Pulling out your hair in making your Squidoo lens look attractive? here’s the check list for your lens’s cool factor. you’ll soon realise making a cool squidoo lens is after all not rocket science.

1. Why should I visit your lens?

I cant stretch enough that how important is to give a reason to your visitors to visit your lens.

The best is to be original and provide your own unique content (writings, images, videos). when there’s no one offering the kind of content your lens’s offering - where else people can be? your lens!

Even if you have limited resources for your own unique content, you still can be special. a great way to do so is to add values to other’s content. it can be a comic built with multiple flickr images, or a voting contest for the best YouTube video clips, or a review on cafepress T shirt designs - the keyword is to be unique and give a good reason for your visitors to visit your lens.

Example of lens: The Funniest TV Show Ever: Seinfeld. every single bit of the content belongs to others, but yet the lens is so welcomed and it’s mentioned a few times in the SquidU forum. What the lensmaster Janet did was compiling the TV show clips and putting up poles that create a rapport with the Seinfeld fans.

2. Yieks, there’s no graphic on your lens!

First, you need graphics for your lens decoration, make lots of them. beg, cheat, steal, or even rob other’s images if you dont have one. but hey, 2008 is hours away and how can you have nothing in your image inventory? try Stock.XCHNG, that’s where you can get nice pictures for free.

Secondly, flat image is not enough. images help to make your lens look nice, but not cool. in fact, flat images on squidoo lens are just simply boring. add dialogues, photoshop effects, or polarize your images whenever it’s appropriate. little visual effects on images always create huge positive impact on your lens cool-ness. as you can make make your images look cool in just 3 seconds with some free web application, why not do so?

3. Better still, use video instead of image
Some quick examples:

Squidoo lens about titanium rings with video in the making of titanium rings.

Video hosted on lens about titanium rings.

Squidoo lens on Custom T shirt designs with a DIY tee shirt screen printing tutorial.

Video hosted on lens about custom T shirt designs.

Video clips are always welcomed (and make your lens look attractive and cool) as long as they are related to your lens topic.

4. Squidoo’s widgets
Dont be afraid of the wide choices in Squidoo’s lens widgets; though it’s sometimes confusing for the beginners.

Use guest books to get feedbacks; use plexo module let others share their lens on yours; use flickr module for more images option; use poll module to interact with your lens visitors, use hollywood entertainment for more news buzz on your lens; use amazon module for more resources recommendation and make money - widgets are made for a good reason, take time to learn about them and fully utilise them into your lens.

5. Write sentences that even Grade 1 can read

The shorter your sentence (and your paragraph) is the better. think about Seth Godin’s The Dip, the book is purposely written with short sentences. if marketing guru and the owner of Squidoo is doing so, shouldn’t you?

So, write short sentences whenever you can. split your content into more writing module - it’s easier to be read. and an image worth a thousand words, speak with images instead of words.

I really hope that you already started your very first Squidoo lens after reading How can Squidoo bring in more traffics for you and Squidoo in your web marketing. If not, you should really consider working it out here.

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• Compatible with Windows XP

Of course, protection doesn’t come for free - even protection from the useless polis diraja bolehland cost you kopi money. the USB Wireless Missile Launcher comes in with a price tag of just $45… i know i know, it’s not a VCD (aka. very cheap device). but then again, i know, you need protection - nothing’s more important than your safety in office; i know you want nothing but the best; i know you want to fight back boredom and sleepy eyes; i know it all. so trust me, i know you need an USB Wireless Missile Launcher.

Enough said.

“Comrades, time to launch the attacks!!”

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Just about every life concept we learned in schools are wrong. from exam strategy (scan and answer the easiest question first) to classroom behaviour (sit and keep quiet like everybody else); from student evaluations (6B is better than 2A and 4E) to teaching method (follows what teacher said is always right); from attitude shaping (mistakes are bad and quiting is worse) to financial senses (study hard get a good job and you’ll be rich).

Everything just seems not so right at school.

Don’t believe me? try to look around. do you care if American Idol Carrie Underwood got an ‘E’ for her history? do you care much if NBA stars Kevin Garnett cant do piano? what if I Capital Biz icon Tan Teng Boo failed Biology in his SPM, will you stop buying ICAP stocks? guess the answers are of course ‘NO’. now, who face more failure thru out his life - Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein or you? who currently makes more money - a Harvard fall-out Bill Gates or a PHD title holder from Harvard?

While the school train us to be average (do as what others doing), our community rewards those who’re willing to be different. you gotta be the ‘best’ in something, you gotta stand out from the rest in certain field - as Seth said ‘taste like chicken’ wasn’t a compliments and being average is just too risky to be.

Reading ‘The Dip’ gave me the quite same feeling when i first read ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’. while ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ talks about money, Seth Godin’s ‘The Dip’ talks about being the best of the world and quiting. the book’s kind of easy to be read - it’s short, it’s printed in large font size (unlike The World is Flat!) and it’s languauge is easy to be understood. however, the book’s not for those who can’t accept new ideas. as said, it’s against every little thing we learned about life in school. a book talks about quitting - if this’s not revolutional, what is?

So hey, if you wanna find out why being the best of the world matters so much; why quitting sometime is the best strategy? when should we quit; what makes quiting a smart choice; what’s a dip and what’s a cua da sac; go read Seth Godin’s The Dip.

P/S: Seth Godin do runs a little blog about the book here but it’s rather quiet over there as he rarely update it now.