Generate Traffic to Your Lenses with MySpace

MySpace Traffic 101 

Course Syllabus.

By the end of this lens, you will have learned how to:

• Create a MySpace profile.
• Implement an appealing profile layout.
• Add image links to your profile page.
• Gain hundreds of friends.
• Use other MySpace features to your advantage.

Step Three: Add image links to your profile. 

Next, you need to add links to your website, blog, Squidoo lenses, or anything else you want to send traffic towards. A great way to do this is by using pictures that also act as links. At first the process of doing this might seem complicated, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be doing it in your sleep.

1. Find the photos you want to use as links. Try to pick images that convey what the link leads to. For example, for my lens on Skimmer Shoes, I found an image of skimmer shoes. You can easily perform a Google image search and download the pictures you want.
2. Then, you need to upload these photos to an image-hosting website, such as PhotoBucket, ImageShack, or ImageHosting. You will also need to resize any large photos down to thumbnail or email/website size so as not to overload your MySpace profile with too-large images.
3. Now it's time to add these images as links to your profile. Wherever you choose to place the image/link codes, that is where it will show up in your profile, so I suggest using your "About Me" section. Here's the basic code you need:
   
   <a href="http://www.yoursite.com" title="My Site."><img border="0" src="http://yourimage.jpg"/></a>
   
   Just replace the addresses and words in the quotes with your own addresses and words. Inside the first set of quotes is the web address of the site, blog, lens, etc., that you want to link to. The second set is the title you want the image to have when someone hovers over it. The last set is for the image you want to use. You can also change the number after [border="0"] to any number you want to create a border for your image. Other than changing these specifications, leave the code exactly how it is, including all quotations, spaces, and characters.
4. You can also use the code <br> to force a line break between images. This helps when you have a lot of images that you don't want to appear cluttered.

Other Helpful Tips to Consider. 

• MySpace allows you to add up to 400 friends per day. Even though some friend adder sites claim they can bypass this limit, don't believe it. Always keep the limit in mind and try to keep your requests down to 100-200 per day.
• Try to stay in touch with at least 10-20 friends that you have a genuine interest in. This will keep you appearing to be just another friend collector with nothing good to contribute.
• Post bulletins, blogs, and send messages to interested friends when you create or update a new site, blog, lens, etc., to add some major traffic.
• Always try to post "Thanks for the add!" or similar messages to new friends. You can search the web for "MySpace thanks for the add comments" to find animated, glitter words, and other neat comments to post. But be mindful if the person's profile says he/she doesn't allow html comments because then your glitzy comment won't show up.
• Another way to keep people coming to your profile is to post "Happy birthday" comments when it's their birthday. To find out about upcoming birthdays, go to the main page of your MySpace account (where it allows you to update your profile, view bulletins, etc.), scroll down to just below your friends' pictures, and click the "View Upcoming Birthdays" link. Like with "Thanks for the add" comments, you can easily search the web for unique birthday comments.
• Join groups that highlight your interests. It's really simple: just click the "Groups" tab and choose a category or search for a specific interest, like dolphins or scrapbooking. Some groups have certain rules you must abide by in order to be a member, so pay attention to those (they're usually found on the group's main page or message board).
• Post attractive/appealing/interesting photos of yourself or artwork. I know it's superficial, but the more appealing your profile (including your default image) can go a long way in attracting friends and traffic.