Since "the work on lots and then republish everything" approach is working so well I actually have the time to create more lenses. The half-finished "make your own jewellery" series has picked up two more entries:
To complete the series I have two (possibly three) methods of gem setting to cover, a few more loose stone lenses to do, and some more pre-made jewellery lenses to create.
I did have one shock: it may have be struggling around the 190,000 in lenserank but a lens I haven't updated since 2009 was still live. Good for English Electric Lightning artwork!
(ETA: By the way, ads might be reappearing on this blog: I've submitted it to Project Wonderful, which has already done wonders for my cat blog.)
Monday 31 October 2011
Saturday 29 October 2011
A new lens
My first for a while:
- http://www.squidoo.com/setting-gems
Meant to be a lensography of my gem-making lenses it turned into a bit more than that. I might actually add a few more lenses to that series, since people are finding them useful. I'm not sure how many people need help with the wire and glue method (although if, like me, you have cats that want to help it can be surprisingly tricky!)
The worst thing about doing this lens? Finding a URL that wasn't taken. Most didn't even have live lenses attached, they had just been sitting there for years untouched (2006 in one case).
And now back to organising a book launch...
- http://www.squidoo.com/setting-gems
Meant to be a lensography of my gem-making lenses it turned into a bit more than that. I might actually add a few more lenses to that series, since people are finding them useful. I'm not sure how many people need help with the wire and glue method (although if, like me, you have cats that want to help it can be surprisingly tricky!)
The worst thing about doing this lens? Finding a URL that wasn't taken. Most didn't even have live lenses attached, they had just been sitting there for years untouched (2006 in one case).
And now back to organising a book launch...
Friday 28 October 2011
Translating Squidoo lenses
Under the terms of the T&Cs Squidoo lenses can now only be in English. People used to create them in a variety of languages but these were harder to moderate. The problem is that this restricts your audience to english speakers only, which really limits the reach of your lens.
To get round this there have been a variety of methods, from my old clearspring translate module which is now disabled, to translating your lens in Babelfish and saving the contents off-site, which has a huge overhead on updating.
I've had another go at it. My new solution requires you to know how to use copy and paste, and a text module. That's it.
My old translate-lens lens above has been updated with details. The solution is still in beta and doesn't look very pretty, but the functionality is there and the output it generates works.
Once embedded it translates the lens on the fly, so there is no need for lensmaster to retranslate everytime they update. It uses Babelfish, so the translation quality may be a bit patchy, but will improve as Babelfish improves. And finally it's easy to use.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
If any squidoo experts out there want to convert this into a custom module it would be pretty easy using the existing BlackBox functionality, it has one $path variable and doesn't need to make a database call, and I'd love a dedicated translate module. (Give me a way to code it in Notepad and I'll build it myself, but I find squidoo's IDE unapproachable).
To get round this there have been a variety of methods, from my old clearspring translate module which is now disabled, to translating your lens in Babelfish and saving the contents off-site, which has a huge overhead on updating.
I've had another go at it. My new solution requires you to know how to use copy and paste, and a text module. That's it.
My old translate-lens lens above has been updated with details. The solution is still in beta and doesn't look very pretty, but the functionality is there and the output it generates works.
Once embedded it translates the lens on the fly, so there is no need for lensmaster to retranslate everytime they update. It uses Babelfish, so the translation quality may be a bit patchy, but will improve as Babelfish improves. And finally it's easy to use.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
If any squidoo experts out there want to convert this into a custom module it would be pretty easy using the existing BlackBox functionality, it has one $path variable and doesn't need to make a database call, and I'd love a dedicated translate module. (Give me a way to code it in Notepad and I'll build it myself, but I find squidoo's IDE unapproachable).
Monday 24 October 2011
Squidoo Part Two
The new approach is definitely working - traffic is up slightly and I can get a lot of dead links fixed without worrying about waiting long periods for lenses to publish.
The major problem with the new approach is the republish. It's certainly faster to save everthing and then do them all in one pass, but re-publishing 250 lenses takes time. The first time I did this, it took two hours. The second time was longer since squidoo didn't want to stay up. Today, it's taken forty minutes.
I have made a few refinements. Using multiple tabs simultaneously in strict rotation mean that you don't need to wait for things to load. I also put my dashboard on a hotkey, so I have fewer mistaken clicks. A minimal browser set-up for the publish run (no images, no ads) makes it faster to publish, although I wouldn't suggest trying to build a lens in it.
The only problems left? I sometimes get out of step in the dashboard/edit/publish/close routine or hit the wrong tab, and towards the end I'm flagging from all the scrolling down. And then after I finish I have to go and do the ones I missed...
Overall, the results on traffic and search rankings are strongly positive, so I might keep on with this for a while.
The major problem with the new approach is the republish. It's certainly faster to save everthing and then do them all in one pass, but re-publishing 250 lenses takes time. The first time I did this, it took two hours. The second time was longer since squidoo didn't want to stay up. Today, it's taken forty minutes.
I have made a few refinements. Using multiple tabs simultaneously in strict rotation mean that you don't need to wait for things to load. I also put my dashboard on a hotkey, so I have fewer mistaken clicks. A minimal browser set-up for the publish run (no images, no ads) makes it faster to publish, although I wouldn't suggest trying to build a lens in it.
The only problems left? I sometimes get out of step in the dashboard/edit/publish/close routine or hit the wrong tab, and towards the end I'm flagging from all the scrolling down. And then after I finish I have to go and do the ones I missed...
Overall, the results on traffic and search rankings are strongly positive, so I might keep on with this for a while.
Sunday 23 October 2011
Changing an approach to squidoo
Recently, with the changes to google and the changes to squidoo itself, it has felt as though I've been running a Red Queen's Race to try to keep my lenses updated.
This is partly because it now gives huge amounts of weight to new lenses (over traffic and sales), so the monthly update schedule I was using is now not enough to keep lenses high. As an example I have lenses with over 100 views/week and sales against them rating lower than lenses with less traffic and no sales that are new that week. The second problem is that publishing a lens - literally every time I click "Publish" - now takes five minutes to go through, making tweaks for things like spelling errors extremely time consuming.
I'm trying a new approach. Make a few edits, save the lenses as draft, and then republish all my lenses a couple of times a week, so I know any changes I made have gone live. That way I don't need to worry about republish for tabs, republish for typos, worry if I've got changes unpublished on a lens...
I timed myself two nights ago when I did the first republish and it takes me about two hours. I also found out that I need to do other things like blog writing at the same time. It might be slower, but it helps me avoid climbing the walls.
I'll be trying this out for a month and see if it works for me. If so, I may start doing new lenses again. To be honest, with hubpages very low on traffic and bukisa dead enough that I am migrating my content off them, I hope it works.
ETA: And the second time I try this Squidoo crashes and I lose my place... Also the delay in publishing seems to be caused by something called s.ytimg.com. Each publish, timed, is taking over a minute in total. I can't find any calls or references to that in my code, so I am wondering if it is integral to squidoo.
And a second update? Squidoo just went down.
This is partly because it now gives huge amounts of weight to new lenses (over traffic and sales), so the monthly update schedule I was using is now not enough to keep lenses high. As an example I have lenses with over 100 views/week and sales against them rating lower than lenses with less traffic and no sales that are new that week. The second problem is that publishing a lens - literally every time I click "Publish" - now takes five minutes to go through, making tweaks for things like spelling errors extremely time consuming.
I'm trying a new approach. Make a few edits, save the lenses as draft, and then republish all my lenses a couple of times a week, so I know any changes I made have gone live. That way I don't need to worry about republish for tabs, republish for typos, worry if I've got changes unpublished on a lens...
I timed myself two nights ago when I did the first republish and it takes me about two hours. I also found out that I need to do other things like blog writing at the same time. It might be slower, but it helps me avoid climbing the walls.
I'll be trying this out for a month and see if it works for me. If so, I may start doing new lenses again. To be honest, with hubpages very low on traffic and bukisa dead enough that I am migrating my content off them, I hope it works.
ETA: And the second time I try this Squidoo crashes and I lose my place... Also the delay in publishing seems to be caused by something called s.ytimg.com. Each publish, timed, is taking over a minute in total. I can't find any calls or references to that in my code, so I am wondering if it is integral to squidoo.
And a second update? Squidoo just went down.
Tuesday 18 October 2011
Project Wonderful - commercial product effect
I put a button ad live for a commercial ebook to see what effect that would have. This is only the result from the first test. I need to run it a few more times to get more data.
On the page it was linked to, the number of page views went up. On Amazon, which is not connected to that page, I got a small but statistically significant number of extra sales over the duration of the trial. The button tracker says that no one clicked the ad, and referrers on the linked page bear this out.
I will try this again, but at the moment it seems that ads are raising awareness of the product and contributing to sales indirectly, but not directly.
For anyone curious about economics, the total cost of my trials so far? $5. If the extra Amazon sales can be attributed to this test, it has already paid for itself.
My next test is trying this with a static button.
On the page it was linked to, the number of page views went up. On Amazon, which is not connected to that page, I got a small but statistically significant number of extra sales over the duration of the trial. The button tracker says that no one clicked the ad, and referrers on the linked page bear this out.
I will try this again, but at the moment it seems that ads are raising awareness of the product and contributing to sales indirectly, but not directly.
For anyone curious about economics, the total cost of my trials so far? $5. If the extra Amazon sales can be attributed to this test, it has already paid for itself.
My next test is trying this with a static button.
Saturday 15 October 2011
Project Wonderful Part 2
Assessing the effects of advertising on Project Wonderful. If you've been following the blog you might remember my odd results from last time. I've run the test for more times. Each time my page views stayed static, but the number of downloads? See for yourself:
You can click for a larger image. Yellow indicates the period an ad was live. The blue line shows the page the ad links directly to. The others show linked products.
Exactly the same number of people hit the page, but in each case they were statistically more likely to download. Also, following shortly after the main bump, there was a smaller rise in the number of people who downloaded associated products. The two middle increases are smaller. These two tests were run with button ads (117px x 30px), while the others used banners. I'd need to run a few more tests before I can see if there is a correlation between ad size and likelihood of downloads, but right now it looks like it.
This was with a free ebook on Smashwords, so the next test is to try this again with a commercial product.
The other thing I have done is to try it as a publisher. The Stephen and Matilda blog now has ads served by Project Wonderful. My assessment? It's easy to set up and editing your ad is simple. They also take Paypal. It takes a few days to get approved, unlike the signup for adsense, but then they are more selective.
A small side benefit I didn't expect is the metrics. Tracking how many people view an adbox, and where in the world they come from, also means tracking site visitors. One of its best features is that you can display your own ads in the adbox if no one else bids, making it easy to co-ordinate a campaign across multiple sites.
We've submitted a second blog to them and, if the results are promising, you might find them serving the ads on here.
You can click for a larger image. Yellow indicates the period an ad was live. The blue line shows the page the ad links directly to. The others show linked products.
Exactly the same number of people hit the page, but in each case they were statistically more likely to download. Also, following shortly after the main bump, there was a smaller rise in the number of people who downloaded associated products. The two middle increases are smaller. These two tests were run with button ads (117px x 30px), while the others used banners. I'd need to run a few more tests before I can see if there is a correlation between ad size and likelihood of downloads, but right now it looks like it.
This was with a free ebook on Smashwords, so the next test is to try this again with a commercial product.
The other thing I have done is to try it as a publisher. The Stephen and Matilda blog now has ads served by Project Wonderful. My assessment? It's easy to set up and editing your ad is simple. They also take Paypal. It takes a few days to get approved, unlike the signup for adsense, but then they are more selective.
A small side benefit I didn't expect is the metrics. Tracking how many people view an adbox, and where in the world they come from, also means tracking site visitors. One of its best features is that you can display your own ads in the adbox if no one else bids, making it easy to co-ordinate a campaign across multiple sites.
We've submitted a second blog to them and, if the results are promising, you might find them serving the ads on here.
Thursday 6 October 2011
A lot going on
So right now I am:
- organising a book launch
- finishing a webpage
- trying to get the Great Western content together into another non-fiction ebook
- writing a follow up to Fire Season
- going back to work on mossie, a stand alone novel (or two)
- writing four more Harry stories, all currently in note form
- trying to manage promotion for all my books
- Getting a book into print-ready format...
...and down with another stinking cold.
The timing is wonderful. I promise I will get back to updating my lenses, eventually, when I get some free time, and am less likely to write absolute rubbish or delete the wrong modules.
And I've put one of my other blogs in to have its ads provided by Project Wonderful. If it is accepted and works out, this one might change over as well.
Right now I want sleep.
- organising a book launch
- finishing a webpage
- trying to get the Great Western content together into another non-fiction ebook
- writing a follow up to Fire Season
- going back to work on mossie, a stand alone novel (or two)
- writing four more Harry stories, all currently in note form
- trying to manage promotion for all my books
- Getting a book into print-ready format...
...and down with another stinking cold.
The timing is wonderful. I promise I will get back to updating my lenses, eventually, when I get some free time, and am less likely to write absolute rubbish or delete the wrong modules.
And I've put one of my other blogs in to have its ads provided by Project Wonderful. If it is accepted and works out, this one might change over as well.
Right now I want sleep.
Monday 3 October 2011
Project Wonderful and odd results
Recently (Ok for the last couple of weeks) I've been experimenting with Project Wonderful for ads. The cost for Google ads is prohibitive for smaller advertisers, and from a content providers some sites that use ad-sharing then fail to accept Adsense codes from users outside the US. My personal feelings towards Google Ads are also not rainbows and fairies right now.
Project Wonderful offers ads on sites which apply. Advertisers bid on the sites per day and can either select the site or personally bid. First impressions from me are favourable: the tracking and reports are easy, so is setting up the ads and making bids. The cost is far lower than GoogleAds - I've sent a whole $3 for 60K views and a lot of clicks in two weeks.
However there was a very interest effect in the results of the ads. As one of my tests I put up some free advertising for free ebooks. Free adverts only have a two day run, so it was very short, but it brought a few hundred hits and no clicks. That's when I noticed the odd result and ran it again.
Both times my number of downloads went up for the second day the ad was live, and for a few days after that. It tailed off fairly quickly. The increase wasn't great, but was measurable (about triple the daily downloads I would expect). I'm not sure of the cause, since there were no clicks. Users may be googling the ad, or clicking on it to grab the URL and pasting into their own browser or a preview tool.
This is something I will be looking into, with another control test. This advert is live again for a third run, but I will be trying a different advert for another free ebook and seeing if the same thing happens.
Overall though, I'd have to say my opinions are favourable - I might sign some of my sites up as hosts. The final big point in their favour? They use paypal.
Project Wonderful offers ads on sites which apply. Advertisers bid on the sites per day and can either select the site or personally bid. First impressions from me are favourable: the tracking and reports are easy, so is setting up the ads and making bids. The cost is far lower than GoogleAds - I've sent a whole $3 for 60K views and a lot of clicks in two weeks.
However there was a very interest effect in the results of the ads. As one of my tests I put up some free advertising for free ebooks. Free adverts only have a two day run, so it was very short, but it brought a few hundred hits and no clicks. That's when I noticed the odd result and ran it again.
Both times my number of downloads went up for the second day the ad was live, and for a few days after that. It tailed off fairly quickly. The increase wasn't great, but was measurable (about triple the daily downloads I would expect). I'm not sure of the cause, since there were no clicks. Users may be googling the ad, or clicking on it to grab the URL and pasting into their own browser or a preview tool.
This is something I will be looking into, with another control test. This advert is live again for a third run, but I will be trying a different advert for another free ebook and seeing if the same thing happens.
Overall though, I'd have to say my opinions are favourable - I might sign some of my sites up as hosts. The final big point in their favour? They use paypal.
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