Going on Six

In a couple of weeks I'll celebrate my sixth anniversary here on Squidoo.  Every year I look back and say wow, what a difference a year makes!

I was just looking at one of my old lenses and noticed that it was linked to this post where I was excited about having made over $50 that month from Squidoo.  Wow, what a difference five years make!

Back then I could only dream that a very part-time venture would become a very fun full-time way to earn a living. 

Wow, can't wait 'til next year!

Content Rules

If you write on Squidoo then you're surely aware of the recent conversations revolved around making our lenses personal with just the right ratio of affiliate links to unique content.  Keyword content factors in as well - no one wants to be punished for keyword stuffing, especially when it's unintentional. 

Here's a conversation about Zazzle content on our lenses and how to make our Zazzle-centric lenses acceptable to both Squidoo and to the search engine powers-that-be.  These Zazzle lens tips can be applied to the rest of our sales-oriented lenses and product reviews as well.  And it's not just Squidoo and the search engines, it's our readers that we should be concerned about.  If we don't offer unique, useful, interesting content to them, then we're not doing our job very well. 

No matter how you stand on the great Squidoo debate these days, it's hard to deny that the old maxim of "content is king" still drives e-commerce and, really, online publishing in general.  I think that's the bottom line in all this.  What do you think?

Food for Thought

In case you missed Seth's blog post today, here's a link.

Us vs Us

That so says it all and really has me thinking about the tribes to which I belong.

If there's a member of any tribe, anywhere, online or off, who doesn't get it, then chances are they'll just never get it.

The Quick Brown Fox

Look at the picture I came across today.  Isn't it great?  It reminds me of ninth grade typing class, where I fell in love with typing.  In fact, a few years ago I actually wrote a lens about the history of the typewriter that included a tribute to my typing teacher and a mug with "The quick brown fox" phrase on it.

Does this phrase bring back memories to you, too?  How fast can you type it? Go ahead, give it a try!

Image credit

Cool New Plexo Tool on Squidoo

It's called an embeddable plexo, a tool that allows you to grab a plexo from your lens and share it on your blog or website.

Like this one (from this lens):

Add Your Romantic Valentine's Day Decorating Ideas for the Bedroom

Cool?  Yeh, I'd say so!

Read more about it right here then let me know how you might use this fun feature.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Thanks to the lensmasters who are making their intro pictures 250x250 square.

You make my life so much easier!

xoxo

February Greetings & Goal Review Time

Happy February everyone! 

I hope Punxsutawney Phil's forecast holds true for all of us and we have a nice, early Spring.  It's a beautiful day here today, nice and sunny with temps that aren't bad for February.  I don't mind winter when it looks this nice!

I just reviewed the list of goals that I wrote at the end of December.  Some are going well, but I'm behind on others and need to make some adjustments this month as well as do some catching up.  How about you?  Have you reviewed your goals for the month and year?  It's a good time to measure progress and re-focus if necessary.  I'd love to hear how others are doing.

If you have lenses that need some love, feel free to post them on my Facebook page. There's a thread started for helping WIP lenses get out of the basement so add yours anytime then visit someone else's to pay the love forward this month.

Time to update Spring lenses, too, and Squidoo has a pretty green theme for Gift Guide lenses categorized for St. Patrick's Day and Easter.

So, what's new with you this fine February?  Care to share?

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Squidoo Springs Into the Green

Just in time for Easter and St. Patrick's Day (not necessarily in that order - actually in just the opposite order) Squidoo has unwrapped a new cover for Celebrate magazine - and this time it's in the green!

For all of our St. Patrick's Day and Easter gift guide-categorized lenses, you'll now see those with a fresh and pretty green background (the picture here shows just a hint).

If you want your spring holiday-seasoned lenses to appear in Celebrate, just re-categorize them in a Gift Guide category for either of those two holidays and your lens will end up looking a whole lot like this one.  (Unless you opt out, which you can do in your lens workshop.)

Bet I can find a few more of my lenses that would fit into those categories.  How about you?  Feel free to drop a link in our comments section below!

Exploiting Shirley

I have a couple of Shirley Temple lenses on Squidoo so when I read late last week that 84-year-old Shirley Temple had just joined Twitter, I was thrilled!  I started following the account immediately.  Her posts so far were adorable and I was excited to be able to include them on a Twitter Follow module on one of my lenses.

Then, over the weekend, I (thankfully) happened to read that Twitter was duped.  Shirley Temple Black's spokesperson said she is not on Twitter.  I checked the account and, indeed, while the URL was the same and included Shirley's name, the identification and information on the account now belonged to a scumbag marketing company that shall remain nameless.

The great news is that today the Twitter account no longer exists.  But I'm still fuming, just a little, that someone would exploit a public figure the way they did.  I should have been suspicious (and I was, a little) that Shirley hadn't included her married name in the account.  She's gone by that name for many, many years and the "Shirley Temple" did have a slight exploitative ring to it.  The other good news is that the Twitter Follow module on the lens where I added it didn't work, and didn't display, so I wasn't responsible for leading any of its 10,000 or so followers to that bogus account.

As far as I'm concerned, Shirley Temple Black is a national treasure and I sincerely hope that the person who used her name will be caught and punished, but I can't imagine that will really happen. I'll just be even more cautious than usual in the future and not assume that just because a Twitter account says "verified," that makes it so.

Rant over.

Wow! It's Wednesday!

Just realized that it's Wednesday, halfway through the week already.  Wow, time flies when I'm having fun!

It's also the 16th of January, already halfway through the first month of the new year.  I started the year feeling very "up" and ambitious, ready to set goals and meet them head-on.  So, I just pulled up the notepad file I made titled "goal notes" to see how I'm doing.  (To be honest, I was a little bit afraid to look.)

Not bad, really.  A few extra-strong points and one or two weak ones, but overall not looking bad for 50 percent of the way through the month and 4 percent through the year.  I see how I need to adjust my focus and I'll be working on that.  Definitely see that if I'm going to finish them, I need to spend more time dispersing those lenses that have fallen so low in lensrank.  (Yep, one of those weak points.)

It really does pay to assess goals periodically.  Have you looked at yours lately?  How are you doing?

Squidoo is In the Pink!

Welcome to Valentine's Day on Squidoo!  Yep, no time like the first week of January to get started on those Valentine's lenses!  (Here's one of mine.)

Have Valentine pages to update?  When you do, consider adding them to the Gift Guide category and choosing a Valentine's Day topic.  That choice will give you the gorgeous pink and red Celebrate theme, just released for Valentine's Day.  I love seeing Squidoo in the pink!

Unsure about joining Celebrate magazine?  Would 3.7 million pageviews over Christmas sway you?  It's up to you, but there are advantages to including your lenses in the magazine.  When you do, make sure you've updated each Valentine's lens with a great, square intro photo as well as a nice, big picture in the body of the lens to give it a better chance of being featured on Celebrate's front page.

What's your favorite Valentine's Day lens?  Feel free to share it in a comment below or on Susan52 on Squidoo's Facebook page. 

XOXOXO, everyone!

Resolved: Become a Better Writer

Happy New Year!  Wow, seems like only yesterday we wondered if the power would still be on when we crossed over into the year 2000.  Now, going into 2013, all we have to worry about is falling off a fiscal cliff.  But that's a topic for another day (and another blog).

Did you read the Hello January post on SquidooHQ today?  In it I mentioned seven things to do this month and to keep in mind throughout the new year.  One of those things has to do with working outside your comfort zone in order to become a better writer.  A day or two after I wrote that, I happened upon this from the Writer's Don't Cry section of Amazon's Omnivoracious blog.   The article includes 10 resolutions for writers, things you can do this year to hone your craft. Idea number five, to exercise your writing, expands more on the practice of writing outside your comfort zone.  Looks like I was onto something with my similar suggestion!

If you're a writer (and if you're a lensmaster, you are a writer) and want to improve your writing skills, give that article a read.  The "comfort zone" topic really resonated with me and I'd love to know which of the 10 tips speak to you.  Would you let me know in a comment below?

Here's wishing each of us a happy, healthy, and productive 2013.  May each of our lenses be better written and more successful than the ones that came before!

Using the Black Box Themes on Squidoo

Want the "black box" modules on your lenses to coordinate with the lens's theme?  Now, in one simple step, it can!

Just edit your "black box" module and choose "theme" instead of a color.  When the lens is published, the black box background will coordinate with the lens theme itself. 

I've done this on several of my lenses and just love how it looks.  Today I updated a lens using the "clouds" theme and updated the black boxes on that lens.  Love how they look and wanted to share one here just in case you haven't tried doing this yet.  Isn't it pretty?  (You can see it on the lens here.)

Have you used the "theme" option for black boxes on your lenses?  Which is your favorite?

Merry Christmas from Susan52

Wishing all of my Squidoo friends a very Merry Christmas.

I hope your holiday is filled with fun and family - 

and Jesus, whose birth we celebrate!

Image Credit

New Year's Resolution: Re-Balance the Scale

It's really hard to believe that Christmas is just a few days away. It's been a nice holiday sales season and I'm not looking forward to watching the volume of Squidoo visits and sales start dropping like Santa's tired elves on December 26th.

I do have a couple of lenses that I'm counting on for after-Christmas shoppers, though, then there's the New Year's resolutions crowd and I'm hoping to profit from that as well. Valentine's Day will be next. After that, Easter will be here before we know it, then summer, then we'll start preparing for Christmas all over again. Say it with me: Time flies when you're having fun!

This year has been different for our family. We spent the first few months building a new house and the next several months getting it furnished and settling in. With all that we've had going on for the last year and a half, my concentration has been on family. And you know what? It's been nice! But now it's time to get back to business.

For me, it's time to re-balance the priority scale. Family will always be first, but I'm looking forward to having some time freed up again to dedicate to the online things that I love. Over the next several days I'll be reassessing, setting goals, and making lists and plans for 2013. It's been a very, very good year, but it's time to move on. I can hardly wait!

How about you? Have you made any New Year's resolutions? Feel free to share your thoughts and goals.

Image used via a Creative Commons license