Scary, Cool, and Simply Awesome Jack-O-Lanterns

My Jack-O-Lanterns page has always done well in October and November since I  published it in 2009. Always tier 1 in October. I hope for the best this year too. It is currently featured on Squidoo front page, so that’ll help a lot (hopefully will also help my other Halloween lenses).

The page has obviously been redesigned a few time. The last redesign was a few weeks ago to change the now defunct Flickr voting plexo to a regular link list plexo with images (rather neat idea, because you get the photos AND the voting. You can vote for your favorite carved pumpkin  here), and to change the caption image that was no longer under creative commons. That happens quite often, images that were available under a CC license getting switch by the owner to a copyright image. It is worth checking your images from time to time. Luckily I was able to find a similar photo at Shutterstock. I do have an “Images on Demand”  plan there and honestly I don’t regret it. Although most of my images are from CC sources, it’s nice to have access at great looking professional stock photos. If you hate the idea of having to subscribe to a plan, you can try iStockphoto: no plan needed you can just buy directly the images you need (but a plan is economical in the long run, I have a plan there too). Before you do subscribe for a plan on either of these stock photo sites, check for coupon codes, often there is one available and it will give you a little saving!

Also, both sites offer a free “photo of the week” and they are often quite interesting. And free is free!

Squidoo Tip: Twitter on a Lens Might Cost you Sales!

This is something I realized recently while updating a sale lens. This is something many lensmasters do to get click outs. This is something I was doing too until I got that light bulb moment: I, We, use Twitter Search on our lens. That is fine on most lenses. It gets click outs and click outs are good.

BUT this is an awful choice on sale lens. On a sale lens,you want to sell widget number 2. Using a twitter search for “widget number 2″ will give you adequate results. The problem is that most/many of these results are in fact people linking to Amazon (or other sale pages) with their affiliate ID… these people are in fact competing directly with you. And a click out on a tweet might result in less sales for you. You certainly don’t want that much direct competition on your own page.

Here’s what I mean: This is a screenshot from my Kathe Kruse Baby Toys  lens.

twitter search on squidoo

click to enlarge

ALL but one goes directly to sales page (Amazon or others). The other one goes to a company FaceBook page that actually specialized in that kind of dolls and baby toys (indirect competition). I DO link to websites where you can find widget number 2 because it is good business to give my visitors other options (not everyone like Amazon). If you check here on my Kathe Kruse lens, I do link to websites selling that specific doll. But I choose where I link. I don’t let the random Twitter Search do it for me.

So now, I am busy removing any Twitter Search modules from my Squidoo sale lenses. Do you use Twitter Search on your sale lens. If so, maybe you should take a peek and see what kind of links it pulls!

Magazine Closer 379: The Infamous Kate Middleton Pictures

Closer may have lost the lawsuit, but they sure did get all the exposure (excuse the pun) they wanted. As of today, the magazine was still available at newsstands and new copies were even delivered that day to make sure everyone gets their hands on it (Ok sorry, I will stop now).

5 Pages of topless Kate. Not sure what the hell she was thinking. It’s perfectly all right here in France (the magazine cover shows her breasts and no one blinks), but when you are the Duchess of Cambridge, you sure know about paparazzi?? No?

If anyone want a copy, I still have a few available (if they are sold out, you won’t be able to complete checkout anyway). Check some of my eBay accounts feedback for reassurance: fanfreluche-a-gogo or fanfreluche-collectibles

Oh and the black marks won’t be on your magazine, I added these to the scan to preserve the innocents.

 

My price is 19.99$ shipping included to anywhere is the world. 

My son’s birthday: pirates and playmobil

My son’s birthday is coming! It’s on june 25th. This year he’ll get 2 birthday parties (and 2 cakes.. hmmm). One next week with us, my mom in law and some of his friends and another one the week after once we are in Canada with my family.

This year it will be a pirate party. Nothing fancy, just a couple of decorations, a treasure chest pinata and some gold coins for the kids. He wants a strawberry cake “same as last year mom please”, so this is going to be easy: I bought it at the bakery downstairs. Not cheap but well worth it: lots and lots of fresh strawberries in a thick fresh cream custard on a light vanilla biscuit. I’ll make some banana cakes, blueberries muffins and chocolate cupcakes to complete.

I got some cool pirate invitations (those you can personalized) and for gifts he’ll get two sets of pirates Playmobil (because they are not made in China….both of these are made in Germany):

Pirate Invitations

playmobil pirate not made in china

How to Replace your Flickr Gallery in Squidoo

Many of us use the amazing Flickr gallery module on our Squidoo lenses. Unfortunately, this is the end of it. Today, HQ announced that they are going to retire it.

There is no easy way to replace these galleries, but there is a way. By using this tool here: Item Box Builder
It requieres many steps and may not be worth it on some lenses. It’s all up to you. Since Flickr seems to randomly block images displayed on squidoo you will need to uplaod the image on your own image hosting. Here’s what to do:

First choose one Flickr image you want to use (or any other).

Right click the image and save it. upload to your image hosting.

Grab the image link and head back to squidtool

Go to the item list and click to have it open and add your link to the image field (click the little arrow to make sure the image looks ok). Then fill the other 2 fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have set all your images, you can play with the other fields to change the look of your gallery (colors, font sizes etc).

Preview and grab the HTML. Paste into a text module and voila.

Here’s a quick one I did with some zazzle posters: The World’s Deadliest Animals (it takes you to the right module).

Now it’s much bigger than the gallery module, so those clickouts might be lower. You can make up to 3 in a row.  Choose wisely.

Load speed might suffer too, not sure yet. I would limit to 6 or 9 items. Anyway 6 items counts for  a little over half of the allotted characters in a text module anyway.

ADDENDUM (Saturday June 16): If you don’t mind a lot of coding, please read how to do a thumbnail gallery on Greekgeek blog here: Squidoo’s Flickr Module Is Retiring: How to Recover.