MobyD - Celtic Music, Puns, Science Fiction, Photos

Lensmasters can link to anything Amazon sells by way of the Amazon modules Squidoo makes available. Squidoo, as the Amazon Associate, gets a commission from these sales and splits it 50/50 with lensmasters who use the link. I have many Amazon links through Squidoo which use this system.

Another way for lensmasters to make money from Amazon is to become an Amazon Associate, something anyone can do. Associates can then create links anywhere they post on the web as long as it's allowed - blogs, websites they may own, and, of course, Squidoo. Associates get the whole commission. There's a sliding scale depending on how many items an Associate refers in a month. Under seven items it's 4%, so lensmasters who don't refer many items might be better off sticking with Squidoo's modules and splitting commission.

I started on Squidoo using the modules and splitting commissions with Squidoo. Quite a few of my lenses still have Amazon modules, so I'm still splitting some commissions. These days, though, I create lenses that have text or image links to Amazon and these links have my own Amazon Associates ID embedded in the code. I've also edited lenses that started out with Squidoo's Amazon modules and converted them to my own links. However, Squidoo still makes money from such lenses because Squidoo puts ads on the pages. They make money from ad clicks. Obviously Squidoo is OK with associates using their own links or they wouldn't allow it.

You may have noticed the word "Amazon" is a link in several places in these paragraphs. Those links will take you to Amazon's main page, and you can go where you like, knowing that anything you purchase will earn me a commission, which will not cost you anything extra.

You could also click on one of my text links for a specific product, like Amazon's #1 selling item, the Kindle 3G. Click on that link, or any of my text links for specific Amazon products in my lenses, and you go to that product's page. If you buy the product, I get the commission. If you then go on to look at other stuff and buy something, I get a commission on those items too. In fact, I get a commission on anything you buy from Amazon in the following 24 hours unless you go to Amazon through another affiliate's link.

By the way, the photo of the Kindles is also a link using my Amazon Associate ID.

CD Baby, based in Portland, Oregon, sells CDs and MP3s by independent musicians. It's a pretty good deal for the musicians. CD Baby takes $4 from each CD sale. The rest goes to the musicians, who get to set the price for their music. Out of that $4, CD Baby pays a commission to affiliates. There's a similar arrangement for MP3 where the musicians make 75% of the price. The price to the buyer is the same whether the buyer goes directly to the CD Baby website and buys or whether the buyer gets there via an affiliate's link.

Unlike Amazon, CD Baby doesn't offer affiliates the opportunity to link to their main page or pages for all of a musician's offerings. Links are to individual products. But once you click on any link, you can go anywhere and I will get commission on anything you buy during that visit. That being the case, here's a link to a CD by the Irish band Dervish:

from CD Baby - Playing with Fire

The first lens I made in October 2007 was about science fiction author Spider Robinson. I made a few other lenses, mostly about authors over the next few months. One of the earlier lenses was the Bushisms Video Showcase which didn't get a whole lot of attention until after the 2008 election.

I was up to around 27 lenses in April 2008 when I got the idea to do a series of lenses about Celtic music. I'd created my 50th lens in late May 2008. At the time, I was more interested in the pun possibilities of that lens being the 23rd in my Celtic music series - "23 Squidoo." I knew a lensmaster needs 50 quality lenses to be a Giant Squid, but I wasn't sure what the quality criteria were, so I didn't think too much of it and just kept making lenses. I think I had 59 by the end of June.

Giant Squid

Someone was watching, obviously, and thought my lenses were up to snuff, because in early July one of the Giant Squid organizers, Robin, left a note on my Spider Robinson lens congratulating me on becoming a Giant Squid. I was both surprised and pleased. Also, it struck me as somewhat ironic that my online nickname is taken from the name of a sperm whale. Sperm whales and giant squids don't always get along in the ocean. But as Kurt Vonnegut said, "So it goes."

Being named a Giant inspired me to keep making more lenses, paying attention, as I like to think I always have, to quality. I found a lot of helpful lenses that showed me ways to add HTML, different modules, etc. to make better lenses. And I started visiting SquidU more often.

Top 100

Sometime around mid-August 2008 I realized if I tried, I could get to 100 lenses by Sept. 30. I branched out a bit from Celtic music for many of them, but my 99th lens was for the Irish group Patrick Street, and the 100th lens was for Irish/American fiddler Liz Carroll. They were published on Sept. 24.

Early in the morning on October 7, 2008 I got an email from Giant Squid organizer Bonnnie informing me I'd made it into the Top 100 Club. I'm certainly happy about that, but I'm also pleased I made my own goal of 100 lenses by Sept. 30.

Lens of the Day

Exactly one month after finding out I'd made the Top 100 Club, my lens on Spoonerisms was named Lens of the Day. It had been moving up in lens ranking before it was named, and this will of course give it a big boost. Many folks left comments in the lens' guestbook, with several including Spoonerisms of their own. The lens eventually achieved a lensrank of 114 overall on Squidoo.

A Second Lens of the Day!

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, my Celtic Music: Lenses lens was named Lens of the Day. While the Spoonerisms lens didn't crack the top 100 lenses, this second Lens of the Day did. It shot up to 106, then 17, then was at 12 and 13 for over a week. I added a couple of new Celtic music lenses to my total number of lenses (Celtic Music: Kim Roberston and Molly's Revenge). That meant adding a module each to the LotD lens. It pushed it up to the number 8 position for a couple of days.

Since getting into the Top 100 Club, I haven't pushed to make as many new lenses. As of early April 2009, I had 120. I've made more than 20 lenses since getting into the Top 100, but I'd also decided to eliminate some of the Celtic music video showcases by putting videos into the associated performers' lenses. I've probably done that about ten times. I've done a lot of revising of existing lenses, mainly to make them more colorful with the use of colored backgrounds and borders. Some of my book and music lenses have been revised to link to Amazon through my Amazon Associates ID and or my affiliate ID for CD Baby.

I also created a series of 16 lenses for the independent folk music label Maggie's Music. They are on another account started by Maggie Sansone, the label's founder who is also a wonderful hammered dulcimer player. She'd spotted the lens I'd made for Bonnie Rideout, one of the performers on Maggie's Music. As part of that set of lenses, of course I made another lens for Bonnie Rideout.