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Super Squid: aj2008

Of all the thousands of lensmasters out there, there are some that really stand out. Some of them create amazing lenses, or help out in the community, or run great groups. Some of them do all of these things and more.

One of these Super Squids is aj2008. She’s coming up on her one year Squidoo anniversary, and is well on her way to Giant Squidom. With 41 featured lenses to date, including the two time Lens of the Day, Auditory Processing Disorder, she shows us that taking your time to create quality - not quantity - lenses can really make you stand out in the crowd.

aj2008 has graciously agreed to share some of her thoughts on Squidoo and lens making. Here’s what she had to say:

Squidophile: How did you first hear about Squidoo?

aj2008: In the Summer of 2008 I was diagnosed with an illness, which meant I had to stop working. As my job was a short term contract I had to give it up, even though it would probably have been renewed, had I not become ill. Financially, this made things difficult for us and I was left trying to think how I could earn money at a time when I was suffering dreadful dizziness and disorientation.

Fortunately I was not suffering from vertigo and found I could still work on the PC. I have always wanted to write so I started researching "writing on the net". I ended up on Janet 21's Number 1 lens Work at home with Squidoo and here I am. I am not earning a huge amount but it is building up gradually!

S: What was the topic of your first lens?

aj: The topic of my first lens was Janey Lee Grace, a BBC Radio 2 presenter who I had met a few days previously. It wasn't meant to be my first lens, but I got sidetracked. The underlying theme of the lens is natural and eco-living. I actually wish I had gone ahead and published the second lens (Bullying at Primary School) first as that was one of the reasons for joining Squidoo and is what I would call my own personal Landmark.

S: What types of lenses have you been working on recently? Is your first topic still important to you?

aj: Natural and green living is very important to me and I have published five more lenses that I would group together under this topic. However, I do have a very diverse range of interests, which is reflected in the range of topics on my lenses. I have started publishing in a new niche just recently (Tips for WAHMs) that will be based on my knowledge about working from home and business start-up and management, as I used to train people who wanted to become self employed.

S: Can you see yourself with 100 featured lenses one day?

aj: Yes, I can and I hope I do my second lot of 50 lenses a bit quicker than I have done the first!

S: Is there a Squidoo habit that you wish more lensmasters had?

aj: Oooo, I could go to town on this one! Occasionally, I see all sorts of "behaviour" on Squidoo that makes me wince and it is hard to retain your sense of humour. But the most hilarious incident was the Lensmaster who spammed one of my Guestbooks with a completely irrelevant link. The lens? Squid Etiquette!!!

I did not delete the comment but replied in the Guestbook saying I was leaving it on the lens as a classic example of Spamming a Guestbook. However, if I had one wish it is that everyone signs up to Squidoo with the attitude of "what can I BRING to the community of Squidoo" rather than "what can Squidoo do for ME". This may then stem the tide of Spam, Scam and Junk and improve the overall quality of the lenses.

S: Did you buy anything special with your first Squidoo payout?

aj: No, I did not earn enough - I could have bought a bag of sherbet lemons but that would have been about it! I have been banking my earnings and using them for what I call "Squidoo Business Development" - that is buying the occasional e-book and anything else related to my Squidooing.

I told myself that when I hit a certain target I would make a donation to a Lensmaster whose tools I use all the time. I am always logging on to SquidUtils and using the brilliant free tools and I also have the toolbar on my browser. So in the New Year, when the total in my Paypal account reached my target, I sent a donation to The Fluffanutta in recognition of all the help he has given me.

S: What are your top 3 Squidoo charities?

aj: Save the children, Soldiers Angels, Covenant House

S: If you could nominate a charity for Squidoo donations, which one would it be?

aj: St Tiggywinkles. Its the biggest wildlife hospital in the world and about an hour's drive from me. I have made the journey there with injured birds and they also released a couple of rehabilitated hedgehogs into my garden some years ago. I last visited a few weeks back - which reminds me, I have some new photos to add to the lens!

S: Do you ever use the Squidoo co-brands? Which one is your favorite?

aj: Until recently I rarely used the Squidoo co-brands, because to be totally honest I am not keen on the templates. However, I am now using the RocketMoms template for some of my lenses, which I like very much.

S: What’s your take on star ratings? Do you use all 5 ratings?

aj: Yes, I do use all the ratings but very infrequently do I use less than 5*s. For me the star ratings system does NOT work - *gasp* - did I just say that? It does not work because people use it in different ways.

You have the people who, if they rate, always give 5*s
You have the people who use it the way it was intended
You have the people (and thank goodness these are in the minority) who use the ratings spitefully
Then you have the people who abuse the fact that they have multiple accounts to give their own lenses a boost - but of course not all multi-account holders do this!

Because the majority of people who rate only use the 5*s, this results in people getting upset if they receive a rating less than 5*s. However, a 1* is actually better than no star at all. So the people who "1 star" you are actually doing you a favour. And when you think about it, the rating will only show when you first publish the lens. I have had it happen on both my newest lenses and I am not going to lose sleep over it. If it is a good lens and you get regular traffic then the lower rating will fade from view as more 5*s are given.

S: What is your favorite method for lens promotion? What about SEO?

aj: When I first joined Squidoo, SEO was a completely new concept and I must confess I had problems grasping it. I am sure that like me, a lot of lensmasters would go back and change the URLs of their first few lenses if they could! However, whenever I start on anything new I do a lot of "how to" research and I set about reading up everything I could about Lens promotion and SEO. This is one of the reasons I did not make my lenses as quickly as others who joined at the same time as I did.

But it was not until January 2009 that I began to see the light as far as SEO and Keywords are concerned and I must say that it was Lensmaster Spirituality (Katinka) who was waving the lantern. I had blogged that I was going to conduct an experiment by making a lens on one of the most published topics on the internet and see if I could get traffic. It is also one of the most spammed topics on Squidoo, so I knew I was taking a risk but I went ahead and published Losing weight on a wheat free diet. Katinka emailed me and asked if I would mind if she pulled apart the lens as far as SEO was concerned and blogged about it. How could I refuse such an offer from an SEO expert? Although, I must admit I was a bit worried because I saw myself as such an SEO amateur.

Katinka's feedback was complimentary in some areas and critical in others but over the weeks I learned so much from her and the lens has been very successful. It is the top weight loss lens on Squidoo, currently in the Top 100 AND getting traffic from Google. Much of this is down to Katinka's patient guidance and I try to apply what I learned from her to all my lenses now.

As far as Lens promotion is concerned, I have developed a system and I keep a record on an Excel chart that lists my lenses down the first colum and then there's headings across the top for the places I go to promote the lenses. Once I have promoted the lens I tick the box so I can keep track as I don't want to damage my reputation by over-promoting in one place. They include: SquidU, relevant forums outside Squidoo, my two blogs, Twitter, Tagfoot, SquidLog and some article sites. Writing articles is my newest strategy and is "under development".

S: Do you have a favorite module?

aj: It has to be the text module. It is so versatile and given a bit of knowledge about HTML (and there's lots of helpful lenses about that) you can do so much with it.

S: If you could invent a Squidoo module, what would it be?

aj: This is a tough one, because there is a brilliant range of modules and there's still some that I have not experimented with yet. I would like to be able to set rules and filters for adding links to Plexos to stop being spammed. I would also like to be able to pull up a list of what Fanclubs I have joined.

S: Do you have a favorite Squid? What makes them a great lensmaster?

aj: Oh no! That's the question I always dread. There are so many great Lensmasters on Squidoo and each one brings something unique that I have learned so much from. There's blogs I follow, Lensmasters I exchange emails with. To pick just one to spotlight would be extremely unfair and even if you said I could name 10, it would still be too difficult. So sorry, I am not even going there! However, I keep thinking that I should blog about a different Lensmaster each week and say what I have learned from them - so thanks for prompting me to do it!

I would like to add that I never cease to be overwhelemed by the help and support that I have received from the Lensmasters I know on Squidoo. It is great to be part of such a wonderful community.

S: If you could have coffee with Seth Godin, what would you talk about?

aj: Seth already knows what Squidoo means to me as we have exchanged emails about it, but the first thing I would do is thank him again for saving my sanity when it looked like my life as I knew it was having to change so radically, when I became ill. I would be really interested to ask Seth whether the Squidoo that we know today is the Squidoo he envisioned when he first evolved the idea. I would ask him if what I call the "dark side" of Squidoo (plagiarism, cheating, spiteful ratings etc) is what he imagined happening and to be honest, I would be surprised if he said no as Seth is one very wise cookie and I doubt that much happens on Squidoo that surprises him. But I would want to talk more about what he loves about Squidoo and what his vision is for the short, medium and long term. Then I would ask him for a job!

S: Any other heroes you’d love to chat with?

aj: There's many people I admire, but there's very few people I am actually in awe of. My heroes are my Dad (80 this year), whose devotion to and care of my mother (81) who has mobility problems, is absolutely incredible and there is my Lovely Hubby, whose care and support of me as I tread a very slow road to recovery reduces me to tears when I think about it. There's many husbands who would not be able to cope with all the domestic tasks he has had to carry out over the last year, in addition to managing a team of 14 people and working long hours. I would not be able to Squidoo like I do if I did not have my husband's support and understanding. Although he doesn't understand what I am talking about half the time!

Squidophile: What is your favorite thing to do outside of Squidoo?

aj2008: I perform in amateur theatre and yes, applause gives me a huge buzz. I love my garden, which was completely bare when we moved in 12 years ago and which we have designed and planted up - there's a lens there methinks! I am also a huge fan of Manchester United and enjoy watching football (soccer in the USA) on the TV.


Aj2008 is currently volunteering as one of our lovely Squidoo Angels. In her entire Squidoo career to date, she has rated over 1400 lenses! She is also a regular contributor in the SquidU forums, and an all around Super Squid. For more on what aj2008 is up to, check out her wonderful blogs: AJ's musings about Squidoo, and AJ is Always Juggling.

5 Ways to Boost Lensrank

Now that Squidoo lensrank has been fixed and we’re getting stats for our lenses again, why not take a look at some of the things that help to improve lensrank?

According to “Lensrank Explained - Really” by spirituality, there are 8 main factors that go into the calculations, and determine how high, or low, your lens will stand in the rankings. Some of them are easy to achieve, while others take a lot of work, and even a little luck.

Here are five specific lensrank factors that you can affect on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

1. Star ratings

Most Squids are pretty generous when it comes to giving out stars to deserving lenses. Whenever someone from the Squidoo community stops by one of your masterpieces, chances are, they will let you know what they think of it by rating it from 1-5.

To get visits from logged in Squids, send out a catchy Squidcast.

Many lensmasters really underestimate the power of a good Squidcast. Don’t just blurt out a sentence about your new lens, or a new module you’ve added. If you want visits, you really have to sell it! Describe your lens, tell your fans why they should visit it, and don’t forget to add a hyperlink or two to some of your hottest modules.

To make sure everyone who scrolls through your lens leaves you a star or five, add thefluffanutta’s amazingly wonderful Love This Lens Widget.

2. Visits

The best kind of visit a lens can get is from outside of Squidoo. That means that you’ve written about a topic that people are interested in, or that you’ve been bookmarked, or that someone loves your page so much they know the URL by heart.

There are many, many ways to find the traffic you want, but they all require a little work from you. When promoting a lens, remember to:

Share it - on Twitter, Digg, Tagfoot, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
Link to it - in forum posts, signatures, and profiles.
Blog about it - but beware of sounding spammy!

3. Click Outs

Click outs are important for lensrank. They indicate that visitors are spending time on your lens, reading what you have to say, and visiting other sites that you recommend.

Aside from providing affiliate links, try to find websites or lenses that people reading your lens would be interested in, and link to them. You can use anchor text links, or link lists, or make buttons from pictures that you use on your lens.

Remember to include the code target=“_blank” to open links in a new window. You can also describe your links with this code: title=“Name of Link Destination”

4. Interaction

Like click outs, when visitors click on polls or other interactive modules, it shows that you’re drawing in readers and keeping them glued to your content. Try to add something for your guests to do in each lens, such as a poll module, duel or guestbook.

For several example of how polls can be used, check out “The History of Surveys”.

5. Sales

Depending on what your topic is, sales can be the hardest thing to improve on your lens. Even if you’re getting plenty of traffic, not everyone is going to rush over to eBay to buy what you’re selling.

To help improve your chances of affiliate success, try to recommend products that you have a personal knowledge of. Describe them to your readers, and tell them why you love it so much, and why they’ll love it, too.

In my opinion, with sales modules, less is more. You don’t need to list every single book on your topic ever published in a gigantic Amazon Plexo. One or two great books (with five star customer ratings) in Amazon Spotlight modules tells readers that you’re serious about providing them with the best advice possible.

The sooner you do these things, the better. Take advantage of the new lens boost that lenses receive after being published, and push it even further up the ranks with quality, interactive content and active promotion.

Go Go Giant Squid Hopefuls

For those of us who are working on become Giant Squids one day, there are few new incentives to get those first 50 lenses published, polished and promoted. Being a Giant is about more than just having 50 lenses, and the standards get higher with each new batch. To qualify, your lenses have to be pretty good (if not great), and be “performing well.” Hopefully, they’re getting some traffic at the very least!

The first carrot-on-a-stick that the Squidteam is offering is the new Purple Star. We’ve been waiting for it for a long time, and Giant Squids are now seeing the benefits of this fun new recognition system. Lensmasters who want a purple star on their best and brightest need to first become Giant Squids, and then submit their lenses in the same fashion as the Lens of the Day.
To learn more, check out the Purple Star rundown by bdkz.

Perhaps the most interesting motivation for the next Giant Squid casting call is the Giant Squid Challenge 2009. Some of our favorite lensmasters and greeters are gathering up this season’s hopefuls for a mad dash to Giant Squidom. It is also open to current Giants who are working towards Club 100.

Check out So You Want to Be a Giant Squid? To learn more about the teams. If you think you’re up to the challenge, applications will only be accepted until April 31st. After that, it’s time to start creating fabulous new lenses for your chosen team!

Good luck to everyone!

A Guide to SquidooGroups Changes: Part Two

Many Squidoo groups have been disbanded in the last few days, indicating that many groupmasters don’t feel up to the challenge of making their groups great. Although it us unfortunate to see many of them go, it does free up the URLs, and new lensmasters will be able to use them once SquidooGroups open up for creation again.

In the meantime, many of us are rising to the occasion and polishing up our groups to meet the new standards. I personally find the challenge refreshing, and I’m looking at my own groups in a totally new light. Just as no lens is ever complete or perfect, groups need a lot of attention if they are to be successful.

If you’re not ready to close or transfer any of your own Squidoo groups, make sure you read up on the new guidelines from “Making Groups Great: Do you have what it takes?”. There is also a handy list of things that the SquidTeam will be looking for when reviewing groups, and what they hope not to see.

Here are the highlights from “Seven ways to make your Groups rock“:

1. Make your group HQ pretty.

There are plenty of ways to improve the appearance of any Squidoo group beyond that of the default HQ page. Though there aren’t very many modules to choose from, most of them do have description areas that you can use to display interesting pictures that will enhance your group’s front page.

You can use your own photos or scanned artwork, and of course there’s AllPosters.com links. And the internet is swimming with all kinds of free clip art as well.

Many lensmasters are also very generous with their images, and offer up plenty of great pictures especially for use on Squidoo. Check out Free Spacers and Fillers and Borders and Dividers for Use on Squidoo for some examples, and links to other great clip art lenses. (Please remember to give credit and link back to your sources. You can do this with a featured lens module, or with a hyperlink at the bottom of your lens.)

If pictures aren’t your thing, or you want to do a little bit more, try using some fancy CSS Tricks. To make a group even more impressive, combine your favorite CSS with the amazing palette of colors on HTML Tips for Color. For some pre-made module titles and more, grab yourself some Lens Candy.

2. Define the focus of your group.

Groups need to be about more than just the basic Squidoo category. Instead of a “Travel Group”, we need to have a “European Destinations Group” and an “RV Vacations Group”. The more specific your topic - and therefore collection of lenses - is, the more potential you have for visits, clickouts and return traffic. Why be the whole phone book when you can be the dog-eared restaurant guide?

When starting a new group, it’s a good idea to use one of your own lenses as a jumping off point. Start groups about topics that you are interested in. This will help you define your group’s area of expertise.

To fix a group that is too broad, try taking a look at the top five or top ten lenses in your group. What are they about? Check out the primary tags for each of them. Is there one that is used more than any other? Use that tag to set the main topic for your group.

For instance, in the top 100 list of an incredibly large group dedicated simply to music, more than half of the top ten lenses have the word ‘songs’ in the title. This groupmaster could redefine his or her group by changing the topic to ‘songs and lyrics’.

If you change the subject of your group, you will inevitably have to let some lenses go. But that’s okay! That’s what the SquidTeam wants you to do.

3. Go ahead. Fire people. We dare you.

See?

Being a good groupmaster is a tough job. Although the small power trip one can get from rejecting lenses that don’t meet guidelines can be fun, it’s much nicer to be able to thank a lensmaster for their wonderful submission. Booting lenses altogether is hard to do. Luckily, the SquidTeam is backing us up on this one, so we don’t have to worry quite as much about offending others.

If you’re removing lenses because you’ve narrowed your group’s focus, you could write a generic message and send it to those lensmasters who’s lenses will be removed. If your group is huge and you’re firing a lot of people, just post it on your HG page and hope for the best.

There are other reasons why you may want to remove a lens from your group. Perhaps the quality of content has dropped, links are broken and it hasn’t been updated in months. Maybe the lensmaster is MIA, since they have not made anything new or done anything to their profile page since you added them to the group last year.

To keep a good group going strong, take some time now and then to weed out lenses that don’t contribute to the quality of your content.

4. Give lensmasters something to talk about.

Of the small selection of modules available from group pages, most of them are interaction modules like the guestbook and plexos. These tools are there to make your groups more than just a place for people to dump their lenses and get a visit from you.

Amazon Voting Plexo - Find some Amazon products that are directly related to your topic. Ask your visitors to vote for the ones they recommend. Remember to keep plexos items down to a minimum. Huge plexos aren’t flattering to groups or lenses.

Group Discussion - This is just like the guestbook module on lenses. You can have a comments section for members and visitors, and you can also use it to get tips or ask questions. Ask your visitors to leave their opinion on your group subject. If your group is about gardening, ask your readers to leave a tip for growing their favorite plants.

Link Plexo - These can be used to feature your group’s lenses - giving them a nice backlink - or you can ask visitors to share their favorite links related to your group topic. There’s nothing worse than a link plexos with totally irrelevant or spammy links, so make sure that you police your list. This will make sure that you’re providing a good resource for your visitors.

Poll Module - The possibilities are endless - ask a question, compare items, get feedback. Remember to always provide options for readers who are neutral, such as “Maybe” “Sometimes” “I don’t know” or “None of the above”. This will make sure that each visitor has a chance to interact with your page, which is great for lens rank.

Text List Plexo - There are plenty of ways to use this module to enhance the value of your group. Make a list of tips that your members can vote on or add to, or create a wish list for lens ideas.

5. Show off your best faces.

What’s the point of joining a group if your lens is just going to get lost in the crowd?

Use the featured lenses and links plexos modules to display some or all of the lenses in your group. If you’re visiting groups before approving them anyway, it takes only a few seconds to copy the URL and add it to your group page.

By breaking your group’s lenses down into categories, and displaying them in the appropriate section, you help your visitors find what they’re looking for. To see this method in action, check out the Family Time Group. If you're using categories, you should also know how to create a group table of contents.

There are also some modules for showing off your very best group members.

6. Keep it current.

You wouldn’t let your lenses go stale, so why neglect your groups?

The easiest way to keep a group fresh is to add new lenses to your feature modules when they are accepted. You could also change the lens picture once in awhile, add a poll, or write an article or blurb to enhance your content. Keep your page looking new with an RSS feed to a related blog (though new posts don’t count as updates).

7. You’re responsible for your members.

If you’re displaying lenses by someone whose conduct leaves something to be desired, it makes your whole group look bad. Set up some guidelines for lensmasters, not just lenses. Many groups require that lensmasters show some activity in the Squidoo community before being accepted.

Before approving a lens, check out the lensmaster’s profile. Look at how long they’ve been a Squidoo member, and how many fields they have filled out on their profile. Do they have contact enabled? Have they uploaded a picture and written a blurb about themselves? Do they have 10 lenses about acai berries or other spam bait?

Remember that your group is only as good as it’s members. Try thinking of yourself as an employer interviewing applicants for a job. Don’t hire people who don’t have the same ideals that you do. Try to encourage your members - and rejected applicants, too - to be active Squids with quality lenses that improve Squidoo.com as a whole. That’s what SquidooGroups is all about.

A Guide to SquidooGroups Changes: Part One

The powers that be at Squidoo have announced that some serious changes will be made to the way groups are managed at Squidoo.com. If you have not already read Kimberly’s post on the SquidU Review, it has plenty of detail about the current changes, and more to come in the near future.

Here are the highlights from Making Groups Great: Do you have what it takes?

“As of right now, no new Groups can be created.”

If you were thinking of making a group to fit some of your newest, best or loneliest lenses, it will now have to wait. As the SquidTeam sorts through existing groups to see what’s what, their job will be made easier by a halt in new group creation.

No word yet on when groups will be opened up for creation again. If you’d like to sound off about it, you can join in Groundswell’s SquidooGroups debate.

What this means for lensmasters:

For the time being, we no longer need to wonder if any new groups have been created that would benefit from the submission of our best lenses. In addition, this closes one avenue that might keep us from polishing our existing groups and lenses. And of course, it means those of use that might have been making groups will just have to make new lenses instead.

“We’re setting our expectations for your existing Groups a little higher.”

The SquidTeam is checking up on groups that have already been made. They want to see who has been running groups that make good use of the tools provided, and who is stepping up to the plate with the new standards.

What this means for lensmasters:

If you’ve made groups that don’t fit in with the intended purpose of SquidooGroups, you’ll need to do one of three things:

Close the group. Many groups have been disbanded already.

Transfer the group. Plenty of lensmasters would be happy to take over for you. Just make a post in the SquidU Groups forum and let everyone know it’s up for grabs.

Improve the group. More on that in an upcoming post!

“We’re going to choose up to 100 of the very BEST groups on Squidoo and unlock a special tool just for them. These groups will fit a list of our criteria and be nominated by SquidStaff and our Angels.”

Our SquidTeam is looking for the best of the best, and whoever makes the cut gets a special prize. Once again, our beloved Squidoo is rewarding members who do more than the bare minimum.

What this means for lensmasters:

If you’re already running groups to the best of your ability, you could be getting a nice bonus tool this summer. If you’re running groups with a minimum of effort, you’ll need to pull up your socks and polish your group mastering skills (or give someone else a chance to do it by transferring your group).

It also means that our lenses which are in groups (especially these top 100) may be getting a little more love in the future. A good group showcases their best lenses, so if you’ve been wishing your lens would get featured more often, you may see it come true.

“We won’t be shy about locking spam or junk or abandoned Groups over the next few months.”

SquidU forum users have been asking for this for a long time. Most savvy lensmasters know that poorly run groups are more of a drain than a boost for our lenses. We don’t want the lens that we worked so hard on lumped in with just any old fluff.

What this means for lensmasters:

In addition to the groups that have been voluntarily closed since the announcement, we’ll be seeing a lot of our other groups disbanded in the future. Even if you’re pretty careful about the groups you join, if they’ve been abandoned, they’re getting the boot! Our lenses will have a much shorter group list as a result.

Though this may temporarily cause drops in lens rank, it could be offset by improvements made in groups that are here to stay. Only the SquidTeam knows for sure what lensrank will be doing.
It also means that we’ll never have to comb through endless groups looking for the ones that have something good to offer.

High five!

Photograph by Mark Thayer