More Squidoo and Digging.

So it was time for another Squidoo lens. Rememember when I was talking about recycling materials? Well this lens (like my other chess lenses so far) was first created as part of a chess help document I made for my chess club at university, it then went on to be made into a part of a blog on my Facebook account and now it is on Squidoo for all the world to see!

My new page is about counting power to help beginners improve their game and you can look through my page here: www.squidoo.com/beginnerschess-countingpower

Notice that I included a few of my chess T-shirt designs around the page but not too many that would detract from the readability of the article.

I've also broadened my social bookmarking slightly by opening an account with Digg. Digg is one of the best established social bookmarking sites and has a large following. Opening an account is easy and you can add links to your profile (see mine here and add me as a friend)!

You can also easily integrate the possibility for visitors to 'dig' your site by integrating a button like the one I have to the left under my profile information... see it? Click it! click it now!!!

There are several different types of Digg buttons which I will be investigating tomorrow.

Blogging the bloggers and reaching out.

Today I have started to try and find people who might be interested in my chess designs. I found a chess blog by Susan Polgar which seemed very comprehensive and professional and have emailed her to see if she would be interested in having a look at my designs.

I also posted a new topic in a popular chess site (www.chess.com) and am hoping to get some feedback on my designs. Having finished my first Squidoo Beginners Chess page I will also start building my next one on the The Values of the Pieces.

Stumbling social bookmarking and Ezinearticles

Finding your way around the Stumble Upon site isn't particularly intuitive. You wonder whether you're logged in or not (before realising that as you have a toolbar installed which has to be able to connect to the site when you make a review you are pretty much always 'logged in'). Its also just not straight forward to navigate. To get your profile/own part of the site you have to click 'home' even though you would normally expect home to be simply the domain name... it isn't.

However submitting your sites to Stumble Upon IS very easy once you have the tool bar installed and it can be easily hidden by using ctrl-F11 (in firefox anyway).

I've reviewed all my pages now and I think its about time I start networking with bloggers who are better established. Maybe people blogging about chess, or even about online business.

Another good thing is that my two newest articles have been approved by Ezinearticles and I now have reached 'expert status' (who says the online achievement is difficult)! Although it wasn't immediately obvious why I had achieved this status I did a quick search to find out (more important to me was what difference this could make to my exposure):

"Ezinearticles.com assigns its authors "expert" status if they demonstrate through their article writing--its style and content--that they have expert knowledge on a subject." Source

"Something else worth noting is the benefit of appearing as an “expert author” at EzineArticles.com. This is a powerful credibility tool and handy search engine optimization trick. Thanks to Ezine Article’s significant presence in search engines (high PageRank and lots of backlinks) web searches for your name will often pull up your author homepage. " Source

I'm also allowed to use these funky button things:


Great!

Promoting your site by using social bookmarking!

Yesterday I promised to try and get to the bottom of what this social bookmarking was all about and why it was of interest to webmasters... well to be honest I dont have all the facts but I think I'm starting to get somewhere.

There are many different social bookmarking sites including Stumble Upon. Stumble upon is like an extension to your 'favourites' in internet explorer where you can save websites and supply a review. However it doesn't stop there. Whereas your favourites on your computer are only on your computer, when you review a site with Stumble Upon your review becomes a part of the Stumble Upon site and community. You can think of Stumble Upon being a cross between a social network and an internet directory.

I'm going to start by giving a 'thumbs up' and review of my own sites and take it from there. You need to install the tool bar to start doing your own reviews. Once you've added your review (using your newly acquired toolbar) your site should have been added to the Stumble Upon directory. You can check here (you could try it by searching for www.cafepress.com/chessgifts)!

I also found two great articles about using Stumble Upon which you can see here: and here.

Tomorrow I will be investigating deeper into the world of Stumble Upon.

Adding to your Squidoo lens piecemeal

Today I have added a little bit more to my Squidoo lens on chess pieces. As it seems that many search engines prefer sites which are regularly updated I held back on doing the whole lot in one go and will add to it each day until its completed. Once completed I will go on to my next topic (something about opening play I expect) and will build it in the same way. I have also sprinkled in my Cafepress products from my Chess Gifts shop amongst my text so for example you can see one product between my section on knights and my section on bishops.

In submitting articles to online publishers you will find that they often give you some ideas on how to promote your articles better. One quite popular suggestion both from publishers like www.1888articles.com and Squidoo is to 'favourite' your URLs in sites like Technorati and Del.Icio.US (and others).

Although I'm not sure exactly what purpose this has yet I intend to find out and will let you all know ASAP!

Recycling material - repackaging for my new articles and promoting two shops simultaneously.

If you've read yesterday's post you will know that I now have two Cafepress shops to promote Tees for Grads and Chess Gifts. Today I posted a link to my Chess Gifts shop on my Facebook page and will be sending the link to all my friends who play chess.

Now to making new articles. You may remember from my other posts that I have been working with Squidoo to help promote my shops. I have two lenses related to graduation one which features my article Graduation Gift and another where I write about taking the first steps after leaving education - Life after Graduation.

You will also know that I'm a big fan of promoting your website by submitting articles to online publishers and including your link in the resource box. Needless to say it takes a while to find the publisher, log in (or register) and go through the process for just one article. Indeed often after submitting an article they ask whether you want to submit another. So this time I will! I will submit one for the Tees for Grads shop and one for my new Chess Gifts shop.

As they become published I will put the direct links to these articles below this post:

here basically... watch this space!
So in order of the fastest to approve my articles:

1. www.infocrystals.com (chess article)
   www.infocrystals.com (graduation/career article)
2. www.1888articles.com (chess article)
   www.1888articles.com (graduation/career article)
3. www.articleindex.com (chess article)
   www.articleindex.com (graduation/career article)
   
4. www.articlesbase.com (chess article)
   www.articlesbase.com (graduation/career article)
5. www.ezinearticles.com (chess article)
   www.ezinearticles.com (graduation/career article)
   

My second cafepress shop...

I can now proudly state that I have a second Cafepress shop. There are two reasons for having more than just the Tees for Grads shop. Firstly graduation is very much a seasonal market (people only graduate and specific times of year) and so I couldn't expect to do a roaring trade all year around. Secondly if you have two shops which are equally good then you should have more chance of selling stuff.

My new category is something that doesnt go in and out of fashion and is predominantly an all year thing...chess! Chess also has quite a faithful following around the world and has been around for much longer than Cafepress and will be here for many more years to come.

I have a look at some of the other chess T-shirt designs both on Cafepress and on the net generally and I wasn't particularly impressed. Mostly quite cluttered designs featuring the whole chessboard and too many pieces. I decided (as usual) to keep my designs simple and straightforward. I brain stormed slogans for a while before coming up with a few different ones which I actually used:

• Chess the sport of kings (fairly obvious one but one that I felt was at least safe).
• En passant...its not a made up rule! (one of the last chess rules that is learned and knowing it tends to show some degree of seriousness about chess).
• Its mating season! (although many people refer to it as 'check mate' the pros generally refer to it simply as 'mate' and discuss 'mating' and 'mating positions' so I hoped this would appeal to some of the more cheeky players out there!
• Chess...its a queen's world! (a take on its a man's world for women players).
• I can mate with a knight and bishop! (one of the most difficult end games when you have only the knight (horse) and bishop with which to win.

I've filled in the tags for the images I created (so people can search for them within Cafepress itself) as well as the titles/descriptions and store details.

Tomorrow I will be collating some beginner's chess notes I have previously written into an article and submitting it to online publishers as before.

If you would like to see my Chess Gifts shop you can do so here.