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.

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It is notable that there are no strict guidelines in determining whether or not a lens should be blessed or dinged. This accounts for the human factor in the lensrank algorithm. It is up to the individual Angel to apply their own quality standard. As a result, a rich diversity of lenses and topics have a fair chance of getting a blessing.

To help interested lensmasters figure out what makes the individual Angels “tick” (i.e. “bless”) I created the Who’s Who of SquidAngels residing at www.squidoo.com/angels-r-us.

It is also a showcase of some of the HTML and CSS tricks I’ve learned from my fellow lensmasters. The coding effort was immense for someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing.  AlI the graphics were custom created as well. All in all it took me over a week to complete this lens, probably in excess of 50 hours work. I cannot really recommend building lenses like this on a regular basis, but for this project I wanted to make the lens extra special and unique. But when it was finally ready - instant gratification!

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Only 10 days left until the start of the 175th Oktoberfest in Munich! Dust off your Lederhosen costumes, grab your favorite Gretchen and roll out the barrel!

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Tips for researching and choosing the perfect tattoo.

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