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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

5 Ways to Use SquidUtils RSS Feeds

Many lensmasters are already aware of the great tools and tricks available from SquidUtils. When you sign in, you can do things like: create affiliate links that work with Squidoo HTML rules, do a Squidoo only Google search, or check backlinks for your lenses.

You can also view and grab RSS feeds of your lenses and groups, your latest updates, your Squidcasts or your favorite lensmasters’ Squidcasts. This is an incredibly handy resource, but what can you do with it? Plenty!

Here are just five things that you can do with your lensmaster feeds:

1. Add to your lensography, groupography or plexography.

The next time you create or edit a Squidoo-ography about yourself, add one of your Squidoo feeds to show off some of your lenses and groups. Use the recently updated feed to show readers what you've been up to.

2. Add to your Yahoo home page.

If you’re using Yahoo for Flickr, MyBlogLog or email, you can add RSS feeds to your home page. Throw up a feed of your latest lens updates and your favorite lensmaster Squidcasts.

3. Add to your Tweetfeed.

You can add additional RSS feeds to your Tweetfeed home page. Why not use thefluffanutta’s new Pipes program to include feeds of your lenses by category or tag? Use the same keywords as your Tweetfeeds.

4. Add to your Lijit content.

You can add many RSS feeds to your Lijit content or network. Keep your Lijit searches up to date with a feed of your lenses and groups.

5. Add to your blog.

Place a feed to your latest Squidcasts on your blog or other website. Be sure to see pmolinero’s tips on adding backlinks to your Squidcasts. This will allow you to highlight important updates and information from your latest lens, and help draw in readers from outside of Squidoo.

The Big Charity Payout

If you're not following the Squidoo Blog, you may have missed the recent post about the unclaimed royalties policy. During the upcoming Squidoo royalty payout, the Squidteam will be donating all earnings on accounts that appear to be inactive.

That means that all lensmasters who have not recieved any payouts in the last 12 months will have their earnings redirected to the Squidoo Charity Fund. So essentially, charities are about to benefit from some of the stinkier lenses out there!

If you've been stockpiling your royalties, you may need to take steps to make sure you receive your payments.

Check out the post on the Squidoo Blog to learn more.

Never Too Late for a Seasonal Lens

Last week I was looking at the calendar and saw that Earth Hour was coming up. Out of nowhere, I realized that it would make a great topic for a Squidoo lens. I didn’t spend any time debating whether or not it would be worthwhile to create a lens for an event that was only a few weeks away. Instead, I got up extra early and got to work on putting my ideas together.

I was able to publish Top Ten Things to Do for Earth Hour the next day. Thanks to the Twitter Storm module, it was picked up by eco-savvy Squid a_willow, and has been receiving a pretty decent amount of traffic ever since.

Is it making me millions? No.

Has it won any awards? Nope.

But has been in my top three lenses since it became featured, and made it into the Top 10 in the Green category almost instantly. And that’s pretty darn good, if you ask me.

The moral of this story is that although seasonal lenses are best made a few months in advance, it is never too late to create a lens on any topic, no matter how short-lived interest might be. Any notch on your dashboard is a step forward, a lesson or two learned, and one more reason for readers to find you and your work.

And if you don’t get lucky with traffic this year, it might be a big money-maker next year!

By the way, what are you doing for Earth Hour?

5 Ways to Update a Stale Lens

Making sure that lenses are updated frequently with new content is a full time job. At the very least, a once monthly update is recommended to maintain a healthy lens rank. Not only does Squidoo appreciate your efforts to add new information, but your readers do, as well.

The trouble is, not every lens focuses on a topic that makes it into the news every month. Some lenses present a single concept, recipe or idea that leaves little room for written improvement. And there are only so many products on Amazon that any one subject can relate to.

So once you’ve eradicated every single typo, polished every bit of HTML, and added as many hyperlinks as you can think of, what is there to do?

Here are just 5 of the things I like to do when a lens needs it’s monthly brush up:

1. Change the lens photo.
It’s great to have a clear, relevant and interesting picture in the introduction module, and even better if your fans and readers recognize it when they see it.

Your profile picture should be like a familiar (and hopefully trusted) face, but lens photos don’t have to be. In fact, changing your lens photo once in awhile might encourage previous visitors to stop by and see what’s new.

2. Add a poll.
There are a million and one ways that polls can fit into all types of lenses. Polls allow your readers to compare products or ideas, answer questions, give feed back or rate a list of items. When I can’t think of anything else to do with a lens, I sometimes add a poll or a duel module.

3. Edit the lens bio.
You can add or change the greeting that is displayed in the bio area of your lens, or add some links to your lensography, blog or other places you’d like readers to go.

4. Optimize your pictures.
Are your lens pictures turning up in searches? If you’ve added the alt tag, then you’re probably already seeing Google traffic for your pics. If not, you need to check out Traffic from Image Searches.

5. Add a Lijit module.
Having a Lijit account is like having your own personal search engine. It includes only content that you make or recommend. When you add a Lijit module to a lens, you can create an account right in the workshop, and automatically add all of your published lenses to your network.

Lijit is a great way to let readers find other lenses, blog posts and content that you’ve created, and you can get keyword ideas and other stats with the traffic information that your account provides.

So, whenever you have 5 or 10 minutes to spare, you can do one of these things to your most stale lens and have it smelling fresh by the next rank update.

Sending Better Tweets

Twitter is one of the best tools available to lensmasters, not only for promoting their lenses, but for staying connected with Squidoo friends, finding ideas and learning new things. There’s a space for your Twitter page in your Squidoo profile, a Twitter feed module, TwttrStrm, and of course you can Tweet your latest lens update using OpenID.

Many lensmasters use the “Tweet Your Update” button that appears in the workshop after publishing a lens. It’s handy if you want to get your lens out there without logging in to Twitter, but is it the best way?

When you tweet your update, the message that appears in your Twitter profile is generic: “I’ve just updated my Squidoo page…” It tells your followers what you’re doing, but it doesn’t give much incentive to visit your lens.

To really advertise your work, sending a customized Tweet is essential. You can copy your lens URL, or use the Twitter button when viewing your lens, and write a blurb about your updates to invite your friends and followers to see what you’ve added.

“I’ve just updated my lens” can become “I’ve just added a new Design Direction Duel” or “Add your gardening lens to the new plexo!” or perhaps “Don’t miss my Mother’s Day gift ideas!”

Using keywords in your Tweets is a good idea, because it will allow your lens Tweets to show up in searches and Tweetfeeds.

"Red Face, Blue Bird"

Not Another Facebook Scandal

By now, nearly everyone has heard of the most recent Facebook scandal that has many people questioning the intentions of the popular social website. The offending terms of service agreement has been discussed all over the blog world, and in some places even made the evening news.

It seems that the online community is made up of two groups: those that are content to use Facebook, and those that love nothing more than discussing reasons to hate Facebook. The company’s new ToS was a very juicy topic for the anti-Facebook crowd, and even had many of the happy users wondering about the merit of the website they like so much.

What’s interesting is how utterly scandalized so many people seem to be over what is essentially a very basic and not uncommon user agreement clause. Although it is possible, it is highly unlikely that a large and profitable company intends to copy pictures of your last birthday party and sell them.

Facebook is not like a one-man business being run out of someone’s basement or van. They have over 175 million active users. They aren’t going to trick anyone into giving up their retirement fund and then scurry off to Mexico in the middle of the night.

Though they may choose to use members’ uploaded content for advertising, it’s not likely that they would paste your picture all over the internet without your permission. Knowing now how important customer satisfaction is, they have little to gain by abusing the trust of their users.

These types of broad, seemingly invasive user agreements are not meant to give websites total domination over your personal information (insert maniacal laugh here). They are meant to protect the company in charge from various lawsuits. If a misguided teenager uploads nude photos of herself to Facebook, and they end up on TotallyNakedChicks dot com, Facebook isn’t interested in paying for it.

Asking users to sign an agreement that gives Facebook ownership of all content you upload is necessary in a society where no one is responsible for their own actions, and common sense is not a requirement for survival.

Having one’s legal team work up a creepy-sounding contract is much the same as making sure all coffee cups say “Caution HOT!”. The only difference is the size of the print.

Search Engine Calendar

Submitting lenses to search engines is often one of the first things we Squids do once we’ve successfully published a great new lens. Those experts that recommend this practice also say that it’s a good idea to re-submit every 4-6 weeks, or any time your lens has a major update such as new information, links or a fresh layout.

This may seem like an easy task when you only have a few lenses under your belt, but the job of keeping your lenses up to date with Google and Yahoo can become overwhelming when your list of lenses continues to grow. How do you remember when you last submitted your lens on humming birds, and did you forget to submit your latest lens on diaper bags?

My solution to this problem is a simple text file that sits quietly on my dashboard. Whenever I make a new lens I open up my “URL Submissions” folder and paste the complete url for my latest masterpiece. Then I type in the date, and head on over to the
Big 3 and beg for a crawl.

After doing major updates, I will open up the file and check to see when my last submission was. If it’s been more than a month, I will copy the url of the lens I want to refresh and re-submit it to Google, Yahoo and MSN. By typing in the date, I’ll have a record of my activity for next time.

As a bonus, this handy little file contains urls for all of my lenses, so I don’t have to remember them all. I can usually recall the addresses for each of my lenses if I think about it, but to date I’m only at 27. Remembering what I called my latest page on beads might be more difficult when I’m working with 50 lenses or more. Being able to quickly link to your lenses on other sites is key to promoting your work on Squidoo.

Of course, you may be one who believes you should not submit your lens to search engines. It's probably true that backlinks are better for promotion than hand submission. I like to use both!

Facebook Ideas for Squids

Like many lensmasters, I didn’t create a Facebook account until after joining Squidoo. I had hoped that by posting my creations for all of my ‘friends’ to see, I would get a little extra traffic, maybe some comments or even a little praise.

What I actually got were a lot of requests to join groups, sign petitions, and add apps like “top friends” and poker games. You know the ones. My inbox is full of requests that I just don’t have the heart to ignore, but have no intention of responding to. The only apps I have added are feeds to my Del.icio.us and Digg activities. Facebook is like a second Twitter to me. And with the new Facbook Connect tool on Squidoo, it’s even better.

Recently many of my friends and family members started passing around a chain-letter type message on Facebook called “25 Random Things About Me”. At first, I groaned. Between Squidoo, my own website, and my two blogs, I don’t exactly have time to play Facebook tag for kicks.

But then I had an idea. What if I threw a little HTML into my response, and directed readers to my lenses?

Suddenly, the chain letter didn’t seem like a waste of time. I was able to work 7 or 8 lenses into my 25 responses without feeling like I was taking advantage. Just as I had hoped, my lens stats are showing a few visits from Facebook daily. Not much, but every visit counts.

Some other tips for using Facebook to promote your Squidiness:

1. Turn comments on in your updates, so that friends will see any comments you make on notes, posted items and photos. Whenever you post a link to one of your lenses, comment on it, and more people will be able to see it when they log in.

2. Comment on your own activities and include links to your lenses or blogs where appropriate. For example, if you RSVP to an event, comment on the update and include a link to your lens that’s related to the theme.

3. Do you use videos on your lenses? Whenever you add a new YouTube video to a lens, post the same video to Facebook, and let your friends know that you’ve chosen it for your lens. Post a link!

4. When you add a new Duel or Prediction module to a lens, invite your Facebook friends to join in the discussion. The same goes for TwttrStrm lenses, too.

5. Be nice! Have fun, all that good stuff.

Squidcast Abuse

One of my habits as a lens master is to check in with my “Favorites” tab to see what people have been up to. It’s usually what I do between lenses, when I can’t decide what to do next. There’s usually an interesting Squidcast or two to check out.

Recently, I found that nearly every item on my Favorites page was from the same lensmaster. I won’t name any names, but this person constantly sent updates about the same lenses and groups, without any indication that there was new content to be seen. They usually seemed like generic advertisements.

I’m not one to judge what a person uses the Squidcast for - to each their own. What bothered me about it is that there were so many, all of the other people I am following were getting bumped before I could get a chance to see their Casts. There are so many things that I could be doing while I have a chance to sit down at my keyboard. Flipping back through pages and pages of Squidcasts is not one of them.

After a few weeks, I finally got up the nerve to head on over to the lensmaster’s profile and leave the fan club. I’ve never unfavorited anything before, and I didn’t exactly enjoy doing it, but enough was enough. I wonder if I should send along some advice on how not to annoy your fan club?

Join the Squid Police

Here is some food for thought: Is "Squidoo" A Dirty Word?

It may not be just yet, but it is starting to feel that way. Anyone who tries to use StumbleUpon, Mixx, or Digg to promote their work on Squidoo may already be feeling the burn of everyone else's bad karma.

A lot of the bad feelings are still lingering from Squidoo's first taste of Spam, and subsequent incidents of bad usership. Far too many people have come to think of Squidoo as a place for spam and irrelevant content.

And who can blame them? What if every time you searched for information via Google or Yahoo, you had to sift through dozens of pages of "Great Stuff on Amazon!", without finding the answer to your question? I know it bugs me when I'm looking for lensroll content, and that's all I find. It must be equally annoying for non-Squids who are trying to write book reports or learn new skills.

So what can we do about it? Bad behavior should be reported whenever it violates the Squidoo Terms of Use. Don't be shy. If you truly believe that a lensmaster is not on the up-and-up, it couldn't hurt for someone at HQ to check in on their activities. This way, we can help weed out those lensmasters that are making the rest of us look bad.

Proving Me Wrong and Stuff

A while back, I was in the mood to rant, and I listed My Top 5 Most Annoying Lensmaster Mistakes. I say my top five, and not the top five, because what is considered good behavior can vary from Squid to Squid. Anyone who spends a lot of time over at SquidU knows that there are all kinds of opinions on things such as adding guestbooks, leaving star ratings, and all of the things that Squids can choose to do during their day.

One of the things that bugs me most about hastily published lenses is the default module title. A close runner up is the only slightly different module title. As I've said before, the word "stuff" does not belong in a headline, or title.

Well, according to Susan52, that's exactly where it goes! Recently on I Squidoo, Do You? she explained that one of her lenses actually dropped in lensrank when she removed the word stuff from the title. This is a great example of why having a lens title that appeals to your target audience is ideal. If possible, it's probably a great idea to use the exact phrase that your reader would type into Google.

I think it might be time to go and have a look at some of my titles, and see if anything needs a good tweaking. And stuff.

A Warning to Etsy and eBay Sellers

Now that the holidays are over, I've gotten back to writing about my main passion - beading. My first lens of the new year is all about ways to use the very easy and traditional daisy chain stitch. As is my habit, I've been blogging about it where appropriate, and today I stopped in at CrafterZone to share Variety Beading: Daisy Chain.

While browsing the forum, I came across a post about a new US law that demands all products made for children be tested for harmful substances such as lead. Apparently Big Brother's panties got in a twist about last year's product recalls. You may remember that many products from China and elsewhere were pulled from shelves because of high lead and amphetamine content. The solution? Ban all children's products that have not been submitted for intense screening.

The problem of course, is that the law as it is applies to everyone and everything, including products manufactured in the US, and those made by home crafters. The result is that if the law should be passed, no one will be able to sell handmade toys, blankets or clothing at farmers markets or online, unless they pay the fees to have tests performed on each item they make.

If there is any truth to the article, then this is bad news for many Squids, especially those that have made lenses just to help promote their home shops. Under the new law, selling products that have not been individually tested will be an offense that could result in fines and even jail time. You can read about this latest economy drain at Digital Journal. I won't go into the endless number of ways that this law contradicts what is needed for the North American economy at this time. We all know it's just bad karma all around.

If you are a US citizen that will be harmed by this law, you may be able to take part in the lawsuit against it.

The Face of Spam

Anyone who spends any amount of time working or playing online knows that there's always some kind of spam lurking out there, just waiting to pounce on you. Generally, the term spam refers to unsolicited information in the form of ads, email, etc. We all know it when we see it, and wonder how on earth people who create spam still manage to attract people to their site, product or cause.

When we find a nasty little fish (or phish!) in our spam filter from "Sales Blaster" or "asdfjkl.com", we usually delete it without looking. But does anyone stop and wonder what kind of person wrote such an email? Who is the man or woman that so shamelessly invades our space with their nonsense?

Recently I had the opportunity to meet a spammer almost face to face. One of my groups received several join requests one day, four of which were from the same lensmaster. This in itself isn't unusual, so I didn't think there was a problem until I started reviewing their lenses. Each of the four pages had similar titles, and nearly identical content. All of the links pointed to the same website, and there was little to see besides a short blurb and an Amazon module.

Because my groups' guidelines specifically state that all lenses must have original written content, I had to deny these lenses from the group. It didn't help that they were barely related to the group topic as well.

When I went to the lensmaster's bio page to let them know why their lenses weren't accepted into the group, I noticed that these four lenses were the only works so far made, and the lensmaster had only been a Squidoo member for a matter of weeks. I don't remember how I worded it, but I let this person know as politely as possible in my message, that their content was spam-like and not the best use of Squidoo. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt...sometimes people are making honest mistakes.

I checked back in with this person's bio later, and discovered that they had added a few new lenses - all of them about credit card debt. So that was the end of that relationship. It became obvious to me that I had met a real-life spammer, and I found the experience very confusing. Here was a real person, with a photo and a bio and everything. And they were doing things that I normally associate with facelessness and codes. It's certainly possible that the photo and blurb provided were totally fake, but there's still a breathing person behind these meaningless contributions - a person who is capable of making better decisions.

I'm very glad that I know better!