Black Friday has come and gone. I tried experimenting with search marketing for my store and spent quite a bit of money, but haven’t seen any sales. I did get a lot of traffic, and maybe I’ll see some customers later. I know I’ve researched plenty of things on the web, but didn’t actually buy anything until much later.

On the bright side (there’s always a bright side), I’m seeing more traffic than ever, even discounting the boost on DIY Auto Backup Camera: How To Install A Backup Camera On Your Car, Truck, SUV, Or RV from people following back to it from my store. I’m seeing a boost in traffic, especially on my holiday related Lenses. Natural Gifts And Decorations For Christmas and Eco-Friendly Christmas Gifts, Presents and Decorations, both published last week, are my top ranked Lenses, and I’m happy to say a bulk of the traffic is coming from Google!

Big thinks to GypsyOwl! I have three Lenses in her Holiday Shopping Cooperative and two of them are featured: Natural Gifts And Decorations For Christmas and Rock N’ Roll Holidays | Celebrate The Holidays With Rock Music.

Big thanks to rms (Robin), I have two Lenses on her “Best Christmas Ever Top 100 List” at the Best Christmas Ever Headquarters!

Big thanks to StarryEyes, four of my Lenses are feature on the front page of her Holiday Fun Headquarters under the Christmas Fun section!

Big thanks to lisadh, two of my Lenses are featured on the front page of her ‘Tis the Season for Christmas Lenses Group!

I was also able to get 3 more Lenses published:

• Eco-Friendly Gifts For Her
• Eco-Friendly Gifts For Him
• Cayenne Pepper

Thirty-four Lenses completed, just sixteen more to make the minimum!

My progress this week was hampered by the discovery that I had made an error in all my Amazon affiliate links, so I had to go back and fix them.

I did manage to finish Old Fashioned Christmas, Eco-Friendly Christmas Gifts, Presents and Decorations, Natural Gifts And Decorations For Christmas and Using Spirulina - What Is Spirulina Good For?

I still have four WIP Lenses and I’m sure I have more than enough ideas to get to 50 and beyond. I’m in this for the long haul!

I Took The Handmade Pledge! is my latest lens on Squidoo!

I am very excited about this concept, and I think you’ll find it interesting, too. Take a look…

Busy As A Bee is a good way to describe my last couple of weeks, and I have spent a lot of spare time either creating or updating web pages and lenses, as well as propping them up with different promotions. Poddyland has ended up taking 2nd place, but to me at least the blog here is important, and I like to think that I have a growing audience among both Squidoo Lensmasters and other friends from around the world.

We are coming up to the halfway point between when my girlfriend headed back to her home in England and when I go over for Christmas, which is wonderful! Having spent 9 1/2 weeks together it’s hard having to spend 2 months apart. And so being 4,500 miles apart, the weekends are still somewhat lonely, despite us both having webcams and phone calls being cheap these days, there is no substitute for being together.

The weekend as always went by far too quickly…

Friday as usual I finished work early, and as it was still nice, I headed down to the pool to get a quick workout before the sun went down. Then it was time to grab a bit to eat, and log into NASA TV in preparation for the Shuttle Launch. This is something special for Debbie and I, since we spent several days up at Cape Canaveral last October to watch a launch, and the experience is amazing. Well Friday night the skies were completely clear, and as I live on the 7th floor of a condo building and the balcony faces north, we are lined up for a great view, even though Cape Canaveral is 150 miles away. The internet feed must have been about 30 seconds behind, since the countdown from 10 down to Lift Off had only just begun when we could see the bright red glow of the rockets propelling the craft up into the skies. You could also just about make out the separation too, before it became just a shooting star and disappeared behind a cloud as it headed over the ocean. Then it was time to take a walk, which was really nice on a warm evening, strolling along the fairways of the golf course around which the condos are built. You are away from the lights and trees a bit more, so the stars shine brighter, and it’s very peaceful.

Saturday I had to get up early, and headed off to the Toyota dealership to take my car back in - 3rd Saturday in a row! The previous week they had replaced a part in the rack and pinion on my car, which cost me close to $1,200 (ouch) but led to the car making clonking noises as I trned the wheel. They took hours trying to locate the problem, and now tell me it needs new shock absorbers and engine mountings. Another $1,000, but luckily I shouldn’t have to do this for a few months, however the noises are still there every time I turn a corner, which is not good. While the car was being looked at, I took my daughters out for breakfast, then to the park, where it rained a bit, but they were having fun on the swings in the rain. However taking them back to their Mother I got into trouble for getting their clothes damp, which would cause her extra work getting them ready to go to the theater in the afternoon. Well she still had to get them changed and showered, it wasn’t going to be any extra, but as usual she has to find a reason to find fault, it’s her way… Headed back home, via Wallyworld (Walmart) to do my groceries, filled up the car ($2.13 a gallon which I am very grateful for), then hit the pool, the sauna, the pool again, and another long walk before bed.

Sunday I woke up really tired. Sometimes the sauna will do that to me, I fel sleep coming on Saturday night, but forced myself to watch the end of a football game and got overtired, subsequently I had trouble sleeping. I wish I wouldn’t do that! It’s so much better to just get a good night’s sleep. However, between watching the end of the game and trying to keep up with all my messages at Tagfoot I overdid it, and subsequently regretted it. So Sunday I didn’t do a lot until lunchtime, other than grab a bite for breakfast, washed the car, chatted with Debbie on the webcam for a while, did some promotion of my new lens I’ve Been There and also Debbies lens on Christmas Crackers, and then since the skies were blue and it was a lovely day I headed off to the beach.

The skies were blue, that’s true, but there was a coo breeze, and the temperatures were in the low 60’s. However there were quite a few people down at the beach, ranging from girls in bikinis to people wrapped up in sweaters and hoods. It’s amazing when the weather cools off how some people feel the cold and others don’t. I went from where I usually park, north up to where there is an inlet to the intracoastal waterway, somewhat over a mile, walking along the waters edge all the way, watching a few people playing frisbee, and some surfers trying out on the waves. Walked there and back, which took just over an hour, and then decided to be one of the people who were brave enough to take a dip, you could count them on the fingers of one hand… There were some good waves coming in, the tide was way out, so the water surged in strongly, great for body surfing. A bit of an undertow as well, but not strong enough for dangerous rips. I did some good body surfing (well I think I am good, but since I haven’t seen a video of myself I have no reason to think otherwise, and I have yet to hear cries of Thar She Blows which is a good thing…) Of course it was nice in the water, but the cold wind made it a little chilly getting out… Well back home, a bite to eat, watched one of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race, more attempts to catch up with my email and messages on Tagfoot, and off to bed.

Well that was my seemingly eventful weekend. I hope yours was as good or better.

SQUIDOO STATUS AND LENS UPDATES

In the last week I have been working on a new lens, the concept for came to me suddenly and so far it’s doing pretty well. The lens is I’ve Been There and it’s about some of the places that I have travveled to around the world, through Squidoo lenses. I don’t have my own lenses on everywhere, so I am hunting around to find other good lenses that fit in. Well that’s the first part of the lens, the second part is where you come in…

Other lensmasters are invited to tell the story of some of the places that they have been to, and to then submit up to 5 lenses about those places, either their lenses or from other lensmasters.

For each submission, I am creating a Text Module for the story, and a Featured Lens Module for the lenses. If you want to get fancy, send me the text/html for your module, complete with formatting, pictures, whatever, and I will be happy to add that.

I think it’s a pretty unique lens and I am hoping it takes off well. So far it looks like it might, but it’s early days yet. If you know of a lensmaster who has lenses on travel and places around the world and isn’t on the lens yet, please let them know that this lens exists. I would appreciate it. Plus, if you have some of your lenses listed, the better my lens does, the more exposure your lenses are going to get as well.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 70

NEW LENSES
I’ve Been There
The Daily Joke October 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
The Daily Joke October 2008
My Pet Peeves
I’ve Been There
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth

My King Crimson obsession continues with the publication of The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp, based on the band that would become King Crimson. Continuing with the King Crimson theme, I made three video showcases: In The Court Of The Crimson King Video Showcase, In The Wake Of Poseidon - King Crimson Video Showcase and Lizard - King Crimson Video Showcase.

Finishing off this week is a lens on singer, songwriter, bass guitarist and guitarist John Wetton. Wetton has worked with many different groups in his career, he is currently with the reunited super group, Asia, which he founded in 1981, before that he co-founded the band U.K. with drummer Bill Bruford when they failed to convince Robert Fripp to reform King Crimson. All three had been members of KC before Fripp disbanded the group in 1974.

I’m up to 27 lenses published lenses with 4 still in WIP. The Wetton lens ended up being much larger than anticipated, I think I have more modules in it than any other I’ve built so far. I may be putting aside music related lens building for a bit, I have a bunch of ideas for non-music related lenses, and plan of working on them for the upcoming week.

I had wanted to publish more, I even held off posting in this blog because I had only published my 18th Lens, Robert Fripp - The Man Behind King Crimson by Sunday, but last night I was able to publish four more, they are kind of a team:

• Hotel Pillows
  
• Hotel Comforters And Feather Beds
• Hotel Bedding Sets | Bedding Featured in Many Hilton® Hotels
• Hotel Bedding Sets | Bedding Featured in Many Marriott® and Ritz-Carlton® Hotels

The Robert Fripp Lens was started when I originally built my Lens on King Crimson. I seems like it took long enough, but I finally managed to get back to it, and finish it! Unfortunately, while putting the final touches on it, I discovered that almost every video I was linked to on the King Crimson Lens was no longer on YouTube, so I spent a good part of my Saturday replacing them. That’s part of what delayed my Lens building over the weekend.

Another thing that delayed me last week was an order that came into my store from a foriegn country. I don’t know if anyone else has these problems with their stores, but the order came from a country that doesn’t have coverage by PayPal yet. The card failed AVS, but may have been a good card. PayPal handles my checkout, and they will process a valid card from any country, but if it fails AVS, and I approve the order, I am unprotected if the card turns out to be stolen.

I spent too much time Thursday night/Friday morning researching my options, because I really didn’t like the idea of turning away a sale, if it is legit, but I really can’t aford to take a chance on the order turning out to be fraudulent. In the end I contacted the customer telling them that they needed to confirm their address with PayPal. This was actually turning them away, since they can’t confirm it because of the country they are in.

After that, I made sure that my checkout won’t allow orders from counties that do not have PayPal yet.

Finally, did I mention I’ve been hanging out at the Squidoo Chat Room? Learning first hand about Loyalis and his strageties is very inspiring, if you haven’t read it yet, this post is a good taste of what I’ve been hearing: The Single Biggest Tip I Can Give Squidoo Lensmasters. It’s also great talking to the other Squids that hang out there, and I’m only there a few hours each night. I have no idea what I’m missing when I’m not there!

So, 22 Lenses publish, 4 WIP’s, and a ton of ideas for the future! 

I’m thoroughly addicted to Twitter, it happens to be a whole lot of fun and is also a pretty good way to promote your business if you do it right.  I put together a lens all about it.

Using Twitter to Promote your Handmade Products

If it was not for the Internet and my search to find other WAHM’s, Jacque and I would have never ‘met’! I joined a couple of programs she offers on her website, Hometowne Market, and the rest, so to speak, is history. Now we chat every single day on Yahoo Messenger, connect on the phone occasionally, share co-ownership in two online groups (WAHM 101 and Deal Divas), and we are excited to be building our empire together

Jacque’s wry sense of humor always leaves me smiling. Her strength to carry on as a single mom, college student, working full-time, and building her online presence is a testament to me that mom’s really do rock! And yes I did drag her, kicking and screaming over to Squidoo! Although now, it’s just a dull grrr!, as she’s learning her way around. Enjoy our interview and I’d love it if you stopped by Jacque’s places on the Internet to see for yourself why I’ve aligned myself with this awesome woman!

What would you like people to know about you? I want people to know that everything I do is for my child, even if it means cutting back on some of my responsibilities. I am determined to succeed in school and with my business, but not at the cost of her or my everyday happiness.  I believe in never giving up and always moving forward.  I also believe that life without coffee would not be worth living,  lol! I believe in miracles, fairies, happy endings, healing hugs and puppy kisses.  I am a kid at heart and being stuck in a grown up world does not effect my ability to be silly.

If there was one thing you could change about yourself what would it be and why? Actually, I am going through a self introspection right now and I have decided that I need to learn how to de-stress my life and regain my joy in the everyday.  A friend loaned me a book recently that has changed my outlook on how I see the world.  Keep an eye out for a SquidLit all about it.

Your website promotes and supports WAHM’s, what inspired this design? With the ecomony being as it is these days, everyone is struggling to get by and be able to provide for their families. WAHM’s are just like you and me and the way I see it, it’s us against the “Big Guys”. Why should be help the millionares get richer by paying them for an item that we can get from a fellow WAHM that not only could use the business but actually appreciates it. I am extremely anti-mall this season ~ I’m shopping WAHM.

Why do you Squidoo? Well, there’s this chick I know :::wink::: that seems to think I have some talent at writing. I have always wanted to write, but was always afraid to share my thoughts ~ I have insecurity issues. This friend bullied me into my first lens and now I am hooked!  Even if nobody ever reads them, I find it very therapeutic just to put my thoughts out there.  If someone learns something, gets a laugh or smile out of it or even looks at something from a different perspective ~ that’s just icing on the cake.

Any final thoughts? If there were to be one thing I would like people to bring away from this interview, it would be a stronger belief in themselves ~ that they can accomplish whatever they set out to. Keep your friends and families close to you and there is nothing that can stop you from achieving your dream! Also remember to stop once in a while to enjoy what you have already accomplished.

I’ve changed the theme of this blog, the old one was beautiful, but did not work very well.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve also replaced my Avatar, not just here, but on every forum/social media site I belong to. If you still see one of my old Avatars around, then it’s some place I don’t visit often, and I’ll change it the next time I log in there.

So here’s the old image of this tree found in the woods behind my house, I’ve been using it, or variations of it as my Avatar for a while now.

With tips I got from GIMP Tutorial Series Guide - Free Coloring Pages and How To Make - Mosaic - Filmstrip Feature and Cutting Image Backgrounds for better eBay Pictures | Gimp I was able to take this version:

Which is the same tree from a different angle, and merged it with a shot of my real face to get this:

My inspiration while doing this was the album cover for Styx’s seventh album, “The Grand Illusion“:

I had it on vinyl!

(so if you think your life is complete confusion

’cause your neighbor’s got it made

just remember that it’s a grand illusion

and deep inside we’re all the same)

In other news, I’ve manged to publish three new Lenses this week. Rock N’ Roll Holidays | Celebrate The Holidays With Rock Music is my first holiday themed Lens. Here I thought I was getting a head start on the coming holidays, but after publishing I found that these two directories were already off to a running start for the Holiday season: Christmas Directory of Lenses and Squidoo Home for The Holidays. I added my Lens to both!

Also, I was amazed that this Lens came out of WIP within an hour of being published! I published it, then went to eat, and when I came back I was suprised to find it out of WIP already. I spent the next three hours working on a problem I found in the way I was using the new Amazon MP3 modules (if you come across a problem working with them, drop me a line, maybe I can help - you can find me on twitter: as CleanerLife).

The next one was an experiment with MagicBuilder, or maybe you can tell from the title: Testing MagicBuilder! Special thanks to Rock_The_Ice for feedback on this and the Rock N’ Roll Holidays Lens. Also thanks to a_willow for encouraging me to keep the experiment. She said I should make it into a tutorial, but I decided to turn it into a review instead.

The third Lens is my first attempt at a food & cooking Lens, Ants On A Log | Heathy Snacks For Kids Of All Ages, which was pretty simple and fun to do. Believe it or not, I was making Ants On a Log as a snack for myself, when I decided to make a Lens about it!

And I had a short celebration on Friday because two of my Lenses reached the 1st tier at the same time. The celebrating sort of died down when the lensrank update came through on Saturday because while The Love Of Dragons: Dragons In Books And On Video continued to rise in rank, DIY Auto Backup Camera: How To Install A Backup Camera On Your Car, Truck, SUV, Or RV dropped back to the 2nd tier. Still that’s pretty good since the How To Install a Backup Camera Lens is just over 2 weeks old, and it’s had 66 hits from Google, now it is starting to get hits from MSN, too. I still haven’t been actively trying to build backlinks for it, either.

17 Lenses published, 4 in progress — I should try to have them, and like 31 - 34 more done by the December deadline for becoming a Giant Squid, think I can do it?

This week has been wild, and the first thing is the page I published on 10/09/08, DIY Auto Backup Camera: How To Install A Backup Camera On Your Car, Truck, SUV, Or RV, which I announced in my last post, received almost 20 visits from Google in it’s first week (over 20 by now). I didn’t even realize this was happening at first, I just figured a bunch of my fans from Squidoo were visiting.

I began to realize something was different about this Lens when I noticed it was slowly rising in lensrank over my older, more established Lenses. My Tips And Ideas For Designing A Successful Website Lens has been my highest ranked Lens almost since I first published it, but it was over taken by The Love Of Dragons: Dragons In Books And On Video because of the increased traffic from entering the Squid’s Choice Awards, but my new DIY Lens was my 2nd highest ranked Lens only a week after being published.

All this, and at that point just 1 rating, 1 comment and one favorite (thanks mulberry). This seems related, Captain Squid’s latest blog post is Why Squidoo Ratings Swaps don’t work, check it out if you haven’t already.

Looking at the statics, I found all the Google traffic listed, and there 10 clickouts. This was incredible, since I had done my regular promotion: I posted here and on 8 other blogs. I posted to Lensroll, Squidom and SquidPoint (first time I did all three on the same day), but didn’t add to Delicious and Digg until a week after I published (well after all the Google traffic).

One thing I know I did try to do was use “backup camera” or “wireless backup camera” in the tile of 8 modules, I also used those words as often as possible in the text and pictures (as you may or may not realize, the picture file names aren’t the same as the description the reader sees, Google sees the picture file name,  and counts it towards how often words or phrases are used on a page, or so I’ve been told).

I’ll be watching this Lens and will still try to make backlinks with social bookmarking sites like I usually do, but I sure hope I can duplicate this in the future.

I’ve been hanging out over at Captain Squid’s Squidoo Chat Room, and was able to hear an interview with Loyalis (he’s Captain Squid, in case you didn’t know), about his history on Squidoo, and It fired my up to start adding more Lenses to my own collection. So, my three newest Lenses are VR3 Bluetooth Hands Free Cell Phone Adapters, VR3 Backup Cameras and Car Safety Products, and VR3 High Quality Audio, Video & High Tech Navigation For Your Car, Truck, RV or SUV.

Never did three in one week before!

In just about every marketing forum you visit, there’s a lot of
talk about the power of a Squidoo lens and how marketers are
welcomed on the site and free to promote their own links.

A lens is a single-page website on Squidoo.com.

Many marketers are finding their niche lens on page 1 (sometimes in
the #1 position) on Google, but others can’t even get indexed.

Part of the problem is the quality of the lens.

As you know – not everyone is an expert at everything. You have to
pick and choose what you want to excel at, and for building Squidoo
lenses, I think it’s better to turn to two pros who specialize in
building lenses from scratch and optimizing them *for you* rather
than spending time getting to understand what works on Squidoo and
what doesn’t.

Tiffany Dow, who literally “wrote the book on Squidoo,” and Lewis
Smile - a Giant Squid who has won lens of the day three time and
built hundreds of lenses - teamed up to launch a service for the
rest of us who want to leverage the site, but don’t have time (or
patience) to take the do it yourself route.

Since they launched their service, they’ve sold hundreds of
custom-made lenses. Topics have included dog training, acne, the
law of attraction, and hundreds of other niches. The quality of the
lenses is far superior to what most of us can do ourselves.

The VIP Niche Expert pack (which includes four custom-made lenses),
helps you dominate Squidoo as an authority figure in your niche.
They link them all together so that traffic is funneled in between
your own lenses and then directly through to your site or blog.

If you’re not already Squidooing, you’re missing out on one of the
best ways to drive free traffic to your site, so see if Lewis and
Tiffany can help you conquer the web 2.0 world before someone steps
in and claims all the glory.

You check out their website and get their help here:
click here for more information on the Squidoo Lens Building Services

Go to the site
Type in the name of someone famous.
We’ll show you the single best fan page on your favorite
writer, musician, movie star, business person or politician.
Even Michael Jackson, if you dare.
(We think you’re famous, too. Make sure there’s a page about you!)

Click Here to check it out…I started my own “fan page”

Posting the lens here now…

Blogger’s Boards

Feedback, suggestions, comments etc would be much appreciated! =]

First up, Thanks Spirituality for featuring me in her “thank you lensmaster” blog. It was unexpected, and I’m truly honored.

Now, wireless backup cameras… Yes, I’m selling these in my new store, and my big brainstorm several weeks back was to document installing one of these on my car, so I could make a Lens about installing them.

I installed the camera and tested it for two reasons, documenting the install was the second reason, the first was so I could see if I liked the product enough to promote it. I’ve had the camera for almost a year, but originally I had bought it to install on the service truck I was assigned at the company I used to work at. I was unable to install it on that truck, but held on to it because I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

When I was selling stuff on eBay to raise my feedback level, I almost sold it dirt cheap just to get some good feedback, but then decided to try to become a distributor. It took several months to set this up, and when the deal was finally coming together, I realized that I was in love with idea of the product, but really had no idea if I really like the product itself having never actually used it.

So, it was a good thing I didn’t sell it. I’ve been testing it for weeks, I really like it, and I think this Lens is a good way to promote it.

Hopefully the Lensmaking will continue, I’ve come up with a lot of ideas over the past few weeks and really would like some more Lenses in my Squidoo profile! 

I haven’t been working on any new Lenses, instead I’ve been taking a close look at the existing 10 that I’ve published so far.

My second Lens,  Tips And Ideas For Designing A Successful Website, is my highest ranked, and half the traffic is coming from Google. I spruced this up a bit first, but I still plan on doing more.

I’m more than half way through the others, but I seem to be so distracted this week. Still, even though I didn’t publish any new Lenses, I did get ideas for new ones, even filing some research for something I think may turn out to be my most ambitious Lens to date.

Besides that, I have another project pretty close to launch which I will probably use Squidoo for my initual promotion. That’s one reason I’m working on my existing Lenses so much. If I use a Lens to promote this project, it needs to as good as possible, and I can only expect some people will look at my other Lenses and judge me based on all my Lenses. (I know I would!)

Even if I didn’t publish any new Lenses, this was an exciting week: I got my first two Squid Angel blessings. I’ve been visited by Squid Angels before, and I celebrate all comments, but this is the first and second time I’ve been left comments saying I’d been blessed.

First, my Greg Lake, Not Just One Third Of Emerson, Lake & Palmer Lens was blessed by chefkeem, then a couple of days later, rockycha blessed my The Love Of Dragons: Dragons In Books And On Video Lens.

Wow! What a rush!

Speaking of my Dragon Lens, it’s entered in enslavedbyfaeries’ Squid’s Choice Awards for September which is  MYTHS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE themed. So if you’re a fan of such things, head over and check out all the great Lenses that have been entered.  Vote for your favorites! You can vote more than once, so I’ve voted on my own, but I’ve also voted on others (after I visited them to check them out, of course)!

I’ve got some pretty good competition and have no illusions of being number one, but I wouldn’t mind some more votes, if your so inclined!

I was surprise to see the new Squidoo Homepage today…

Look it gets a makeover! Stunning.

Plus, they launches today the Squidoo Magic Quickbuilder

Exciting!

We shall the see the upcoming buzz.

It’s time to brag again, I guess. My lenses got a total of 2520 visitors over the last week. This is mainly due to my spiritual quotes lens which is now found by google again. I guess a few extra external links helps a lot. Note that I still haven’t turned on ‘explore related lenses’ on that lens, so that it’s not getting links from other squidoo lenses through that feature. It is of course getting links from my own lenses and one or two others that have featured or lensrolled it. The main change however is the links from the So you want to be a Giant Squid blog and the Captain Squid blog. So I thank them. I should not forget the earlier link from the squidoo review blog by mimi/growwear. It didn’t make a difference back then, but no doubt it helped this lens get back it’s momentum with google.

But there are other changes afoot as well. I’ve been steaming towards getting a 100 lenses.
Right now I have 99, which gives me 4 days to make deadline. I should be able to make it as I generally make about one lens every 2.5 days. Also I think my lenses are all up to scratch. I was nervous about that for the giant squid deadline, but this time I’m more confident.

My latest lenses include the blogging tutorial lens I wrote about yesterday. Glad none of you were offended by that blogpost

I’ve also used squidoo to do a poll for the religious organisation I’m a part of: the Theosophical Society. It stands to make some changes in it’s regulations that would make it less democratic. And since it’s current democratic nature is one of the reasons I love the TS, I have become something of an activist on the subject. I’m using squidoo as the main forum for that activism. The polls have gotten record numbers (for my lenses anyhow) of votes within the last 24 hours. This lens will probably not make me any money at all, but it needed to be made.

Severn Suzuki is an environmental activist I found out about recently. She did a great speech in front of the UN when she was 12 and has been trying to get the world to change its act about the environment ever since. It’s a great lady.

Also donating to charity is my lens filled with lovely nature pictures. It’s based on posters found on allposters.com.

Near Death Experiences is the one main psychological phenomenon that has consistently drawn attention to ‘the spiritual’ over the past 50 years or so. I’ve put together a video showcase of it. Video showcases are an easy way to make a themed lens with little effort.

Well, I published lens on Christmas cards: Original Christmas Cards and think of it to become kind of mix: showcase of cards from Zazzle, DIY and reuse projects for cards… I should add more but for now on I don’t really have time for it since SEPTEMBER, 30 IS ONLY 7 DAYS AWAY and I still have to make 8 lenses…. Not to mention that last one must be published on September, 29th if I want it out of WIP so it’s really 6 days for 8 lenses.
So, I went for Poddys advice and gonna make several SquidWho lenses (although there is still a lots of work on them since I don’t like what computer came out with on these people!).

Rank stats:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 15
Top 100,000: 23
WIP: 17
Total: 58

My WIP number is getting better and better! Man, how to come up with time?!?

Well, I have published 2 lenses today (haven’t done a bit on Squidoo for two days ’cause whole family caught cold and had high temperature! Now we are all getting better little by little). First is on cartoon popular in Europe but produced in GB: Fifi And The Flowertots. Second is review by another book by Fyodor Dostoevsky: The idiot.

Fresh Squid group is now featuring 30 lenses by Fresh Squids. They are great and completed - one of requirements of acceptance.

Rank stats (this is from yesterday - today lens rank haven’t updated yet):
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 16
Top 100,000: 19
WIP: 14
Total: 53

Well, I have to make 9 lenses in 7 days to apply for Giant Squid… Uh, it’s really going to be close!

It’s 7.30 in the morning, here in the UK. Despite having visitors: 2 elderly parents, one extra dog, my son and his girlfriend, in addition to moi, LH (Lovely Hubby), two out of my three angels, and not forgetting our own mad hound, the house is quiet, the sun is up, the birds are singing and the air has that golden tinge, that heralds autumn. Just realised that hey, it IS autumn.

After what seemed non-stop rain through August and the first weeks of September, the forecasters got it right. We were promised lovely weather for the last couple of weeks of September and we have got it. Perhaps the peppers in the greehouse will ripen after all.

So it’a BBQ for lunch - possibly the last for the year and then I know I will take at least a day to recover from the weekend. The otosclerosis is horrible and yes, at times it does get me down. I can’t go anywhere on my own in case I get dizzy and disorientated but at least I can write, so as I keep telling myself, every cloud does have a silver lining. I would not have discovered Squidoo had I not been searching the internet about ways to earn a living writing as I can’t do anything else at the moment. Not sure I will actually ever earn masses of income but Squidoo is a start and has inspired me like nothing else has, to just write about whatever comes into my head.

I do feel a bit guilty though - my lens on David Miliband will only become really successful if someone else loses their job. But hey, Gordon Brown is a clever fellow and I guarantee he won’t be out of a job for long. And he will still be a Member of Parliament.

Have a lovely Squiday and I hope your day and the weather is exactly how you want it to be.

As I said, she is still sick - poor baby has full nose that is licking all the time and that causes her getting up all night… Feels so useless since I can’t really help her!
Haven’t made single lens in last two-three days… I’ll have to make up time - 11 days for 11 lenses!?! Hmmm… it’s going to be close!

Rank stats:

Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 19
Top 100,000: 15
Over 100,000: 1
WIP: 13
Total: 52

Today I didn’t do much on Squidoo. Baby girl got sick - full nose, got a cold so I had to give her a lot more attention.

Fresh Squid Headquarters is now having 14 Fresh lenses featured so now it looks like a group! I would like to thank Spirituality for support that she showed by paying a visit to each new member that signed in this group! Thanks Katinka!

Rank stats:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 17
Top 100,000: 17
Over 100,000: 1
WIP: 12
Total: 51

It’s review of book Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky…

Fresh Squid Headquarters is alive one day and features 5 great lenses so far! Check them out! You may find yourself pleasely surprised by quality and informations in those lenses! I know I was!

Rank stats:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 18
Top 100,000: 15
Over 100,000: 2
WIP: 12
Total: 51

Getting better little by little!

If you haven’t registered with Tagfoot yet, this is taking off really well.  It’s a lot faster than Digg, which just seems to be getting impossibly slow these days, and a lot nicer, plus all your friends are signing up too.  People are posting some great articles on there this week.  You can also earn money with Adsense on Tagfoot which is great.

Work was very busy yesterday, so when I got home dinner was ready, and we headed off down the beach for a walk as the sun went down, then watched the full moon rise from the water.  It’s very relaxing walking along the water’s edge in the moonlight, very romantic too, except the recent storms had washed up lots of seaweed and this was washing back and forth, so you had to constantly watch where you were walking.  Lots of coral had been washed up too.

My girlfriend is now ploughing ahead with her lenses having got a new laptop over the weekend.  That means we aren’t fighting for mine in the evening or at the weekend, which is nice.  So we should now be able to both work on lenses at the same time, as well as not having to wait for each other.  I’m hoping I can now start to catch up a bit.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 7
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES

My girlfriend and I are both still working on our joint New York lens, which is coming along nicely, but I think it’s going to be a monster. We have so much material to add yet, lots of photos, descriptions, advice on what to do and what to see, plus our own observations. I hope it will be a hit when it’s published.

My Pet Peeves
Poddys Lensography
My Claim To Fame
Religious Jokes
Bournemouth

So, I finally made my lensography: Willow. It’s kind a mix between ‘About me’ page and ‘Lensography’ page… But, you’ll see for yourself!

Ranks today:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 16
Top 100,000: 15
Over 100,000: 2
WIP: 13
Total: 50

See? 13 to go!

Should be featured in the next few hours. Lens Number 10 is Pantomime.

At about this time of year thousands of Amateur actors start rehearsing, at least twice a week, for a musical show that is a Great British Christmas tradition - Pantomime or Panto as it is affectionately called.

It is something that is very difficult to explain. Panto is a very visual experience - thank goodness for YouTube! I have had a lot of fun trawling through YouTube to find good examples of scenes from Pantos and managed to find some from both Professional and Amateur productions. I hope they help explain what Panto is all about.

I am still not completely satisfied with the lens and there’s more that needs to be added but I think it is at a stage where it can be unleashed into the world of Squidoo!

… one of the greatest Russian writers of all time! I published SquidWho - Who Is Fyodor Dostoevsky and one about his book Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Three more about his books are lurking to come to the light!
I was busy-bee today!

Rank stats:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 16
Top 100,000: 14
Over 100,000: 3
WIP: 13
Total: 49

14 to go!

Well, today things were not going as planned… I though by today I’ll have 35th lens published… But, obligations, obligations, obligations… So, here is my 34th lens: My Musical Retreat
This one need much more work, but it looks completed - I think. I’ll add more things with time. Now I gotta move on to another.

Rank stats:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 16
Top 100,000: 13
Over 100,000: 1
WIP: 16
Total: 49

My WIP number is great! LOL
Stats are looking better than yesterday so I’m happy….

Well, I published my 33rd lens two hours ago: Multifunctional Aluminium Foil… Seams somebody has put it on StumbleUpon since it had 58 visits before it came out of WIP…. Thank You, friend who ever you are!

Today another one of my lenses got blessed: Taste of Croatia and for this one I’m really happy, since it’s lens that shows off a little of my motherland’s culture! Thank you Alison!

Rank stats for today:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 15
Top 100,000: 14
Over 100,000: 1
WIP: 6
Total: 39

Now I gotta go and finish that 2nd lens I said I’ll finish today!
I’m only 17 lenses away!
I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, …

I’m very much a squidoohooolic! I’m tired but feeling contented after finishing a lens today.

I hate to admit how I’m lazy I am with coming up with a new one. So, today I feel a little boost of ideas and energy. I think I need a FASHION EMERGENCY! I’m suddenly out of style!

That’s why browsing through some lovely things at Amazon (as if I’m buying a stuff for myself, nah! not yet) I’m just conditioning myself on what’s good out there if ever I need to buy it for myself. I realize how Bohemian Style: The Funkiest Fashion Style Ever of fashion suddenly becomes so fascinating to me. From the long and colorful necklaces, flowing skirts, lots of layers and sandals with ties that wrap around your body.

It has a certain look which make you feel so vibrant, beautiful, free-spirited and electic at the same time. I believe that every woman deserves to feel always good about themselves on whatever that is whether it might be in terms of pampering, expressing it in a choice of fashion and most of all the beauty that comes within everything will follow.

Since my latest posts aren’t going to show up on the front page of squidtop anyhow (they’re about Squidoo Tag & Search Pages not indexed by google - implications and Rel no follow in squidoo btw) - I might as well do a post bragging about my top traffic lenses

So here goes (more SEO tomorrow btw)

Wisdom Quotes: The Wisest Quotes Ever has major stumbleupon traffic still - few votes though. Nobody here who likes it?

My lens about Spiritual Quotes and Wisdom Sayings, which sounds similar but takes a very different approach is still a solid no. 2 in terms of traffic.

Then my mavorick lens: about rosacea and getting red cheeks under control is a solid third place.

Thanks to the Answer Deck my lens about the Introduction Module is at 4.

One of my solid top 5 lenses is my lens about Squidoo CSS - my favorite code to spice up a lens

Consolation prize for my lens about ‘gezegden over liefde’ (sayings about Love). Gets lots of traffic, is in Dutch and has only one vote. (Thanks again Jaguar Julie)

This was mostly influenced by How to Reuse Toilet-Paper Rolls being a LOTD… Right now this lens is at #3 on overall rank!

Yesterday I published my 32nd lens - How to Reuse Old Mouse Pad? - combined ‘how to reuse’ tips, ‘how to make’ tips and my designs of mouse pads from Zazzle.com

Rank stats at this point:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 13
Top 100,000: 14
Over 100,000: 1
WIP: 5
Total: 36

Counting down… 32nd published, 18 to go!

Does Bullying Run in Families? is in the queue to become a featured lens, which should happen in the next couple of hours or so. It is the next one in my planned series about Bullying and links to Bullying at Primary School.

Today’s big task is uploading all the photos I use on my lenses onto Flickr, so I can get creative with them. Am typing this as I wait for the upload to finish.

Got some good feedback on the SquidU forum about how to break up the text a bit more - serious subject means lots of text and no room to add stuff in to make it “lighter”. Ah well, if I will choose to do a load of “heavy” lenses…….

Got some ideas on doing some more lighthearted lenses, so will crack on with those in next few days. “Dancing Queen” lyrics are just going round and around my head at the moment, after the visit to the cinema yesterday.

Because of my ear condition, there is a danger that my tinnitus will manifest itself as original music if I have been listening to some - I just wish I could write music as some of it is very good!

Now, I’m just rambling……..ah, download has finished. Off to try and do great things with HTML and photos.

Today I published my 31st lens: Dazzle by Halloween on Zazzle - I just love that dazzle - zazzle rhyme!

I’m loosing track of many things - I’m not putting tags into my new lenses, not doing any promotion, not even joining groups (!!!) - just making them one after another…. I’ll have a lots of work to do when I come to 50! If I keep up with this tempo - hopefully I’ll be done by 25th and than have few more days for fine tuning my lenses.

Ranks today:
Top 100: 1
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 12
Top 100,000: 15
Over 100,000: 1
WIP: 5
Total: 36

Now I have to take a break - my eyes are hurting!

and you are at 500. Go Go

Several days ago I was starting to panic that with Hurricane Hanna headed towards South Florida, that the airports would be closed and I wouldn’t be able to head off to New York for the weekend. Now with Hanna fizzling out and having slowed down, it shouldn’t affect us here, so I am pretty sure the flight will leave ok tonight - however…

By the time we are set to come back on Monday afternoon, the monster storm of the season, Hurricane Ike, already a Category 4 while way out in the Atlantic, could either be here or close to being here. I am hoping it misses Florida completely, but if it does hit, it would be nice to be able to get home first. I don’t trust the bedroom windows, and I would prefer to be at home if only to take plenty of video as things blow around - if it does hit us. I would really not want to get stuck in New York with the airports closed - that has to be a really miserable experience.

Nothing much has changed with my lens traffic this week, up slightly, but what has changed is the traffic to one of the jokes on my main web site (So You Think You Had A Bad Day) that has been picked up by Stumbleupon. I had 11,000 visitors to my site yesterday, from 87 Countries, and from all 50 States in the USA. That’s the good news… The bad news - hardly a click on the rotating CJ banner on the main joke page that got hit, and under $3 on Adsense. What a shame - if only I could find a way to capitalize on the traffic…

I’m struggling to keep up with the things that I want to do, just not enough hours in the day unfortunately. For those of you with lenses that I have promised to visit, I have close to 100 lenses marked that I will get around to as soon as I can. The list is growing, but unless I have actually visited a lens, the link isn’t going to go away.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 9
Top 10,000: 4
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES
Poddys Lensography
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke - April 2008
The Daily Joke Lensography
My Pet Peeves

Today I released my 27th lens… this one a little bit different than most of my lenses. It’s about Cravat! And the fact that cravat / necktie / tie is originally from Croatia. And I also featured my ties from Zazzle here… Link is: http://www.squidoo.com/croataties

Stats were a bit crazy today, so Gil had some extra work again… It’s really good we have him!

Today’s rank:
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 10
Top 100,000: 15
WIP: 5
Total: 32

New Lens about Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare“! Released in ‘75.

There’s a bit of a funky feel to it, could it be in part because bass player Prakash John had been in Parliament/Funkadelic?

Oh, Tony Levin also played bass on the album — I can’t escape this web I’ve been creating since I started writing about King Crimson.

There’s even a clip of Vincent Price w/ Alice, from the TV special “The Nightmare”. Wish I could get the whole special on DVD, but it hasn’t been released on DVD yet. There is one VHS copy available on Amazon, but it’s been out of print since the 80’s, so even if it’s never been opened, would I pay $60 for it? I’m not even sure if any of my VCRs still work, I only use my DVR and DVDs now.

Anyhow, I still have three in the works because this Lens wasn’t even one of the ones I had started before… I just had a shot of inspiration to do a quick Lens.

I finished my newest Lens which is on an incredible musician, Tony Levin. He’s been Peter Gabriel’s bass player both in the studio and on the road since Peter’s first solo album. He joined King Crimson in the 80’s, which relates back to my previous Lens on King Crimson.

In building this Lens, I came up ideas to improve the King Crimson Lens, and I now have 4 music related WIP’s. I need to finish them before I come up with too many more ideas =D

Edit: I wrote this on 8/22/2008, and some how forgot to publish it.

It looks like only one of my posts from yesterday made it to the front page of Squidtop, Favorite Lensmasters - Debnet.  

I am not sure what happened to the previous one, maybe only your latest post gets added to the front page, but it did contain a few tips for using Squidtop, features of Wordpress that some of you might not be familiar with.   In case you missed it, and I suspect everyone did, Here Is The Link

It took forever for the lens rankings to update today, and during a discussion in the Lensmaster Lounge I had an idea to create a lens about what we do while we are waiting for the lens rankings to update.  It’s not only the change in rank that takes place, it’s the giving of the Green Light to new lenses, so it’s important to us all.   Do we tap our feet, pace up and down, tear our hair out, or what? 

If you would like to contribute to my lens, I need from you a brief description of what you do while waiting for the lens rankings to update, plus a candid photo to go along with it.  The details of how to submit your entry for the lens are in This Thread.

Meantime, the rankings did update finally early this afternoon, and here is my current status.

LENS STATUS
Top 100        0
Top 2,000     9
Top 10,000   4
Lenses         60

I have these sites in my SquidU signature, but tried to add more and ran out of room, so I thought this was a good place to add them.

If you have lenses, and I know you do, you want to go to these sites and promote them there.

All of these sites WANT you to submit lenses there so go ahead, don’t be shy.

Lensroll
Squidom
Squoogle
BumpZee - Not just Squidoo but very well respected and they love Squidoo
Isle of Squid
Squidoo Mixx (Mixx for Squidoo members)
Squidixx Mixx (Also Mixx for Squidooers)
Lensmasters Mixx (Does anyone know if a link submitted in one place goes to all 3?)
Squid Directory
Tower Promote - Just submit your link - easy.
Best Free Forums - A forum devoted to Squidoo Lenses only.
Article Troll - An article link directory that loves Squidoo.

Well, haven’t work few days on my lenses and it shows in  rank:

top 1,000: 2

top 10,000: 8

top 100,000: 13

WIP: 6

Total: 29

Can’t seem to find enough time for everything these days…. I have complete materials for 2 lenses in WIP, only need to sort them and put them into modules… Can’t find time!

I have seen people having over 100 lenses… how do they manage to find time for making new lenses, promoting and upgrading existing lenses?!? And have a life? Take care of daily chores, kids, husbands/wives, etc.?

Is there some recipe? How to make day longer than 24 hours?

A new topic for me. A few weeks ago, following some very frightening symptoms, I was diagnosed with Otosclerosis. So being a compulsive communicator, I have written a lens about it. Researching the “technical” stuff for the lens was hard as at no time have my Doctor or Consultant actually told me that I could lose my hearing but from all my reading I now know that this might happen.

In the weeks leading up to the diagnosis I wondered if I’d had a mini-stroke, a brain tumour or was I in the first stages of Parkinson’s. Although at times debillitating Otosclerosis is mild in comparison and at the moment only one ear is affected - I have a lot to be thankful for.

Onto a lighter subject - at the moment in the afternoons between 2 & 3pm GMT+1, I am experiencing problems with Squidoo, going slow and even hanging up. Is this because all the American Squids are waking up and frantically checking their lens ranks?

OK I am trying this again. I was so proud of myself when I finally finished my new lens: http://www.squidoo.com/collegevisitsurvivalchecklist that I thought I had posted it but it is not showing up in the next posting. I am trying again. If it finally shows up, chalk it up to enthusiasm! Please visit and leave comments. I think this is a lens that can really help make college visits worthwhile so I am hoping the word gets out!

Do you want to get started in social networking, but don’t have the time or expertise needed to do it yourself? Now, you don’t have to. You can have your lenses built and promoted and then transferred to you, all in a couple of weeks or so.

Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile - experts on Squidoo - are now at your service.

Learn more by reading Two Squidoo Titans unite to build your lenses for you on my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog.

Act on your dream!

JD

Very sad ranking updates for today - another lens drops out of the Top 2,000.

A week ago I had 11 lenses in the Top 2,000 and 5 in the Top 10,000.  Now I have only 4 in the Top 2,000 and 9 in the Top 10,000.  That’s a potential loss of close to $50 in the payout - ouch!   It shows how important it is to keep promoting and updating your lenses, and I have had little chance to do either in the last week.   I desperately need to do something, yet this weekend is already going to require more time than I have for essential things.

It’s going to be a busy weekend for sure.   I have to get my hair cut, go grocery shopping, see my daughters, plan a trip to New York that was to have been next Spring but now has to be done early September, get a new cell phone (mine is 8 years old and the case has to be held on with a rubber band to stop the phone falling out - embarrassing but the phone works ok though - just can’t get a case - it’s time to upgrade), research and shop for a new camcorder (can’t go to New York without one).   So a very full weekend, and in addition I need to spend time enjoying the 8 weeks I have left with my girlfriend here :)    I have a funny feeling my lenses are going to suffer further unfortunately.  The August payout in 2 months will be horrible I am sure. 

Well as usual no money from CJ or Amazon, and I still have to earn 1c on affiliate links on my lenses, but it does look as if Adsense might break records with amost $30 this month so far.  I hope as the year continues I can continue the upward trend on Adsense.

LENS STATUS
Top      100      0
Top   2,000      4
Top 10,000      9

Hi!  I’m JHF SEO.  I’m a west coast content developer, SE optimizer and more importantly, lensmaster at Squidoo.

Thanks to Loyalis and ZachG for another cool tool for Squidooers.  I normally use Blogger and WordPress, so this will be a good new haunt for sure.

This was my best month ever for payouts, with the grand total being $170.04 (last month I made $89.43).  One of my Squidoo goals was to make enough to cover my student loan payments which are $100 a month, I’ve done that with some leftover this month.  If you want more details you can check out my stats lens.

On the downside it looks like payouts per lens went down a little this month again, I’m starting to wonder if the switch over to Glam ads has been as successful as hoped.

Well I’m officially now taking orders for custom designed lenses.  You can find out more on this lens: Buy a Custom Lens Designed by Noadi.

I’m a long-time Squidoo lensmaster with over 100 lenses, many top ranked.  You can check out my lensmaster page to see a sampling of my lenses.

Okay, we’ve finally had time to sit down and add a Squidoo Lens for Squidtop.

It includes a plexo with a list of Squidtop Blogs on it, so if you haven’t gone and added yours to the list yet, do it! I added a few that were on the front page but it’s entirely possible I missed yours so go check it out and let us know if you think it needs anything.

My highest since the early days of Squidoo when there was only 50,000 lenses.

Keep it fresh, new and topical

Goal is 50 , that might be tough.

Cheers

Jeff

I just finished a new lens that I plan to expand over time about using Squidoo to promote all things handmade.  So check it out.

Using Squidoo to Promote your Handmade Business

So final lensrank update for June has happened. The major point is that if the payout tiers don’t change I have 17 top tier lenses. If the top tier payout is still around $8.50 that means I’ll make about $150 just for those 17 lenses.

To check out my stats go to Squidoodling with Noadi.

AffSphere is a great site to promote your lenses. Just write a short article on the basic theme of your lens and link to your lenses appropriately. You can advertise free. Moreover, if you include your AdSense code in your profile, you can earn too!

• Sign up for free
• Verify email
• Write short article
• Write resource box
• Submit article
• You’re done!

So, why not give it a try?
—————————————————————————————-

Submit Lens for Review

Hooray!! Google has picked my novelty cycling jerseys lens back up. Good timing as it seems to have dropped the other one now. Just can’t win. This was making money within like a day of my creating it. Hoping that continues. People who get on there click out at least.

seen a rhody up close? Venture to my hometown of Woodland right about now and you’ll see em’ (Rhododendrons) in all hues and in full bloom! Our established plants require little maintenance so we are always in awe when we get their heaven-sent bursts!

Lucky us, lucky you…read more on Wikipedia.

And then made a lens on it -  http://www.squidoo.com/hedge-trimmer

Can’t spend all my time indoors at the computer. I think.

Just parsing some of the traffic to some of my lenses. Why do people come to a lens about throwing an Abby Cadabby party and then just click through to look at pictures of cakes? What can I do about it? Are they planning to do the cake themselves? Should I include cake decorating supplies to help them? Aargh! Just wanting to improve conversion rates, but considering the traffic here is pretty much looky-loo except for the flickr pics, I’m not sure how. OK. Through venting.

I really didn’t like the TOC/Explore bar when it was put in this last layout change. Still would like to have it elsewhere. But I can say it definitely works - in some cases. My Child’s Play Charity lens (which I should promote more) has been getting 10-15 hits a week now, up from 0. And every single one comes from the Explore bar on my hair donation lens. So this lens would be getting no play if it wasn’t for the Explore bar. Still don’t like the location, but at least in this case, one lens has been rescued from obscurity because of it.

Well, my novelty cycling jerseys lens has been de-indexed by Google. Which means traffic has seriously dropped off. However, thanks to the efforts I’ve made adding it to lensroll, bookmarking at de.li.cious, blogging here and on my main blog - if you search for “novelty cycling jerseys” in Google, nine of the first 10 entries are actually pointing to me.

Now that’s good, but most of my traffic was coming from people searching for something specific, like Iron Maiden or Queen or Snoopy jerseys. Those searches don’t pick up any of my backlinks, unfortunately. But I’ve ridden this roller coaster before. I’m hot for a couple of weeks, Google drops me like a hot potato for a while, then I’m back in Google and life goes on. So I’m not that worried. Yet. This lens has potential to be a really good money maker for me, so I hope it’ll be back in search soon.

NOTE: I have disabled comments on this post in an effort to thwart spammers. Please leave a note on another post and reference this one if you’re planning to comment. Thanks!!

Squee! Hair donation lens has breached the 1,000-visitor mark for the past seven days. It went over that mark several weeks ago, then dropped back down to below 800 for a while. Has been sitting nicely at around 850 for a couple of weeks now. Just jumping the last few days.

Musing this morning about the sudden spike in traffic to my lens about Susans. As in a couple hundred visitors this week and the stats show them all as direct. Which tells me nothing. They’re clicking on nothing, which tells me I probably shouldn’t care where they’re coming from as they aren’t useful.

Hmm. What to add - if anything - to our Giant Squids class lens? Twitter or blog feeds? More lenses? Amazon modules with books recommended by the Squid? I’d like to do some things that keep it fresh, but also provide a way to make a little money on the lens itself since it’s contributing to the Squidoo Charity Fund. I feel an obligation to keep it in the top tier if I can. Thoughts?

New lens: Music for Monday. I started out planning to do a whole series on the days of the week. Got overwhelmed almost immediately and decided to ditch the rest and just kept this piece of the research. Some great stuff here that I had never heard of.

Still waiting for my college fight song ringtones lens to be hand reviewed. Got caught in the spam filter the last time I tried to update it. Been at least a week now. Sigh.

New lens: Had such great success with a random brainstorm on my novelty cycling jerseys lens that I’ve done an off-shot of stylish cycling jerseys for women. Still pretty much just for fun, but we’ll see if it flys as far.

Review My Lens at no.2 on Google!

Blog post: Having fun in Dallas. Ties to my new lens on Medieval Times.

Still waiting for my college fight song ringtone lens to be unlocked. Sigh. Maybe the Giant Squid organizers could take on reviewing locked lenses by Giant Squids? You have to assume that we’re not trying to create problems by making spammy lenses.

Waiting for my second victim!
Clouda9 dares me & leaves unscathed……

Please! Do not submit Run-of-the-mill lenses for Review!
Thanks.

Submit for Review

  

This Woman Is Really A Spodd!

Menopause, I realize, can make woman do funny things too. Perhaps, odd. Understandably, you have “Beat” for B in Clouda9’s thesaurus and not “Bang” for what is added next to it. You can check out Spodd  if you are oddly curious.

Well, did you know Virgin Mary’s toast was auctioned for $ 28,000 on eBay or if you still use an ink pen and need it to be repaired, there is a fellow out there with a website. Find out such crazy stuff. It is quite odd,  sorry, spodd to find Montana Meth Project. The only even thing I found was the Readers’ Comments.  Deja vu! There is a choice from A to Z but none preferred to use it. Some people are really odd!

And what is so mature or adult? I was expecting some spodd pics or videos but Clouda9 disappoints. She chose Amazon stuff to sell for which Megan might not shell out a dime!

In all fairness, Clouda9 deserves a hug for her bold and fresh content.

What next? Speven? 

—————————————————————————————–

Submit for Review

Here is one of my latest lens. I had a BLAST with this one because it was just totally out in left field and fun. So, here it is: Indiana Jones is Totally My Boyfriend.

(Weird, I swore I published this the other day!)

Latest lens is up: Matter of Trust. It’s one of my unusual charities that I just love.

Hi Captain, my blog is ready!

Squidoo Lens Review: Introduction

There are lenses and lenses. Many good lenses never reach the top for lack of traffic or peer review. I have come across some real good stuff lying in the bottom layers of the pyramid.

Now you have a place to get your work critically examined for recommendation.

The following guidelines apply:

1. Your own Lens can be requested for review only here. (comments)

2. You will not enter into arguments or debates after reading the review. The objective is not to hurt/discourage anyone. Submission for review implies acceptance of reasonable criticism.

3. Rating does not imply it is certified or anything of that sort.

4. Not all lenses submitted for review can be promised to be reviewed.

5. Rating will be one of these: 

               

6. This reviewer may suo moto review any lens.

7. Any other rule can be added here!

So, are you ready to get kinged or dinged? 

Free cinema tickets.

Just updated my lens on getting free cinema tickets http://www.squidoo.com/freecinematickets
Now includes a link to Momentum Pictures site to sign up for free ticket offers.

Magnify

On that single front page are many money makers:

Squidoo RSS

Squidoo Amazon Plexo Widget

Big Fish Games

CJ Smart Zone

ShareaSale

eBay affiliate Feed

3 Google adsense

ShareAPic Photos

Neat eh!