What’s Do You Need to Be Successful with Squidoo Christmas Cash?

Thanks for sharing this poll. I added key word research for me to start.

Thank you Jackie - smart thinking - the health button is now off my list of "must remember to do" things.

Hi Jade,

Here's my advice. Stop clicking the health button. :)

No really, I don't know how they configured that, but it has never been accurate for my lenses.

Hi Jackie,
This may not be the right post to ask this question but here goes.

When I do a health check on my Squidoo lens I always seem to get the message - "Your Primary Tag Needs Work: Your Primary Tag doesn't appear to be related to your lens."

I thought the Primary Tag would be the keyword/s you are targetting. Is this correct? Example - targeted keyword - Rocky the robot truck, Squidoo lens url is the same, the keywords would be in the Main Heading and the first heading of the intro module and the content would also have those keywords used as anchor text.

Why oh why would Squidoo tell me my primary tag doesn't related to my lens when the entire lens is about promoting good old Rocky!!!!!

Would appreciate any advice you can give - going slightly crazy over this little speed bump I have encountered.

Thanks for all your great tips and tricks
Jade

Angie,

there are many many ways to build backlinks. Check out today's post on everything you ever wanted to know about backlinking and you'll see a lot of ways to make backlinks. Social bookmarking is 1 way to create backlinks to your sites. I personally don't enjoy doing it and don't feel like it gives me results for the time it takes so I don't use it much. That's a personal decision.

There is a whole post on how to create a blogger blog to support your lenses, hopefully that will help you. Realize a blog does not HAVE to be linking anywhere. You can just talk about stuff ~ which is why I suggested if you do a christmas gift type blog you just talk about how to shop for christmas gifts, how to save money at christmas etc ~ get some content that's related to the blog topic on the blog and then apply to Amazon.

Yes you can always go back and add links to your blog.

Not being an amazon affiliate should NOT be stopping you from creating lenses!!! Read this post about how to use the modules that are available to you ~ everything can be modified once you are an amazon affiliate.

hope that helps.

Social Bookmarking and Creating Backlinks seems to be my biggest problem. I know I've heard you say you don't really do much social bookmarking. Can you explain?

Also, I'm not real sure how to create a blog so that I can become an Amazon affiliate. If the blog needs to link to your lens and you've created no lenses because you're not an amazon affiliate yet, where do you link and can the link to your lens be added after the fact in your blog?

Again it depends on the purpose of your article ~ if you are driving traffic directly to a sales page you probably want your kw in the title, if you are driving traffic to a lens or another site that is sending traffic to the sales page you don't want to use the kw in article title.

Here' s why:

EZA is a really powerful site ~ that's why we use it. If you use the kw in the title of your article chances are good your article will outrank your lens (at least in the beginning) then you are missing out on traffic that could go directly to your lens.

The chance people will get where you want them to go decreases exponentially with each click ~ so if your article ranks higher than your lens, that's 1 click on your article, then another click on the link in your resource box, then yet another click they have to make to finally get to the sales page. Much better to rank your lens and just have the one click to sales page.

Thanks Jackie for the tip.

Hi Jackie, First, a great big thank you for your help.......... Question...........you said on your mindmap NOT to use your keyword phrase in your title on an Ezine article. Could you explain more?

Thanks!

Hi Francis,

A tweet can only be 140 characters. With my long winded titles, and then the blog title after it the tweet was too long ~ you can just delete the blog name, and it was short enough to go through. :) That will hold true for anytime you get that message.

Hi Jackie, there is a problem, I cannot Tweet this post, I get the following message-Tweet too long. What would be the problem?

Thanks again Jackie for your concern. Actually all the above elements in your survey are all important. But for me the whole element of linking among my lens as well as outside Squidoo, plus my Christmas blog is a nightmare. I also don't know what makes the lens move up the ladder, if you could write something on the above, I would really appreciate. Keep up your good job Jackie, be patient with us, we need a lot of help.

Hey Lisa!

Congrats on traffic and sales ~ very cool.

The thing about Amazon is anything someone buys after they get there still counts as a sale for you. So they may have decided not to buy what they went there for, but their interest was piqued by something else and they bought it.

You can check in your squidoo dashboard under the stats link and see what keywords people are using to find your lenses.

I sell lots of stuff that has nothing to do with my sites ~ just a benefit of Amazon. :)

Hi Jackie,

I have about 15 lenses now and I focused the past week on social bookmarking and backlinks. I am so excited I made 2 sales that added to $7.28 commission! Not alot but now I know it is possible.

I am more excited about getting traffic to my lenses the first batch of 10 got over 50 visits in the past 7 days. This is exciting to me!

The one thing I don't understand is what I made commission on had nothing to do with what I am advertising. It was books not even related to my lenses.

Does this mean I am doing something wrong and getting random untargeted traffic? If I had sold an item I was promoting the commission would have been much higher.

Thanks for helping me make my first sale online! I am motivated and on my way.

Lisa

Mosidi,

If you will look at the posts in the squidoo lens tutorial category you will find most of the posts have videos showing you the whole process.

I have tried to build some lens and looking at the high numbers they are ranked on... I thought I might as well find a video course so I can see the instructions. That way I can repeat what I see. I have said before that I am a little bit slow to understand...so I don't even know what questions to ask. I think the best thing is to start from the begging.

Thanks again Jackie, for all this great advice. My biggest problem is lack of traffic to my lenses. Granted, I'm only working on my 10th lens at the moment, and I haven't really built any links to them - I ping them in Squidutils, and then do a blog post on them on my Christmas Wish List blog. I plan on doing Ezine articles relevant to each, and then the free ads.

THEN - while that's (hopefully!) moving up google, I'll do my next bundle of 10.

But more info on building links would be awesome - I'd really love to get my traffic moving.

Thanks again -
Kelly

Thanks for all your replies everyone~ they really are appreciated, and I would much rather be spending time on things that you all need, than things I make up in my head that you need ;)

@Wayland ~ check out this post ~ it shows you exactly how to do the big arrow module with an amazon link

Can you tell me how to use the big arrow module with the long Amazon html product page links?

What great valuable information. It is really helping me put things together properly and giving me the confidence to continue. I'm optimistic that my time spent will equate to making money.

Keyword/product research is may stumbling block.

Thanks Jackie for being so giving

Ingrid

Jackie:

I wanted to thank you so much for your generosity and your clear, easy to understand Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint. The information is very valuable and it really got the creative juices flowing.

I've made several lenses using the Christmas Cash Blueprint. No sales yet, however I am starting to get traffic from google. :-) It's very exciting!

Again, many thanks.
Amber

Creating content on the lens and ezines. Writing an article is one of my stumbling block