Tip Jars Part Two

November 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 31 Comments
Filed under: Advertising, Musings, Web Services 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about tip jars since I wrote What do you think about tip jars on websites? back in September.

As I wrote in my last comment on that thread, I leave tips on some very useful sites, such as thefluffanutta’s SquidUtils.com. He provides an outstanding service for Squidoo lensmasters and I’m happy to leave him a tip when I think about it.

I’m going to leave the PayPal donate button in the right column of this blog, whether or not it gets used.

On the other hand, I removed the TopSpots list yesterday.

After two months, with thousands of visitors and no nibbles, I simply deleted it. *Poof!*

I’ll still use that service to advertise this blog on other blogs I like, but won’t be offering it here.

In general, I don’t like to have paid links on my sites, and this was the only one where I was doing anything like that. So, even though I was playing by all the rules I know, it never felt comfortable for me.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with TopSpots, but it just doesn’t feel like a good fit here.

Act on your dream!

JD

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How to add an Aweber subscribe form to your Squidoo lens

November 13, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 26 Comments
Filed under: Aweber Autoresponders, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Web Services, email marketing 

In a previous post on another of my blogs, I wrote about adding subscribe forms on our Squidoo lenses:

Squidoo module request – Sign-up forms for Aweber mailing lists

Last week, Lewis Smile added a comment to the post and told me my dream was answered. Today, I finally found enough time to see what he was talking about.

Update: Before you get too excited about this, I’ve learned that the folks at Squidoo are working to defeat this “trick,” as it is being called. This means that any AWeber sign up forms on our lenses will stop working at any moment.

Please see the comments on this post for more information.

I purchased his report for only $7.00 and downloaded it immediately.

Well, that’s not exactly how I started. I read Lewis’ blog post, AT LAST! Aweber Opt In Forms On Your Lenses!, and read in the comments that he had an active form on his Squidoo Traffic Tricks lens.

There it was. Cool!

Being the frugal person that I am, I looked at the source code and saw that the form was actually a javascript widget that was powered by Clearspring.com.

Immediately, I grasped the concept. Lewis was using a widget as an intermediary between the Aweber javascript, which won’t work on a Squidoo lens, and the lens itself.

I joined Clearspring, but after a few minutes of looking around, I decided it would take longer to work out the details for myself than it would to purchase the report, download it, read it, and put what I learned to work.

If the report had been $47, or $27, or some other higher amount, I’d have learned how to do it myself. But, for a report that costs only $7.00, it was a no-brainer to just buy it.

You can find the report at SquidooTricks.com.

As someone who earns his living from affiliate marketing, it pains me to send you to such a valuable site without using an affiliate link, but the information here is too useful not to tell you how to get it for yourself – even if I’m not earning anything from it.

Sigh.

In just a few minutes, I bought the report, downloaded it, and read it.

My initial thoughts were correct. I probably could have worked it out for myself in an hour or two, but Lewis has done an excellent job of telling you just how to make this work for you.

I went to Aweber.com and added a new sign-up form for my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog. I use Aweber to manage email subscriptions for what I post to this blog, as well as a growing number of mailing lists I manage for myself and for my clients. I wanted to create a new form that I would use only on Squidoo lenses so I’d be able to track the source of new subscriptions.

That took maybe 10 minutes to do.

Following the instructions in Lewis’ report, I copied the code I’d need and proceeded to the next step – create the new widget on Clearspring.com.

Even though I’d not done anything but look around Clearspring for a few minutes, I found his instructions extremely clear and easy to follow.

It took maybe 20 minutes or so to create the new widget and another couple of minutes to add it to my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing lens on Squidoo.

(If I had broadband, it would have gone much quicker, but slow dial-up is still all that’s available here where I live.)

I didn’t follow all of Lewis’ instructions on creating the widget.

He advised us to hide the “get and share” links at the bottom of the widget. While I can see reasons for doing this, I don’t like to ever use code on a site that hides the text by making it the same color as the background.

Plus, I don’t mind if someone gets that widget and puts it on another site. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do it, but I’ll take all the subscribers I can get.

It took a total of maybe 45 minutes from the time I bought the report until I had an active Aweber sign-up form on my lens, and that includes downloading and reading everything.

Lewis has done a remarkable service for us by providing such clear instructions.

Now, all I have to do is add this Clearspring.com widget to the other lenses where I syndicate this blog.

Then, over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing the same thing for other mailing lists I manage through Aweber.com.

This has come at a particularly fortuitous time, because I am in the planning stages of setting up quite a few new mailing lists and Squidoo lenses. Lewis’ method of adding a subscribe form to a lens will make what I plan to do much easier and probably more effective.

Thanks Lewis. My dream really was answered.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Do you want to add polls to your site?

October 20, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 18 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Web Services, WordPress 

I have been thinking about adding polls and surveys to some of my sites, but haven’t had the time to research how to do it best.

Serendipity favored my efforts this morning when I read on Matt Mullenwag’s blog that PollDaddy Goes Automattic.

He announced that all the blogs hosted on WordPress.com now have PollDaddy features enabled and a new plug-in for WordPress has been released.

I just installed the plug-in on this site and this is my test post to see how well it works.

It took only a few minutes to sign up for free at PollDaddy.com and set up my profile there.

I have been wanting a way to create polls and surveys and to show them on my websites and blogs. Creating a poll with PollDaddy is very easy and there are several ways to link to your poll and/or embed it in your site, including javascript, a direct link, and a tag to use with the WordPress plug-in.

Here’s my first test of using a PollDaddy poll using the plug-in:

This is just a simple poll asking if you are a Squidoo lensmaster. It allows comments and I chose to moderate the comments before they are published.

I’m sure I’ll come up with better polls in the future, but I really love Squidoo and I like meeting new lensmasters and catching up with all the lensmasters I already know.

One thing I’m seeing that I don’t like is how the format of the poll changes as my blog page loads. At first, the answers are neatly lined up, but after the page loads completely, they change and no longer line up.

Are you seeing that, too?

It looks, to me, like I’m having a CSS conflict between this poll and one of the widgets I have on this blog.

You can compare what the poll looks like on this site with what it looks like on the PollDaddy site: Are you a Squidoo lensmaster?

Have you wanted to add polls and surveys to your sites and blogs? What tools are you using to accomplish this?

Act on your dream!

JD

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