KC Bead Designs now has a lens on Squidoo.com at http://squidoo.com/kcbeaddesigns .   The lens is designed to promote both the KC Bead Designs webstore and the KCBeadDesigns Jewelry and Variety eBay store.  This blog is also featured on the lens. 

There are some very interesting lens (their term for your page) published on the Squidoo site.  You can search for practically every subject and find a lens written on, for, or about it.  There are SquidU forums, top 100 lens, groups, charity organizations and more you can search for and check out.  I found google adsense ads on every page as well as advertisements and opportunities to list links for Amazon books, i-Tunes, and other offers.  The lensmaster is free to choose the content added to their page. After registering and filling out the form for my lens,  I was asked to complete my global payment choices.  Before filling this part out I decided to research what they were talking about.  One interesting fact I learned is that if you choose to add Amazon books to your lens and someone clicks on one of the books you list and subsequently purchases that book Amazon pays Squidoo a fee for the sale.  Each lensmaster chooses in their setup if they want to share the portion of the fee they can potentially receive with a charity.  Squidoo has a formula set up that after expenses for salaries and the website are met they share the remainder of the fee with the lensmaster where the sale originated and their chosen charity.  They tell you that in the beginning the expenses will far outweigh the earnings and the fees may be small, but multiply that by the thousands of lens being created on Squidoo.com every day and that could really add up for selected charities.  I think this is a generous incentive to get people to participate on the website.  Other sites may use something like this, but this is the first I have personally encountered.

What benefit in traffic my webstore and eBay store will receive from Squidoo is yet to be determined.  Promoting an online business is hard work and a task that you must keep up with on a regular basis.  Utilizing sites like Squidoo and MySpace gives me another tool to add to my box.  Hopefully, my toolbox will get the job done!

If you haven’t noticed the addition to the sidebar menu, I have added a Photo Gallery link where you can see pictures of my newest items before I even write about them.  Thanks for visiting and sharing my reflections.

You are invited to browse and shop in my stores: KC Bead Designs and KCBeadDesigns Jewelry and Variety anytime – 24/7. I hope you subscribe to “Reflections . . .” and enjoy sharing my passion for artisan jewelry.

’till next time!

Cheryl Skeens,
Jewelry Artist/Designer

KC Bead Designs
KCBeadDesigns Jewelry and Variety
KC Bead Designs on Squidoo
KC Bead Designs on MySpace
~ New Items Added -eBay
Jewelry Artist Direct