I did it! I published my first squidoo lens today.
It was much easier than I expected, and it doesn't have to be perfect the first time. A lensmaster is free to tweak and change as often as he/she wishes.
Check it out. It's not completely done - needs more pictures and more personal experiences - but I had to start somewhere.
Germany's Best: The Black Forest
Copyright © Claudia Pate
Plug-in Profits, Start Writing Your Internet Success Story Today
Friday, March 30, 2007
I'm a bona fide lensmaster
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Soul Searching
I know it's been a month since I've posted to Common Sense Ebiz, but I've been doing some heavy soul searching and praying.
You see, once again I found myself going in a lot of different directions. Instead of concentrating on the two businesses I have going, I was looking for and downloading ebooks like crazy.
You won't believe this, but on my desktop right now I have two ebooks side by side. One is named "Do You Want Millions?" and the other is "I Want Pennies."
That is the absolute truth! This was not intentional; these are just two ebooks I happened to run across in the past month and thought they deserved a second look.
"Do You Want Millions" is about blogging and the "right" way to go about setting up blogs to make money. "I Want Pennies" has to do with PPC ads for discount coupons. If you would like information on how to get either one of these, email me and I will send the information to you. I am not making commissions on either of these, but will gladly send the link if you request it.
I have also been checking into squidoo.com. Do you Squidoo? If not, you should.
squidoo.com is a great place to write on or off topic and still be able to get money for affiliate programs. In the words (paraphrased) of the founder of Squidoo, Squidoo is not a destination, it is a beginning. This is not where you go to end your journey; it is where you go to start your journey.
In future posts I will write more about Squidoo. I am working on my first lens and will post the link here when I get done. I am a bit of a perfectionist, so it takes me a while to even get going for fear of not doing it right, but I have every intention to get started this week.
Why don't you take a peak at www.squidoo.com for yourself to get a feel for what I'm talking about.
Copyright © Claudia Pate
Plug-in Profits, Start Writing Your Internet Success Story Today
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
What You Say Can and Will Be Used - Either For You or Against You
Even before two interns to US Presidential candidate John Edwards were fired for posts found on their personal blogs, this topic was on my mind.
Article writing and blog posting have become a huge industry on the web and have become a way for many of us to be "who we are" to a faceless audience. Sometimes this anonymity can be intoxicating and we forget that there really are people out there who are going to read what we wrote and judge us on what they find.
In addition to these two girls who have lost their footing in a presidential campaign, I read recently of a number of people who have lost the race for new jobs because employers went online to find out more information about the candidate.
Information found in social networks, such as MySpace, are generally written to an entirely different audience from your employer, but employers and human resource personnel have just as much right and access to these writings as do your peers.
Be careful what you write, whether it is in an article or on your blog or on social networks such as MySpace. What you write will be available in cyberspace for years to come and you can bet that eventually it will be used - either for you or against you.
If you must let off steam, follow these simple rules
A piece of great advice I read one time is to "write down good news; speak bad news." The logic behind this is that what is written can be read and reread and will be remembered word for word. Bad news should not be conveyed in a way that will be remembered as bad news.
Good news, however, what you learned, how you have changed as a result, etc., should be remembered and therefore should be written down for yourself and for others.
You may want to let off steam now by writing an article or a post about your employer or your teacher or some other awful thing that has happened, but before you hit the "publish" button, think about the long-lasting impression your words will have for people in authority whom you one day will not want to alienate.
Copyright © Claudia Pate
Plug-in Profits, Start Writing Your Internet Success Story Today
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Snacks for the Spiders, a Feast for Your Customers
Search engine optimization (SEO) is on the minds of nearly all web masters. As a site is being built, the savvy web master is thinking constantly of how to optimize the site to gain the attention of the search engines.
To this end, web masters spend hours and hours working on keywords, title tags, description tags, and meta tags to act as spider food to get spiders to their site and return to their nest with a higher page rank for the site. In this quest, much time and effort is spent trying to think like a spider to attract attention.
While I do highly recommend that you learn how spiders work and what they are looking for (sign up for the free lessons from www.seoelite.com for a great overview of how to optimize your site), I further recommend that a site be built to attract and keep customers. While spiders, as they report back to home base and move your site up in the index, will help customers find your site, customers will not stay there or spend their money on your products if the site is not built for them as well as the spiders. In other words, provide snacks to attact spiders and a feast to keep customers.
To this end
Optimize your site for keywords that are relevant to your customers
Few things irritate me more than to search for "running shoes," for example, only to be met with shoe stores that sell everything but running shoes but had some web master that knew people would look for running shoes and might settle for black leather pumps instead. I don't know about you, but instead of deciding to buy dress shoes instead of running shoes, I move on from that site with a mental note not to return.
Write copy to tell customers what your site is about
Once a spider finds your site, it is looking for keywords that tell it what your site is all about. Guess what! Customers are looking for the same thing. Customers want to know, within a few seconds of landing on your site, if they will find what they are looking for within your pages. Use the pages of your site to inform both spiders and customers of your purpose for opening shop on the world wide web.
Provide the products customers came to find
As in the suggestion above, don't use keywords for products you do not provide. If you do not provide golf shoes, never have, never will, do not use the keyword "golf shoes" to rope customers into buying cowbody boots instead. People who are ready to buy from the internet know what they want and do not want to have their time wasted on sites that do not offer the products they are looking for. If, on the other hand, you do sell golf shoes but are temporarily out of stock, by all means use the keyword "golf shoes," but be honest with the customer to let them know that you will do your best to get the golf shoes back in stock as soon as possible and that you will let them know when they are available.
Make navigation easy for your customers
Spiders don't look at your site the same way people do. While spiders crawl a site in a set manner, right to left, top to bottom, site navigation must make sense to customers too. Make navigation buttons easy to find and simple to understand. Use words and menus that make sense to your customers.
Make the site attractive to people
Spiders don't look at anything but words. They don't see color, let alone pictures. While pictures and color can excite or turn off customers, a site is not indexed by the spider's report because it looks good. Read information on userability and site usage. Understand how people use the internet and what they are looking for in a site. Build your site to keep the attention of people, not just spiders.
In the areas that spiders see - words, glorious words - customers and spiders are looking for the same things: keywords that are relevant to your site, copy that tells what your site is about, and products they came to your site to find. Beyond that, make navigation intuitive for your customers and make the site attractive to people.
In the end, SEO must take into consideration both the customer and the spiders, and if it comes to a tie, break the tie in favor of the customer and the spiders will reward you in the end.
Copyright © Claudia Pate
Plug-in Profits, Start Writing Your Internet Success Story Today
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