Squidlog

Have you ever wondered what an Angel Blessing will do to your lens? Or what happens when the blessing fades? What if several Angels blessed your lens all at once?

You may have heard by now that SquidAngel blessings will give you a nice boost in lens rank. The lower your lens ranked at the time of blessing, the bigger the resulting leap up the ranks. On the downside, SquidAngel dust shelf life is limited. It’s a bit more potent than the magic of Cinderella’s fairy godmother, which lasted only until midnight. But just the same, it wears off after  while.

Here comes the painful part. When several Angels bless a lens at the same time, the effects are gigantic. Both ways! My latest lens project literally blazed it’s way up the ranks to peak at #5 (of around 900,000 lenses) on October 18, 2008! All within less than 3 weeks of being first published. Every morning I gaped in awe and utter disbelief at my dashboard. It was breathtaking!

The very next day, before I could get comfortable in the Top 10, the inevitable happened. The first blessings wore off. Instead of floating down in a dignified, angelic way, the lens dropped like a duck shot in flight, all the way to #47. Then to #65 after another day. It’s rather sickening to watch.

Now, I’m not complaining, mind you. I feel very fortunate and blessed regardless of current lensrank. This lens was built for the SquidAngels, not for my own glory or pocket. But the rollercoaster of this blessing-induced ride through the lensranks has a very important message for those who care to hear it:

SquidAngel Blessings are no replacement for hard, honest work to bring your lens to the top and keep it there! It’s like a sugar rush. At the end of the day what really counts is unique, useful content, pleasing aesthetics, clever marketing, patience, and a satisfied readership that will return and help spread the word.

Amen.

Share/Save

This past few weeks have not been very productive in terms of new lens creation. I may have mentioned it before, even though I think that some of my lenses are pretty good I’m just not seeing the traffic and more importantly, the sales to justify all this time I spent there. It’s nobody’s fault but my own, I know. I read about how my fellow lensmasters make hundreds, some even thousands of dollars a month on Squidoo. Makes me feel like I’ve missed the boat somewhere. I’m lucky if I make enough to treat my kids to a Happy Meal once in a  while.

Yes, I love Squidoo very much. The community is great, it’s the first time I’ve been comfortable in an online community at all. And making lenses is immense fun, I could do nothing else all day, and I never run out of ideas either. The Giant Squids, Squidoo Activists and even Seth himself would keep me busy building lenses ’til the end of days. The only problem I have is that I need to contribute to the family income in a major way and I just don’t see this happen with Squidoo.

Ah, the distractions. Seth Godin launched Triiibes and many of us were scrambling to get in, just so we could answer YES to the question: Are you in the triiibe? Once there, I found myself out of place. It’s a great community with an incredible quality of professional members. It’s great if you’re looking to connect with marketing intellectuals, great for discussing the bigger picture. I’d love to participate more but again, it’s time consuming and fun but doesn’t help me put food on the table. At least not short term.

So now I’m taking the 30-Day-Challenge which needs all my attention. It’s still a lot harder than I thought. They make it sound easy at the start and watching the tutorials and using some software I can see that it all makes perfect sense. But it’s still hard work for me because of all the writing involved. This is the major stumbling block I encountered and unless I find a way to overcome that I guess it’s back to square 1 for me.

So there, I hope nobody reads my blog because I don’t want to come off as a whiner. If you do read this, just ignore this post, please. I just saw the need to write a post and this is all I could come up with.

Share/Save

I recently saw someone post in the Squidu forum, who wondered whether or not to delete a non-performing lens. I can relate. My OCC lens has been at or near the bottom of my pit for a long time. It wasn’t as cool as it is now, and I wasn’t really proud of it enough to promote it either. I just didn’t connect with this lens, if you know what I mean.

So not too long ago I thought it would be best to set it free. As if the frightened little lens sensed what I was up to, all of a sudden I had a noticeable spike in traffic. Just when I thought nobody except me thought that OCC choppers are the coolest motorcycles ever the lens came about. I was immediately inspired to give my visitors a lens worthy of their time, and went to work.

With my newfound enthusiasm, the lensrank kept creeping up up up. I got some nice comments and ratings, and somebody I don’t even know stumbled it. Wow!

Bottom line: Don’t delete under-performers unless it’s a topic you’d be ashamed to be associated with. It’s just sitting quietly until it’s moment has come. Wait until it gets some traffic and analyze the keywords people were searching for when they came to your lens. Then go to work and over-deliver! Voila! A new starlet is born!

Share/Save

This morning I was thrilled out of my jammies to find my Orange County Choppers lens at Lensrank #798 overall and #12 in Autos (that category should really be renamed into Motors or something similar)!

This is a big boost to my lensmastering morale. Ok, so I made Giant Squid status this month, which means I have produced over 50 quality lenses. I’ve also had a very successful top lens, but would you believe, this is only the second lens I have ever managed to get into the the magical 3 digit lensrank?

Yeah baby, this sure made my day!

This experience led me to my next post “To delete or not to delete…”

Share/Save

Unlike the Oscar nominees, today’s good news hit me quite unexpectedly, so my acceptance speech is still in the works. Until I have gathered all my marbles I just want to thank the Squidoo Team, BDKZ, GypsyPirate & RMS, aka The Giant Squid Organizers, and all the other friendly squid for their continuing efforts and support to make this happen.

Share/Save

This week I experienced something entirely new - lenses I submitted to a group and a directory were rejected. After the initial shock I learned that my lenses were not up to snuff according to their standards.

And by golly, they were right! It slipped my attention that these lenses had some default module titles, and in some cases were just really poor. Even though I had been wanting to improve those lenses for some time something else was always more urgent. Now that someone poked their finger at me I had to get my act together and put some more effort into them.

So, today I want to thank all those who care enough to make me aware of the mediocrity of some of my lenses! It is with their help that the quality of my lenses will improve, and hopefully become valuable resources one day. I prefer constructive criticism any day over false or unjustified praise.

Share/Save