Lens Titles and Stuff

I use the word "stuff" a lot.  Do you?

One of my earliest Squidoo lenses was called "Where to Find Stuff to Sell on eBay" for a long time and actually did pretty well, then I changed the title to "What to Sell on eBay and Where to Find It."  The lensrank dropped.  I changed the title back over the weekend and already visits have picked up substantially and lensrank has improved, plus when I look at the stats I see that the majority of the search terms include the word "stuff."  Interesting. 

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  File that rule under "Squidoo Stuff to Remember."

Add This One Little Thing for More Star Ratings

Do you ever leave a comment on a Squidoo lens but then forget to go back to the top to rate it with the stars? I'm sure I've done it. Sometimes I just forget or get in a hurry or sidetracked.  Likely others have forgotten to rate my lenses, too.  

Frankly, when people practically beg for star ratings for their lenses, sometimes that seems a bit pushy (not always, some do it well) and I'm inclined to move on.  Since self-promotion is far from my strong suit anyway, I'm not inclined to ask.  However, recently I've started adding one little line,  four or five little words, in a text module just below the comment box at the bottom of my lenses.  I simply link those words to the lens itself, saying "Return to top of page" or "Back to the top."  That provides an easy way to get back to the stars and, perhaps, a small reminder to the reader to go back to the top and color in those pretty stars.  (See what I'm talking about at the bottom of this lens.)

I can't say whether or not it has improved my star feedback or not, but I figure it can't hurt and maybe, just maybe it will help.  What do you think?  Is it a good idea?  Is it better just to ask?  Is my approach too subliminal?  Are you going to try it?  Do leave a comment and let me know. 

A Challenge and a Cheerleader

Back in mid-October I received the following message via email:

"I'm going for the 100 club too (although I am behind you by a few lenses) and I'm going to be keeping my eye on you and your lenses! Susanna"

Thus began the challenge. Susanna was challenging herself, but little did she know how she would challenge me! Susanna had a plan, which included four lenses a week in order to make the 100 Club deadline of the 31st. Wow, four a week. That's a lot of lenses!

Guess what. She did it. And, after giving up on my goal with nine to go, then receiving a kick in the tentacles by (guess who) Susanna herself, so did I. I published my 102nd lens last night at a few minutes before midnight. Susanna is up to at least 110 (Squidoo hasn't updated totals in a couple of days). That's more than four lenses a week and, I might add, hers are good, quality lenses. No junk in her lensography, that I can guarantee! Here's her latest; just check it out to see what I mean.

Susanna Duffy, you're a shining star in the Squidoo sky, or is it sea? Either way, thank you for being my cheerleader. You're going to make a wonderful member of the Giant 100 Club!

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!

Non-Geek Gets Best Tech Lens Nomination

What an honor! My Kindle lens has been nominated for the 2008 Giant Squid "Best Tech Lens" award. Very cool!

It's kind of ironic, though. I'm not exactly known for my technical prowess and I'm rarely mistaken for a geek. In fact, I'm rather technologically challenged. Actually, that's what has made my Kindle lens a pretty good lens; I designed it from a "Why would a non-techie type person like me want a Kindle wireless reader?" perspective. Happily, that approach has worked rather well.

The prize for the winner is basically bragging rights on Squidoo, which is a great reward. I'd be thrilled if you'd consider voting for my lens. The link to the voting module is on the Kindle lens, which I'd love for you to visit to make sure it's award-worthy, or you can go directly to the tech lens module on the 2008 Giant Squid Awards lens here. Be sure to take a look at all the lenses nominated in each of the different categories - all 21 - and vote for Giant Squid of the year while you're at it. (Good luck with narrowing that one down.) Voting deadline is December 21, but go ahead and vote now while it's fresh on your mind, and thank you very much for your support!

Raise Your Conversion Rate With These Squidoo Tips of the Day

A couple of quick tips today that will help convert lookers to shoppers and shoppers to buyers on your Squidoo lenses.

• In shopping modules (amazon, eBay, or with your own affiliate items such as allposters.com) use wording such as, "Click on the picture to read more about or to purchase the item." Some visitors to your lenses might not be accustomed to shopping online and need a call to action or even instructions to help them learn how to shop.


• When setting up an eBay module, if you know there will be plenty of your search items with bids, choose to show items with 1 or greater bids rather than defaulting to zero. Look under the "display options" tab and check the box to display the number of bids. Seeing that someone else is already bidding on the items creates an instant demand for the products that are shown, resulting in a sense of urgency for your lookers/shoppers/buyers to click through. Here's an example.
  

Have any additional tips to increase conversion rates on Squidoo? Please share them in a comment!

People Are Watching

I've discovered something rather interesting on Squidoo. People pay attention. They watch you. Having a fan club is fun and cool, even flattering, but it's actually a big responsibility. Add Giant Squid to your lensmaster status and people really start watching. Add SquidAngel to the mix and lensmasters start seeking you out. Sometimes it can be a little scary.

I used to think that I was a rather anonymous soul on the internet and, in fact, I pretty much was with a couple of nondescript websites that were easily overlooked. Then I started blogging and found a few people who began listening to what I had to say, but even that was on such a small scale it seemed that what I said or how I said it wasn't particularly important.

After Squidoo came along and one lens grew to two then 10 then, suddenly, I had 50 lenses and became a Giant Squid, by golly, people began to know who I was and what I said began to matter. Hiding behind my childhood-picture avatar was somewhat comforting, but as time has passed and I've built not only my brand on Squidoo but a reputation, the comfort level has really changed. Now I regularly get contacted with questions as well as getting asked for advice. I've even done a couple of interviews. Whoa, people actually care what I think!

That's pretty humbling, you know? I may be a Giant Squid and may, for awhile, have SquidAngel as part of my job description, but I'm really still just little ol' me. I take the responsibilities seriously and try to do my best and not let anyone down, though I might from time to time. I'm still that little girl in the picture, just a bit older. Okay, a lot older. When you do see me around, just remember that behind that orange halo lies a regular squid person who puts her pants on one tentacle at a time, just like you.

What All Squids Want - and I Got!

What do all Squidoo lensmasters hope for, strive for, wish for, live for? Do you know? If you're a lensmaster I'm guessing you do. The answer? Having your lens chosen as Lens of the Day.

Today was my day. I woke to lots and lots of Squidoo comment emails, which was my first clue. One said "Congratulations on LOTD" and then I knew for sure. Hooray! This is my first time receiving this great honor. What a way to start the week!

Making Fun of Sarah Palin - Has Political Humor Crossed the Line? is my honored lens. If you haven't seen it, I hope you'll take a few minutes to visit and read all the great comments answering the title question. Do you think political humor has gone too far this year? Add your comments to the duel. It's great fun!

Thanks, everyone, for creating such great content on the lens with your opinions and comments. Thanks, Megan, for choosing my lens. I'm so honored and still so excited!