How To Add Amazon Widgets To Your Lens

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Easy step by step tutorial to put an Amazon Affiliate Widget on any Squidoo Lens

Have you wished you could add one of those cool carousel widgets on your lens? Or a contextual product cloud? How about a big preview of your Amazon aStore?

Well, now you can. With a little (actually BIG!) help of Clearspring, the widget network, and Squidoo's Clearspring Module. It's not quite as easy as putting the Squidoo module on your lens, but pretty close.

I've been fidgeting around with this ever since it first came out but could never really get it to work. But once I figured out which buttons to press and which options to choose it was really quite easy.

You don't need to be a a techie to implement this, I promise.

Enjoy!

Please use this tool responsibly and in moderation.


P.S.: This is only for Amazon associates who wish to enhance their lenses with their own associate widgets. For regular product recommendations you may want to utilize the many Amazon modules which Squidoo provides for us.

Amazon Carousel Widget 600 px wide 

Cool flash effects to spice up your lens

Before we dig in to creating Amazon widgets on your Squidoo lens here's an example of my favorite widget: The Product Carousel Widget.

This one is horizontal, with a width of 600px. For more examples look further down on this page at the Widget Showcase.

You Need a Clearspring Account! 

It's free.

Ok, I'm assuming that you already have an Amazon Associate account or else you probably wouldn't be interested in this topic. On this lens, I don't go into the details of the Amazon Associate program, or even how to create your Amazon widgets. I'm sure there are some folks who have created detailed instructions for this. If you have a tutorial lens about this please let me know so I can put the link in here.

So now, go to Clearspring and sign up, if you haven't already. It's quick and easy (and yes, it's free), just enter email address and choose username/password. Voila!

Step 1: Add A Widget 

Once you've signed up and are logged in we can now start to create a widget. You'll find the button on the top right.


Add A Widget

Step 2: Where Do You Want To Add Your Widget 

You will be asked where you want to add Launchpad. Choose "On my Webpage" for a seamless integration. There will be no additional widget frames around your widget, unless you want to publish a widget for sharing.



Photobucket

Step 3 and 4: Name your Widget and Add Your Code 

Building a widget for your Squidoo lens is really easy as A, B, C! You can ignore most of the options on this page. Just do the following steps:


  • A Name your Widget. This is just for your future reference. It will not appear anywhere on the published widget.

  • B What Do You Want To Share?: Add the code you got from your Amazon Associate account.

  • C Click on "SAVE".

Build your widget

Step 5: Publish Your Widget 

Yay! You're well on your way to publishing your very own Amazon widget on your Squidoo lens. Way to go!

When you reach this screen "Congrats..." resist the temptation to grab the code on your right side. It won't work on your lens.

You want to click on the link in the middle on the left side that says: "Publish Your Widget".



Publish Your Widget

Step 6: The Widget Home Page 

You'll land on this page with a lot of shiny apps, which you can safely ignore for now. Just hit the link near the top where it says "Widget Home Page Settings".



Widget Home Page

Next, you will be teleported to the page for your Widget Home Page Settings. There's nothing you need to do here, except to click on the link which will finally take you to your Widget Home Page:



Photobucket

Step 7: Post Your Widget To Your Squidoo Lens 

A new window or tab will open and you're close to the finish line. The Widget Home Page!

For the first time you will see a real live preview of your widget. If it doesn't look as expected go back to square one and create a new widget. Or, if it's something you can change on the Amazon Associates page you can change the code over there. You cannot change the code that is inside your Clearspring widget! At least I haven't found a way to do that. Feel free to correct me.

Assuming it looks good we can now go to the final step - putting it on your lens! For this you must locate and click on the familiar Squid on the right hand sharing menu. If you don't see it try clicking the "All" tab and scroll down. It should be near the bottom left. At this point you should be logged in to your Squidoo account because in the next and final step Clearspring will connect to Squidoo and get your list of lenses.



Add your widget to Squidoo

The look of the sharing menu has changed a bit recently. If you do not see the Squidoo Squid on the sharing menu please click on "All" services and then scroll down the (alphabetical) list until it appears. It is a bit shy but it's really there!



Sharing menu 1



Sharing menu 2



The final step is here! You're almost done! Choose the lens on which you want your widget to appear. This will add a Clearspring module to your lens. You will be able to enter title, subtitle and description as usual - but you won't be able to see or edit the widget code itself.



Cleaspring to Squidoo

Your familiar Lens Workshop will now open and you will find your new widget added to the bottom. Here you can edit title, subtitle and description if you want. You still won't be able to see the actual widget code though.

You Did It!!! 

Amazon Widgets Showcase 

Look what you can do with your Amazon Associate Widgets!

Here are some examples of Amazon widgets on a Squidoo lens. You can use this procedure for other kinds of widgets, too. I'll leave it up to your imagination, but please keep it clean for all our sake's...

Amazon Carousel Widget 500px wide 

Here's an example of a 500px horizontal carousel. Still looks pretty good.

Amazon aStore Widget 

I was actually able to put an entire aStore on the lens, which had me very excited. I slaved for hours over the aStore CSS to make it fit onto a Squidoo lens but once I published the lens the aStore code got stripped. To add insult to injury it's still visible on the workshop :(

Anyway, moving forward I found that the aStore widget is the next best thing to represent your aStore and send some visitors to it. You can totally customize the look and feel of this widget from within your Amazon Associates account.

Amazon Slideshow Widget 

More cool flash effects for your Squidoo lens

The Amazon slide show widget has several options for size, colors and transition effects. After you've embedded the slide show on your lens it will automatically update whenever you edit this widget in your Amazon Associate account. So whenever you want to try something new you don't have to create a whole new Clearspring widget. I thought that was very considerate of the good folks who created those tools.

Gold Box Deals Widget 

Sale - Cheap - Quick - Hot Hot Hot - Buy Now!

The Gold Box Widget comes in 3 orientations and sizes. Color and content cannot be modified. It will show today's Gold Box offer as well as the current Lightning Deal. This really keeps your lens fresh and interesting.

Product Cloud Widget 

Add a cloud of relevant products to your lens

I customized this widget within my Amazon Associates account. The colors and size can all be adjusted individually. For this example I chose the Squidoo colors orange and blue, the width is 540 and height is 200. But you can change all that according to your own taste.

Amazon Omakase Widget 

Contextual Product Ads for your lens

This is the Omakase Widget from Amazon, which is supposed to feature products based on the content of your website. You can add up to 5 keywords and negative keywords to help Amazon decide what to put into your widget. Not sure how well this works for Squidoo lenses, but here we go:

Let me know if this lens was helpful 

A word of Caution: Do not delete a widget from your Clearspring account if it is published on one of your lenses. This might break your lens. Always remove the Clearspring module from your lens first before deleting the actual widget!



I was excited about the possibilities of the Squidoo - Amazon - Clearspring connection. I'm sure there are some gurus who can do much more awesome stuff but I just wanted to share the easiest way to spiff up your lenses with the coolest Amazon widgets. The same procedure works for most other widgets and code snippets (opt-in form anyone?).

If you have a tutorial lens that is related to Widgets let's hear about it.


Hopefully, reading this lens was a good use of your time. It would be great to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting!

Lensmaster

Vacation-In-My-Head wrote...

Thank you so much for this information. It was very useful. I love the way it looks on my lens.

ReplyPosted June 29, 2009

Lensmaster

wealthyafi wrote...

thank you your lens was a great help. bless you!

ReplyPosted June 28, 2009

Lensmaster

chefkeem wrote...

As a brand new Amazon Affiliate, I came back to re-study this fantastic tutorial. Thank you for spending endless hours over these detailed instructions so we can save time...you're an angel! (Re-blessed by another one!) :-)

ReplyPosted June 27, 2009

Lensmaster

Midnytefire wrote...

Thank you for sharing this fantastic info. I learn something new everyday.

ReplyPosted June 26, 2009

Lensmaster

Rajays wrote...

Squidoo Angel Blessings to this most helpful lens. I have applied your amazon widget tutorial onto some of my lenses and they work great! Thanks a ton.

ReplyPosted June 26, 2009

Lensmaster

JanTUB wrote...

Absolutely fabulous tutorial! Can I give it multiple stars? Deserved. 5 anyhow, and a fave. Thanks for the easy to follow instructions.

ReplyPosted June 20, 2009

Lensmaster

The_Party_Animal wrote...

AWESOME

ReplyPosted June 10, 2009

Lensmaster

trackjacket wrote...

Great lens. Hope to use it soon.

ReplyPosted June 03, 2009

Lensmaster

MeredithCrosby wrote...

Thanks, Bookmarking and giving ya 5 Stars! Just what I need plus a great source to come back to while learning the ropes!

ReplyPosted May 29, 2009

Lensmaster

JenniferAkers wrote...

Excellent step-by-step instructions. I was able to successfully add a couple Amazon widgets, thanks to your lens. I'm off to add them in other lenses as well. Thanks so much for this guide! 5*!

ReplyPosted May 21, 2009

Lensmaster

sandyspider wrote...

This is featured in my Squidoo Tips lens Squidoo Widgets, PayPal and Tools Since I first read on how to put an Amazon widget on my lens. I have been using it all the time. And other widgets, like playlist and Zazzle. Great information. Thanks.

ReplyPosted May 17, 2009

Lensmaster

ElizabethJeanAllen wrote...

I have an Amazon affiliate account but every time I've tried to put something on my lens, I've gotten so frustrated that I've resorted back to the Squid modules. I may try again.
Thanks for sharing
Lizzy

ReplyPosted May 14, 2009

Lensmaster

24websurf wrote...

I should have known when I started looking for this that you would be the genius to have it! OMG!! I did it! Thank you! I put the carousel on my Book of Shadow lens!

ReplyPosted May 02, 2009

Lensmaster

likeapenguin wrote...

AWESOME!

ReplyPosted April 28, 2009

Lensmaster

mysticmama wrote...

OMG! thank you so much for making this lens...I was just trying to figure out how to do exactly this! wow, you rock!

ReplyPosted April 23, 2009

 
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