A few thoughts about webhosting and building websites

November 22, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, Blogging, Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting, Websites, WordPress 

This morning, I received an email notice that someone had submitted a new site for the Sites Built With SBI list on my Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion lens on Squidoo.

I usually wait until I’ve received several such notices before I go to either approve or delete the entries. Usually, 80% of the entries are spam for sites that are not built using SBI. I’m not sure why anyone would think I’d approve those sites for the list, but I get regular submissions for sites built using other methods and most of them are built with WordPress.

So, I go look at each site and, if it’s built with SBI, I accept it. Otherwise, I delete it.

Designing and building websites

I’ve been thinking a lot about SBI sites lately, because Sitesell has been building a new site editor called Block Builder 2 (or BB2) and it is set for release in December. They have spent a couple of years and several million dollars developing it and it recently completed alpha testing.

(Unlike other sitebuilders, SBI offers 70 or 80 integrated tools that are part of the process and features of building sites the SBI way. This new BB2 has to integrate with almost all of them, and the central database had to be modified and expanded to work with BB2. So, this was probably a larger, more difficult project than the original creation of SBI about a decade ago. Updating and expanding a system that powers thousands of websites is not the same as building an HTML editor that just builds pages or adds blog posts. It’s a very big job.)

Beta testing starts this week with a couple of hundred volunteers, who will be added in groups over the next couple of weeks.

If you’re interested, here’s a pre-release sneak preview of using the new block builder 2:

Sneak peak of Sitesell’s new block builder 2 for SBI!

I’m one of those volunteers, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it, soon. I have plans for a complete make-over and extensive additions to both of my SBI-powered sites, and you can bet that I’ll be talking about it over the next few weeks.

This new editor is going to make building sites and pages much easier than before and I’ll finally get to do some of the things I’ve done on other sites, but much more easily. This includes using Server Side Includes for things like links to particular pages, affiliate programs, Google Adsense ads, and more, using their new Reusable Blocks tool.

Even for an old-timer like me, who can dream in HTML, this is going to be a nice, easy way to build a site. For someone who is not technically-inclined and doesn’t like coding HTML, it’ll be wonderful. Once again, SBI helps people focus on the business of building their business, not endlessly tinkering with all the tech stuff.

Of course, there are lots of site builders out there, so this isn’t what makes SBI special. Sitesell continues to be focused on helping their subscribers create successful, profitable businesses, and not just websites.

So, with the imminent release of BB2, look and feel, and site design has been on my mind a lot over the last couple of months.

I think it is better to make sites simpler and faster, rather than confusing with lots of distractions. (You can’t tell that by looking at my blogs, because I add a lot of things to a blog that I would not put on a website.)

Meanwhile, back at the Squidoo ranch…

I noticed that one of the sites on my Squidoo lens (out of over 100) was now powered by WordPress, rather than SBI. It has been over a year since I’ve gone through the whole list to check, so I spent some time this morning going through each of them.

Out of over 100, six were now powered by WordPress, two were standard Linux-hosted websites, and three domains had been allowed to expire or put up for sale. So, a little less than 8% had left SBI over the last year.

I got to thinking that there seems to be a lot less churn with SBI sites over the years, even though a lot of people just can’t seem to wrap their minds around why I consider each SBI-powered site to be a bargain at $300 each per year.

For the last couple of decades, I’ve seen webhosting services come and go and I’ve used a number of them. I’ve watched as websites move from one service to another, and often I can see the change only because their name servers change.

Hosting sites and blogs at HostGator

For professional technogeeks and web designers, I recommend HostGator.

For the last ten years, or so, all of my traditionally-hosted sites and WordPress-powered blogs have been hosted by HostGator, and I’m very happy with the service and features I get there. I have a reseller account, so I can host more sites than I care to, all for about $25 per month. That includes several sites and three blogs. At one point, a couple of years ago, I was hosting many more sites with them, but I’ve closed those sites as I focus more on my main target market.

As I said, I’m very happy with HostGator, but I don’t go out of my way to recommend them, even though I’m an affiliate.

Why?

Over the years, it has been my experience that building websites and managing blogs is a pain in the rear. This is definitely NOT for everyone. If you are not technically inclined and if you don’t like tinkering “under the hood” all the time, then I urge you to avoid traditional webhosting services.

If you don’t love writing, day in and day out, all the time, don’t even think of building websites or blogging. If you don’t love the subject for your site enough to write a book, or even a magazine article about it, you WILL NOT enjoy an online business.

I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know how much work it can be. Especially, when some jerk decides to hack a site and either destroy it or break in and install malware. All of my traditionally-hosted sites have been hacked at least once, and most of them several times, over the years.

(Note: Neither of my SBI sites has ever been hacked, and I’ve never spent even a minute thinking about site security for either of them.)

HostGator is very good about watching for this and notifying me if someone has hacked a site and installed malware. They shut down the domain and then I have to go find and delete the cause of it.

If you’re looking for a good place to host a WordPress blog or you need scripting and databases for your business, I highly recommend HostGator. They are the only traditional hosting service that I’ve used for years with no complaints.

If you want an account with them, I’d be happy if you click my link and purchase your subscription to HostGator.

If you are unhappy about the amount of work it takes to build a site or blog and if it doesn’t open the automatic magical Internet dollar machine to make you rich overnight, don’t complain to me. That is a fantasy.

The reality is this: building websites and blogs and earning a profit takes lots of hard work and time. It’s not as hard as digging ditches, but it’s not nearly as easy as some people want you to believe.

Trust me. I know.

Weebly – Webhosting for real people

These days, I urge people who want a basic website — and who don’t want to have to roll up their sleeves and get under the hood — to use a service like Weebly. I’ve been using them for a little over a year with excellent results. I particularly like their sitebuilder and think most people can use it to build a reasonably good site. If you have the skills and the knowledge, you can build an excellent site using their service.

If you want to put up a brochure-like website for your brick and mortar business and you prefer to do it yourself rather than hire someone to do it for you, Weebly is a good choice. If you want to purchase a domain for your website, it makes sense to purchase through Weebly, because they’ll do the set-up for you. If you prefer to purchase a domain elsewhere, they have instructions on how to set up the DNS, but, unless that’s something you like doing, you’re better off buying the domain through them and letting their propeller-heads do the work.

—–Sidebar—-
Just in case you’re not familiar with the lingo, here’s the deal…

What is a domain?

This blog is on the 21stCenturyAffiliateMarketing.com domain. I have another one at JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com and another one (rarely used) at MurphyNC28906.com.

Those names that end in .com, .org, .info, .biz, .mil, and others are domain names.

So, if you’re a plumber and own We Fix Leaks, you could register WeFixLeaks.com — if someone else hasn’t already done it. [Someone already owns that domain.]

You could also host it on Weebly at wefixleaks.weebly.com, and that’s called a subdomain. The word to the left of Weebly.com — separated by a period — is the name of the subdomain.

In general, that’s not a good idea if the top level domain is already taken. It could lead to things like trademark infringement, legal actions, bad feelings, and other things most of us would prefer to avoid. It’s not exactly illegal to do it, but you’ll sleep better at night if you avoid those kinds of tactics. It’s better to find a top-level domain that nobody has claimed, and that can take some time and creativity.

Weebly hosts thousands of subdomains, and thousands of full domains, for their clients.

I hope that explains it. I’ve been doing this so long that I forget that this is brand-new to some people.
———-

If you want to build a site for something like a family reunion, big picnic, community event, or something similar, and you want a good place to do it for free, Weebly is a good choice.

If you want to combine a website with a simple blog (and don’t want to hassle with WordPress upgrades and plug-ins), Weebly is a good choice.

You can host a couple of sites for free at Weebly, or you can upgrade to their professional level (at about $50 per year) and host up to 10 sites. I’ve had a professional account with them for a little over a year and it has worked very well. No hassles, good price, easy to build and maintain.

You can start for free and test it, and then if you want the features that are available only for the paid professional level account, it’s easy to upgrade.

That’s the route I took. I have a couple of fully functional sites hosted by Weebly and five others in various stages of completion. All for the low annual price. I spend a lot more money on coffee every year than I do on hosting professional sites at Weebly. (grin)

I sometimes use their service to test an idea by building a site on one of Weebly’s subdomains, so I don’t even have to register a new domain to see if I like it, or not.

(I don’t know about you, but I have a lot more ideas for things to do than I have time and energy to get them all done. In the past, I’d rush to register a domain, build a site, and see how it worked. I’ve done way too much of that, and now I stay much more focused on my core mission. Still, now and then, mostly for fun, I like to try out an idea and see what I think about it. Some people watch TV, movies, or sports. I build websites.)

I have a couple of old sites that are currently hosted by HostGator that I’m slowly adapting and moving to Weebly, and I’ll be changing the DNS to point their domains to the new sites sometime this winter.

SBI – The place to go if you’re interested in long-term online business success

If you want to build an income-producing online business, my top recommendation is still Sitesell’s SBI, and that’s where I’ll be putting at least 80% of my efforts next year.

My two SBI sites have been sadly neglected over the last couple of years (along with all my other sites), but now that I’m recovering from the cancer that tried to kill me last year, I’ll be getting back up to full speed, soon.

So, that’s my round-about way of saying this…

As I looked at all of the sites on my lens that were built with SBI, I realized that there is a remarkably low rate of churn with SBI sites. Most sites that are built using SBI stay there, year after year.

I know from talking to friends and colleagues that people have real businesses based around their SBI sites. They earn good money every year, and there is very little temptation to leave. Some have added WordPress blogs to their sites, but this is an additional part of the site, not a replacement.

It’s kind of tricky to add a WordPress blog to an SBI site, because SBI doesn’t allow the use of databases and scripts. So, SBI added a feature called Infin It! a few years ago. This makes it easier to add an e-commerce store, blog, forum, or other feature that won’t run on SBI, and combine it with your main site using subdomains.

You need both MySQL and PHP in order to host a WordPress blog, so the way it is added to an SBI-powered site is this: You have to host the blog on another service, such as BlueHost or HostGator and then attach it to the main domain by adjusting the DNS entries so that the blog is a subdomain of the main site.

It’s a little complicated, but the directions on how to do it are well-written and quite a few people have done it. When it’s set up (a one-time thing), the store, forum, or blog is treated as a part of your domain, rather than as a stand-alone site on a different domain.

Personally, I prefer to keep my blogs separate from my sites, but that’s just my own take on how to do it. People who prefer to do it the other way can make that choice for themselves. I know several webmasters who have chosen to go the Infin It! approach.

Not as easy to spot an SBI site as it used to be

I noticed, today, that it is getting harder to tell a site that was built with SBI from sites built using other services. One reason is that people are uploading their own HTML using a variety of templates. This Upload Your Own HTML (UYOH) feature was added a few years ago, for people who wanted designs that could not be built with the original (and now ten years old) block builder.

So, a few years ago, I could tell at a glance if a site was powered by SBI or something else. Now, it’s not so easy. A couple of times this morning I had to look at the source code to see if the site was built with WordPress or SBI, and twice I had to go to BetterWhoIs.com to see where the domain was registered and what the domain name servers pointed to.

(I also noticed that some people do not have a good eye for design — not that I can brag about my own good taste. I know I’m not a visually-oriented designer. While some people don’t like the original SBI templates, they had the advantage of being simple and did not distract from the main purpose of each page — also known as its Most Wanted Response. This morning, I noticed that several of the sites were full of junk that just made it more complicated and less clear about what the owner was trying to do with the site. There were way too many distractions. Sure, that’s their choice, if they want to go that way, but I think they’re making a mistake.)

With the introduction of BB2, next month, it’s going to be even harder to recognize that sites are built and powered by SBI. There will be a lot of new templates, and BB2 offers many new features that allow for massive customization of a site and of individual pages. The new templates are all CSS enabled, and that allows for further, easy customization.

I won’t talk much about BB2 until I get my hands on it and see for sure how it works. Then, I’ll be talking about it. When it is fully-released next month, I’ll probably talk about it a lot, as I test what it can do.

I still believe in simple websites, but I think my sites will be a bit less simple than they currently are, although I hope I never make them as crowded as I do my blogs. And I know I won’t be junking them up with a lot of unnecessary doodads and thingamajigs.

If I go that route, please feel free to smack my little hand and get me back on track. (grin)

Now, back to working with Aweber the rest of the day

So, with that said, it’s time to turn my attention to building a new template for sending newsletters using Aweber. I have to complete that template within the next day or two, because the first issue will be published the second week of January, and that’s fast approaching.

The new editor of the newsletter is patient with me right now, but if I don’t get this done this week, I don’t think she’ll be as patient. I can hear her foot tapping as her impatience grows — and she lives several miles from me. (grin)

Happy Thanksgiving!

If I don’t write anything else here before Thursday, I want to wish all my friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m looking forward to setting my work aside for a day and spending time with my family. There is a poor unfortunate turkey who is going to be a big part of the day, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Squidoo makes major change in their home page

April 8, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 8 Comments
Filed under: Squidoo Lenses 

Have you been to the Squidoo home page lately?

Instead of just showing random avatars of their lensmasters, now they show the top lenses in each category, and you can click a “More” button to see the top 100 lenses in each category.

They’ve also made it easier to create new lenses using their various popular Squid Projects (see the bottom of the page).

I like this much better than what they used to have.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

January 16, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 87 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Opinions, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses, Twitter, Webhosting, WordPress 

This is a question that I have been asking myself for months.

Today, I created a new TwitterStorm (Twttrstrm.com) asking Which is better for building an online business? Site Build It! or WordPress? Why?

What’s a TwitterStorm? This is a new site powered by Squidoo. Now you can ask a question of your Twitter followers and easily gather all their answers in one spot.

I know that the majority of people who will see this post are probably happy WordPress users. I’m one, too.

Still, after years of building websites and blogging on a lot of platforms, I still keep coming back to thinking Site Build It! is a better choice for building a business website.

Is it better to blog or build?

When Ken Evoy first raised this question, I was leaning towards blogging and disagreed with some of the things he said about it. Now, however, after months of blogging, I’m not as in favor of WordPress as I once was, especially when building multiple blogs.

As part of my goals for 2009, I’ve decided to do more to promote local businesses in Murphy, NC. I already have several blogs and websites related to Murphy and Cherokee County, NC. I’m really not happy with any of them.

I’m considering mothballing all of them except for my Murphy, NC 28906 blog, which needs serious updating. First off, I have to upgrade to WordPress 2.7, change the theme, add plugins, add widgets, and then I’m faced with finding things to write about, in addition to updating the blog software whenever necessary.

I can probably get the blog to where I want it in a couple of days without too much of a problem, because I’ve been doing this a long time and know what I want to do. I’m going to change it and fashion that blog after this one.

One of the problems with blogs is always having to manage the software and that takes away time and energy from actually writing content.

My Act On Your Dream! site is powered by Site Build It! and has been sadly neglected over the last year or more. Now that I can devote full-time to building my business, I can put more effort into building it into the site I have planned. Still, even with little work on my part, it continues to attract visitors and makes a nice profit.

There are lots of things wrong with that site, however. I’ve only built a small fraction of what I have planned for it, and there are a couple of main reasons for that.

For over six years, I was my Mom’s full-time caretaker and the duties associated with that took precedence over everything else. I am happy that I was able to care for her so long when she needed it.

The second reason is that I wasted a lot of time and effort testing a lot of different ways to build websites. I’ve lost track of how many different blogging platforms and content management systems I’ve tested. What do I have to show for it? A lot of neglected or abandoned blogs in my wake. Of all the blogs I’ve started, there are only two or three that I’m going to continue updating.

What do I do with the others? Some of them get traffic and even earn a profit. Do I delete them and redirect the domain to a page on a site I’ll keep? Or, do I just throw them out with the rest of the clutter and delete them and then let the domain expire?

It’s hard enough to build traffic to a site. I really don’t like the idea of just deleting a site that actually gets visitors.

Is it better to keep the domain and put up a static page explaining that the blog has been taken down and link to one of my related sites, or is it best to just let the domain expire and forget about it?

Being a packrat, I tend to want to do the former, but I’m thinking this is a good time to declutter my online life as I unclutter my offline world.

I continue asking myself this question: Why do I have so many blogs?

I think the main answer is that the cost of entry is so low that it’s easy to throw up a blog on the spur of the moment and just as easy to lose interest in it somewhere down the line.

I already have a reseller account on HostGator, so I can add a new domain for basically no cost, except for registering the domain. So, there’s little to stop me from testing an idea.

But, I look at those blogs and consider that I am paying over $500 per year just for domain registrations. For that amount, I can get two subscriptions to Site Build It!

I’ve already decided that I’m going to buy a new subscription to SBI to build a new site promoting businesses in Murphy, NC, because only SBI provides all the tools I need to do it right. That means that I’m going to be deleting several sites that I started over the last few years. I hate to do it, because they’re ranked well in the search engines, but I’m sure I can get page one listings on the keywords I want with a new site powered by Site Build It. I know, because I’ve tested it.

So, all of this boils down to my dithering over deciding what to do this year. When it all boils down to the essentials, the only real sites I have that I should keep and maintain would be this blog, Act On Your Dream!, Murphy, NC 28906, and a new SBI site for Murphy.

I’ll probably keep JohnDilbeck.com, but it will be trimmed to a much, much smaller size.

Of course, I’ll continue to maintain my brother’s site, Georgia Drag Racing. There’s not as much to do on that site now that he’s unable to continue building it as he wants. Still, it gets a lot of visitors and there are a lot of people interested in the subject.

I’ll also keep a couple of communities I created on ning.com.

I have a couple of forums that I’ve been trying to build for a couple of years, but they aren’t gaining any traction, so now may be a good time to shut them down, too.

So, in looking at all my sites, blogs, forums, and communities, I can probably drop the number from over 60 to just a half-dozen or so and actually accomplish more with less effort. I don’t know this for sure, but that’s the direction I’m leaning.

When I build a site with Site Build It, I make a commitment to my own success by paying the $300 upfront for an annual subscription. I just don’t have that commitment when I create another free site somewhere.

I often wonder how many other people have gone through these same experiences. Have you?

I’ve read many messages on the members-only SiteSell forum where SBI webmasters tell their stories of floundering around until they find Site Build It and finally concentrate on building a successful business website.

On the other hand, I’ve read many posts on blogs and forums from people who feel that WordPress offers them the best set of features for the lowest cost.

All I know for sure is that I have gone through my testing and learning phase, and I’m ready to implement what I’ve learned.

One of the keys to success is to focus on what you want to do and then put all your effort into manifesting what you imagine. I just don’t believe that can be done when we try to do too much.

I’m really having a hard time making this decision. Part of me wants to simplify everything and focus on affiliate marketing and promoting local businesses. Part of me doesn’t want to lose all the other sites I’ve started. I have to make this decision and implement it, soon.

I welcome your comments, advice, and suggestions. I value the opinions of the people who read this blog.

Who knows? I may have a bunch of domains to sell or give away.

What do you think? Join the Site Build It! or WordPress? twitter storm and share your opinion.

Leave any other comments you’d care to share here.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Did you know you can syndicate your SquidCasts by RSS and email?

December 22, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: John Dilbeck, Lenses, RSS Syndication, Squidoo Lenses, email marketing 

As I’ve written previously on this blog, you can treat your Squidoo lenses as a sort of mini-blog by sending a SquidCast whenever you create a new lens or make significant updates to an existing lens.

The SquidCast is a very limited posting (500 characters maximum) about the lens. This is added to the RSS feed for that lens.

For example, the following URL is the RSS feed for my John Dilbeck lensography lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lens/John-Dilbeck

Each lens has a similar RSS feed.

In order to make use of this, you must remember to send a SquidCast whenever appropriate. Fortunately, we are reminded to do this whenever we publish a lens.

You can treat this RSS feed as you would any other. It can be added to feed readers, syndicated using RSS modules on other lenses or your blog, and it can be syndicated via email, if you want.

I got to thinking about this because I read a post by Linda Martin on her blog: Offer Email Subscriptions to Your SquidCasts

She has created a new lens, Offer Email Subscriptions to Your SquidCasts, that explains the process of offering updates via email for your SquidCasts for all your lenses.

Essentially, her method uses the RSS feed for all a lensmaster’s Squidcasts, provided by thefluffanutta’s SquidUtils.com, and syndicates it using the free services of FeedBurner.com.

Each lensmaster can get an RSS feed through SquidUtils.com that includes the SquidCasts you’ve made for all your lenses, combined. The URL for my feed is:

http://squidutils.com/squidcasts/from/johndilbeck.rss

Feedburner.com provides tools for publicizing your RSS feeds, including syndication via email. It is a free service, and you can syndicate as many RSS or Atom feeds as you want.

Using the method Linda describes on her lens, anyone who subscribes to the email updates will be notified whenever a lensmaster updates any of his or her lenses. This may be a very good way to keep your fans updated if your lenses are about similar topics.

However, if you have a lot of very different types of lenses, it may not be the best approach, necessarily.

Linda provides a caution on her lenses reminding the subscriber that they’ll receive updates on all her lenses, not just the one they’re subscribing from.

On the other hand, you may want to restrict updates to just the lens that’s being read.

You can do this by syndicating just that lens’ RSS feed via Feedburner, instead of the combined SquidCasts feed provided by SquidUtils.

That way, your readers will not be surprised by updates totally unrelated to the lens from which they subscribed.

So, which is better?

Do you want an easy way for your readers to subscribe to your SquidCasts for all your lenses combined?

…or…

Do you want an easy way for your readers to subscribe to just the SquidCasts about the lens they are currently reading?

I think syndicating the SquidCasts for all your lenses may be more useful, unless you have a lens that will be updated frequently. There’s not much point to subscribing to updates to a lens if it is only updated every few months or so, is there?

Fortunately, you can do either – or both – depending upon what you think is best for your readers and the particular lens they are visiting.

Thanks for the reminder, Linda, and for providing clear instructions on providing our fans with another easy way to be informed when we make changes to our lenses.

If you set this up, don’t forget to offer it to your fans on your lensmasters’ page, too.

So, what do you think about this? Is it something you would want to offer to the readers of your Squidoo lenses and to your fans?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Promote Your CafePress store on Squidoo

December 22, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 19 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, CafePress, Marketing, Poll, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing 

I was just updating my Promote Your CafePress Store lens on Squidoo and started wondering why someone would add a link to their shop, but would neglect to reload the page and vote for their own shop so it would rise closer to the top of the list.

What would be a valid reason for this behavior?

Could it be a basic lack of understanding of how the Squidoo Plexo modules work? On most of my lenses with a Plexo module, I have it set to add the link right away and send me an email message. When I get time, I go through those messages and look at what has been added to my lenses. If something is off-topic, I delete it.

Usually, I click on the link to see what was added. If I like it, I’ll click the up-arrow on my lens and vote for it.

The more up-votes, the higher the link will appear in that list.

Now, I’ve been remiss in looking through the CafePress shops in this lens, but I’m going to rectify that omission in the next few days by visiting those shops and voting for the ones I like.

I made some changes to the lens this evening. Instead of showing just the top 25 lenses (based on vote count), the lens is now showing all of them. I also removed the option to vote down a store in the list.

Still, I wonder why someone would build a store at CafePress, want to sell their merchandise, would add a link to their store on my lens, but would neglect the simple act of voting for their store and asking their friends to do the same.

Lack of understanding? Being too scattered in what they’re doing? Lazy?

I’m not going to make that mistake.

If you visit my Promote Your CafePress Store lens, I hope you’ll take the time to click the up-arrow next to my store, John Dilbeck – Shirts, Mugs, and Hats : CafePress.com. Currently, it’s at the top of the list with only two votes! Hopefully, after writing about it, my store will stay at the top of the list, or at least near the top.

If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. I created the list with the anticipation that CafePress shop owners would list their store, and ask their friends to vote for it. I’m hoping other visitors to the lens will look at the stores in the list and vote for their favorites. Maybe the best stores will rise to the top, eventually.

Helping my friends promote their shops

Originally, I created the lens because I had friends with CafePress shops who were not selling their merchandise. Some of them had some high-quality designs, so the lack of sales must have been due to the lack of proper marketing.

Now, I know that one link on a lens will not create an overwhelming rush of customers to your store with their credit cards outstretched as they join in a mad frenzy of shopping, but it is a start.

Promote your shop

Have you taken that first step? If you have a CafePress shop, have you added a link to your store on this lens? Don’t forget to reload the page and vote for your shop.

Have you promoted your shop anywhere online? How are you attracting visitors to your shop so they’ll buy products with your designs?

Squidoo Marketing Community

A few months ago, I started the Squidoo Marketing Community so my fellow lensmasters could share ideas, help each other, and do a better job of marketing using their Squidoo lenses. There’s even a CafePress Shops group there so we can focus on discussing ways to promote our CafePress designs.

CafePress Affiliate Marketing Program

Did you know that CafePress has an affiliate marketing program managed through CommissionJunction.com? They do, and it pays pretty good commissions.

As a shop owner, I welcome sales by affiliates and I’m happy to provide part of my profits to them for any sales they make.

As an affiliate, I’m happy to accept a commission for helping to sell someone else’s items through my marketing efforts.

As you may know, my CafePress shop is located at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com and I welcome anyone who would like to purchase my designs and/or any affiliates who would like to earn a commission by marketing my designs to your readers.

Do you have a CafePress shop?

What are you doing to promote it?

If you don’t have one, did you know that you can open your own shop for free?

An even better deal is opening your shop and upgrading it to a premium shop. You’ll be able to do much more with it. Considering all that CafePress provides, the low monthly fee for a premium shop is a real bargain.

How satisfied are you with your CafePress store?

I know everyone isn’t as satisfied with CafePress as I am.

So, what’s your experience?

What do you think?

Tell us about your CafePress shop and what you are doing to promote it.

I’m interested in your experiences with CafePress, learning more about your shops and the designs you sell, and how you’re marketing your products via CafePress.

How can we work together to help each other increase our sales and make more profits from our CafePress stores?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Do you like the new Squidoo Workshop editor?

December 18, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 14 Comments
Filed under: Poll, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses 

In the last day or so – I don’t know exactly when – Squidoo released a new Workshop editor for editing lenses.

I didn’t know about it until I was editing a couple of lenses yesterday and there it was. Everything looked totally different, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what to do.

So, I did what I normally do. I started poking around to see what would happen when I clicked on things.

In just a few minutes, I felt pretty comfortable with the new editor and started liking it.

Many things are much faster. It looks like they’re using more AJAX to speed things up.

Although I haven’t tried adding a module or changing the order of the modules on a lens, it looks like the new system will be faster. I’m going to try that later today.

Well, why wait? Hang on a second while I go edit a lens and republish it…

I have a lens about Ken Evoy that hasn’t been updated in a long time. So, let’s update it.

Ken’s role at Sitesell changed in 2008, so I wanted to add a text module for updates.

With the old Workshop, I’d have to click on the Add Modules link, go to a completely different page, add the modules I wanted, drag them to the correct order, and then go back to the editor. That took some time, especially for people on dialup connections.

With the new Workshop, I just went to the right column and clicked the plus sign next to Text module. At the bottom of the list, I clicked Add. That’s it. I wanted to change the position of the module, so I went to the next section in the right column, Reorder Modules, and dragged the title of the new text module to where I wanted it. When I clicked the Apply button, the page reloaded with the new module right where I wanted it. This was much faster than the previous method.

Once I had the new text module where I wanted, it was just a matter of writing the content and visiting a couple of sites to get the proper URLs.

Done.

Publishing the lens worked as expected and it’s now live in its updated form: Ken Evoy.

Everything that I tried worked great, but there is one thing that is a bit irritating.

I’m using a Mac and Firefox 2.

At the top of the new Workshop, there is a gray section across the top that has links to several things related to the lens, including the Publish button.

For some reason, that section deactivates the scroll bar and the scroll up button. Now, I’m an old dinosaur and I prefer the scroll arrows on each end of the scrollbar, and not next to each other. As a result of the changes in the new Workshop, I can’t scroll up by using the up arrow. This really bugged me, at first. Then I found a workaround. All I have to do is click in the scroll down part of the bar until the scroll button (what used to be called the Thumb) is below that gray section. Then, I can drag the thumb back up to find the part of the page I want to see. It’s a bit annoying, but easy enough to work around.

All things considered, I like the new Workshop. I’m sure they’ll get the bugs worked out in the next few days.

So, what do you think?

I’m looking forward to your thoughts and comments.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is Squidoo a part of your marketing mix?

December 17, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 34 Comments
Filed under: CafePress, Communities, Lenses, Marketing, Poll, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing 

I am a huge fan of Squidoo and use it as a major part of my marketing mix.

I recommend Squidoo for a number of reasons. The lenses are easy to build and you can always go back and modify them whenever you want. It’s free to use. They even pay you to use their free service – how’s that for a deal!

Why do they call it a lens?

Squidoo calls it a lens, actually one page on their site, because you can focus the page on a particular topic. Not every lensmaster does this, but the more successful ones tightly focus a lens on just one subject. If you want to cover multiple subjects, you can always create new lenses, and Squidoo offers several ways to help you cross-promote your related lenses.

Are you a Squidoo lensmaster?

I am happy to be a squidoo lensmaster and I currently have about 70 lenses. I had more, but had to delete almost 50 of them when one of the companies I was promoting changed direction. It’s time to start creating new lenses about the topics in which I’m interested.

Here’s my profile page: John Dilbeck, Squidoo Lensmaster.

If you examine this page, you’ll see that in addition to listing all my lenses, I can customize the page to link to other sites, including this blog, my Cafepress store, my Lulu store (which needs lots of work next year), my profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more.

If you’re reading this, I invite you to follow me on Twitter and become my friend on Facebook.

I think you can see at a glance that your Squidoo lensmaster page is a good way to link to other sites that are important to you.

If you get serious about Squidoo, you may want to create your own lensography to list your lenses in whatever way you want to present them. Here’s my main lensography (you can have more than one): Who is John Dilbeck?

Now, remember that you don’t have to build a lensography about yourself, although it is recommended to keep track of all your lenses and to present them however you want. You can build multiple lensographies.

Let’s say that you are promoting a particular product or service and you want to have multiple lenses, each of which discusses a major feature or benefit. You can create a lens about the main topic and then link to each of the sub-lenses. Even though each page is totally separate on Squidoo, you can present them organized logically and all together. That gives you a lot of flexibility.

Do you have a blog?

If so, you need to create a lens about it.

Why? Because you can tell people about your blog, syndicate your RSS feed, and get the benefit of Squidoo’s high rankings in the search engines.

For instance, I have a lens for this 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog.

Do you have a CafePress shop?

How would you like to promote not only your store and the products within it, but also be able to promote other products sold on Cafepress – and earn some money doing it?

CafePress has an affiliate program on Commission Junction, and it pays a nice commission when you sell other people’s products. However, just by building a Squidoo lens, you can promote products without having to join at CJ.

But, you’ll make more money if you sell your own products from your lenses.

I have a CafePress shop at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com and sell products just about every day.

I created a lens, John Dilbeck’s Shirts, Mugs, and Hats, where I link to the store and some of my best-selling items. There’s also a section where you can add a link to your Cafepress store, and I show random products from searches farther down the lens. I earn money on every sale, and you can do the same thing. It just takes a little time and creativity.

I even created a lens mainly designed to help you promote your CafePress shop. Several dozen shop owners have taken advantage of this, but few have gone back after adding their shops and voted them up higher in the list. Always remember to reload the page after adding something to a Plexo list so you can vote for it.

Come and Promote Your CafePress Store.

By the way, did you know that you can open a CafePress shop for free? Once you’re serious about it, you may want to upgrade to a pro shop. I did, and it’s basically free for me since my first couple of sales every month pays the fee and the rest of my sales are all profit. Not a bad deal.

Learn how to get started at CafePress and Make Your Own T-Shirts.

Promote Your Favorite Products and Services at Squidoo

As you may already be aware, one of the services I enjoy promoting the most is Site Build It! I’m both a satisfied customer and a very happy affiliate.

I have several lenses where I promote Site Build It!.

One of my most popular lenses is Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion and I invite you to visit the lens, if you’re interested.

I think one reason this lens is popular is because I help other fellow SBIers promote their sites and lenses there. If you are an SBIer and have a website powered by Site Build It!, you are welcome to submit your site to the appropriate module on that lens. If you have lenses about SBI, there is a place you can add it, too.

You’ll note that I even welcome affiliate lenses from competing 5 Pillar affiliates.

As I have time, and as more services are announced at SBI, I’ll be adding more lenses discussing the benefits of those services.

Hint: I can’t tell you any more right now, but Sitesell will be announcing an exciting new educational service in about three weeks. Stay tuned for more information. I was on a conference call about it, just this afternoon, and I think there will be people who will want to take advantage of this new service. That’s all I can say, right now.

Squidoo offers much more

There are many modules that can be added to lenses to help you promote what you’re doing and help people find what you’ve written.

They offer a Twitter module where you can show your latest tweets.

Lijit.com has a special module so people can search your content via their search engine. When you add it to a lens, you can specify which lenses to include in the search results.

By going directly to Lijit.com, you can get code to add their search to your blogs and sites, too. You can see it in action in the right column of this blog.

Want to sell products from Amazon? There are modules designed to make it easy to do just that.

It would take a lot of blog posts to cover all that Squidoo offers to help you accomplish what you want, so I’m going to stop here.

How do you become a lensmaster

It’s easy to start building lenses on Squidoo. Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it. Do it now, while you are thinking about it.

Remember, you can start simply and then expand your lens(es) whenever you want. I edited three of my lenses and republished them while I was writing this. It’s pretty easy once you learn how to do it.

Learn more from other Squidoo marketers

I would like to invite you to join us on the Squidoo Marketers community.

Come and learn from people who are using Squidoo in their marketing mix. Share what you know. Tell us about your lenses. Promote your CafePress shops.

It’s a friendly little community, and I’m looking forward to you joining us and participating there.

What’s your opinion?

So, what’s your opinion of using Squidoo as part of your marketing mix? I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts, opinions, and comments about your experiences with, or lack thereof, using Squidoo.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Vote Now for the 2008 Giant Squid Awards

December 15, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 15 Comments
Filed under: Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing 

From the introduction of the lens:

Welcome to the 2008 Giant Squid Awards! We’ve hand picked over 100 Giants in 15 Categories for you to vote on along with “Best Lensography” and “Giant Squid of the Year”.

Now sit back, relax and take a look at these fabulous lenses. I know it’s going to be hard to decide because all these lenses are truly amazing…but there can only be one winner. So get ready, get set, start VOTING…once per category, please!

PS – Everyone can vote! So blog, e-mail, create a lens and get creative about getting votes for yourself and your favorite lenses.

Vote Now for the 2008 Giant Squid Awards

Act on your dream!

JD

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Can AWeber and Squidoo Work Together?

November 17, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 7 Comments
Filed under: Aweber Autoresponders, Marketing, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Web Services, email marketing 

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

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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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