe in the law of attraction it says “That which is like unto itself is drawn”. What the…? What that means to me is if you sit there saying “dang, my lens doesn’t have any traffic what the… ” You are going to draw even more of that to you and your lens. The more you focus on what isn’t working, why it’s not working, you’re going to pull more “not working” to you.

So just let it go and have FUN. Do more lenses, have fun doing lenses. Find things to write about that you are excited to share with people. Share things that make you smile. The better you feel while you’re doing this, the better the results. Yes, that’s just my personal experience ~ but its’ what I see over and over again in my business. When I go out and put stuff up just to make money bleck… nada. When I write because I’m loving something and want someone else to experience the fun/joy/love I have then magical things happen.

Passion vs. profit is an ongoing and long debate in the marketing world ~ but that’s my take on it.

ANYWAY ~ there was my ramble for Tuesday.

Now what?

If you want to keep building more lenses as your primary or secondary internet marketing strategy I suggest you build, build, build as many as you possibly can. Be consistent, build and promote regularly. Follow the Christmas Cash blueprint (which will have a new name and look shortly, but will be the same information don’t worry).

Go to the articles page of this blog and follow the steps outlined in the product lens process section.

Many of you mentioned, in the survey, you wish there was a checklist. Something you could print out to keep you on track and help you see which steps you’ve taken and what still needs to be done.

Your wish is my pleasure to create!

I have put together a checklist in pdf format. You can download it and then print it out for each lens. It will walk you through all the steps needed to research, create and promote a product lens. There’s a place to mark off each step when you’ve completed it.

While I’d like to give it away for free I want people to really use it. It seems people think things are really useful and helpful when they have to pay for it. Don’t worry, I’m keeping it really affordable, but if you pay for it, make me one promise. USE IT!!

If you want the Squidoo Lens Creation Checklist just click the buy now button below. You will receive an email with your download link in it. Once you’ve downloaded it make sure you save it to your computer so you can use it over and over again for each of your lenses.

Squidoo Lens Creation Checklist: $7

I hope that answers the question of what’s next for your christmas cash lenses ~ if you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comment section and I’ll do my best to answer them.