Giant Squid Tips

Our Favorite Childrens Christmas Books

• I really like this lens. Recommendation lenses are the foundation of Squidoo. Having a real person say “I recommend this book” is a powerful thing.
• I love that you used the Amazon Spotlight Module to highlight your favorite book with a short review. In fact I’d love to see more of your personal recommendations.
• Here’s what I would do.  Pick 5 of your all time favorite books and do a nice review of them with the Amazon Spotlight Module. Then add a “Prediction Module” and ask people to “predict” the next best Christmas book. This gets your reader involved a little more.
• I’m not crazy about the “Here’s my favorite link” module on this lens.  It works great with some lenses but I think it takes away from the storytelling theme on this lens.  It’s just too much.
• Keeping a lens tight and on target will make it very successful.

PS - My favorite is Max & Ruby: Max & Ruby’s Christmas Tree, Board Book By Rosemary Wells.

-Reviewed by Bonnie

Give OneFootPutt some feedback here.

Retro Bowling Shirt–The Perfect Gift for Him

Kingpin, anyone?

This lens is really nicely focused. The Two And A Half Men tie-in is smart and topical. I’d probably move the Fuzzy Dice module to the bottom.

Here are a few theories as to why the lens isn’t converting many of its visitors into sales…

a) The Intro module is a really important spot on the lens. It’s above the fold. It’s a first impression. And lakeerieartists has chosen to populate that prime spot with shareasale affiliate links, which send people away from the lens before they even scroll down. Maybe that’s making lots of money for lakeeerie independently, which is completely fine (great for her, even). But if it’s not, I’d resist the temptation of trying to send your visitors too many places at once, and instead talk a little about retro shirts and anchor link your readers down into parts of your lens.

b) Try the Amazon module. Okay, read this carefully. I’m not trying to fleece anyone here. But most individual, small Amazon affiliates, people who open their own person accounts, start in the 4% sales tier on Amazon. With a little work and a lot of sales, you can earn your way into Amazon’s 6% tier. This has zilch to do with Squidoo, you can do it on your own with work. A lot of lensmasters like this option because they don’t share the revenue with Squidoo or charity. Totally understood.

But think about this: Squidoo is a top affiliate, and we’re in the 8.5% tier. If you’re using the official Amazon module, we halve that with you, which means your cut is already higher than the straight 4% you’d get if you were starting out on your own with Amazon.

And the Amazon module was designed with a nice little buy button, which makes it loud and clear to visitors that they can purchase something from your lens. The Amazon Spotlight module converts especially well.

Even if you don’t want to switch to the official Amazon module, consider hacking in some kind of buy button to your person Amazon links. It works.

c) A marketing trick is that visitors LOVE lists and numbers. Change the subtitle of your lens to something like: The 15 Coolest Retro Bowling Shirts Ever. Or say in the intro: ‘I’ve gathered my 20 favorite retro bowling shirts from tons of websites, to save you the trouble. Here’s the list!’

d) Another marketing trick: Pick ONE. Spotlight just one shirt at the top, above the others, and call it “The bestselling retro bowling shirt.” Why is it bestselling? Well, maybe it’s the one you’ve sold two units of on your lens. Maybe it’s the bestselling on Amazon. The reader won’t question what the criteria are, they’ll just be glad to have a shortcut and a recommendation. Have you ever heard an author call herself a bestselling author? Sounds good, right? (Next time, ask her on what list :).

-Reviewed by Megan

Give lakeerieartists some feedback here.

Five Classic Blu-Ray Movies and Specials

Brenda, you’ve stumped me on this one.

I find this lens to be beautifully designed and laid out.  You’ve chosen five truly classic Holiday movies (some of my own all-time favorites) that are now being released on Blu-Ray.

You’ve provided excellent interaction for the reader and given them enough information to pique their interest and keep them reading.

If this lens isn’t successful for you I’d say you need to check that you’ve used all the appropriate tags possible and then give it some extra promotion and perhaps a bit more time.  People don’t usually shop for Holiday classic movies until just before the holidays.

I think this is a well done addition to your blu-ray niche lens collection.  Nice work!

-Reviewed by Robin

Give Treasures-By-Brenda some feedback here.

Christmas in Australia

1. I love international lenses. Of course it’s obvious for locals, but it isn’t obvious to people not from Australia that you don’t have snow!  This is a great example of a way to show the non-traditional side of a traditional holiday.

2. Great use of photos, in variety, quality, and placement.

3. You can make this a moneymaker lens by adding Cafepress items related to snow-less Christmases, or travel related books, Orbitz module, etc.

-Reviewed by Kimberly

Give susannaduffy some feedback here.

Silent Night, Holy Night…

Seth says: This is a great lens about a great song. I think there’s plenty of data (not just on Squidoo but everywhere on the web) that using a lot of backgrounds, bevels, colors and moving images actually decreases the attention people pay to the page. So I’d probably clean up the look a bit. And see if that makes the best content on the lens easier to find.

Megan says: Well, the lens is from Chef Keem, so there’s that going for it!  This lens strikes me as a technicolor, multimedia Wikipedia entry.  An informative page with reliable collation, but not much opinion or recommendation. That’s a fine approach for many topics, to be sure. I just think I miss being able to know what the ‘heart’ of the lens is.

As for style, I’d agree with Seth that there’s too much happening here. The “blackbox” module was intended to be a pullquote module, a way to punctuate a lens once in a while with something really important. Long paragraphs are probably better saved for a regular old text module.

There’s great postscript stuff happening at the bottom of the lens, by the way.  I really like how Chef used the About Me module at the bottom, and an Index of all the modules too.
-Reviewed by Seth & Megan

Give chefkeem some feedback here.

Christmas Gifts for Seniors

• I think that Christmas Gifts for Seniors is a really neat niche idea. This idea could even be broken down more. Christmas Gifts for Grandma, Christmas Gifts for Grandpa, Christmas Gifts for active Seniors,  etc.
• You could link some pretty Zazzle products  to your suggestion for buying a roll of stamps and note cards.
• I would work on the flow of the lens a bit. I would rather see a nice neat list of Amazon Spotlight Modules coupled with a horizontal Amazon Module underneath that has more product choices. Then at the end of the lens do a “Featured Lens” Module.
• I feel like I would like more choices for Senior Gifts. Again this lens could be broken down into many super niche lenses.
• Great job!

-Reviewed by Bonnie

Give Joan4  some feedback here.

Ten Fun Christmas Songs

You’ve chosen a fun Holiday topic for this lens.

To improve it I would remove some of the links in your “Fun Songs Contents” module. In fact I would only leave one link per song so that you have ten links listed there each one bringing the reader to the first module per song. And be sure to use the song’s title for the title of each of these modules.

I’d also remove one of the videos for “Up on the Housetop” to leave only 3 there. The fourth one is hanging by itself and takes away from your overall lens design.

I’d like to see more consistency in the information and module repetition you provide for each song such as, provide only 3 modules, maybe ” lyrics, video, amazon spotlight” or “lyrics, video, trivia” in the same order for each song. Remove all the extras, such as your module titled “next” I found them to be distracting me away from your lens topic.

Overall this is a very cute idea for a Holiday lens that I think might become very popular with a sleeker, more professional looking design pattern.

-Reviewed by Robin

Give  MsSnow4a  some feedback here.

Christmas Ornaments for Children

1. This lens was well-organized using thing the BlackBox as a divider. One of my fav methods!

2. For each category, it would be nice to see more options.  Three is good, 5-7 is even better.  The Baby’s First Christmas section will be especially popular, so try more there to start.

3. Some of these could even be lenses in and of themselves.  To help share the love, link to lenses or sites that help kids make their own ornaments to give.

-Reviewed by Kimberly

Give  mbgphoto  some feedback here.