75th Lens!

Wahey! I made another milestone. Yesterday, I published my 75th lens on How to Clean Your Laptop. I'm committed to making the 100 this year so have another 25 to make.

Old Passion, New Lens

I don't always have time for lensmaking because I spend the majority of my free hours on writing fiction. Today, I'm proud to have crafted a lens on a subject that's close to my heart - recommendations for books about writing. I've been meaning to create this lens for a long time and hope it helps other aspiring authors out there.

Journeying

I'm amazed how long it's taking to reach 100 lenses, but I'm still committed to the goal. I'm now totally at 72 live lenses so if I can create 28 this year I'll be happy. I was particularly productive before Christmas and managed to make pages for the following subjects:


Daphne du Maurier
The Best Vintage Beach Signs
The Flumps
The Mummers

There's no doubt that the last two months have been the most profitable too, but that's due to Xmas. It'll be interesting to see how this year fares.

Themes and Borders

This is a new feature that Squidoo brought out while I was working on other projects. At first, I was lukewarm about the frames, but now, after using these for a while, I can see the benefit. They do have the advantage of branding lenses, especially the Christmas ones.

Most recently, I also tried out the Valentine's theme on my Great Gifts for Your Wife lens and this has really boosted the look and feel of the page. I'm waiting to find out what kind of impact this might have on the traffic and will record this here.

Although the themes are fairly varied, I would be happy to see a few more on the list. If I could choose, I'd request a travel, bookend, and a food theme.

Weekly Traffic

I now have 69 lenses bringing in just short of 4000 hits per week. I expect to be hitting 5000 per week this time next year. I've just gone through an exercise of deleting non-performing tags and replacing with high-hitting alternatives from the Traffic listing on the Stats button. I believe that this is already beginning to make a difference

Some of my traffic is consistently high, other seasonal lenses such as the Christmas Gifts for Grandparents only come alive at this time of year.

Making Lenses for Personal Hobbies

Some lensmasters make lenses purely for cash, but I find that I have to make lenses that support my personal hobbies in some way. I particularly love the ebay module when looking for collectables and this has helped me to find some real gems -most notably on the Vintage Dunhill Lighter and Alexander Girard lenses. The listings seem to work really well on these two.

The Return

I've returned to Squidoo with a vengeance after being largely away from the site for a couple of years. I'll admit that the monsters and trophies revived my interest in the site. I've been making a small amount of income (between $25-$50) per month without doing a great deal, but recently, I've made approximately another 10 lenses to see if I can both boost my level. I also would like to hit a target of 75 pages by the end of Dec 10.

Currently, I'm at Level 34, have 5 trophies and 67 lenses. I've kind of given up on gaining more trophies simply through commenting or liking because I've easily reached the totals needed and nothing has happened.

My most recent lens, and one that I'm happy with is 40 Things Before 40. It lists all the major things I'd like to achieve before my 40th birthday in 2013 and I plan to update this frequently. I'm also building links for my Christmas Gifts for Grandparents lens and have added some extra ideas in preparation for the festive season. Overall, I really pleased to be back at Squidoo.