How to Promote Your Etsy Shop on Squidoo

Whats a lens? - Lenses are pages, kind of like fliers or signposts or overview articles, that gather everything you know about your topic of interest--and snap it all into focus. You're looking at a lens right now.

Creating a lens is actually pretty easy. Perfecting and making it complex takes sometime, but that's the wonders of Squidoo. Improving a lens each week, or each month or even each day is recommended to increase your views and lensrank. So we will start out with the basics and after learning those, learning more will come like second nature.

The beautiful thing about Squidoo is that while your promoting your Etsy shop, possibly getting a sale or two because of it, you are also earning money from Squidoo by posting links, ads, and trying to sell items from ebay, amazon, and more.

So now that you know what a lens is, remember think of it like a flier for your shop. A one page, catch all, describing you, your shop, the products you sell, maybe the sales your having, or how people can contact you on Twitter or Facebook.

You first want to Start a Lens - Click Here
(If you right click you can open this in a new window/tab so you can continue reading this tutorial). Go through the 3 step by step pages and answer all the questions, trust me its quick and EASY.

Now you're ready to begin building. You will see a page that has a whole bunch of sections to fill out, calm down, breathe. It will be ok. It's not as hard as it looks.

Start with the "Intro Module". Click on the EDIT button to edit it. Add a picture if you can find one to go along with your lens, (maybe a picture of you or a picture of an item you sell) and write a short introduction as to what the lens is about. This really isn't the area to go into a lot of information, that is better saved for the text module.

Next, add a "Text Module". This is where you write about your products, your store, yourself, how you got into the business of crafting and creating. Anything you wish to write about. Maybe list your sales or special promotions. You can add a picture in this module, but it isn't necessary, I would add a lot of photos - it keeps people interested and moving down the page.

Last, add a "Guest Book" module. Give people a chance to interact with you and to tell you "nice work".

These parts aren't necessary for lens about your Etsy shop, but I will include them anyways:
"Link List" module. Find a few good links by searching Google to support what your lens is about. These are links that can give your readers additional information to the subject.

If you wish to make some money off your lens, use the "Amazon" module. Find some books that add to the subject or a few products that go along. This module will help you make more money on your lens.

Due to Google changing...
Promoting your Etsy products needs to change as well.

Using Squidoo can help so long as you modify and don't copy the Etsy listings word for word.

Create a new "Text Module." Adding Modules is along the right side. See the photo to help you out. You want to click the Green Plus Sign to add that module to your lens. (You can add any of the other modules and even view more modules by clicking the browse all button). Now scroll down below that box and you will see another list that says SORT MODULES. You can now drag this module anywhere you want to add it on your lens.

Ok, so you have the Text Module - now EDIT it.

Pick a product you want to advertise. Enter a title for the item, don't use your Etsy title, change it up and give it a new title, then a subtitle if you want and finally enter some info about the item. Now add a picture of the item and finally, have that item link back to your Etsy shop. You can place HTML within the text box or you can have the image be click-able by using the "Link the photo to this URL". (Make sure you tell people to click the image so they can view more info, purchase information and price)

And that's it! You've promoted a product on Squidoo, keep adding more Text modules to promote more items, get creative, promote a section of your shop, promote the cheapest or most expensive items in your shop. The possibilities are endless.

I'm not going to bother trying to explain how backlinks work or how search engines use them to raise your importance on their results, but backlinks do work, and the more you create for yourself the better.

- Using Squidoo - Building as many lenses as you can pointing at your site has many benefits. Hubpages is a similar site to Squidoo, but not as much fun.

- Use forums - Forums are a fantastic place to build backlinks to your website. Join online forums that relate to your topic and get active, ask and answer questions at least once a day. Always remember to add you website link to your forum signature.

- Make a Blog - write blog articles about yourself, your business, and your life. Always remember to backlink to your shop.