Tips for Etsians!

So, you've made a lens about your shop. Now what??

Well, much like your store, you'll need to make sure that it:

1. Looks Good. When someone brings up your lens you want them to read it all the way through.

2. Gets Traffic - There are many great lenses here that can show you how to do it.

3. Promotes Your Etsy Store(s) and entices people to buy your wares.

4. Earns you some extra cash aside from your store sales.

A Squidoo Lens is a lot like a newborn baby. You can't just pop it out and call it a day. It needs to be raised up, nutured, loved, and fed or else it will get all yucky and start to smell bad.

OK, it won't smell bad, but if you want to put all of the work in to making a lens, then just leave it alone, well, you're kind of wasting your time.

So, #1, Making it good look good.

Add pictures. Lots of nice, high quality pictures. People like to look at stuff. If you have a Flicker account, you can add a feed with the Flicker Module. The Polaroid module is really nice for featuring one special piece you've done.

Add content. Put in a couple of different text modules about you, what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and so on. Breaking all of this up into separate modules is much tidier.

Mix it up a bit. Don't set it up so that readers have to scroll down through a bunch of text followed by scroll through a bunch of pictures. Mix it all together, make it flow.

Learn some simple HTML so that you can highlight, bold, and center your stuff. Here's a great spot to cut and paste codes:

Squidoo HTML Tips

Make your modules stand out a bit, but don't overdo it:

Squidwords Templates

***All of you are artists! Use your artistic eye to look over your lens and critique it.

#2 Getting Traffic. If no one can find your lens, then it's not going to drive many buyers to your store!

Read this lens - it has TONS of tips:

SquidUtils

Promote your lens right in your Etsy Profile and store front.

#3 Promote your Etsy Store and entice customers to buy.

Use the Polaroid module to highlight items in your store with descriptions.

You can always add other items from your store by loading the picture of it and then linking to it.

Here's the easiest site to cut and paste HTML hyperlink code from:

Nosferatu

MORE TIPS

Add more links. Search engines love links going to and from a page. Add a link module and add other pages that you want to promote or that relate to your lens. If you make glass beads, find a site on the history of glassmaking and add that. If you're inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art, link to a site about that.

Amazon or other sales modules - with these modules, you (or your charity) will receive a small commission if people go and purchase the stuff you recommend. Look through the alphabetical list of modules to see what stores may interest your buyers. I like adding magazines, books, and home decor stuff. The cafe press module works well if you've got a store there too!

Lensroll - if you see a lens that you like and you think readers of your lens would also enjoy - lensroll it! It will show up as "this lensmaster recommends......."and list the ones you've lensrolled. If other lensmasters lensroll you, then that will boost your lensrank too. Everyone here needs to make sure that they lensroll this group page and the squidestsians lens on to their shop lenses.

Refresh and update often! Get the basics set up on your lens so it looks nice and then keep adding to it. Everytime you add new content to your lens, your lensrank will get a little boost. If you add new items in your shop, if you want to place an announcement for an upcoming craft fair, or anything else - add it. Keep your lens updated and tidy. I really recommend doing this at least once a week.

Poll modules - your customers might like a chance to vote on your next project, you never know!

Don't leave the guestbook alone. Change the title to something personal. It just looks friendlier.

Whenever you update a lens, you can "ping" it. Let the blog search engines know that you've got fresh content. I like this site:

http://pingomatic.com/

Add a featured lenses module (under "F" in the alpha list) - add your other lenses, pimp your friends, or just other lenses you like.

Sticky Note Go to the module A-Z and enter "sticky" in the search field, that'll put a customizable sticky note on your lens.

Remove empty or un-needed modules!!!!

Re-Name each module. Don't leave "New Text Module" as the title. You can even erase the default and have no title or subtitle if you want.

Blogs if you have a blog, pimp your lenses in it. Same goes for Facebook, Myspace, wherever.

- much like over on Etsy, your tags are really important here. Squidoo allows up to 40 tags on each lens. Get creative and use them wisely. If people search for one of your tags, Squidoo will pull up a whole page of lenses that use that tag in order of page rank. Take a look at similar lenses to see what their tags are. Run a search on your tags to see what else comes up and how applicable those other lenses are to yours. You can use the word "ETSY" as a tag here. When you are in edit mode for your lens, Squidoo will also list other suggested tags that you might want to use right under your tags.

Stats From your dashboard you can click on "stats" for each lens - you can see where the traffic has come from for the lens and also, if a search engine has been used, it will tell you which search terms were used.

***Weird Stuff*** On my lens about the Poe Toaster ( http://www.squidoo.com/poetoaster ), my stats show that someone found my lens by running a Google Search for "Poems by toast". Hmmmmm, I think their results may have been a bit disappointing! LOL

Wikipedia Add a Wiki article that relates to your lens. It adds a huge amount of information for people who are interested in what you're talking about!

66%

This quizz was provided by - Match Special

So, you've made you lens.

You've improved your lens.

Your lens ROCKS!

Now What?

This section will be discussing ways to GET YOUR LENS NOTICED!!!

**This is a work in progress, so check back often**

SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It means making your lens attractive to search engines (like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.).

This lens will start you off nicely:
Submit URL

Find friends on StumbleUpon -
The_Homeopath
LucyVet
Punkerkas

If you look into affiliate programs like Share-A-Sale, there may be retailers that your readers might be interested in and then YOU make money from their purchases. Very Cool. For example - if you are a watercolor artist the maybe your customers are also gardeners. Putting up an affiliate link for a gardeners gift store or nursery can make you a bit of money placed on a lens featuring your floral watercolors. Now, not every lens may be suitable for monetizing. On my professional site, I have decided against blatant advertising since I do feel that it could diminish my professionalism. The specific companies which I do promote (some affiliates, some not) are companies which I personally use and feel are quality resources for my clients. A bunch of ads on my site would make me look like an idiot, I think.