Polishing My Plow on New Year's Eve

So, how are you spending your New Year's eve? I hope you'll take some time out to have a little fun, spend a bit of time reflecting, but spend most of your time looking ahead. What do you believe the new year holds? Do you have predictions? Goals? Resolutions? If you do, I hope you'll take a minute or two and share them on my New Year Predictions and Resolutions lens. Then bookmark the lens and come back in a month or two, or even next December 31st to see how you're doing or how you did.

A couple of years ago I found a saying that goes like this: A man cannot plow a field by turning it over in his mind. I printed that out and it's been taped to my computer monitor ever since. I haven't found any better advice, advice that truly speaks to me, since then and I will continue to dust off those wise words and read them every day, not just on January 1st. They really motivate me to act.

I predict wonderful things for the coming year. Of course life will always bring surprises, but one thing we can control is our outlook on and our approach to life. Be positive, be proactive, and see what can happen. That's how I intend to plow my field in the coming year. I hope you'll do the same.

Happy New Year!

Announcing the 2008 Giant Squid Awards

It's official. Today was announcement day. The 2008 Giant Squid best of the best lenses by category, along with the Giant Squid of the Year, have been announced.

Choosing which lenses to vote for was actually quite a challenge. Every lens nominated was a good one, and every one is a winner by virtue of being nominated. Congratulations to every lensmaster represented among the nominees!

Then there was Giant Squid of the Year. Talk about difficult. It's just very tough to narrow down the best of the best. The winner was lensmaster JaguarJulie, first runner-up was thefluffanutta, with ChefKeem following closely behind. Congratulations to these three, as well as the other deserving lensmasters who were nominated.

Thanks to all who voted for my Kindle lens which, I am happy to say, did capture the prize for Tech Lens of the Year. What an honor!

If you're looking for Squidoo lenses and lensmasters to study and learn from, the 2008 Giant Squids Award Ceremony lens is the perfect place to start. Be prepared to be inspired!

Keeping the Faith, I Made it to 100!

Just published my hundredth lens! It wasn't the one I thought would be number one hundred, but I felt it was a lens I needed to do and now I'm really glad I did.

Hopefully I'll have a couple more in the next couple of days, plus find time to edit some oldies but goodies.

So, drumroll please, I am proud to share my faith with you!

Ninety-Nine!

I just published my 99th lens! I'm shooting for the Giant Squids 100 Club and it looks like I'm almost there, but actually I have a lot of work to do. The criteria is 100 "quality" lenses and, although all of mine were quality at one time, I'm behind in updating several lenses and I must find time to refresh and renew probably half a dozen before the end of the month.

In the meantime, I haven't had a chance to promote numbers 97 or 98 at all. Number 100 is started, so hopefully I'll find time to put some really good finishing touches on it and start promoting it as well.

Think I'll make it? I hope so. Thanks for all the help and encouragement along the way!

Hurry! Squidoo is Giving Away Money!

Squidoo is at it again. This time they're giving $30,000 to charity and they want you to help.

To choose which charity you would like the money to go to, visit this lens and follow the directions. You need to have a Twitter account to designate a dollar donation to one of 21 charities that Squidoo has named as recipients of this round of donations. There are links to click on within the lens, links which will auto-tweet your vote. It takes just a second to click and register your vote for the charity of your choice.

Once the 30,000 votes are tweeted, each representing a dollar to a specific charity, the voting ends and the donations will be made. If you want to be sure a dollar goes to your favorite of the 21 charities, go vote now before the 30,000 votes are used up. Really, it won't take long, so don't put it off.

You can watch the progress of the voting on Twitter Search. If you don't have a Twitter account, it's simple enough to set one up (and why, oh why, haven't you done that already?) at twitter.com. If my explanation doesn't make sense, read Megan's explanation on the official Squidoo Holiday Twitterdrive for Charity lens.

Hurry!

I'm Thoroughly Confused. What is Squidoo?

My new online friend, April, asked me this: "I just went to your Squidoo page, but am thoroughly confused! Just what is it? Is it a place to blog, sell, or something else?" Here's my response.

April,

To answer your question about Squidoo, yes to all of those things! Squidoo is a place where "experts" make pages about topics, anything at all, and people then find those pages when they're looking for information about the topic or contents of the page. It's an example of Permission Marketing, where you don't go to people, but they seek you out. If they like what they see, they might buy something you're offering for sale.

You don't actually have to sell anything on Squidoo, but if you do, you earn commissions on those things, plus you as a lensmaster (the pages are called lenses, the authors lensmasters) receive a portion of the overall ad commissions that Squidoo earns.

To understand it, you just have to explore it. My lensmaster/profile page shows all of the lenses that I've created, which cover a wide array of topics. Squidoo is a great way to promote an online business or just to get the word out about something you're passionate about. I just updated my favorite lens, called Nurturing Imagination. That's a topic I am rather passionate about, plus it features my kids. :-) Also, I'm pretty proud of the lens I recently made about my puppy, Daisy. I updated that one again this morning. It's good to update/freshen your pages regularly, but it isn't like a blog where you're expected to post regularly.

There are over 750,000 Squidoo lenses and thousands and thousands of lensmasters, so you can imagine the variety you'll find on Squidoo. I love it! (Can you tell??)

Hope that helps to answer your question!

Make a Bigger First Impression With Squidoo

First impressions are important and this is especially true with Squidoo lenses. Recently, Squidoo increased the allowable size of the intro module images (read about it here). I love this change. Now the pictures really pop.

The change isn't retroactive to the pictures you're already using on your lenses, so you might want to go back through and re-load your puny pictures if you believe a bigger version would benefit your lens. I've done that on a few of my lenses already, including this one and this one. (Don't worry, it's rated G.)

Tell me what you think. You like the bigger pictures or are they too big? Are you going to update yours? Leave me a comment and a link; I'd love to take a look.

My 7 Habits of Successful Lensmaking

Glen recently put together an awesome post called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Lensmasters. He enlisted the help of seven very successful lensmasters who each presented their own seven things that they do to help make each of their lenses successful. Great idea and you must read all 49. Then you can read my seven, here.

1. I have an idea! The best ones seem to just pop into my head.
2. Brainstorm. Write down everything I can think of about the topic. I usually type it, but brainstorming is better done with pen and paper.
3. Keyword search, which might actually change the direction of the lens but will likely give me the URL.
4. Google it. What’s there that I didn’t think of? Check images and video.
5. Amazon, eBay, and other affiliate products available? Look for both bestsellers and something unique. Look for eye appeal to spur emotion. (I’d choose a product with a pretty picture over something plain, wouldn’t you?)
6. Set up the sequence of modules and make the lens. This is where the creative juices actually flow. I’m a visual learner and seeing my ideas take shape actually spurs new and better ideas, so it isn’t surprising that my final product is often not quite the same as what I thought it would be when I first visualized it in my head.
7. Publish and take a look. Rearrange modules to make everything look nicely balanced.

Assignment: What are your 7 habits? Make your own list, print it out, tape it to your monitor or to the wall and refer to it often. Revise when necessary. Make great lenses!