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.

Google PR got updated recently - as it did always in the past. yes, always. it’s like sun rise and sink, the little green bar on your google tool bar changed from time to time.

What’s different this time with Google PR updates?

What makes this time special is that the updates create sort of a panic in blogsphere. lots of blogs, including those well established ones like problogger and copyblogger got hit badly where their PR sunk from PR6/7 to PR4/3. (if you ask, yeah, i believe google is doing this purposely - the same as what they did to punish link exchange, page cloaking, keyword stuffing in the past by turning the algo knob.)

Now you might be wondering why many bloggers are so concern about google PR… the reason behind this is because many bloggers make revenue from their blog via Text Link Ads - a place where you can sell link ads to advertisers. these ads are basically priced based on the number of outbound links, link ads placement, and more importantly blog PR. yes, this means blogs with higher PR will charge higher price on link ads, aka, $ for bloggers.

For example, a blogger were used to charge $30 monthly per link ads with his/her PR5 blog. then comes recent google PR updates and guess what, his blog got hit and the PR turned south to PR3 - long gone $30/mo and he or she might need to be satisfied with maybe just $15 per link ads.

Get the picture?

What’s FUN with this?

Of course, not all bloggers are panic. in fact most are well aware that google PR is now nothing more than just a meaningless greenbar on the big G’s toolbar.

Some went pissed and teach others how to loose PR:

(Graphic by Gyutae Park)

Darren from Problogger.net even made good fun (or use?) of it, launching a slogan competition for bloggers hit by the page rank slam, right after his blog PR sunk. you might wish to check out some creatives by bloggers around the world:

(Graphic by Meg)

(Graphic by Blogging Success Journey)

(Graphic by Micheal Beck)

(Graphic by Thirstan)

(Graphic by A Blog about Nothing)

OMG my blog got hit! is this google PR changed permenant?

Who knows?

While google PR had been rolled back right after its shy release for nearly 24 hours (again, a usual trend for google updates), the noise hasn’t. there’re lots of discussion and ranting around the blogsphere and webmaster forums. as usual, those who got slammed keep cursing and yelling (that google is broke); those who got promoted (in PR) kept quiet in the dark.

Like it or not, google is still the monopoly around the Internet and you gotta live with it no matter how. i am just happy that i’m not making my living out from PR re-selling.

More readings (and rantings)? here. not sure what the hell is google page rank? read more here.

Ali from everybodygoto.com wrote about consideration points before joining an affiliate program and which affiliate program to promote - both are good readings and i recommend every newbies to go read it.

While the post is full of insights and helpful tips, it might not be right for everyone nevertheless. so here’s my take on the same subject… perhaps you can mixed up a little from both and have your own version.

1. Ignore the niche market theory

Yes, i knew i just made a controversial statement.

Almost every Internet marketing guru talks about finding a good niche with little competition and be a big fish in a small pond (yeah, right?). But after three years plus in the business, the so-call cash-rich online niche market is just another ‘penis-enlargement-kinda-myth’ for me.

I’ll explain why:

When there’s a niche, it means there’re little audience in the pool - when there’re little audience (hence, little money) in the pool, there will be minimum merchant promoting their products online - hence, as an affiliate, it’ll be tough to get a (more over, reliable) merchant.

Secondly, when there’s a niche - where there’s very little competition, high chances are others already explored about the market and found out that there’s little money to be earned there and moved away - which explains why there’s little competition. (com’on, the Internet is such a big space and do you think you can find a good niche market with just two days of keyword research?)

Unless you’re creating a niche market of your own, aka making and selling your own products (a good example: Danny’s titanium rings ); if not i would just recommend you to stick with the market with moderate or even high competition. from my experience, that’s where the money flows around.

2. Do people buy the product online?

There are certain things people (well, at least most of them) just like to search, but not buying them online - inflatable boats for example. it’s irrational when you judge the market solely based on the numbers from keywords research. common sense works, people who’re searching for laser cutting machine are most probably students or employees working out on their reports - com’on they aren’t going to buy the $20k mahcine online from you!

If you don’t have common sense or you need more figures to support your thoughts, MSN’s ad center labs ‘Online Commercial Intention detection‘ is a very good place (so far the best) for the detailing job.

As described by in MSN’s own words,

Microsoft adCenter detect your customers’ intention to purchase products or acquire information. for example, if a customer searches for LCD monitor, it is likely that he or she wants to purchase an LCD monitor; therefore, the online commercial intention is strong, with a confidence level greater than 0.5.

Webpage searches display two levels of commercial intention: informational and transactional.

The Online Commercial Intent (OCI) demo calculates commercial intent on a scale of 0 to 1. Any site whose score is greater than 0.5 is considered to have commercial intent.

However, some websites that have commercial intent might produce a score of less than 0.5. If you feel that this is the case with your website, we encourage you to contact us to help improve our scoring mechanism.

3. Affiliate manager’s quality and appreciation

How helpful is the affiliate manager shows how serious is the merchant’s attitude on their affiliates. does the affiliate manager answer your questions properly and support you in making more sales? do the merchants strike their best to improve their website conversion rate? do they show appreciation on your work as an affiliate?

We live on the products we are selling and we work our ass damn hard to pull sales - our efforts should be appreciated. so if you’re dealing with someone who take your effort for granted, maybe you should start searching about better alternatives in the same market. i’m sure other serious merchants are more than happy to gain more sales.

4. Avoid merchant with difficult payout process

I don’t deal with any merchant that tends to drag the payout time for their affiliates.

PayPerPost for example, is a definite ‘No-no’ for me - to earn $15 for a PPP blogger signup, you’ll have to lead a blogger to sign up with PayPerPost, get their blog approved in the system, bid and get a writing job, complete their first sponsored post, get that approved and paid after 30 days - and only then, you’ll get your $15 commissions. A single signup process might just drag you for 6 months easily - i’m sorry, but it just doesn’t seems fair and right to me.

5. Motivation & Interest

You have million of products to choose from - pick something you’re interested in, pick some topics that ignites your passions. if you’re into outdoor activities, promote about outdoor camping gears, fishing rod, outdoor wearings, and maybe alaska rafting tour - dont go for the Apple’s iPhone just because everyone’s talking about it.

Affiliate business is about making money, but it can also be fun and interesting. right?

Now, what’s your opinion on this? what are the keypoints you’ll be considering before picking up an affiliate program?

p/s: Ali, i hope you dont mind that i ’steal’ your post title… this show your post’s inspiring.