Can AWeber and Squidoo Work Together?
November 17th, 2008 by 
John Dilbeck
Why can’t active sign-up forms for AWeber mailing lists be added to Squidoo lenses?
Is there a solution?
Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this subject, because the ability to add AWeber subscription forms to my Squidoo lenses is very important to my plans for next year.
I don’t believe there are any unsolvable technical problems stopping these two companies from working together.
It is very easy to add active AWeber subscription forms on other sites. They provide two easy-to-use methods: Javascript and HTML forms. You can see an example of the HTML version of a subscription form on every page of this site, right below my photo in the right column. You can see an example of the javascript version of a sign-up form on the Subscribe page on this site.
In both cases, I accomplished what I wanted in just a few minutes.
Unfortunately, I’ve been looking for a way to do this simple task on my Squidoo lenses for months. I thought I found a solution last week, and it worked very well, but it is being killed by Squidoo.
I just created a new lens with an open letter to Tom Kulzer, CEO and founder of AWeber.com, and Seth Godin, Founder of Squidoo.com, asking if they can find a way to work together to make it possible for us to do something that I believe will have a relatively easy solution. I also emailed each of them and invited them to view the lens.
You are invited to come read the lens and express your opinions:
Can AWeber and Squidoo Work Together?
Perhaps this isn’t a technical problem. Maybe it’s just a lack of motivation on the part of both companies to develop a solution. I don’t know.
Tom and Seth, I hope you’ll find a way to make this happen.
While it may not be important to the vast majority of Squidoo lensmasters, it is important to some of us - possibly many of us. I believe it may be important to many AWeber customers.
I’ve added a couple of polls to the lens and I invite everyone who reads this to come and voice your opinions and help spread the word to others who may want to combine the power of the services AWeber and Squidoo provide.
Act on your dream!
JD
| 2.9 |
This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Aweber Autoresponders, Marketing, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Web Services, email marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I received an email from Tom Kulzer, CEO and Founder of AWeber.
He said, “Someone on our development team is looking into its feasibility.”
Thank you very much, Tom. I appreciate it.
Act on your dream!
JD
November 19th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I responded to all the polls buddy.
I wonder if he meant someone was “already” looking into it, or if you kicked him in the pants…now that would be cool.
Dennis Edells last blog post..A Monkey Can Do Your Job!
November 19th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Thanks, Dennis.
He didn’t specify. Either way, I’m happy that they are looking into it.
I’m not trying to get credit for this; I just want to be able to add AWeber sign-up forms on my Squidoo lenses.
If they get this working, I’m happy for all the credit to go to AWeber and Squidoo.
Act on your dream!
JD
November 20th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Hmmm, these are the 2 tools I’m yet using myself. Are you actually saying one can actually subscribe to your lens, John?
Yan
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..Michael Dunlop - Young Entrepreneur Making Money Online
November 20th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Good afternoon, Yan.
Subscribing to my lens is not the point I’m trying to make here, but, what I’m requesting from AWeber and Squidoo would make that easier.
Actually, you can already subscribe to a lens in a couple of ways.
At some point in the past, I’m not sure when, Squidoo changed the RSS feed for each lens. At first, it showed only when it was last updated - if I remember correctly.
Now, however, it shows the most recent Squidcasts.
So, that can be considered a kind of blog because you’re allowed to put real text and links in a Squidcast.
You can already syndicate that via email using a service such as Feedburner.
If you’re an AWeber customer, you can create a list and use the RSS broadcast feature to send any Squidcasts from the lens to the list.
That would have limited use, unless the lens were updated frequently and you sent a substantive Squidcast each time. For some lenses, however, it would be a great thing to do and I’m planning a few of them that I want to try.
For someone who doesn’t want to manage a real blog, a Squidoo lens can be used as a kind of mini-blog, and being able to subscribe to the Squidcasts feed could reach out to anyone interested in the topic of the lens. Plus, for those who are frugal, the lens is free.
On my Squidoo Marketing community, Katinka and I are having a discussion on her blog post, Squidoo Tips about just this subject.
In her last comment, she gives a link to a page on SquidUtils.com where a lensmaster can log in and get a variety of RSS feeds related to his/her lenses.
I just now learned that there is an RSS feed for all my Squidcasts on all my lenses at:
http://squidutils.com/squidcasts/from/johndilbeck.rss
If I wanted to start a mailing list and let people subscribe to all my Squidcasts, then it’s possible to do that now through Feedburner or AWeber or any other tool that sends RSS feeds through email to subscribers.
What I’m wanting to do is to be able to put an active AWeber sign-up form on a lens. If they would make this possible, then a lensmaster can set up a list on AWeber and let people subscribe directly on the lens, without having to go to a secondary site to do so.
So, we could add a list for lens updates and let people subscribe to it.
Or, more practically, we can have an AWeber autoresponder series, mailing list, or newsletter and put the subscribe form for that on the lens. That’s the original thing I’m wanting to do.
Does that make sense? I’m afraid I’m making this too complicated.
Act on your dream!
JD
June 18th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Very good ideal that would be wonderful this could be done instead of being tranfered to another page to sign-up sign up right from the lense that has got to help your sign-up and conversion rates wow thats would really be nice
why don’t we all drop tom and seth a line this might speed up this process if we all send them a line or too good job
gdiwebsite´s last blog ..GDI Income For Life updated Tue Jun 16 2009 12:51 pm CDT
June 19th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Good morning, Ervin.
I agree. An officially-sanctioned way to put live sign-up forms on Squidoo lenses would be great.
However, I haven’t heard anything more about this topic in the intervening months and Lewis Smile’s method continues to work.
At this point, I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude and working on other sites.
Welcome to our discussions. Thanks for your comment.
Act on your dream!
JD