Nonetheless, I’m happy that my cookie is already in so many computers, that I feel like I’m going to see a lot of sales for Halloween costumes this year.

Here it is, already June, and it is WAY PAST TIME to discuss…

Christmas!

Well, not really Christmas per se, but a very important strategy for building, expanding, relating and planning your Squidoo lenses to maximize your income.

There are mainly two approaches when considering seasons, holidays and events with your Squidoo pages.

One is to have a variety of topics that each have their own season.  I have done this and had excellent results.

The other is to maximize your niche and be sure you create a specific lens for each season.  I have done this with a few pages, and I recommend this approach highly.  It will be one that I pursue more fully during the rest of the year.

For example, you may have a lens related to chocolate.  Chocolate has potential in each season.  You can have a Valentine’s chocolate page.  A summer chocolates page.  A weddings chocolate page.  A Christmas chocolate page.

The year long focus helps you to capture audience, capture sales all year, and gives you an organized approach to maintaining the lenses that are most likely to benefit from the attention.

The new dashboard REALLY helps with this!  You can label your lenses, allowing you to sort them according to the season or event, topic or any other way.  We now have a ‘to do’ list that can help you keep track of which lenses to update when.

If you’ve made some Squidoo pages, you are in this for the long haul.  It is very smart to try to make each and every season, holiday and event work in your favor.

One of the most impressive creative writing exercises I’ve ever done is ‘collaging’.  Focusing on an interesting word, and then doing a ‘free association’ wordplay, I could make connections that I otherwise would never have thought of, and would be able to write a very satisfying, and very interesting piece.

I also used to do this with pictures- from magazines, newspapers, old collections I’d find at garage sales… the juxtaposition of unrelated photos seemed to jar my mind, help me to go places I’d never gone before.

So, when writing creative Squidoo lenses, these tools might seem a little bulky, a little non-techy, but here’s a fabulous one you can do right on your computer!

Called ‘Moodstream’ it is a series of photos, music and words that seems random enough, but in each person’s mind would create exceptional and interesting connections.

I’d love to see you try it, and I’d love to see the fruits of your ‘Creative Squidooing’ if you do!

Our favorite headmaster boredofeducation has been a PREMIER support person for not only newbies, but for small business and the Room to Read organization.

He has a particular niche, Harry Potter, a subject that he has a passion for, and he keeps up with new developments incredibly well. There may be competitors, and those using the identical niche to drive their own traffic, but Damon has something that nobody else has: a sister who’s memory he keeps alive and beneficial to children!

The proceeds from his lenses all go to the organization in his sister’s memory, and there will be many a child that has this effort to thank for their reading skills.

But artists, too, that captured Damon’s attention, will benefit from his work on Squidoo. On his page Harry Potter Fan Art, Damon shows us the special artists that have captured his attention and may catch yours too!

From Anime to the Disneyesque, Damon has found some artists with fabulous expressive techniques- amazing what a difference those can make to how you see Harry Potter!

Damon also found some terrific artistic accessories: magic wands, matchstick marvels and even computer art.

All on one page Damon has provided support to multiple small business and artists. What a great favor for us, for Harry Potter fans, and for Room to Read!

A new announcement by your friend and mine, Google, is that Google Trends is now available for use comparing actual websites.

Many of our Squidoo lensmasters also have websites that are linked to their Squidoo pages and other places. If you have competitors, you can now use Google Trends to compare your traffic with theirs.

This will certainly increase the competitiveness among websites, just as Squidaholic has increased competitiveness among similar Squidoo lenses.

There are quite a number of individuals around who are very experienced at using these tools to increase the traffic to their sites. My suggestion is that you spend some time practicing with these tools yourself and learn to protect yourself and to compete the best you can.

Making sales on your Squidoo commerce lens or website is virtually the same process as any salesman, any brand building advertising, any relationship.  Having had all too many years being trained and re-trained in this field, I’d like to share these elements with you, one at a time, to give you a look at the essentials.

Many successful pages do these things, perhaps intuitively, but if you can’t intuit your selling approach, take a look and see if you can improve elements of your page.

The first essential is ALWAYS to establish your credibility with your visitor.

Without taking up huge amounts of space, you can create a credibility builder default bio as an overall feature of your Squidoo lenscrafting, or an ‘about me’ page on your website.

Secondly, on a Squidoo page, you get the specific bio that does not need to be the default bio, and if you have pages on many topics, I suggest you use this space to increase your credibility on the topic.

You can create a Squidoo lens about you, about you and your specific niche, a SquidWho lens, or a lensography that addresses your niche credibility as you display your specific lenses.

How do you approach the topic of credibility?

Ask yourself questions.  Why am I interested in this, how is it that I know something others don’t?  If I saw a biography like this, would I feel more comfortable, more welcome, more likely to be in good hands?

This can be done with good humor, you can share your excitement or successful use of your product, or an established history.

Credibility is also a form of ‘authority’ which all webmasters and Squidoo lensmasters have a need to develop with Google, digg and other forms of social marketing.  Authority or credibility will help your page survive the test of time, will help you achieve over other competitors, and help you to build your online business one visitor at a time.

I just heard that some of the big shooters of the University of Michigan have been looking at Michelangelo’s David, and they’re impressed!  They LOVE the writing and content…

Perhaps the page will make the rounds among the kind of people that could bring some SERIOUS Squidoo pages, some SERIOUS credibility, some SERIOUS traffic.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

In the professional sales world there is a techniques called ‘killing off the competition.’

Depending on your product, there are lots of ways to do this.  However a better way of thinking about this step is to show somehow that you KNOW what else is out there, and that the way you are offering it, the product you’re offering, the service you are giving, is better than almost anyone else’s.

It is easier to do this sitting face to face with people, and so to some degree, your page needs to give people a little bit of that ‘face to face’ feeling.

The most effective way to do that is to write your page as if someone IS sitting in front of you, someone you care about, and your text is what you are saying to THEM.  This is called a ‘conversational style’.

Therefore, a copy/paste of someone else’s text is the LAST thing you want to do on your page!

How you do this, demonstrate your knowledge of your product/field/industry can take a few different forms.  One very successful way on a webpage/ Squidoo lens is alternatives.

What is the need you are trying to meet?

Example:

“You could buy heavy wooden outdoor furniture that is difficult to move, or you could get this light, beautiful and easy to store, easy to take care of recycled plastic outdoor furniture”

“You could take a chance that your downloads are illegal and cause you problems later, or you could download from this secure site, knowing that you’ve done this securely, legally, and honestly.”

Understanding the problems people run into in your topic area, and addressing them genuinely, even if briefly, goes a very long way to gaining an emotional connection with you and your potential customer.

The ONLY customer that is important is the one visiting your page, right now.

Squidooers are a charitable bunch, no question about it! With the close of the Superheroes Contest, and the terrific response from lensmasters, you can tell that bunches of us care very deeply about our charities and do our best to benefit them!

Now that that contest is over, I’d like to talk about some little known ways that you can use your Squidooing to really help charities, that many folks don’t know about.

First thing- did you know that volunteering for a non-profit helps them at a value of $17 per hour (in 2004 figures- the last time I was responsible to know that)?

Yes, Squidooers, $17 an hour or more for your charity just by donating your time. More even than that, if your charity seeks out funding from someplace like the Kellogg Foundation, your hours working for them at that price increases their chances of getting an in-kind financial donation?

In kind donations are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for nearly EVERY charity you can think of. By accumulating volunteer time, say 2,000 hours, valued at $17 per hour, the charity can seek in-kind money from many organizations to the tune of $34,000 CASH.

Why am I telling you this? Because this is a wonderful way for you to maximize your time spent Squidooing!

Make a page about or for your favorite charity. Then, donate it TO that charity at market rates- I think Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile are advertising somewhere in the area of $500 per lens? In addition, you may include the value of each lens TO SQUIDOO, which (last time I looked) was about $250. Therefore, your donation would begin with about $750 per lens, that they can use as an in-kind donation.

Doing this is a tax deduction for you, unlike donating directly through Squidoo which you may want.

Here’s where the $17 per hour time comes in. You ALSO donate your time that you spend building and maintaining that (those) lenses for that charity. Just report your time to that charity each month and they’ll do the rest.

If the charity has a paypal account, the payments for those pages should pay directly into the charity. Each month of that payout is additional income for that charity.

Now, if you do NOT itemize your deductions, doing this won’t help you, but the charity will still benefit and they’ll make excellent use of the hours of time you spend on their pages.

If you do itemize your deductions, then this is much preferred as you can then take a deduction on YOUR tax bill.

So, consider ways to maximize your charitable activities with Squidoo. In this economy, they can use every bit of help they can get!

Edit: Yes.  Create a new account with a paypal email for your charity.

Transfer the lens to the new account that pays them directly.

Send a statement to the charity of your donation of the lens(es) and the value, which I estimate at this time to be between $750 & $1000

Thereafter, as you maintain or upgrade the page, keep track of your hours and send a statement of your volunteer hours on a monthly or quarterly statement.  The charity can value those hours at about $17 per hour for purposes of seeking in-kind matching grants.

If you create more lenses for the charity account, wash, rinse and repeat!

The duplicates of the statements you send can be provided to your accountant for your charitable deduction.

One of the great things about Squidoo is how it helps promote websites AND special expertise!

Evrin Celimli is a FABULOUS composer, having won at Tribeca Film Festival AND at the Woods Hole Film Festival, done some amazing soundtrack work, and also some music for soundtracks for corporate films!  You can listen to his work at this website.

But do take a look at his Squidoo lens, Music for Pictures, Film Scores and Soundtracks, where he has so much other interesting information and videos!

There are truly passionate people out there in the world, and Evrin is one of them.

Like Evrin, I enourage you to ‘take control of the passions of your soul and make a Squidoo lens about them.’

I hope this automatic masterpiece of music mastery will inspire you to share your talents and inspirations!